MaelstromTear

Wow, they read my email! I can't speak for other venues, but the place I saw TMBG at was the Pageant in St. Louis, which is a pretty big auditorium-type place with a balcony overlooking. It was packed, just like the last time I saw them there. The fact they're touring and doing Dial-a-song again is pretty crazy, even considering most of those songs are just from their new album.

I'd probably listen to an album called "We'd Rotate the Nudity".

You know, I think I'd play a game called FMV Cops.

I feel like the theme of hate in Last of Us 2 is probably going to be around how that's totally not the right thing to do. Ellie's on a quest for vengeance for one reason or another, and those kinds of stories don't end well. That being said, if they got rid of the standard "Revenge feels empty" for a "no that revenge was great, I loved it" kind of ending I'd be on board. It rarely ever happens.

@boiter: I think what's hurting Sony is how many times we're seeing the same games with vague/no release date. Granted, this is only 5ish months since E3 but still no concrete dates.

Now to watch this so I know how I should feel about it! /s

Never seen Jeff get as emotional as seeing Spelunky Dad fade out.

I had no idea Timothy Omundson was in a video game. He'll pretty much always be Lassie to me, though.

The work of one who consorts with beasts!

Would love to see more Overgrowth versus matches with different weapons/stages. That could get crazy.

This look didn't make me want to buy the game, but I do want an HG Mack Knife now. G-Reco's suits are real cool.

I've been playing through Shadow of Mordor because I'm a super frugal kind of player, and there is some dialogue with Talion and Celebrimbor about branding. Talion is pretty conflicted, but Elf-Stand is pretty dismissive. But the alternative is what, just straight murdering them? It reminds me of the good parts of Drakengard in that it's difficult to have a super positive character who is also a mass murderer. I don't think Talion is a "good guy". He's sympathetic, but not an outright hero. If anything, he's kind of a hostage to Elf-Stand because while he does want revenge he also just wants to die. These Middle-Earth games are not Good Vs. Evil, they have grey areas and I think that's interesting.

That all being said, other than some interesting nemesis fights I haven't really loved my time with the first game. It feels like a lot of checklists. The combat works for the most part, but isn't a huge joy. I'm not a big Tolkien guy so I don't really know if they're mistreating the lore or not. Even as base of a fan I still wasn't big on Gollum's inclusion. It felt fairly "These are things I know" for LoTR. Hopefully not sounding like I'm bragging but I only had one really constant Warchief series of fights where I kept dying to the guy to the point he was practically invincible. I had to scum the roll-over-stun into enough hits for a critical strike to even dent his health bar. But at the end of that battle I didn't really feel accomplished, just that I cheesed a fight.

I can't complain too hard because I got the game as a birthday present during the Steam sale so there's absolutely no real investment wasted except my time, but if Shadow of War is more of the same with some extra features, I can definitely wait like I did this one.