It would be great if Sony could really blow us away with a well designed console that's priced reasonably.  I'd love to be able to throw my money at them and their free PSN (if the core service still remains free this gen).  It really irks me to have to pay to access streaming apps on my 360 like Netflix and Amazon Prime, that I'm already paying for.  Not to mention having to pay to play with friends, and xbox live doesn't allow for a house account either, each individual family member has to pay for a Gold membership. 

The right way to do it this gen would be to offer free access to all of the core features of their gaming and entertainment network/community (xbox live and PSN), and then have it loaded with apps and other services that can be purchased.         

It looks like the game is selling well.  According to the NPD charts, it was #11 for the month of January, despite being released late in the month.

It seems like it's doing well considering it's a single SKU jrpg competing against multiplatforms (of course Halo 4 is the single SKU big daddy that blows the bell curve).   

I saw this posted in the comments section under one of the reviews:
"How many games is this for you, Gearbox?"
"Thirty eight... simulated."
"How many *decent* games?"
"Uh, two. Not including this one."

I was really excited about this game, especially after hearing Randy talk about the demo build last year.  From his description of their development team, he made it sound like they were all big fans of the franchise.  What a disaster the game turned out to be.  Why didn't their senior leadership call a timeout, stop the marketing, and tell fans "sorry, the game will be ready when it's ready"? This is a PR mess for them. 

I finally won in SP as the Axis, with my supply line and path of attack looking oddly similar to slightly crooked, but erect male junk.  I can't even type this without it sounding like this, but my rear flank was protected by units arranged in semicircles on either side of the main line of advance and supply.  So there you go, thankfully the germans didn't use the crooked boner attack during the real Battle of the Bulge.

That was fun to follow and read.  I thought that was a bold move to head up North to the base.  I hope you do another AAR soon.

The last sub sims I really got into were the Silent Service games, I was never able to get into SH3, although I didn't give it my best effort.   

I was an early xbox and 360 adopter, but if the PSN continues to be free, I will go that route first.  I had a bad experience canceling xbox live service that has me soured on MS's xbox live practices.  My family uses the PS3 and 360 just as much for watching movies on Amazon Prime and Netflix as we do for gaming.  If one platform offers a price fee option to get to both of those (like PSN does now), then that's where my $ will go first.

I just told them I like pie and that there is no way they can not give a pie lover beta access unless they are cake eaters in which case, I dont wanna play there silly game anyway. 

Even if they were cake eaters, they should admire a dedicated lover of pies, and for that grant you unlimited access.  I wish I had thought of that for my open ended response.  I would have written it in fantasy english though. 

That seems like a below average situation.

Also, I believe Oliver is my favorite RPG/JRPG lead that I have ever played. Kid just wants to save his mom, is polite, and does not suffer from amnesia/dark past/brooding personality.

+1.  It is wonderful to have a hero like this for my kids to see. 

It's really refreshing.

My family loves Ponyo, which we usually watch together at least 4 or 5 times a year.  We were glued to the tv last night watching my oldest play about 90 minutes of Ni No Kuni.  It was amazing that a game could pull my entire family in like that.  We all thought it reminded us of Ponyo, from the animation to the voices to the heartwarming characters.  This was obviously a labor of love for the developers. 

It was made by the Studio that made Ponyo.

I just looked that up: Studio Ghibli.  That's really cool.  I just ordered a few more of their bluray movies from amazon.   Whisper of the Heart, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, & The Secret World of Arriety.

My family loves Ponyo, which we usually watch together at least 4 or 5 times a year.  We were glued to the tv last night watching my oldest play about 90 minutes of Ni No Kuni.  It was amazing that a game could pull my entire family in like that.  We all thought it reminded us of Ponyo, from the animation to the voices to the heartwarming characters.  This was obviously a labor of love for the developers. 

[Orc: Vengeance]

I've been enjoying Orc: Vengeance on my iPad Mini.  It's an action rpg from the perspective of an orc.  There's not much story to it, but it's fun killing stuff.  It makes me nostalgic for my WoW orc warrior.  They did a nice job with the combat and loot.  Even though there is an option to purchase gold, I've never felt the need to do so.  I have some really nice gear that came from drops.  

A word of warning though: If you find yourself in a location where the enemies are suddenly 1 shotting you, it's probably one of the optional areas.  I learned that the hard way after kiting and attacking my way through one such area in Act 1.  I leveled up 5 times I think during that painful experience, but got some great loot in the process.  Once I figured out it was optional (it spits you out right at the entrance) I found the main story path and proceeded to kick ass again.

There are some decent skills, similar to the barbarian in D2&3.  Right now I have an elemental ground stomp equipped, and a charge that sets things on fire.  You have 4 skill/item slots that can be unlocked.  You can load up all 4 slots with skills, or put potions in some, or mix it up.  I have 2 skills and 2 potions equipped.  It's mostly mindless fun...as a big green orc warchief.    

Updated:  The optional areas are easy to spot.  They have a yellow door glow rather than the white glow.  They don't advance the story and are purely optional.   

I wonder how the status changes, as I've filled in nearly everything, leaving the guild fields empty and I got Above Average. Pretty smooth system though. It's one of the better ones I've seen.

I put in The Wanderers since if I do join a guild in a MMO it's them; I think mentioning them bumped me up to excellent right away 

I was Above Average for most of the form until I wrote a haiku in the "Tell us why we should pick you" field.  I'm now Excellent.

That was a classy goodbye letter from Ben Cureton at Vigil.  He sounds like a really good guy.  Thanks for posting that.  It stinks that they didn't get picked up by a publisher. 

Lol at Ubisoft's Volition bid.  Or maybe  if I'm Deep Silver overbidding so much?

Portlandia Gets Ronald D. Moore to Write One More Episode

Awesome.  Thank you for the link.  I did marathons for Firefly and The Walking Dead season 1 and 2.  Which Ron Moore is a cylon?   

I love Dove dark chocolate. But damn if it isn't a little bit embarrassing buying those.

There are much worse things to be embarrased about.  At least they're not genital shaped.

I couldn't stand dark chocolate when I was a kid, but I'm liking it more and more as I get older.

Poor Vigil...that's like being the last kid standing after everyone has been picked and the teams are full.     

It's hard to imagine warring factions based along neat racial lines in the Elder Scrolls universe.  I think if I approach the concept as daoc 2 with an elder scrolls paint job, it works better.  The 3 faction system worked really well in daoc, it just doesn't really match up with the Elder Scrolls world that I've played in since Morrowind.  I hope they let common sense prevail and price this thing right.  Buy the box, play for free.  In app purchases like GW2.     

I'm glad to hear that most of the studios found new publishers.  Hopefully they can continue to march along with the games currently in development.  Sega now owning both Warhammer licenses is interesting.  Hopefully they can do something good with that.   

I'm really liking my iPad Mini for portable gaming.  It's light, can fit in one hand, and still has a good screen size.  The iPad game library seems endless, with lots of good 99 cent games available.  It seems too good to be true.  Baldur's Gate, Need For Speed, Sonic Jump, Ticket to Ride, Battle of the Bulge, FIFA, just to name a few of the excellent games I can play on the go with the Mini.    

This is probably his best option right now...

 

Tiger Woods should do the same thing.  He could endeavor to break Wilt Chamberlain's seemingly impossible record of 10,000.   Hold a press conference and announce the goal.  Maybe 2,000 each year over the next 5 years.  He could do it if he was really committed.  I bet his golf mojo would return while pursuing his quest to pass Wilt.     

Temple Run 2 has been downloaded 20 million times in less than a week.

Dayum.

That's crazy.  Someone's rich.

They definitely cut corners in DA2, especially the generic level designs.  I read an interview about DA3 where the developers admitted as much, and were promising a more varied experience, with no repeated levels.  That and the waves of enemies that appear out of thin air, or magically leap out of buildings were the 2 biggest complaints I had about DA2.    

It's surprising to see the really good review scores.  I never would have expected a truck driving sim to be good.  It looks like it has a business management element to the game too.  Growing and expanding a trucking business sounds more interesting to me than actually driving the rigs around. 

Are the steering wheels on all the trucks on the right side of the cab?  That would screw me up.

AMC leadership must be a bitch to work for if the Showrunners keep leaving over the industry catch-all "creative differences".  They were on a good roll for Season 3.   

Since most of us have kind of spread out after Gone Gold, this is one of the last places where there's still a good connection to that community.  I very much appreciate that.  Compared to the alternatives, the GT forums are a more reasonable place, that tends to be a lot less snarky and mean spirited. 

Thanks for keeping the site and forums going.     

I thought Kotor 2 was the better game for 90% of the game.  One of my favorite gaming moments happens in Kotor 2 during a moment of truth talk with the PC's mentor (Kreia) later in the game.  It's just so well acted by Sara Kestelman.  The music was great in that moment too.  I remember actually getting chills.

They just ran out of time to put together a quality ending.  Of the NPCs, I liked Visas Marr, the female Miraluka.  She was my PC's love interest.  Kelly Hu did a good job voice acting her.  Of course HK-47. 

It really is a great game, with an excellent voice cast for 90-95% of the experience.   

Reading about this I still don't see any reason why one should purchase the new edition? Sure, if you want it on the Ipad (Which you still can without this), but on the PC? No reason whatsoever it seems.

For me it's just been the ease of play.  I don't have to worry about all of the mod installs.  If you already have all the essential mods, and you already have the GOG version, the differences are a few extra NPCs, some new avatar portraits, and the seperate Black Pits adventure.

The BGEE is supposed to be the new baseline for future mods, but I think that remains to be seen.  They do a nice job of providing regular updates and patches.  But it's mainly just the convenience for me.  I hate having to manage and install a bunch of mods, especially for older games.     

I really enjoyed Kotor 1, but you're right about the initial pacing before you get your lightsaber, it takes forever.  I think it took me about 6-7 hours too.  I burnt myself out on Kotor 1 after 2 1/2 playthroughs. 

I liked the pacing of Kotor 2 better, including some of the npcs, but that ending was a turd.     

I'm just shaking my head.  I don't get it.  Why not the entire zombie body standing on the pedestal so it's not so jack the ripper creepy?  That's some weird sh*t.       

My stepson saved up enough money to purchase all of the components needed to build a decent gaming pc.  His dad has an IT background, and did all of the legwork putting it together.  It's a standard gaming pc with all of the expected components with the exception of one feature.  He designed the pc so that my stepson has to login to a virtual machine to access or play anything online.  I'm not sure exactly how it works, but what I've seen from a pure gaming perspective is that it just doesn't seem to work well.  Maybe it's a good solution for a business, but it seems to be a bottleneck for online gaming. 

He spends most of his time online playing Minecraft with his friends, but he can't do it through the virutal machine, it causes all sorts of weird issues and lag.  Is it possible to game through a virtual machine setup?  Or is this a bad idea from the start?

Again, I don't know anything about the concept or the tech, but having to play through a portal (if that's what it is) seems like a bad idea.  I would think he would be better off just installing games to his local hard drive, using a good local antivirus program, and going straight to the internet.  On the plus side his dad can see and monitor everything he's doing online.  But I can do that locally if I wanted too. 

You can use a normal 120v power to charge. It will just take longer.  Sacramento has a bunch of charging stations and one right across the street from me that offers free parking and free charging.

Work is 15.6 miles one way so i could easily go to work for 2 days for 1 charge.   

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk HD

I think the lease price you quoted is good, and you have charging stations nearby.  Seems like a nice option.  The story I saw on the growing # of charging stations in some states spotlighted California and I think Washington as 2 states where you can get around pretty well already with an electric car.  I get about 420-430 miles on a full tank (9 gallons), but to be able to never have to fill up, or to get 700 miles with a plug-in hyrid, that would be awesome.   

Sorry, my geek is showing.



(random thoughts:  Cross nails it...yet again.  Portia needs a sandwich)

Cross was born to play Tobias.  There's no way other way to explain it.  He became something bigger than his role to the nevernude community.  He also founded a new role within the mental health profession. 

I so can't wait for this!

 

I think it depends on where you live too.  Some states are putting electric car hook ups (plug ins?) along some of their more trafficked routes to encourage more electric car use.  I've noticed the plug ins now at some of the major airports I fly through too, and they are usually right up near the front of the parking garages by the handicap spots.  I've been driving a prius for the past 2 years as my commuter car, and I'm a bit envious of the plug in cars.

     

That section of the airport is a bit confusing.  Most of the junkyard and skatepark missions are good.  You just have to bypass some of the baddies around and near the airport fenceline.  I'm not sure why they put that higher level group area there. 

I know Tilt already mentioned most of these, but I'll just reinforce what really helped me:
- There are no true character levels in the game.  Everything is based on your weapon/skill level...including quest difficulty.  That's why it's so important that you focus on leveling up 2 weapons, and using both of their skills the best you can.  Another way to say it, you will notice quest difficulty level go down as you raise your weapon skill levels. 

- If you're not comfortable trying to pick the best active and passive skill combos, try going with one of the starter templates.  The template will help you pick active and passive skills that work well together.  Almost all of the templates will teach you how to use 2 weapon skills together to trigger effects.  Once you get a feel for how the different weapon abilities work together, you can start swapping out what you want (or working towards something you want).  The beauty of it is that you never need to respec.  You can start working on a different weapon anytime you want.

- I had to use a crafting guide to figure out the different crafting shapes.  Unless something has changed, breaking down loot was straightforward.  I would just check out a guide and see if that helps.   

I'm a sucker for sci-fi neuromancer/blade runner settings.  I wish they didn't tease the game 2 years out from the release though.

I am honestly surprised at the level of "stuff" the previous owner's get when it goes F2P.  It seems like most games strip everything out but there doesn't seem to be any real downside to playing if you're a founder.

Same with what they offer for free.

Make the players want to subscribe to get bonuses, not force them to do so because you restrict every little thing that they can do beyond a paywall. *coughSWTORcough* Limited UI buttons, seriously?!

I'm right there with you.  It's why I won't play swtor (even though I'd like to finish at least 1 storyline).  Their ftp model is too obnoxious.  I'd rather reward other mmos that have better models with my instore purchases.