This thread is awesome if I do say so myself!

Sorry I missed this thread over the holidays.  I have to agree with thFool - seems hypocritical to me that our society condemns sexuality in favor of violence.  So it's cool to play games simulating how many different ways I can kill or maim someone, but then we get morally outraged about games that simulate different ways to f someone? 

...but I find there's something inherently sexy listening to true gaming geeks discussing games intelligently.  I was just listening to the latest GT cast, and I'm confused trying to figure out if it's Ron's voice that turns me on, if he is just hot in general, or just the fact that he is talking about games coherently that I find hot.   If anyone has some sexy photos of Ron, please send them my way so I can figure it all out 

OK, carry on with your regularly scheduled programming!

What,no battle of the bulge jokes?!? There's gotta be a penis joke lying around!

I guess my comment above was not clear enough?  PENIS BULGES YUM YUM YUM!!!

Damn, I was hoping for a different kind of bulge battle.

Lost Cities is on sale for 1.99. This is particularly notable since Coding Monkeys has never put Carcassone on sale (though it was cheaper before the universal update came out). I went ahead and bought it, but I hope it gets updated to universal at some point.

Let's play a game!!!

- - -

I've been hooked on a kind of goofy game called Age of Myth:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/age-of-myth/id547841533?mt=8

I'm not even sure what type of game to call it, I guess it's a side scrolling RTS.  The English translations are horrible, the design is fairly simplistic, and a lot of things aren't explained well or at all, but somehow it has some weird addictive quality to it (for me, anyway).  You are in charge of a town with buildings to upgrade units, upgrade your hero, train your hero, buy items and other miscellaneous things.  The center of the town is your castle.  It took me a while to figure this out, but essentially each "combat" you participate in leads from your castle to the enemy's area in a side scrolling-ish way.  Along the path they send mob after mob at you, and you can fight them with your weapons or items or special skills.  In addition you can call up a limited number of disposable troops (there are 5 to choose from at the outset) to help in the fight.  The battle will go back and forth until you or the enemy run is defeated, or until one of you destroys the others's castle.  The rate at which you can call troops is upgradeable, as is your castle strength and castle defenses.  Fighting requires little skill, just some basic timing on when to use your special abilities.  In spite of all the simplicity, because pretty much everything is upgradeable or disposable, you are constantly making choices as to how to use your rewards (money and runes, runes are earned slowly or as IAP and can be traded for gold, gold is earned by playing battles and just logging in over time) to get further along.  You may have to go back and grind out different levels for cash.  You get a letter grade for your performance and extra cash if you destroy the enemy castle.

All in all I'm not exactly sure what kind of gamer this appeals to, but I'm definitely a little addicted.

Saw it in 3D and I loved it.  The clarity of the picture was great.   

Ditto!  (This was HFR 3D just to be clear).  Admittedly I did get a bit nauseous/headachey during some of the big sweeping camera motions, but I got over it.  I thought the first hour moved a little slow but all in all it met and exceeded my expectations.  Casting wise, I felt Martin Freeman played a much better hobbit overall than any of the LOTR crew, so that was definitely a big plus.  Side note: if you haven't seen Love, Actually, it's worth it to just watch his scenes in there.

Pretty brutal mid-season finale, I hope it helps to escalate the "big bad" for the second half of the season which will presumably involve all those people who sacrificed in the beginning of the season and the stupid teacher dude.  Either way, as long as buff Jeremy is around, I'm in!

Is no one playing or interested in that Guardians of Middle Earth game?  I couldn't find a thread about it.

Holy crap that was some awesome TV, I almost had a heart attack.  I don't think I've yelled and screamed at the TV that much ever.  Absolutely fantastic.

I'm not sure if it's new or not but Bowling Dead is pretty fun!

FYI I actually did get an Alpha code, sweet!  Took a few days but no big deal; the issue was on sale on iTunes for $0.99 so I'm pretty happy.

I played the tutorial, pretty much what I'd expected.  I think it will ultimately play the best on a tablet, so hopefully games will all be cross-platform. 

I was a bit disappointed in the hex portion of the game, I thought it was a full chess board type but really it's more like MTG with layers, i.e. you can have multiple "things" (units, walls or whatever) stacked in front of the thing you are protecting.  In fact I don't see how making it a hex makes much difference at all but I barely scratched the surface.

Otherwise it plays very similarly to other CCGs.  Resources are the cards themselves so it's simplified from MTG's multi color system. 

I realize there's a ton of competition in the genre these days, but this one definitely seems like it good be a cut above, particularly if they can get games going seamlessly through all the major platforms.

All I can say is Miles and Munroe need to get a room and take care of business.  I swear they were acting more like forlorn lovers than friends who had grown apart.  Juliette's acting in this show is kind of terrible, I really hope her role improves when the show returns.  Kim Raver has mostly been wasted as well thus far. 

Fun inconsequential trivia: both Miles and that doofus boy show up in Breaking Dawn Pt. 2!

- - -

I don't think the break will be as detrimental as Flashforward's was.  First off it's a more engaging show with a stronger core cast and core plot.  More importantly they didn't take any significant breaks in between, it almost felt like we got to see all 13 episodes sequentially, and that's pretty satisfying these days when you compare to shows like Game of Thrones whose entire "season" is only 10 episodes long, and shows like Falling Skies, Homeland, True Blood, etc have all done fine with short seasons separated by longer periods.  The key IMHO is to not allow for more than a single break, maybe two, while you air all the episodes.  You want the audience to feel like they know the show is going to be there, and once there's a break, you break.  3 months is a lot less than 8 or whatever it is we had to wait for GoT.

Fassbender can do very little wrong.  I love his choice in roles.  He even made Prometheus fun to watch at times.

Plus he's got a HUGE package!  I still need to watch Shame to see some good old fashioned full frontal 

- - -

Days of Future Past from the comics was one of the classic time travel storylines, but was heavily involved with Kitty Pryde, Storm and Wolverine in a dystopian future scenario.  Basically older Kitty's consciousness is sent back in time to younger Kitty's body to thwart an assassination attempt.  With this cast it seems like they are going to go a very different direction.  Hopefully we'll still get some Sentinel bashing!

I'm still hooked on Puzzle and Dragons.  Would never have predicted this would be the one to hook me, but for whatever reason it has.  Definite similarities to Dragon Island Blue/Pokemon, a little bit of Dragon Vale and Puzzle Craft/Puzzle Quest.  The collection and upgrading aspects are well done, but the core "match 3" gameplay/combat coupled with the strategy/risk factor involved with limited "stamina" make for an all around fun experience.  Unlike other match 3 games, you can move pieces anywhere on the board, which would seem to be a bit "overpowered" - but it works.  There are 5 colors + health hearts, and depending on what you've chosen your team make up to be, successful combat can become highly dependent on how well you balance your team against the colors of mobs that you are fighting as well as for what colors show up to play and how you play them.  It's definitely one of those games that seems exceedingly easy and simple at first but gradually becomes more complex.  You can play completely free if you so desire, in fact it's probably more fun that way.

Are any of you in the UK?  Supposedly the December 2012 PC Gamer comes with an Alpha code for Scrolls.  I'm trying to get one through iTunes but I don't have high hopes.  If anyone can pick one up for me I'd be happy to Paypal the cost of the magazine or whatever.

I've been playing this for the last few weeks and agree with the earlier comment that the world is feeling empty.  For the first 10 levels or so, there were lots of players around to team on events.  I'm up to level 26 now and sometimes I can't find anyone to join me for an event and I end up getting mobbed even though I am 2-3 levels above the recommended level.

This was a problem I know I mentioned in Beta test but of course was ignored.   The PvE is so much fun when there are others around; even a single other person makes a world of difference, but as soon as it's empty, it can be a complete chore to accomplish anything.  What they need is a reason for people to come back to lower level areas, and to make the whole "dynamic PvE" more meaningful.  There should be server wide rewards or some other motivation to keeping lower levels intact, and the enemy content should be constantly encroaching.  As much as I love the game, I get frustrated by knowing what it has/had the potential to be.

My advice if you are stuck solo is to go to a completely different lower level area and just do those quests and exploration, or supplement with a bit of crafting.  I've done full levels just wandering around in areas far below my level, and it's still fun.  The xp is smaller but comes much faster the more you outlevel the content.

For the Dragon Island Blue fans, I think I've found something just as addictive, or at least comparable.  It's like DIB mixed with Puzzle quest, called Puzzle and Dragon.  Similar collecting type of game, where you can use lesser monsters to fuse into your main team, but the combat is gem matching based like Puzzle Quest instead of like Pokemon.  The graphics are really crisp and look fantastic on the Mini.  Only downside is it uses a stamina system like some of those other time based games, so it plays best in small bursts.  I believe it's free to try.

I was never much of an angry birds fan, but the Star Wars wrapper is totally fun.

Bah you guys got me hooked on Dragon Island Blue!  Perfect for the iPad Mini.

I'm also into this old game I found recently, Supremacy HD - I think it used to be called Civilization Wars HD, it's a Galcon-ish game in a fantasy setting.

Has anyone tried Samurai Empire?  It's got a big ad on Toucharcade, card battles and empire building or something like that.  I may give it a whirl.

I actually thought of you when I was posting my impressions.  Knew it would be right up your alley.  I have played almost nothing else since I got it a couple weeks ago.

Is this the supremacy game?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/supremacy-wars-hd/id383572497?mt=8


Samurai Empire does look interesting but i'm too busy on Dragon island right now...bookmarked for future!

Yeah, I tried Samurai out a bit last night and it was just a bit too sporadic for me; I'm sticking with Dragon Island!!!

And yes, that was the Supremacy game.  I was having a great time with it but now I'm kind of stuck on one map with a giant turtle who just kicks the crap out of me. 

What kind of job are you looking for?  My company was hiring quite a few software engineer types a little while back, I doubt they are all filled.

I was going to post my impressions of the iPad Mini, but this post from Toucharcade pretty much covers it:

http://toucharcade.com/2012/11/05/a-weekend-with-the-new-ipad-mini-i-love-this-little-thing/

Yes, it feels a little slow in terms of browsing and loading, etc - particularly compared with the 4th gen.  And yes, I can see the difference in the resolution, particularly in text when browsing. 

But other than that, it's just fantastic.  This is the size/weight/form factor I wanted from the getgo, with access to almost all of the apps I want.  It holds perfectly in one hand, the weight makes it nearly effortless.  The form factor is sweet, it actually hid perfectly under one of those voting booklets you get in the mail.  This is something I honestly feel like you can just carry with you anywhere and everywhere, yet it's still big enough to give you a much better experience than the iPhone/iTouch.  Once they get the A6 and retina in here, it could actually take over the regular iPad. 

Bah you guys got me hooked on Dragon Island Blue!  Perfect for the iPad Mini.

I'm also into this old game I found recently, Supremacy HD - I think it used to be called Civilization Wars HD, it's a Galcon-ish game in a fantasy setting.

Has anyone tried Samurai Empire?  It's got a big ad on Toucharcade, card battles and empire building or something like that.  I may give it a whirl.

It's black magic as far as I'm concerned. We were deathly afraid the appraisal on our house was going to be too low when we bought, but it came in (surprise) exactly at the purchase price. I mean, really? Exactly the purchase price and not a penny more? The comps were all over the place and from several years ago, so it looked pretty silly. But we got our house, so were happy.

Got the appraisal back today on the house we're buying and it came back....exactly at the purchase price. I don't understand why the Appraiser knows the price. It's obviously a target to hit rather than an objective number. He also stretched the comps to make sure they met the number so we make the deal. I have no faith if the house is actually worth the price now. Of course on the house we're selling it didn't appraise and they did not take any of the numerous upgrades and addition into account at all.

The entire appraisal process stinks IMO.

This is astute. Before the drop, appraisers were often in the pocket of the mortgage companies and would come in right on number for the loan. Since the crash, though, it's supposed to be an independent process....maybe it has gone back to the old way...

I bought my house around 3 years ago AFTER the crash and when the new supposedly "independent" process was already in place.  I was concerned at the time because I had to do two separate appraisals, one from the FHA's choice and one of my own.  But as I mentioned, they both came in at the asking price, which seemed a little suspicious at the time, but I assumed they were allowed to know what the target price was and had to either justify it or not. 

As far as Quicken is concerned, they aren't a broker; they own the loan directly themselves.  What I don't know is who would benefit from the alternate package they wanted to get me in.  The interest rate was the same, but the MIP fees were outrageous; there's a starter fee around $11,000 and the monthly fee TRIPLES (WTF!).  Do they collect the MIP or is that an FHA thing?  Either way I decided not to go there.  Get this - if I had bought the house a couple months sooner, I would have qualified for the old MIP rates in the "Streamline" finance and no additional fees.  If I had bought the house a few months later, I would have at least qualified for a percentage rebate off the starter fee.  But I was lucky enough to have bought during the special few month period I like to call the FMF (FUCK ME FHA).

At this point, I just want to see a formal response addressing my concerns and then I'm ready to just drop it.  I don't want to go through this whole thing again so I'll probably wait for more favorable conditions or if I happen to find a different company I want to work with.

Have you checked a site like Zillow to see what their estimate is?  I'm about to close on a refinance myself, and my appraisal was really close to what Zillow estimated.

Yeah, the numbers on Zillow are pretty low, similar to what the appraiser had - but.... this was the same situation 3 years ago.  My house happens to be a bit of an oddity in the neighborhood it is in because it was torn down and rebuilt 25 years ago, and then about 10 years ago a major extension was made to it.  So it's much newer than the majority of the neighborhood and much larger as well, which is why 3 years ago I was also worried the appraisal may not come in - but like Teggy said, it came in exactly at the purchase price.  Even better, because it was through the FHA, we had to do 2 appraisals, and BOTH came in at exactly the purchase price. 

Now supposedly the appraisal process has changed in recent years so that it can't be directly influenced/controlled by banks, etc. - but that was the same thing I was told 3 years ago.  Supposedly these are completely independent entities, which makes the whole process even more suspicious.

ATB, how did you find/choose your local mortgage co?  I get a ton of ads every day but I don't know if they are trustworthy so I thought it would be safer to work with a bigger company.

Trying to make this long story short.  A while ago I inquired about a refinance from Quickenloans.  Everything was looking good, paperwork, credit scores, everything was approved - net effect would be we'd be saving about $900/month.  I was ecstatic, I mean that would really open up things financially to pay down the principal or remodel or donate or whatever.  But then the appraisal came in - at $100,000 less than what I assumed (which was just that the value remained roughly the same over the past 3 years), which effectively killed the whole deal.  I sent Quicken an appeal/rebuttal/questions regarding the details of the appraisal, but they've been delaying and trying to get me to work on a different loan package (FHA streamline) which I more or less turned down.

Now you might assume I don't understand how appraisals are done (true) and may be underestimating how much the market has come down in my area in the past 3 years (debatable), but regardless, I feel like at bare minimum I deserve an explanation on a few key items.  These appraisals basically boil down to the comparables the appraiser chooses, and how they choose to manipulate the +/- factors compared to your home.  In other words, it still comes down to a single person's biased opinions and approach.  For instance, there's a number they use for how much each sq ft of living space is worth, and how much each sq ft of additional property, etc. (where do these numbers come from and why are they so drastically different from the numbers the appraiser used 3 years ago?)  Then they factor in things like "quality" and "condition" - which of course have a lot of personal bias.  Her primary comparable was a foreclosed home, and though it was clearly remodeled, I'd still be skeptical on the "quality" or "condition" of a 60+ year old foreclosed house vs. my 25 yo house which has been well taken care of.  The numbers can matter dramatically depending on which condition or quality they choose, in this case each tier was a factor of $30,000 different so her foreclosed comparable gets valued +$30,000.  In another interesting choice, she factored $20,000 for each additional bathroom (3 years ago my appraiser factored $5000 per bathroom).  

But here's the best part: after all her calculations, the number she came up with for 3 average comparables was VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL to the number in my appraisal from 3 years ago.  In her text, she even remarks that the market had stabilized.  Every market trend graph I've seen shows basically a stable curve in the zip code over the last 3 years, maybe a small % dip but nothing even close to justifying a $100,000 drop.  The property assessment has gone up and down over the past few years, but has always been consistent with the price we bought it for.  So if this new appraisal value is "correct," that means 3 years ago I was the victim of 2 faulty appraisals plus the County Assessor being wrong for about 10 years.

All that said, what really bothers me is that there seems to be a complete lack of process or protection against this - essentially your fate is left in the hands of a single person's biased opinion and manipulation of numbers.  Everywhere I've looked and asked and read, people just seem to be complacent about accepting the results.  Even buying/selling/valuing a car seems to have far more options, stipulations and protections in place than this mess.  I'm wondering if there is any point in contacting a lawyer to inquire about possible actions in the future, or if it's really as futile as everyone seems to be telling me.

He's like a more annoying and less manly Ryan Seacrest...if that's possible.

Isn't he that doofus from MTV, Chris Hardick or something like that?

[Spoiler]

Well I hope you haters are happy now!!!   

That was an absolutely unbelievable episode, I really didn't think they'd go there this soon.  Maybe in the finale but WTF, that was just brutal.  And freaking Carl, OMG, even the actor should be scarred for life.

Given that they seem willing to do just about anything (well no zombie baby yet), I guess they will probably stay true to a lot of the Governor storyline. 

Spoiler for Hiden:

Everyone catch his mentioning of his daughter lol?  Hooray!!!!

 

On a side note, I still wanted to see him and Andrea get it on, but oh well.

I watched about 4 hours of gameplay streamed. 

If you have FOUR hours of time available to watch gameplay streamed, why don't you just go play something instead?!?!?!      

I got totally sucked into this yesterday as I was watching the Lakers get pummelled by Dallas.

The graphics are definitely old school horrible but the game is new school fun.  It's exactly what they advertised, a TD game where the units take on a bit more personality.  There's definitely a fun flow to the "story" and the characters, and it's nice that you get to rename them all and do some limited customization of their skills.

Each map is pretty much traditional TD fare, and can be played and replayed on any of 4 difficulty levels, so if you are having trouble in one and just want to advance the storyline, you can play it at a lower difficulty.  Or you can go back and "grind" previous levels for more xp to level up.  Each difficulty completion gives a different (and better) reward, but the difficulty seems to ramp up very quickly.

"Scraps" are used for currency to buy items for your units, or to recruit more units.

Aside from the graphics, everything else is top notch and addictive if you enjoy TD games.  

I picked it up regardless, but only played for about 10 minutes.  In all honesty I don't see why it is being so universally blasted.  I wouldn't call it a great game and I'm not going to recommend it here for fear of being smacked down (plus I think the price is a bit high), but personally I'm happy with it.

For fans of Borderlands, you have the same sense of "humor" from the robot with the 4 familiar characters from BL1.  Each "mission" plays out on a single screen much more like Battlehearts or Epic Raiders than anything else.  I am a total fan of these types of games so I'm a bit biased.  Basically you tap or drag each person to move or attack or use their special ability.  You can also move close to heal a fallen comrade to get him a "second wind."  One of the 4 serves as a healer similar to the above-mentioned games.  Unfortunately it doesn't feel quite as polished as those games (perhaps because the characters are much smaller), but the graphics are far better and it's the only game like this that uses guns instead of fantasy based.  Supposedly there is a cover system but I haven't figured it out.  Your guys will level up as they gain xp and can buy new guns and equipment at a kiosk similar in design to the original game. 

All in all it has all the elements of BH/Epic Raiders without any annoying IAP plus Unreal Engine graphics in the Borderlands universe. 

That's really a shame 

[Spoiler]

Another strong episode, reminded me a bit of Lost how they totally went with the other characters, if they had more episodes it would be cool to have one showing how Michonne and Andrea survived the seven months.  I like the actress who plays Michonne in general, but she really needs to develop a few more expressions aside from "glare with frown" and "glare with big frown" and "glare with bigger frown."  I like her look and when she has speaking parts, but when she's in the back of the scene just glaring and frowning, it's a bit much.  Anyway also enjoyed what happened with her slaves, wondering if they are going to go with what the very recent one-shot comic book revealed.

Comic spoiler:

Spoiler for Hiden:

You find out the two slaves was her boyfriend and his best friend or something like that.  Seemed like they were hinting at it this episode.

I also really like what they are doing with the Governor.  I dunno if it was just me but I found him eerily sexy in a weird disturbing way.  He definitely had a nice ass.  But that's beside the point, in the comic there was just nothing even vaguely redeeming about him, in the show it looks like they are going to give him some added depth.  I'm wondering if they are wanting to do some sort of romance or something with him and Andrea.

Can't wait for next week!

I'm just curious if you guys who are using it really like the Metro/box interface, and if you are using it on a touch screen.  I tried the customer preview a while back and really did not like it at all; I just jumped to the desktop as soon as I could.  This was not on a touch screen though.  Also in terms of new/better features, are there specific ones that would be good even if you only used the desktop interface?

My Vita has been collecting dust for a long time now, hopefully this will be the game to get it some action.

How is this possible?  I am buying games left and right!!!!

Same here....   

Clearly you people aren't doing a good job of advertising what you are buying for the Vita - post more!!!!!   

This is looking really fantastic!

http://www.g4tv.com/articles/78638/borderlands-legends-hands-on-preview-pocket-sized-vault-hunting/

I've been playing again with the new patch and while it is a lot of fun, the issue with the limited skill system and loot still persists.  What do I mean?  Because of the way skill damage is tied to your weapon damage (as opposed to stats or skill points that you invest), your success is pretty much tied simply to having the highest DPS weapon you can find, regardless of your class or "build" or skill choices.  And that pretty much means.... Auction House!

Without the AH, my mid 40s mage had weapons with DPS in the 110-150 range (even with gems).  Sure I got more yellow drops and made small incremental improvements in either stats or dmg, but as I got further along I noticed my ability to kill was steadily getting worse.  So I went to the AH, put my buyout limit at 50K, and lo and behold, everything that showed up was in the 500+ dps range.  WTF?  I haven't seen anything remotely close in hundreds of drops at my level, yet there they all were.  I was being choosy at first but then I remembered the golden rule: DPS trumps all, so I grabbed the highest DPS thing there, an axe with 730 or something crazy like that.  As soon as I equipped it, everything around me just melted like butter, it was pretty ridiculous.  My overall damage number went from something like 2000 to 8000 (I don't remember exactly).

In other words, AH still is the dominant factor.  In my last week of play I've leveled from around 40 to 52 and in that time I think I've had one usable drop, so not much has changed for me yet.  It's not just that the items I get are mediocre, but the disparity between them and what's on the AH is so far it's ridiculous.

whoa, NICE!!!

And hepcat, say hi to your mother for me.

Comes out next week, looks pretty sweet to me.  My Vita has been collecting dust for a long time now, hopefully this will be the game to get it some action.

http://www.ign.com/games/ragnarok-odyssey/vita-117348

Must Have!!!!!