Simon's other micro-decisions only either affected "him" or a singular entity in the world. The WAU decision implied that it would affect a lot more (i.e. the gameworld as a whole), and it would have been nice to see some evidence of that.

I liked his panicked rant at the end. Also some of Catherine's chat cracked me up, she seemed all too comfortable with her situation. 

Religion wasn't mentioned in the story, probably because it's a bad idea to go around kicking wasps nest, but I bet Catherine was a Buddhist.

The Buddhists I know are all annoyingly calm and unfazed by anything, and my reaction to their calm demeanor probably sounds a lot like Simon's rant sometimes XD 

While bathurst was on I went through and made a list of all the 2013 games I'll play. If anyone is interested, in case you missed something, here's the list: www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/2013toplay.htm

These are all freelook games, no isometric top-down stuff. They're all action games, or survival, adventure, stealth etc but they all pretty much fall under action. No racing, sims, strategy, oh there probably are a couple of platformers but only very good ones. And they're all single player. Metacritic pc rank next to each one. There's not really any puzzle adventures in there yet, I'll do those later, plus work out if any mmo is worth playing that year.

Of the list itself, 2013 was a decent year actually. Just as much to play in 2013 as 2012, though the indie games are growing in volume, they're not at an AAA level yet. Quite excited to play Rise of the Triad, I didn't even realise that had a remake. There's a massive lack of rpg's though, particularly fantasy rpgs. There's none. Every year prior usually at least a couple good ones.

At the top of the ranking Bioshock 3 will be good, the rest not so much. I don't care much for GTA or Asscreed or the 90s looking indie adventures like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable. Definitely doesn't have the great releases 2012 had. 

So this got such a high ranking from media because it was made by Rockstar, and everyone will spooge their pants over a Rockstar game because of GTA, much like they do with Bungie. or maybe the publisher buys reviews I don't know.

It's just a standard third person cover shooter. Bullet-time is reduced to being a waste of time and you're better off going into cover and doing the bobble head thing. Diving with bullet time is ludicrous as you flap around on the floor like a fish trying to get back up. The enemies are bullet sponges that require headshots, but that's okay with a mouse. Not sure how consolers would have done it.

Story is good, graphics and art is great, although it is extremely linear. The Favela levels were fantastic, visually. Not quite as exciting as when COD did the Favelas, but close. Combat is really no different from any other third person cover shooter that ranks in the 70's/100. EXCEPT MP3 has goddam unskippable cutscenes every 20 secs. I can't even open a door on my own without a cutscene doing it for me. Then it countlessly puts me into said room, with door locked shut, and I'm behind the flimsiest cover it could find with either my guns all taken off me except the handgun, or I've still got my guns but it's the handgun equipped. The end of the game was seriously stupid as every 30sec cutscene would put me back to the handgun which had no ammo because no enemies carried handguns! I ragequit the last level. Watching the moron Max idiotically diving around while getting shot to pieces and not going into cover when I pressed the cover key was enough for me... perhaps 1 chapter too long.

7.5/10 

In the last few months I've bought several good games I haven't played in years and some old, but new to me, games cheaply enough to not feel bad if/when I don't like them.

Today's purchase (less than $10):

F.E.A.R.
Dungeon Keeper
UT 2004
Gemini Rue 

is a decent enough service and the games are reasonably priced. However I prefer the features that steam has and the steam releases tend to be less reliant on DOS Box (which I hate with a vengeance). 

Is there some other way to run really old DOS games on Windows 7 or newer without DOS Box?

It seems much better than actually running DOS with special boot disks just for games like we did back in the early 90s.

One thing I don't like about GOG is their install program brings a bit too much junk with it. I'd much rather just have a zip file I could unpack and run.

I don't like stuff mucking around in the registry for no reason, so with GOG I usually create a restore point then just revert after installing the game. Followed by cleaning the unnecessary crap out of the game folder.

Steam smells just a little too much like spyware to me, I keep it shut down as much as possible. An interesting fact is that many games sold on Steam don't actually need it to run. The new Shadowrun series and Fallout 3 for example. 

what junk? i thought it was basically a self extracting zip file.

what registry keys are being added other than the ones that the game originally required to run? 

It varies from game to game. I couldn't tell you exactly because I move stuff out of the games folder a few files at a time and check if it still runs. Once I get it down to the minimum number of files, I delete all the unnecessary stuff.

It's not that it's a lot of stuff really, maybe 10-15 files. The GoG uninstaller, some icons, a zip file with jpegs (probably used by the uninstaller), That kind of stuff. I really don't have much need for an uninstaller.

Usually gameuxinstallhelper.dll is included. It has something to do with Games for Windows I think, useless to me.

Part of why this stuff irritates me is that I reinstall Windows frequently and I prefer things to more or less run from whatever folder on whatever drive I put them and not be tied to a particular Windows install.

Games that put their saves in weird locations really annoy me. 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/93321-SOMA-Review 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/360950/

Descent 1, 2 and 3 really captivated my imagination as a kid, they're still compelling, really. This could be sweet 

That has got to be the cheesiest trailer I've seen in a looooong time.

ALPHA ZULU VICTOR COME AROUND ON HIS 6 AND BREAK COVER ON MY GO. IMMA SPRAY MILITARY LINGO IN YOUR FACE EVEN THO I SOUND LIKE A 12 YEAR OLD.

BUY MY GAME!

Descent is cool. This trailer wasn't :( 

 

I didn't watch the trailer. 

Sorry, which part of that was meant to be cool? 

Which is basically Descent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmpsy8aML6c 

I suspect all of it was meant to be cool 

Fail 

�\_(ツ)_/� 

emoji fail... 

Good enough that it even crossed my "try to map for it" threshold. 

I got the level editor with a descent 1 and 2 bundle, but it wasnt as flexible as quake... 

Well that's not quite fair. It's capable of doing cool things but the level of skill required seemed much higher and not worth the effort.