Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Vampire_-_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Bloodlines_Coverart.png

Pretty obscure, but cool game. It plays a lot like The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, and runs on the same version of Unreal as SWAT 4 (odd choice for an RPG, but it's passable). The main premise of the game is supplementing your own survival as a vampire without losing your humanity. Like the fables in The Wolf Among Us, the vampires have their own organized secret society, with both good and bad citizens.
Funnily enough, that's what I'm playing at the moment too. Trying to keep the Halloween mood going as well?

The benefits of playing a game that's been out for years is that it's all patched up. Haven't gotten far, but haven't run into a bug yet. I'm also using a community patch that restored some cut content.

Nah, it actually runs on Valve's Source engine, the same one used for Half-Life 2, which was cutting edge at the time. Part of why the game had tons of bugs and half-done animations initially; it was rushed out the door to cash in on the hype around Valve's new tech. I believe it may have even come out before Half-Life 2, which was really supposed to be the first game using it.
Either way the base game itself, regardless of tech, is pretty freakin' excellent. Great story, especially. Acting, dialogue, all that stuff is pretty top-notch, even now. And yeah, it's still the best game ever made based on White Wolf's various tabletop RPGs. Would have loved a sequel.


Speaking of sequels, the potential for one has gone up. White Wolf's properties were bought by Paradox a few days ago. Since that World of Darkness MMO was a failure, it's more likely we'll see a proper sequel.

Is it racist if I just want to punch sexy cosplay asian girls in the face?

Can't say I find them all that sexy, but I can relate to the compulsion to punch them in the face. Or wreck 'em with a shovel.
It's not racist, because I feel the same way about every cosplayer.
Cosplay as The Hulk or Shovel Knight. That way, you can just claim you're being in character.

As a kid, I'd see those health advisory warnings before video games and couldn't fathom how anyone could get sick from that.

As an adult, I've since discovered that I'm the type of person who gets nauseous or queasy when playing certain video games. I blame game developers for adding motion blur to everything for "realism".

Was holding off on getting this until I got a PS4, but I was in a Dark Souls mood and it turns out they made a version for the PS3.

No, not everyone holds a rifle like that, but you wanna know who does? People that know what they are doing with them. Are you really presuming that every person knows how to handle a gun and carry it properly? Cmon man...
We live in the country with the most civilian gun ownership in the world. Learning how to hold a gun is one of the first things you learn when you start learning how to shoot. Are you telling me a guy who mastered 127 different styles of martial arts can't hold a gun the same way most shooters in America can?

But I just dont imagine batman carrying around a gun to shoot and clean up the streets of gotham, its just not his style.
Good thing he isn't in Gotham and he's fighting things way above common criminals.

I found an old giftcard with $1.06 on it, so I decided to get the NeoGeo Humble Bundle.

Nilin from Remember Me is pretty.

I've PM'ed Ziming his options for prizes.

Once he gets around to choosing, then second place chooses what games he wants from what I have available, and so on.

OL wrote: The city is sunny, probably not very dirty at all, and obviously the roads will provide lots of ramping and jumps.

Bay Area resident here. Stay gold OL.

^
Don't let that stop you.

Reach for the stars! Be the retard we all know you can be!

My friend is playing through X-Com right now, so I feel like reviewing The Bureau: X-Com Declassified. It's been a couple of months, so my memory may be hazy.

http://i.imgur.com/O0MZr1f.jpg

While it certainly deserves some of the flak it gets, at least part of it derives from being different from other X-Coms. Any entry in a long-running series that's different enough seems to get shat on by a sizable portion of fans just on principle and The Bureau is no exception.

The gameplay isn't anything revolutionary, but it's fun enough. It plays like your normal third-person shooter with some tactical elements to give it a similar vibe to the X-Com games. I only found the partner AI to be mildly annoying at worst compared to other reviewers, though it's a definite weakpoint. The enemy AI is good enough that you can't haphazardly run and gun and the squad AI isn't so bad as to artificially raise the difficulty by much.

The story is fairly by-the-numbers for an alien invasion, but it's fairly well done (up to a point) for me to not care. The 60s Cold War aesthetic contributed to making it feel novel enough compared to other alien games, which lean more towards modern or sci-fi settings. There's some neat world building in the side quests and spread around the X-Com base, which acts as the game hub.

I did say the story was well done up to a point for a reason, because it takes a ginormous nosedive in quality around the last 1/5 or so of the game. According to the lead designer, the main story beats were set in stone by the previous designer and he filled in the details. I don't know if the twist was planned or added later on, but it fell flatter than Apollo 13. It shat out all the Wrong Stuff and made me want to crack my Skully faster than Will Smith could say "WELCOME TO ERF".

The twist and the multiple endings all can contradict or ignore all the choices you've made and the character development the characters undergo.

I could go into many details, but I only really need to write one detail to drive home how bad it gets.

You can kill the character you played as for the majority of the game.

It's not game-over. It's not like you're controlling the character when he dies. It's not a major climax to the story. You literally can have somebody casually walk up to him and shoot him point blank, and whether he lives or dies doesn't have any effect on the ending you get

Despite all the negative stuff, I'd still recommend giving it a go if you're a fan of the X-Com series or like the Cold War + aliens setting.

3/5

http://celebhealthy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Lauren-Cohan-CelebHealthy_com.jpg
Lauren Cohan has been confirmed to play Martha Wayne. Diane Lane is Martha Kent in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice. Marisa Tomei will be playing Aunt May in the upcoming Spiderman movie. I approve of this milftacular comic book casting trend.

shredingskin wrote: Fuck music today.
If bach could listen to our music he would probably think we are retarded.

If Beethoven could listen to our music, I think he'd be pretty happy.

Patiently waiting for the next installment of the Riku Saga.

^
I'd say most of those fans had only played Fallout 3 at that point.

New Vegas is much closer to the previous entries in tone and writing than 3. 3 is still a fun game, but it feels very Bethesda-ized, if that makes sense.

Mr357 wrote:Of course, but New Vegas was the "bad" Fallout game of the 7th generation.

I thought Fallout 3 was worse.

AnimeGamer183 wrote: Wish I could get a full games worth of content for one price all released on physical media like the old days...

They have those. They're called "Game of the Year Editions".

^
Say what you will about Snyder, but the man knows his fight scenes. For comparison, here's a clip from The Dark Knight Rises.

I watched Turbo Kid after a few Facebook friends recommended it.
http://i.imgur.com/O9Oh1h9.jpg

I really liked it. A lot of 80s-inspired movies end up being a bit too in-your-face with the 80s stuff and end up as sort of a parody even if they're not intentionally trying to be. With Turbo Kid , it seems like they just tried to make a good movie and it made the 80s setting seem organic. Everything was played 100% straight with no winks to the camera and everyone was super-committed to their roles. Whole lot of fun, just don't watch it with kids because it's gorier than you might think just going by the poster.

Also re-watched Galaxy Quest . I say re-watched, but it's one of those movies I vaguely recall seeing when I was young and I don't remember any of it, so it's like watching it for the first time. Funny movie, Sigourney Weaver's tits looked great, would recommend.

I'll call people butt-hurts if that's what they're being. Seriously, I don't give a fuck. I hate listening to nerds complain about dumb things.


I'm sitting here, i'm trying to play Yakuza 2. I can't get into it... I just don't give a FUCK. I've been stuck in the past for so god damn long. I'm sick of retro video-games, I'm sick of playing anything that doesn't either keep me going forward in life or bring me together in some sort of community. I don't want to play lame-ass old shitty b-movie-esque video games in my GOD DAMN ROOM anymore.

I'm selling everything I own. I'm even selling my old Shenmue shit. Shenmue was great, as was a lot of games I played, but they were great to me when I played them, not forever in my fucking closet. I'll play Shenmue 3, i'll have a great experience, and then I'll MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE. No more collecting, none of this nonsense bullshit. I'm only keeping things I actively use. I will have a Super Nintendo (for competitive Super Metroid) and a Playstation 4 (for new games and fighting games).

I don't know why I'm so angry with this post -- probably because I'm a little bit drunk.. but fuck retro videogames. Fuck 'em once and for fucking all.

I don't know, I'm actually looking forward to Indiana Jones and the Two-Story Staircase

This is the first April Fool's where if someone said Shenmue 3 was coming out, it wouldn't be a joke.

^
She first appeared in some Crimean news thing (she was the attorney general) when Putin on a ritz. Japan saw her and fell in love.

I don't think you can go wrong with Christopher Walken singing.

I practice HEMA (historical European martial arts) and was thinking of how a Europe-centric version of Bushido Blade would be like. Then I realized I've never actually played Bushido Blade and all I know about it is from what you guys said.

So I remedied that problem and holy cow, Bushido Blade is really fun.

I also finished Dark Souls 2 and its DLC not too long ago, and my thoughts seem to mirror pretty much everyone's. Fun, just not quite as inspired as the previous games.

Sonikku wrote:

*Kenshin Himura* wrote: I'm thinking about taking a vacation to the EU or back to the States any suggestions?

My vote is for Not US.

My vote is for US. Come see it before *whatever political candidate you don't like* ruins the country.

I just switched all my Windows sounds to HAL9000 sounds. I feel that was a productive way to spend my evening.

Paid around 3.50 for it in the most recent Deep Silver Humble Bundle.

Also got the other games in the bundle, but Killer is Dead is the only one I really wanted.

^

http://i.imgur.com/SKTgatC.jpg
I'm so pleased at how my Dark Souls 2 character turned out, I snapped a crappy cell phone picture of it. While she isn't amazing looking or anything, I'm especially proud at how cute I managed to make her while using the

wait for it...

randomize option .

Souls characters aren't known for being good-looking (to put it nicely), so making a character like that while using the random option is like making the Mona Lisa by accident.

If I can do the same thing with Oblivion, I'm pretty sure I'll be entered into the Western canon.

^^Really it's only the first two movies that matter. After that, the entire franchise is just a bad joke.

Finally got to see the animated Batman: Year One that came out some years back. It's always been one of my favorite Batman stories in the comics, but I'm always pretty apprehensive about bothering with these DC animated movies now; most that I've seen have been pretty weak.
Surprised you hadn't seen it since it came with one of the Arkham games.

Most of the newer DC movies are mediocre at best (at least the ones I've seen, I avoid watching anything with Damian), but the older ones have a better track record IMO.

Of the newer ones, I liked Gods and Monsters. It marks the return of Bruce Timm since he stepped down as creative director of the DC animated movies. Here are the short films he released before the movie came out to whet your appetite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYSxN4ezhO4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpu6yPAFHrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOWLqnjFN64

Peter wrote: I've had a dogshit day, do you have links to those? I could do with a laugh.

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Enjoy the Riku classics.

Mr357 wrote:

SMDzero wrote:

Mr357 wrote:

Zoltor wrote:

Mr357 wrote: Tell me about Ryo! Why does he wear the bandage?

No one cared who he was until he put on the bandage!

If someone ripped it off, would he die?

He's a big guy.

Just makes me want to see it more, actually. As hard as I disagreed with most critics about Batman v. Superman, I'm curious about how this will fare with me. And this was the DC project I was honestly least interested in before.
As much as I hate to blame the boogeyman of "dumb, potentially Marvel-biased critics", I've read some pretty asinine reviews.

One of the reviews was complaining that the cast was full of bad people. No shit, how many times did they say that in the trailer?

^
I had a similar experience not too long ago with USPS. I mailed out an antique (which wasn't inexpensive) and it was supposed to be delivered in 3 days. For 5 days, the tracking info showed it not even leaving my local post office until it suddenly just updated when it actually made it to its destination.

I guess we should try UPS next time.

On a side note, kind of nice to find out a humble writer like Paul Dini scored himself a hot magician wife . He fucking married Zatanna , dude.
The best part is Zatanna is one of Dini's favorite characters, so it's like somebody told Dini "she's not real, you can't marry her" and Dini went "watch me."

Plus, here's a handy tip - don't forget to crouch!

You make a lot less noise when crouching, giving you a better chance of seeking around nearby guards. This is true even when you don't have any stealth augments currently activated.

Show me a decent 3D stealth game where this isn't a standard mechanic and I'll show you a real life unicorn.
Batman: Arkham Asylum?

Was crouching excluded from Asylum? It's been a while, so I don't remember the first game much, but playing Knight right now and Origins just before it, and crouching is front and center.
If they didn't do it at all in Asylum... that's gonna feel weird going back to it when I play the upcoming remaster.
Nah, I distinctly remember crouching during the Croc fight because it was faster than trying to walk away.

I don't remember it being that big of a deal in Asylum though because of the limited options during the predator segments at that time. Crouching was more for squeezing through vents and stuff.

^
I felt the same way about Dark Souls (and I did the same thing as what you're planning).

I'd recommend moving on to Dark Souls though. That way, when you end up replaying Demon's Souls down the road, it'll feel even more like a new experience since you'll be playing a new build and have forgotten some of it, making it fresh again.

I'm ready to play Shamoo 3 when it comes out.

It's not a problem at all, except that I was expecting to get GR first, so that whenever Yakuza showed up it'd be a "Sorry Yakuza, let me finish Gravity Rush first" kind of deal.
But now I'm going to have both in front of me at the same time... and now I don't know which to play first.

My life is so hard. I think I'll just kill myself to avoid all this difficult decision making.

"Sorry sweet embrace of death, let me finish Gravity Rush first."

Himuro wrote:How can I be biggest bully AND biggest punching bag though?

Have you tried to stop hitting yourself?

SWAT 4 Gold Edition
https://s4.wampi.ru/2017/02/03/SWAT-4-Gold-Edition-v2.0.0.4-GOG.jpg
A fun tactical law enforcement sim that is now easily playable on modern systems thanks to GOG.

The main point of the game is to simulate being a SWAT officer. Ideally, you should be able take down a suspect without killing them so they can be arrested. If you manage to run in and shoot everyone like John Wick, you may still fail the mission for using excessive force. The game's interpretation of the continuum of force isn't perfect. For example, you can tase a guy as much as you want without getting a complaint, but shooting a heavily armed bank robber who killed people before you arrived on scene and was running towards you will get you a violation if you didn't tell him to drop his weapon. It's fairly good as far as games go and it makes you take into account what's in front of and behind your target.

Going hardboiled is easier said than done though. The game requires a fair amount of planning as even a petty gangbanger with a saturday night special can ruin your day. Fortunately, you can study the suspects, hostages, floor layouts, etc. all before the mission starts and get a wide array of specialty tools to choose from. Gadgets ranging from optical cameras, breaching shotguns, and all kinds of grenades are all at your disposal. Issuing commands is easy and intuitive with a simple menu or fast commands through highlighting a specific part of the level. There are also other neat features like being able to separate your squad and command them from totally different parts of the building through viewing their body cam.

The squad AI is thankfully pretty competent, as bad AI can make or break a game like this. You may have to reissue a command because they didn't catch it first time. They may sometimes be too rigid when following commands. "Lead ordered me to flashbang a room, so goddamn it I'm going to flashbang this room. Who cares that I'm getting shot a bunch of times while trying to throw it in?" For the most part though, there shouldn't be too much trouble. Enemy AI is also decent, though they occasionally have their own brain farts as well. They're smart enough to run if they're being outgunned and will move around and hide in places you wouldn't expect (like rooms you were so sure that you cleared beforehand).

Irrational (RIP) did a fantastic job at creating atmosphere and tension in each level. The attention to detail in level design really helps paint a story rather than just a backdrop to operate around. I may have body armor and buddies with automatic weapons, but diving into a serial killer's basement is still creepy as hell. Something mundane like a server room that you wouldn't think twice about suddenly becomes a loud, dark room full of nooks and crannies that bad guys could be hiding in. A TV in a lobby may not seem like much, but when it plays a newsfeed that tells the terrorists that SWAT (i.e. you) have entered the building, you know that shit just got real.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet so I can't comment on it, but the multiplayer scene is nearly dead and the game shines more in single player anyways in my opinion.

4/5

It also features another one to add to my personal list of the greatest dogs in gaming.
Missile. That lovable little bastard.
http://oi65.tinypic.com/xlw6mf.jpg

Fun fact: Missile is based off of Takumi's actual Pomeranian, also named Missile. The Missile in Ace Attorney is also named after Takumi's dog, but is a Shiba Inu instead of a Pomeranian. I read that the AA Missile was going to be a Pom too, but was changed to a Shiba so it seemed more Japanese. Don't know if that's true though.
https://s4.wampi.ru/2017/02/28/222475162.jpg