The NEW Game Journal

[kyuusei]

I don't really get the whole four of February thing.  Do people really play through four games in a month?  I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two.  These days a single game can can me several months...

Yeah, no kidding. Even in my glory days as a high school student I couldn't finish four in a month. Fire Emblem will be my bedtime game for the next four months, most likely.

Well yeah, if you play LUNATIC CLASSIC.

[MeshGearFox]

Deus Ex - Finished the first real mission. This game feels /well/.

Crysis - PROBABLY going to have to fiddle with settings more when the island gets over. TEEHEE. Think I'm near the end of the third level. Not sure. The in game playtime counter has me at having played for an hour. I know I've played for more like three-ish.

I think I give up on Four in February. Rushing games isn't fun. If I pick up and slowly complete a game over a decade, so be it! If I never complete a game but enjoy the time I did spend with it, SO BE IT.

[Taelus]

I don't really get the whole four of February thing.  Do people really play through four games in a month?  I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two.  These days a single game can can me several months...

Yeah, no kidding. Even in my glory days as a high school student I couldn't finish four in a month. Fire Emblem will be my bedtime game for the next four months, most likely.

Well yeah, if you play LUNATIC CLASSIC.

Hey, I'm not known for being sane :D

Plus, when I win, I FEEL SO AWESOME

[Lard]

I killed an important guy in Mexico in Red Dead.

I found an old game of Strange Journey that I had logged *106* hours on but never finished. I'm getting back into it.

[kyuusei]

Vamp is a horrible fight. :( Timing the grab after I knock him out is kind of annoying. TAKE MY SYRINGE ALREADY, BITCH.

Also broke some hearts in Mass Effect 3 MP.

[MeshGearFox]

Euro Truck Simulator 2 - So it turns out this is actually a trucking RPG. I hauled yogurt.

Lunar: TSSSC - Up to the final dungeon. Gonna wander around talking to people first though. This game gets kinda NGE at the end. I like. Anyway, once I finish this, I can start up that copy of EB I bought from HPB last year.

System Shock 2 - Still early in the game -- up to the science lab -- but I think I'm gonna take a pass on this. I've voiced my complaints on the main board. Found Watts in R&D. Probably going to restart. SecMod's either installed wrong or not working right. There's a more... minimal rebalance mod.

By the way, what's the deal with conversation rings in games? ME started them. Amalur had them (along with normal topic lists. WTF?) Human Revolution has them. Are they superior to just picking conversation choices from a list? Conversation trees don't usually branch in more than four ways at a given node anyway so they don't change the gameplay any, but...

[Kevadu]

By the way, what's the deal with conversation rings in games? ME started them. Amalur had them (along with normal topic lists. WTF?) Human Revolution has them. Are they superior to just picking conversation choices from a list? Conversation trees don't usually branch in more than four ways at a given node anyway so they don't change the gameplay any, but...

I think they're quite silly, personally.  I really don't see the point.  But they're trendy and cool, I guess.  But I've read actual articles by game 'journalists' (using that term loosely) proclaiming that conversation rings were the future and lists were old-fashioned and obsolete without bothering to explain how they're any different...

Some people get weird about this sort of thing.  And for these big games that cost tens of millions of dollars I guess you just have to do what's expected of you.  Don't want some reviewer marking you down for using "old-fashioned" lists...

[Taelus]

The rings look nicer than a big list. They have less room for text. It's a tradeoff.

[GrimReality]

Dead Space 3 - The game tells me I'm about 25% done. I've played for probably about 4-5 hours. Maybe a little more. This is a long game! I haven't even made it to the ice planet yet.
The enemies are WAY more vicious this time around. They move faster, take more damage, and do more damage to me. I am forced to play on Casual in order to get anywhere. Either I suck at video games, or everyone else is amazing. I vote the former.
Damn kid blew through R & C TOD super quick. Got him playing Jeanne D'Arc now. His first strat/rpg. I'm so proud.

[Annubis]

Aren't rings better on consoles? You can use your analog stick to point and decide your choice instead of going through the list.

[MeshGearFox]

Aren't rings better on consoles? You can use your analog stick to point and decide your choice instead of going through the list.

You can also use an analog stick to navigate a menu and since most conversation trees, as I said, don't really have more than four branches per node ANYWAY, so it doesn't really affect much.

[Aeolus]

The only benefit I see rings bringing is by not letting the player actually read the conversation piece they're responding with until the player has made their choice. That way, they'll spend less time reading through all the possible dialogue before making their decision (since all they see are the choice that grants good guy points, the choice that grants bad guy points, and the comedy option; i.e. the only choice), and the delivery will have a more sudden impact since they didn't read through it themselves a minute ago while they were reading through their options.


Anyways, Awakening. I'm out of things to do right now, aside from grinding more gen1 characters up to prepare their children for acquisition and grinding my Avatar's support to Yarne to S rank for a Taguel Morgan with the highest possible skill stat cap in the game. Also, Yarne has some hilarious battle quotes.

Probably should start a Lunatic run so that I can access Lunatic+.

[kyuusei]

The other thing with the convo rings is that, at least in Mass Effect, there's patterns to certain dialogue choices depending on where they are on the ring. Left is usually investigate/questions, top right is usually paragon, middle neutral, bottom renegade.

Lots of gold matches in ME3. Haven't beaten vamp yet in MGS4.

[MeshGearFox]

The only benefit I see rings bringing is by not letting the player actually read the conversation piece they're responding with until the player has made their choice

Yeah, but Amalur and HR both show you what the actual dialog will be before you select it.

There IS merit in showing what the INTENT of the dialog selection will be, by the way, since -- and this is just an issue with how text works, in general. NOT something inherent to games -- you can't always gauge the register/tone of a particular line of dialogue when it's out of context like that.

Anyway, reinstalled System Shock 2 and got back to where I was last night. Posted comments on issues with mod manager on the main RPG forum.

ETS2 - I got lost trying to get out of the quarry by Salzburg. Hrtkgfakfdg. I did hit level 2 though and got the first level perk to haul valuable cargo. Also I have access to the bank now, so I can take out a 100k Euro loan and buy a truck. Dealership is in France, and I'm still in... Salzburg, headed for Linz.

FUCKING CARGO BAY ROBOTS.

[Fadedsun]

So I ended up getting FTL and it's way more fun than I thought it would be. Looks are very deceiving.