Playing a great deal of Max Payne 3 punctuated by Zen Pinball. Max Payne has a *LOT* of monologues. This makes up for at least two instances of forced stupidity that I’ve encountered so far (I suppose that they’re required instances of stupidity… they move the plot… but, seriously, I go out of my way to be careless when I am not downright reckless… then the cutscene has me be all careful?) but the gameplay is the same delicious gameplay from Max Payne 1 and 2 that I fell in love with years ago.
Zen Pinball is, of course, Zen Pinball.
So… what are you playing?
The Wrath of the Lamb DLC for The Binding Isaac came out this week, so I’ve been making my way through that to get all the new items and achievements.
I also just got in to the Counter-Strike: GO beta (finally!) so I’ll be playing a lot of that when I get back home.
Oh, and the Humble Indie Bundle V is out (http://www.humblebundle.com/) and available for the next 12 days. I’ve already got four of the five games but I’ll be picking it up anyway because you get the soundtracks with the bundle for free.
The selection this time is really awesome:
LIMBO
Psychonauts
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP
and Bastion if you pay more than the average ($7.79 as of a few minutes ago).
LIMBO and Bastion are two of the beautiful and meaningful games I’ve ever played – if you enjoy video games and have never gotten them you NEED to get them now. Getting the soundtrack to Bastion is a great deal (as soon as I finished the game I went out and bought it for $8.99 and listen to it regularly).
Of the games in the set, only Amnesia requires much graphical processing power – it’s a psychological horror game and I can attest that it’s really, really scary – so scary I put it down after an hour and keep putting off going back).
I strongly disliked Psychonauts but everyone else I know thinks it’s one of the greatest games of all time, so for whatever you’re willing to pay it’s probably a worthwhile bet.
Superbrothers seems exactly like my kind of game, a retro-themed side scrolling adventure game, I had this on my wishlist for a while.
I absolutely *LOVE* Psychonauts. What didn’t you like about it?
It was a long time ago when I got it, but I recall hearing how awesome it was only to find it was yet another ‘walk around and collect stuff’ game – I didn’t find the conceit compelling enough to forget that I liked Banjo & Kazooie a lot better to do more or less the same thing.
Ah, fair enough. See, I *LOVED* the various level design. The German psyche? That was awesome. The Not Agents from the paranoid guy’s psyche? I laughed a lot.
I got into this argument over the game Manhunt as well, though. I thought it was a terrifying game that had one of the most horrifying immersive atmospheres ever… and he complained that it was a substandard sneaker with a limited weapon set.
I think that this will tie into tomorrow’s essay…
So, they added Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Lone Survivor (!) to the Bundle today.
I would say anyone that owns a computer and has even a mild interest in games, especially in seeing what these “indie games” are all about, would be hard pressed to find a worse use of whatever entertainment money you’d feel like donating to get it.
Yeah, I really want to pick up Lone Survivor.
I’d recommend Braid for anybody who wants to see what advancements they’ve made with Mario technology but Super Meat Boy is a brilliant game that I can’t recommend to anyone over the age of 19. It just requires too much twitch.
More Diablo 3 for me. My primary character is in Act 2 Nightmare.
Better than Diablo II or is it one of those “we wanted to make Diablo II accessible to freakin’ everybody” games?
Since my first experience with Diablo II is more than a decade old it’s hard to make a comparison. Personally, I think the streamlining is a step forward rather than backward. You don’t need to lug scrolls around any more and the ability to rebuild your skills on the fly means that you can experiment without having to create a duplicate character of a class. They’ve also put work into the resource management, you think about your mana very differently when you’re a wizard vs. a barbarian vs. a monk (the 3 classes I’ve played). They’ve also done a good job of making the difficulty levels feel like a real part of the game, rather than being a tack-on, there’s a lot of stuff you won’t see playing on Normal only.
I dislike the always-online requirement, but on the whole I think Diablo 3’s design is a step forward,a nd will probably help set the standards for the next generation of hack and slash games.
I would just like to thank you for posting this video. It astounds me that even though I haven’t thought about this in many decades, I can still sing along word for word.
Including the screams, I’m sure.