Cordeos

I'm hoping they will work with touch screen controls on my surface pro3.

Re Oblivion: It introduces who he is and hints at the main quest that you will be set on when Emperor Patrick shows up in your prison cell. I agree it isn't directly applicable, to your situation, but long intros rarely are. I think Morrowind did pretty much the same thing. Part of the issue with having a more descriptive intro is that your character in TES games is a blank slate, Skyrim was the first one to even say where/why you were arrested. The intro to your characters in Oblivion would be "You are in jail" because everything else is decided by you. I prefer lore that I can experience or not at my leisure which is why I like the lore in TES games. It also helps that their lore is interesting, there is all kinds of lore I wouldn't touch in the Assassins Creed series. I can barely stand the required cinematics. I also love when lore is build in game series since its fun to know the background of things introduced in new games. One thing that drove me nuts about Final Fantasy game lore is that they build these really complex worlds you will never return to, so there is less of a reward for learning the lore since a sequel will not expand on it.

The "Lore" that always gets to me is the long text intro filled with names, dates, events that have little or no context and might not even matter in the game (bonus points for made up day and month names for extra confusion). The Oblivion intro is only about a minute and a half before you get control of a character. I am having trouble thinking of a really heinously long explanatory intro (probably because I stopped playing JRPGs ) But I know I have read paragraph after paragraph of confusing history before ever getting close to gameplay. I think there is also style choices in how you introduce lore to the player. Sort of a spectrum between assaulting them with required novellas, sprinkling it around the world in books, flavor text and dialog, and having the story being totally optional.

Dues Ex has always been a world so chocked full of over the top conspiracy and villains it always falls into lame action movie trailers and dialog. You can't have FEMA death camps and the Illuminati and not just throw subtlety/intelligence out the window. I found the story and lack of choice in the missions to be really off-putting in HR. Really seems like CoD (silly story and railroad levels) with some RPG elements. I had hoped for something with more open levels with augmentations to accent your playstyle instead of essentially requiring stealth. But if the Illuminati control the media, then those soldiers/terrorists/murders mostly just sheeple being tricked into following. Aside from bosses, it wasn't clear how many true believers there were in HR. How many of the people you kill in HR would have made the right choice if they knew the truth?

*enemy guns will still be unreliable rustbuckets for you, they will never really jam or ever break for the enemies.

So many bad mustaches. That is all the commentary on the episode i can think of right now. Notes after listening to the podcast: Didn't Don drink wine with the stewardess? He also seemed to have some drinks before going to the diner, but maybe he was just tired.

And SimCopter is coming: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/07/citycopter-mod-aims-to-be-simcopter-for-cities-skylines/ Is Streets of SimCity next?

I got half way there I was also trying to generate a claim on Majorca, but died before that bore fruit either.

(Feel free to touch htis post up however you want for the blog) May 1120 Finally a chance to rule. I want nothing more than to show my military skill to the emperor, perhaps he will make me his Marshall. 19th June My wifes failure to produce a son is a continuing source of shame for me and my family. I knew the electors wouldn't support my daughter as heir forever. 2nd November A son! I have a son! 29th April 1121 Finally a war! I can lead my troops to battle in the name of the Emperor. 10th September I will take Paris on my own if I have to. 22nd May 1122 The war ends without even a thank you from the boy Emperor. 26th November I have the pox, probably due to those mongrel Frenchmen we fought in the dirty streets of Paris. 10th December My thirteen year old daughter has become uncontrollable. Nothing is going as planned. 18th August 1123 Still no recognition from the Emperor, my family is beyond my power to control and no wars to be fought. 29th August Perhaps this will take my mind off my troubles. 26th May 1124 After almost a year of preperation and travel we have arrived at Kent and laid seige! 9th August 1125 News has reached us in the seige camp of the fall of Constantinople and the utter collapse of the Greek Empire, god preserve us in these troubled times. 28th August Not even a soldierly death for me. Here is the next save: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5745hjdk1enyr1/Duke%20Gilbert%20of%20Provence.ck2?dl=0 And a zip of all the screenshots I took, not a lot happened in my five year reign: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zo4p16sv0inizoz/CKIIscreens.rar?dl=0

I have actually been annoyed with how difficult it is to find non-penis creation videos for Besiege. One of my favorites:

I quit Talos Principle recently. I found the puzzles more irritating than fun. There seems to be one very specific way to complete each puzzle and I was just not getting it over and over again. Its a cool looking game, but the puzzle design just felt sort of bland and repetitive, I didn't get too far so maybe it gets better later on.

That is really sad, it was the least horrible option.

The more I listen to Idle Thumbs the more I realize I have totally different taste in games than the hosts. The discussion of Ori really drove this home for me. I have never really liked platformers, but the story of getting stuck and trying every little thing to advance sounds terrible to me. When listening I just kept thinking that it sounds like a game design problem, not a player misunderstanding problem. The basic difference seems to stem from my desire to relax when playing games. I find platformers and super unforgiving games like the early Ghost Recon's and Dark Souls to be really frustrating. As the amount of time I have to game has decreased and my ability to buy more games has increased, I have found myself gravitating towards the lowest difficulty level in games. I have a giant pile of unplayed games and don't want to get stuck on some fiddly bit of a game and waste a bunch of time. The only games I have really enjoyed the highest difficulty on were the Rainbow Six Vegas games and the Ace Combat series, I have no idea why these are the games I love the highest difficulty on. This is totally not a criticism and I actually think it is a strength of Idle Thumbs that I don't care about a lot of the games discussed, but still love to listen every week. P.S. This article made me so happy because it let me know I wasn't alone: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/24/easy-mode-guilt

I have been trying to unlock all buildings in one game, any tips on 50% unemployment rate?

I did the Charlemagne start actually. I am going to try Shattered World again as either a pagan or hindu to avoid heresy.

sounds good

I need to look into which religion has the least problems with heritic uprisings. I tried, but due to the fractured nature of the map, Catholicism quickly drops to zero authority. I was spending way to much time putting down religious uprisings. I didn't even play that long, can't imagine what it would be like after more time. Here is the religious makeup of my game before i quit.

Yes, how do I grab the game?

So cruise ship clipping in Cities Skylines needs some work....

I am worried about this with my PS3, i have a big library of PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. Backwards compatible PS3s are pricey used. So I might have to give up on the old games when my system dies (It already has overheat issues with Bluray movies) and buy what I can on steam.

I finished Far Cry 4 this week, its an incremental upgrade to Far Cry 3. The best feature they added in my opinion is the rhinos and elephants, because now that the wildlife can flip cars the world is a more amusing place.

You get all the graphs as a PDF with the audiobook, it is indeed a good listen.

And now you can fly a plane around your city: http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/26/8294877/cities-skylines-mod-flight-cimulator This reminds me of SimCopter being able to explore cities built in simcity 2000

I know this thread is more about the whole Gamergate thing, but I figured this was the best place to post this: http://www.rferl.mobi/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html Its an interview with someone who was a paid Russian internet troll. Its something I became interested in after encountering several of these accounts across Facebook and Twitter. Usually the accounts have super generic profile pic and if you look at their post history/tweets all they ever do is post Pro-Russian comments/posts. Its very strange to live in a world with such an Orwellian institution. I also think this relates to Gamergate stuff as it is an example of real paid trolls, as opposed to the people who are accused of being paid shills for SJW or whatever.

There are already so many cool mods, I haven't even played this game yet. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/25/best-cities-skylines-mods-maps-buildings/