chickenmonger

GOG just added Dark Forces II, Republic Commando, and Starfighter to their catalog today. 20% off for now.

This reminds me a lot of the DVD releases of Babylon 5. While the live-action scenes were filmed, allowing for high definition scans, the original computer graphics cutscenes were only available in standard NTSC.

I think this might be the game that trips the trigger on me upgrading my computer, oddly enough. Intel HD3000 integrated graphics works surprisingly well for so many games I play, and minimum specs on GF: Remastered say HD4000. Costume Quest 2 ran on my HD3000, with a little jumpiness here and there, so I can see why Double Fine would say HD4000 or better.

The Double Fine Explorer might come in handy...

Today, GOG added three more Lucasfilm games: Empire At War, Rebellion, and Rogue Squadron 3D. http://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_rebellion http://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_empire_at_war_gold_pack http://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_rogue_squadrom_3d

Even more to come later two days from now, according to the countdown on GOG's site. Today's announcement includes: X-Wing Alliance Galactic Battlegrounds X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Dark Forces Battlefront II Knights of the Old Republic II http://www.gog.com/news/lucasfilm_on_gogcom_wave_ii_starts_now

Between Steam's "no customer support" and Humble's "well, now that we've got venture capital funding, meh on supporting the bundled games you bought in 2012", I'm growing to really like GOG.

Bump, because Grim Fandango has a release date now (January 27th), and you can preorder it from GOG. http://www.gog.com/game/grim_fandango_remastered Interesting how Double Fine seems to have chosen GOG exclusively, rather than Steam or Humble.

This week, I finished The Cat Lady by Harvester Games. I'm not usually into jump-scare horror video games, but this one hooked me. It might have been the adventure game genre that did it for me. The art is creepy and frightening at all times. Of note, is that the most commented thread on the Steam forums is how the main character isn't pretty enough. I say, well, we aren't all pretty, so it's good that diverse games can show us all, pretty or not. The gameplay is the standard adventure game fetch quest at times, when single items procured hours before just happen to become a critical piece later. It's unfortunate for the genre to keep doing this, over and over, and unfortunately, I think I've become used to it. Reach a dead end? Well, time to lookup a walkthrough to find out what critical item I missed. I personally don't have many complaints about when this happens. Others' enjoyment of these games, however, may rely more heavily on puzzling, rather than art, music and story. 8 hours from beginning to end.

I can't even claim a relatively new Steam account as justification for not having Half Life 2 before now...my Steam account was created in August of 2004, a good couple of months before HL2 was released.

I played a little of the meta-game with gems, but didn't win any of the auctions I bid on. I ended up getting enough gems to create one booster pack for a game I was close to having a badge for...and realized after the fact that just buying the cards themselves would have been cheaper. Now I've got about 340 gems left over, with no cosmetics or cards I want to get rid of. I'll probably trade them to a friend somewhere down the line, now that they're worth such a tiny, tiny amount. For actual games, I was a little reserved this sale. We're trying to save funds for various reasons, so my budget was around $30. For that, I got: A Golden Wake Blackwell Epiphany Half Life 2, HL2: Ep1, HL2: Ep2 Car Mechanic Simulator Rogue Legacy Transistor Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons The Banner Saga Plus, my friend bought me a copy of The Talos Principle, which I'm particularly excited about playing. Right now, I'm playing through Half Life 2 for the very first time. Would you believe I've successfully avoided spoilers for an entire decade?

I've been finding a lot of indie games where there's less than 100 bids right now, so even a 1 gem bid would (in theory) receive the game. Eh, worth a shot.

I recently finished *Lilly Looking Through*, after getting it in one of the ubiquitous bundles that pop up every day. I spent a little less than 3 hours finishing it. I will admit that my love of adventure games is usually in their art and sound design, because frankly, I stink at solving puzzles. That doesn't stop me from seeking them out and playing them, however. Lilly Looking Through succeeds in this area. It is a beautiful game. Spoiler free, one should have correct color vision in order to finish this game. I feel that any sound/light puzzles in adventure games should offer options for solving in an alternate way. I ended up looking up a Let's Play in order to count mouse clicks...which was annoying. The built-in hint system was helpful on the early puzzles, but became less helpful as the story progressed. All in all, worth playing when purchased on sale. The animation is cute, and the story, though it felt a bit unfinished, sets up the potential for a sequel.

I've been playing CQ2. Having a great fun, silly time with it.

I've been putting in some Costume Quest 2 time in recent days. Because my desktop is in a home office, I tend to play games sitting on the couch with the family, on my low-powered laptop with Steam in-home streaming. CQ2 mostly works with this, but the combos are hard to get with the inherent lag of my slow, aged equipment. I really appreciate the casual gameplay, as I can hold a conversation with the family and not worry about having to give 100% of my concentration to the game all the time. I've also been co-op playing The Journey Down: Chapter One with a friend over Skype these past few weeks. I really like the aesthetic and voice acting. It recreates a lot of the silliness of old LucasArts adventure games. (I was going to point out an example puzzle here, but can't figure out spoiler tags) The game's developer recently visited the Double Fine forums and had a key giveaway as part of a promotion for the game's Chapter Two. I got caught up in the whole Spacebase DF-9 thing, and got Hack 'n' Slash as well out of the deal. I've been playing a bit of both, and haven't really played enough of them to have strong opinions yet. Trying to avoid others' preconceptions is difficult. I find my own tastes differ wildly from most "gaming personalities", and they're such loud voices anymore, it's hard to ignore their influence. On mobile, I've been hopping between Cubemen and Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. Both are excellent games to play when I only have a few minutes of time while waiting around for life to continue.