That reminds me of when I got stuck in the big blizzard of 1983 (?) in NYC. All the highways basically got shut-down. I (and tens of thousands of others) got stuck on the Major Deegan from about 8PM until the plows could finally push through in the early hours of the next morning. Fortunately, we had a full tank of gas, blankets and even chocolate bars in the trunk so we were merely discomfited rather than threatened (if things had become truly desperate, we could have left our cars and sought shelter in nearby buildings that were a few hundred feet away, but this was NYC in the early 80s and abandoning your car meant you weren't going to see it in one piece again ;-)

But the drive home after the plows came through had the same quiet, almost post-apocalyptic vibe.

I haven't thought of that blizzard in /years/.

Oh, please no.

These are my memories of XIII. It's been 15+ years since I played it but it still leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.

XIII had an interesting cel-shaded style and setting, but god it was like a cesspool of all the worst game-play tropes. Instant-death bottomless pits you had to jump over. Annoying escort missions. Instant-fail-if-detected stealth-missions. Over-powered bosses. Find-the-keycard doors. Mid-game stripping of all your gear.

This is not a forgotten classic that needs a remaster. I wouldn't mind another game in the same setting - preferably by someone who knew had to make interesting gameplay - but leave the first to rot in some unmarked grave.

Everytime I read a headline about this game, my first thought is that it is the long-awaited sequel to Eidos' forgotten gem, "Project Eden".

Then I learn it's just another tower-defense game and disappointment sets in once again.

Ha. I just reinstalled Fantasy General in my DOSBox build. I think saying it "reinvented the genre" is a bit much; while Panzer General helped revitalize classic wargames, Fantasy General was basically just PG with a fantasy re-skin. Still, it had a great (CD-Audio) soundtrack and it wasn't a bad game, if you liked that particular genre of game.

It's a bit telling that their video-reveal doesn't, you know, actually reveal any gameplay; they know quite well wargames /still/ aren't a crowd favorite. Still, while I doubt they'll be much more than a niche title, best of luck to them. Wargames are due a revival.

Ah, another once-a-fortnight freebie from Epic. Time for the usual procedure. You know the one:

- Open EGS
- Add free game
- Close EGS
- Forgets game exists
- Re-discover game on Steam in a few months and plays it there.

Honestly, at this point Epic should just automatically add the game to all its subscribers libraries and cut out the middle-men. Think of all the time it would save!

While I am all for these older Blizzard games appearing on GOG, I gotta say that I don't understand Blizzard's strategy. Why put these games on GOG and not on their own Battle.net service?

Why give a third-party a cut of the profits when you have a perfectly good storefront and can keep all the profits for yourself? Is this an admission that their own Battle.net store isn't giving them the exposure (and sales) they want? But then why not put it on Steam? I mean, I love GOG and think it is the perfect home for older games like these, but it seems an odd move for ActiBlizz.

Competition makes the industry better. I was somewhat supportive of EGS when it was first announced for this reason; God knows that Valve needed a kick in the ass because Steam is a damnable mess. But the EGS client is awful and Epic's methods are anti-competitive, and I've soured on them. Create a client that is as beneficial to gamers as it is to developers, and then we'll talk. But don't release a sub-par client that lacks expected functionality, lets developers hide all criticism and locks up third-party games behind exclusivity agreements and then try to tell us how you are making the industry "better" and that complainers are morons for not seeing how wonderfully beneficent you are. We can see through your flim-flamery.

I wonder how many of those 250 million are just people who clicked on "get Fortnite for free!" in the EGS, never having any intention of actually installing it, much less playing it.

Just me? Well, that still leaves Epic with only 249,999,999 actual players and not the 250 million they claim.

Putting Quantic Dream games on Epic isn't an exclusive; it's a quarantine. I'd just about as rather catch leprosy as play one of David Cage's attempts at making a game. Epic is welcome to them. It just gives me reason to stay away.

Knoppix? KNOPPIX?!?

Talk about a blast from the past; I had no idea that distro was still being developed. I think I have some Knoppix v1 LiveCDs lurking about somewhere.

Tried playing Vermintide for the first time last week. I could not get into it. Was it just bad, or have I left this genre behind?

There's an easy test: try playing a similar game in the genre that you did enjoy (say, Left4Dead) and see if you still enjoy it. If so, then it's probably the fault of the new game, and not you.

I still love an occasional match of Left4Dead, but was left cold by Vermintide too. It has been a while since I played it, but if I recall the problem was that Vermintide felt overly cluttered. It had too many classes, the levels that just went on and on, an excess of powers and weapons... Left4Dead had a certain simplistic purity to it that made it ideal for a quick pick-up game here and there, but with Vermintide, it felt as if I would have to dedicate a lot more time to the game to get real enjoyment out of it.

Me too. Axis & Allies and Shogun were the go-to board-game for my clique.

There have been a number of attempts to bring Axis & Allies to the digital world, including some that had online capability. None of them recaptured the fun of the original. I am convinced it's the miniatures; they were so much fun to play with, and little digital markers - even if they are animated - aren't anywhere near as fun.

Even if you don't appreciate Twitch streams, you can still enjoy the games. They are stand-alone apps (although you do need the Twitch app to initially download them, you can just copy the files to a different folder and run them from wherever).

I'm not a fan of Twitch streams, but that has more to do with the style of most Twitch videos than any opposition to watching people stream their games. As many have pointed out, it's just another form of (passive) entertainment, like watching football, NASCAR racing or poker. Sometimes all you want to do is veg out, and game streams can be quite interesting. It's also a good way of seeing what a title's gameplay is actually like. Some people even like the Twitch community and commentators.

But even if you don't care for any of that, it's still worthwhile to get the Twitch client for free games (well, if you already have Amazon Prime already). This month's selection aren't that great but they have offered some I quite enjoyed, including Darksiders, Pillars of Eternity and SOMA.

But does the FarCry 2 patch fix the horrendous respawning issue?

FC2 was actually a pretty amazing game, but that respawning was terrible, and it negatively affected almost every aspect of the game. Traversing the empty world became a chore; you'd clear a checkpoint only to return to it five minutes later and find it manned with soldiers again. This meant more, pointless combat - which just made the weapons and vehicles break faster - and made hunting for diamonds and malaria medicine even more burdensome.

Thing was, the combat was extremely solid - some of the best I've experienced - and the world was a lot of fun to explore. Had they turned the respawning down a notch, the game would easily rank amongst my favorites (especially if also used in conjunction with a mod that removes the filter that makes everything appear unduly brown).

Unfortunately the FarCry 2 Redux seems only to affect the graphics and some weapon balance issues. So close.

Wow, that 3D Doom looks terrible.

If your 3D models make the 20+ year old, pixelated, 320x200 sprites of the original Doom look better, you probably should find a better modeler.

To give you some perspective.

"2018 Domestic Box Office Will Cross $11 Billion Mark In Record Time This Week".

Meanwhile, the video-game market raked in $27 billion dollars in 2017 in North America alone.

Even worse: it requires Origin! ;-)

(Not that I really find Origin that bad of a client. It is just half-baked, redundant and generally not wanted. Sort of like most of EA's offerings, actually).

Remember bookmarks? How do you think I got to Blue's News today?

I wonder how well this game will perform for CD Projekt Red. I loved Witcher 3 and had a blast playing its Gwent mini-game, but would not want to play a whole game based entirely on Gwent.

This video did little to convince me otherwise. Animations and quests aside, its core gameplay is still Gwent, and I think that's just too shallow a base to build a whole game upon. Every new thing I've seen about this title just edges it further and further into the "no buy" column.

I'm sure they'll get a good number of early sale based solely on its association with Witcher 3, but I really wonder if this game will be as half as successful as CD Projekt Red expects.

I'm sorry to hear about this, but not surprised.

I'm a fan of the Telltale Games - I've purchased the majority of their catalog - but it's been getting harder and harder to justify the purchase each time. Their games usually have good stories and settings but the gameplay was always very lackluster. They just aren't very fun to play. Now, I tend to put story and immersion above gameplay, but this preference isn't true for the general audience. After a dozen or so games that more or less followed the exact same formula, even I started getting tired of their titles.

(engage Monday night quarterbacking)
Telltale Games were always attractive to only a niche group, but they were producing games at such a rate that I'm surprised they have stayed in business this long. They either needed to drastically scale back production or should have explored alternative styles of game so that when the market inevitably dropped out of the "interactive comic/adventure" genre they specialized in, they would have a fallback source of revenue.

And honestly, after they had established themselves, they really should have ditched the episodic model. It hurt the games more than it helped because each chapter had to be self-contained, which broke up the story. I hear it was hell on their developers too.

It's sad to see a developer fold - especially one that helped usher in both a new era of adventure games and indie publishing - but no, I'm not surprised at all.