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Top Gun

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Everything posted by Top Gun

  1. Team Fortress 2 begs to differ, and many people would argue that many modern forms of "DLC" aren't worth a fraction of what they cost. But that's beside the point...was there any other gaming-related ARG in the past that cost additional money to participate in like this?
  2. ...except I did pay to play the game. I pre-ordered Portal 2. I legally own it. So I don't think it was too much of a stretch to assume that that would give me access to things Portal 2-related. But then the entire Potato pack came about, and I learned that I would have to purchase an additional one or two or several or thirteen additional games, games I might not have had any interest in buying, to participate in something Portal 2-related. There was no logistical reason why Valve had to do things this way...they could have done something with the original Portal again, or hell, just kept things web-based. By doing things this way, they cut off myself and other Portal fans from something we probably would have enjoyed. Look, I'm only saying this once more, because it's obvious that no one is actually paying attention to my core complaint, and I'm frankly sick of repeating myself. I do not like the fact that Valve chose to use a bunch of different games in order to create a Portal 2 event. I recognize that Valve had every right to do so, and that it was probably a good thing for the parties involved...but by the same token, I have every right to not think it was a good thing, and to express my opinion accordingly. That's pretty much it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find something better to pass the time until Portal 2 does release than repeating the same arguments ad nauseam.
  3. I never said I would have, or even could have, but it'd be nice to get the chance to see the evidence first-hand within the games themselves. I didn't decode the hidden radio messages in Portal during the first ARG, but at least I was able to get the achievement that gave you said messages. Yes, which is exactly what I'm complaining about.
  4. Yeah, I've seen some of those fixes listed, but my specific issue doesn't seem to be among them. I don't think my game audio is affected at all when I'm broadcasting; it just transmits this burst of loud obnoxious distorted static that makes everyone else in the server yell "OMG WHAT THE HELL IS THAT TURN IT OFF." I can hear it happening when I do the mic test in the TF2 options menu, but what's weird is that it doesn't happen in the test in Steam proper. I did see one thread on SPUF that seemed to be the same thing, but because I still have to wait for a moderator to approve my new account (argh), I couldn't chime in.
  5. Boy I sure am glad people know how to read in here. And color me strange, maybe, but hanging out in an IRC channel drooling over random links and images people are posting doesn't seem nearly as enjoyable as actually finding the stuff yourself.
  6. Yes, as I've already stated, I realize that I can buy the games separately. But if you had wanted to fully participate in the ARG and find all of the potatoes and the secret GLADoS messages and whatnot, you'd have to go through all of the games. Buying a single game at this point doesn't serve any real purpose, especially when it's a game I'm not interested in anyway. (srsly, why have I had to repeat myself like four or five times now? I don't think my statements are some uber-complex treatise.)
  7. ...I'm not really sure where people are getting the idea that I'm "bent out of shape" over this. I'm not going all RAAAAAAEG and pulling my hair out over the whole concept. I just find it to be kind of irritating. That's all. And as I already said, it's not just the release date thing, but the Potato Sack cross-promotion as a whole. And I'm not "refusing" to participate in anything here...it's something I honestly couldn't do even if I wanted to, because I didn't have the spare cash to throw down $40 for the pack on top of the $45 I already spent for Portal 2 itself. The whole thing was basically, "You must pay this much to participate!", and that's what rubs me the wrong way. The previous ARG stunt Valve pulled was added to the original Portal, so anyone who was already a fan of it would get the chance to participate. This time, there was a price for entry. If you have any of the games on the list that haven't reached "completed" status left, I think just playing them will move them along.
  8. Oh, I fully agree that the developers of these games must have loved this whole event, both for the financial/exposure gains and for the chance to be part of what was probably a really fun experience. I'm really just looking at this from a consumer's perspective.
  9. Hey, I'll have you know that the space under this rock is very comfy. Such lovely springy moss. But srsly, I have no problem with Steam promoting those games. I have no problem with them being gathered into a pack. I have no problem with people being interested in them and choosing to buy the pack in order to play them. Hell, I don't even really have a problem with people getting a TF2 hat for buying the pack; there have been games with promo hats released before that I didn't have much interest in, and I'm sure there will be in the future. The only part I do have a problem with is Valve choosing to use this pack of games, none of which have any natural relation to Portal, to exclusively set up an ARG for and affect the release date of Portal 2. That's it.
  10. No, no one's holding a gun to my head and forcing me to buy the entire pack together, but what would be the point of buying just two or three of them when you have to perform tasks in all of them to really "play"? Even the games in the pack that I have the most interest in still aren't games I'd buy on their own, at least not right now.
  11. Wow...did I manage to paint a target on the back of my head here? Let's try this again. First off, I'm not saying any of this out of some "sense of entitlement." I'm fine with waiting to play the game until its original release date. That was the original expectation I had before I heard about any of this "Potato" stuff. But when I saw the game update the other day and heard increasingly-defined rumors about the potential for an early release, I got excited, because who wouldn't? That countdown timer led a lot of people to believe that the game was going to be released this morning. But when the time came, we all found out that it was just a continuation of the Potato games thing, and I was (understandably, I think) somewhat disappointed. I didn't mean "the last straw" in the sense of any "BAWWWWW imma boycott it" sentiment...I meant that I'd found the whole Potato concept kind of annoying beforehand, and now find it even more so. Hell, at the rate things are going according to the status page, it doesn't look like we'll get it much before the original release date anyway. As for the overall Potato concept, I'm sorry to say that I don't have the spare cash lying around to put up $40 for a bunch of games I've never heard of on top of $45 for one game that I have heard of and really want. But even if I did, I most likely wouldn't be spending it on said games I've never heard of. I don't buy many brand-new games in general (lack of income, backlog of old games sitting around, general lack of interest in what's out there...take your pick), so when I do, it's a game that I really want, like Portal 2. As a fan of Portal, I feel like having the expectation that activities related to the sequel wouldn't require purchasing random games was a reasonable one; that's how things worked with the ARG added into the original Portal, after all. But then the Potato Sack came out, and I learned that I'd have to purchase these thirteen random games, only two or three of which I have any legitimate interest in, if I wanted to get involved with said activities. As an overall concept, it doesn't make much sense, and it certainly doesn't seem fair to people who are specifically interested in this one game. If Valve wanted to do a big cross-game event, why not use some of their own titles, which Portal fans would probably have general interest in already? You speak of promoting these other games, but isn't that something that happens all the time on Steam? There was the special Treasure Hunt event, there have been other themed events and sales, there are the regular weekly super-bargains on select games...there are plenty of opportunities to promote lesser-known titles on the service. Hell, several of the games in this pack have been promoted by those other methods in the past. So why is it that this promotion has to be specifically tied into getting info and other assorted goodies about Portal 2? Is there some general expectation that just because someone wants that one game, they'll want thirteen others too? It's like offering a NASCAR fan free merchandise if they sit through that weekend's PGA Tour event...it doesn't make much sense. That's really all I'm upset about here. I don't think Valve should use a bunch of completely-unrelated titles to promote their big new release, because it excludes those of us who can't/won't purchase said titles by default. I don't really see that as being that revolutionary of an opinion. (As far as waiting for the PS3 version goes, honestly, I'm not entirely sure why someone would want to own the game on both a console and PC in the first place. But that's just me personally.)
  12. Okay, fair enough, I wasn't aware that the specific URL came from the ARG. Though that sort of ties into my point, since you'd have to buy the Potato games in order to be involved in the whole thing in the first place. But whatever. New topic. Yesterday's update seems to have absolutely destroyed my ability to use voice chat, as doing so now sends out nothing but an ear-splitting blast of static. The mic itself is physically fine; I can record myself in Audacity/Sound Recorder just the same as I always could. I've tried fiddling around with the volume/gain settings in TF2, and it sometimes seems to work for a short while, but I'm inevitably back to static almost immediately. I've registered on SPUF to try to figure things out, but in the meantime, does anyone here have any ideas?
  13. There were rumors flying around about it (including some GameStop pre-order date inconsistencies) for some time before the ARG started, and both the mysterious Portal 2 update yesterday and the countdown clock on the website were sources that were external to what was going on. It's just the fact that people playing completely-unrelated games are now going to determine exactly when the rest of us get to play Portal 2 that rubs me the wrong way. Valve could have at least done something with their own titles.
  14. I don't think it's that stupid to get upset over the entire Potato Pack thing in the first place. It isn't just about the release date...I've felt like this whole concept was goofy from the start. Setting up this whole ARG phenomenon across a bunch of titles is little more than a way of bribing people who otherwise don't care about those games to snap them up, and those of us who chose not to were cut off from all parts of the ARG. Last time Valve did something like this, when they first announced Portal 2, they used updates to the original Portal...which, y'know, makes sense as a place that fans of Portal could look and participate. I know I'm not the only one who's felt like this whole Potato thing sucks for those of us who are really really excited about Portal 2, but may or may not care about a random assortment of indie games on Steam. Having that very same set of games now being used to determine the release date is kind of the last straw.
  15. Well that's nice, at least. I can now take my Potato-induced raeg back a notch. (Though now they're even using it to hold the early release over our heads. Ugh.)
  16. Yeah, I'm really starting to get fed up with this whole Potato thing. Like, what about those of us who really really want to play Portal 2, but don't really give a crap about the games in that pack?
  17. I'm not really a fan of most of those melee nerfs myself (they make a few achievements significantly harder to get), but glancing at SPUF reveals the expected level of BAWWWWWW over every little thing. Yeah, God forbid they actually made the Backburner have a purpose now, or that idiot Soldiers with their equalizer out can't keep spamming the Medic button. And THANK GOD FoS NERF WOOOOO (Holy crap, this thing still hasn't finished downloading. Their servers are not handling this well.)
  18. That's right, it was Gorge that cut out right in the middle of a point capture. It'd be great if that gets fixed at some point, because it's pretty much the TF2 equivalent of blue balls.
  19. Ah, okay, that makes sense. I can't remember which map ended with 30 seconds left, but it was one where I hadn't seen it happen before, so it wound up surprising me. I can see why you'd want the setting on CTF and 5CP maps in general, because you could easily wind up in a seemingly-endless stalemate, but it's still a huge bummer when you're in the middle of a heated back-and-forth over a certain control point and the round just cuts off. Maybe it wouldn't feel so bad if there was some way of alerting the players that the time limit was almost up.
  20. Ugh...you ever have one of those nights where you lose almost every one-on-one situation you find yourself in, and every weapon seems to find you no matter how far away you are? That was tonight. Especially as Spy. Yeesh. There's something I don't quite get about how map time limit works. There were a few situations tonight when the map ran out of time at a really crappy point in the match, including one where there were just 30 seconds left in a round. But I'm pretty sure I've been on other servers (or is it just other maps?) where the last round is always allowed to play out as it normally would before the map changes. Is there some sort of server-side setting, or maybe a mod, that enables this behavior?
  21. Indeed. I've actually heard a bit of conflicting info about that pin...apparently, it counts as a separate item than the "Companion Cube Pin" that was added ages ago, even though it looks the same. So maybe it'll be the case that pre-ordering (or just ordering) Portal 2 will still get you that original pin. I hope so, anyway...if not that, then I better get a goddamn cake hat or something. Regarding the whole ARG thing in general, I don't mind the overall concept of it, and I actually think it's kind of cool that there are vague Portal references invading all of those other games. What I don't like, however, is the concept of having to buy that Potato Pack in order to get something related to Portal 2. I mean, I've probably heard of only half of those Potato games, and there are only two that I'd seriously want to play. I'm not about to go out and buy a bunch of games I have no interest in when there are dozens of other games out there I legitimately want to play.
  22. Those new hats are awesome, but what the hell. The Portal pin is finally available...and you get it from playing all of the games in that asinine Potato Pack? Instead of, y'know, pre-ordering Portal 2? Le bullshit, Valve.
  23. I have a bit of an OCD tic, so I'm all about the 100% in general. If there are collectibles to be collected or unlocks to be unlocked, I'll do my very best to grab them. For example, I'm playing through Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii right now. (I'd played the first two games on GC a few years ago.) I played through the first game on Normal difficulty and realized I'd missed a limited-time creature scan (dear lord I hate those) by the end...so I proceeded to restart the game on Veteran at the same time I was also going through MP2 on Normal. And now that I've finished all three, I'm going through 2 on Veteran, plan to move on to 3, and then plan to replay all three someday on Hypermode. Yup. Also, I'm a total achievement whore. So long as it's not next-to-impossible, I'll do my best to check every single one of them off. (And yes, that meant doing the gnome thing in HL2: Episode 2.) To be honest, though, I don't usually view it as work. I'm not the type who goes out and buys many newly-released games; instead, I have my old favorites that I like to revisit time and again, and I'll gradually add to those a few years after a game's released. In that light, so long as a game's good, replaying it to check off everything is usually an enjoyable experience to me.
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