The Coop

I hate to say it but... well, I won't. A potential Star Wars sale always brings in a metric fuckton of attention, no matter how many times that given game's gone on sale. Too bad we can't wave our hand in front of them all and say, "This is not the game you're looking for."

Perhaps the nature of what was being given away as rewards caught the attention of someone (be it on Kickstarter or elsewhere)?

Don't tase him, bro!

You realize that there's no chance in hell of it winning against that Star Wars game, right? There are way more Star Wars nuts than there are Ys followers. I mean, I voted for Ys Origins, but...

A few months ago, I got a new XBox game, fired it up, and played for a bit. Things seemed reasonably fine at the time, though I did notice a bit of stuttering. However, I recently got myself another game, only now, I'm having all sorts of constant problems. Things like... - It takes a good 40-60 seconds to get from the XBox boot up logo, to the menu screen for managing memory, music, and what have you. - It takes about a minute to bring up all my game saves in the memory manager. - The background audio stutters and repeats constantly like a glitchy loop on the menu screens, and none of the animations are smooth anymore. They're jerky, and show maybe one frame of some kind of animation change before it suddenly jumps to the next screen. - Games take a good minute or more before they come up after popping them in. - Loading simple things like save menus in a game takes 20-30 seconds (in Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, it takes a minute just to bring up the pause menu). None of these kinds of things took so long before. Basically, is my XBox's hard drive about to die? Is the CPU about fried? This started up seemingly out of nowhere yesterday, and it seems to be a bit worse today, so I'd appreciate some feedback.

Walking Dead

Well, there are twelve days for this sale, so... Anyway, took a chance on the flash sale, and surprise surprise... F.3.A.R. not only runs, it can be run on Medium settings. Go figure.

I haven't spent much money this time around, as frankly, most of the games I want won't run on my PC... as in, not even be compatible with my graphics card. Sonic Generations, Skyrim, F.3.A.R., The Witcher 2 (though I can run the first game fine on Medium settings), Dead Island (though there is a video on YouTube with someone running it on a PC not much better than mine), Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, Hunted: The Demon's Forge... it's almost disheartening to see my old P4 3.00 GHz CPU and 7800 GS being left utterly behind. So, I've just grabbed Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2 ($1.99 each), Legend of Grimrock ($5.99... big spender on this one), and Trine 2 ($3.74). I'm waiting to see if Satazius and Razor2: Hidden Skies goes on a flash sale or something before the 22nd. I'm wanting them, but we'll see about any possible special deals first.

Keep in mind, the next two paragraphs are addressing only the EC stuff... Simple; because that's not what the fund was for. The fund was for Allison, her lost wages, her recovery/therapy, medical expenses, and hiring a few artists to help the show while she was getting better. Helping indie gamers doesn't factor into that at all. It wasn't the project goal, and wasn't a part of the project until well after they'd gotten what they needed (if I recall, they had something like $50,000 or $60,000 by the time the publishing thing came up). Sure, people can give as they see fit. No argument from me on that point. But you always... ALWAYS... plan for the worst (not meeting your goal), hitting your target, and exceeding your goal. You let people know ahead of time what will happen, instead of just winging it after it happens. If you do that from the get go, then people don't get thoughts about... well, thoughts like what's going on in this thread. EC didn't think it through, and it led to drama between them, The Escapist and so forth. Of course, that's just my stance on what took place back then. Now, I personally don't have an issue with what's going on with the OCR fund. I have faith in the ability of the staff to not start clamoring for every dime that they can hang on to with a death grip while purchasing a six inch-tall gold statue of the Nice Work Guy for every room in DJP's house. But at the same time, I can understand why some eyebrows got raised here when the numbers kept climbing. The ways the extra funds will be used here are far more in line with the fundraiser than what EC did, but that people raised their hands to ask a question (or ten) isn't outlandish in my book. The tone of the questions certainly wasn't always very friendly, but...

She (he?) needs to buy some shampoo and a pair of sheep shearers for that helmet of hair.

Sounds like you have the same issue with this fund raiser, that I had with Extra Credits' Rockethub drive to help their artist, Allison, get the needed operation on her shoulder. They asked for $15,000, and got a bit over $100,000. The extra money then became a kind of indie game publisher project, which was WAY off from the original point of the fund raiser, and didn't sit well with me at all.

I'm not that familiar with Motoi's newer stuff, as I mostly heard his 16-bit soundtracks in games like Earnest Evans, Sol-Deace, Arcus Odyssey and Granada on the Genesis. He used the same basic sound fonts for his music, which made his OSTs stand out because of their familiar feel going from game to game. Of course, there was also the fact that the OSTs contained good music with catchy beats and such, but that's beside the point

PSSSSSST! Check his join date.

All of it's going to the Fostering Underdeveloped Nerds: Breast Augmentation for Gaming Girls fund, or FUN:BAGG. It's a charity to allow any flat-chested (sub A-cup) gaming girls across the US and Canada, to acquire A-cups or larger if they so choose. The only catch is that any woman who applies, must agree to a Sports Illustrated-level photo shoot for the OCR Facebook page. Oh, and there are no rewards given until the $500 level, at which point you get hi-res photos of all the women who participated.

Spec Ops: The Line

I don't know who's pictured in the video's thumbnail, but they look like they're about to go into a Sammy Davis Jr. impersonation.

Quantum Conundrum

The moment I realized what I'd done after buying (full price no less) and playing Slaughter Sport and Soul Fighter back when each was new.

That is one comma away from being a really strange way to celebrate.

Full-on cry? No. Get a big lump in my throat? Oh yeah. Spoilers. Now you've been warned. In Drakengard, the two main characters of Angelus and Caim started as basically enemies that became bonded in life so that neither would die at a moment when they'd been bested. But, they grew close by the end of the game, and that's where their paths parted in a tragic fashion. In the second game, Angelus, driven mad after allowing herself to be the seal at the end of the first game, had to be stopped when she was freed. The video above is the end result, with her and Caim's final moment together. That damn near got me.

Lollipop Chainsaw

I guess time will tell. But I'm expecting the main villain to be back in some form. Building all of that up just to get rid of him so quickly doesn't strike me as how things will end up working out by the end of Book 2.