The Bard

I'm teaching abroad for a month or so starting mid June, so I might be back just before the 25th, but I might also not. I'm definitely free any time in August though so that one gets my vote.

Tremendous

If yawning when someone else yawns is called a sympathetic yawn, then the tightness in my chest and the sense of panic I feel whenever Miliband opens his mouth in a debate can only be called a sympathetic heart attack. I don't have much flair for or interest in politics since it consists of supremely untalented people pandering to positions that no sane person actually holds, but that come out of groupthink, and which almost always exist only as a means to provide a set of contrasting policies to the nearest competitor. You can never really take either of the big parties on their word, and your voting decision then just becomes a matter of figuring out what the parties general ethos is, which is all most people are really capable of basing their vote on anyway - to be an informed electorate you have to have a decent, disinterested grasp of economics and also realise that not only will any incumbent government have very little room to manoeuvre, departmental bureaucracy and hung parliaments are going to make it almost impossible to effect any meaningful change anyway. To be honest, the only reason you definitely should vote is because a greater voter turnout better reflects the political dispositions of the country. But then, that's only a good thing if you believe that the political character of the country as a whole is good for the country as a whole.

Play it man, it's the best shooter that came out last year by a long shot. Although the following might apply; I'm having mixed feelings about TOB after having bought it on PS4. It's a PC game at heart. Opens up so much on a tactical level when you have the accuracy of mouse aim. But it's still really good.

Well if anyone wants my R9 290, I'm unloading it for £180.

Wav Race - It's the mid nineties. You play a Microsoft executive in this management sim based on real life events in the cutthroat world of audio codec development.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is out today. I'm on that shit like a dirty great rash.

Rand Theft Auto - Terrorise congressmen at the Republican National Convention by jacking their cars and stealing copies of Atlas Shrugged from under their bedpillows. Gone 'Ome - Find and decipher a breadcrumb trail of items left in the wake of your family's disappearance from the family farmhouse in Cornwall, leading up to the inevitable revelation that your sister is also your mother. Ed Faction: Guerilla - Play as Red Ed as he leads the disenfranchised working classes into misdirecting bacon butties into their gaping maws, and inscribing inanities into stone plinths after the inevitable election victory of Dickhead Dave. One pathetic gaffe after another. Hovel Knight - Play a first year university student as he desperately tries to shovel the years worth of detritus from his dorm room so he doesn't have to forfeit his damage deposit.

Pfft guy, I finished it twice in a week

Guys, what the fuck? You don't even need to get past the first slow-mo moneyshot of these dumb fools flexing in mid air to realise that this film isn't going to stand up to the intense fucking literary scrutiny you're subjecting it to. Just turn your brain off and worry not about why maths professor from Good Will Hunting shows up for five whole seconds. The moment you try to explain any of this shit is the moment it goes completely to hell.

Same here, had some excellent times with the N-E crew. Gears 3 was a better game, but by that point the series had gotten a little stale anyway.

Oh yeah, I think we only saw you for about half an hour though, and then you disappeared. I meant mostly the people that were there for three days and stayed at the hostel, most of whom haven't been on here for years.

Now play multiplayer with me, it's fucking incrediballs.

It's a man date. Mandate.

I don't think anyone who was at the first meet still comes, apart from ReZ und ich. I'll come and talk trash after drinking too much, as usual.

Birth control often slips your mind when you're iced on crystal meth. Reading this thread; you guys are all unexpectedly sane. I think what typically passes as adulthood is a combination of basic human goal oriented behaviour, pursuing biological or evolutionary-psychological imperatives (marriage as a strategic goal for reproduction, the inevitable children, a degree of wealth that puts you beyond subsistence and into a social arms race where you have to have a shinier aluminium can to traverse the grey concrete in, etc.) and assumption of a milquetoast persona that is incapable of 1. offending, 2. nothing but water cooler talk, and 3. as a corollary of 2, assumption of a set of socially acceptable political, moral and cultural standards that allow you to make easy conversational proclamations on their basis. None of your geek asses are ever going to grow up btw, you're typing all this below a banner of a cartoon plumber whose only verbal skill is saying his own name in various inflections, fist pumping next to a yellow turtle-dinosaur in goth regalia. I liked that.

Next level shit. Way superior to Dark Souls, although I fount it quite a bit easier. The combat is substantially more reactive; you hatch a plan and are able to enact it immediately instead of waiting a half minute for your roll animation to finish, and are able to close distance between you and enemies a lot more quickly. Also enemy moves are telegraphed in pretty much the same way but take less time to wind up/ seem more natural in the span between initiation and landing, and in that way are easier to avoid, whereas with Dark Souls you it was more difficult to get a real estimation of when an enemy attack was going to land unless you'd seen it a few times before. Also it's a lot more streamlined - you don't find yourself halfway through the game with an inventory full of useless sword hilts and five sets of baldur armour which helps give the sense that any loadout is a viable path to success in the game. There's much less needless and annoying obscurantism and cock eyed trollery and more just sublime world building/ mechanical perfection.

Daymn son, that's cold.

The thing is, it ain't just the light, the controller has to provide at least some current to the internal microphone and the headphone port at all times, as well as the touch pad. It's a good pad, but it's super annoying to not even be able to get through a play session without it dropping to one bar from full.

@Fierce_LiNk You definitely shouldn't play all the previous installments first, because the story is legitimately the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic with a fetish for poopoo jokes (which is part of the appeal sometimes) - but you should play MGS3 if you get the chance because that is legitimately still a good game, and playable in a way that the first two just aren't. Ground Zeroes is a lot of fun if you can find it cheap, just as a sandbox that allows you to fuck around with different ways to play. It's made to be replayed.

Yeah I joined the vilebloods, which you need the Crown of Illusions to access, gives you the ability to buy the awesome looking armour I'm currently using.

That game is the shit, played it for months on PC and never spent a penny. Hopefully we can get an N-E platoon rolling on the regular when it comes out.

Yeah those screens are undoubtedly bullshots, but I liked the golden hue of the last game. Loads of painters use a prevalent lighting colour to create atmosphere and draw attention to the play of light and shadow in a frame. I really liked the way it made the game look. I'm actually quite happy that Eidos took this long to announce this game. Gives me the impression that they spent some time thinking about what direction they want to take the series in, rather than making it a bi-annual bore.

Tried to co-op with Daft for about an hour, but couldn't get into his game. Not sure if level disparity figures into Chalice Dungeon co-op? Cause I'm level 168, which probably means I'm going to have difficulty finding anyone to co-op with on my friends list.