Wiper

Yeah, CB killing off two sectorials plus the aggressive splitting of Yu Jing all in one year does make Infinity feel a little volatile at the moment - you never quite know what the next rug to be pulled will be. The Merovingian Rapid Response Force getting culled was made in a way both better and worse by the fact that they were so badly supported by CB in the first place: it made it less surprising that they went away, and formed a nice cycle of unpopularity so reduced the people affected, but also meant that the sectorial felt particularly unfinished when it was culled, with its ancient, patchy set of sculpts meaning you could never have a truly satisfying force of theirs. Even seven years ago I was looking at MRRF and thinking that I really liked the concept, but not the execution, and was looking forward to resculpts; alas. At least Acontecimento has a reasonable range of figures, so it is possible to already have/quickly grab a decent force before they discontinue the models! All this instability does make me wary of expanding into a new force; not that I need to, given I've barely scraped the surface of Haqqislam and Yu Jing, and still have some holes to plug in my Nomads force, but even so I'd otherwise been somewhat interested in trying Tohaa - but the fact they're clearly the least popular base faction, and the most underserved by CB,* makes me worry they're not long for this world, core faction or no. *hell, they're the only faction without even a single sectorial to their name

Apollo Justice came very close and is missed, but yeah, the original trilogy is a masterpiece of adventure game design, and anyone who likes the genre but has somehow missed them until now should snap them up. I'll certainly be buying them for a fourth time at least! Though they aren't quite up there with the initial quadrilogy, the 3DS sequels are also well worth a look, they're just a bit too easy. A bit of a shame they haven't redone the original trilogy in their engine, actually - the simple 3D was a much nicer effect then the barely-redrawn iOS sprites this looks to use. But cost, of course. It's also a shame we'll never see the Phoenix Wright X Sherlock Holmes games over here. Of course, the real tragedy is that we'll almost certainly not get a remake of Ghost Trick any time soon - now there's an overlooked classic, up there with the best Ace Attorney games! (the less said about Miles Edgeworth Investigations or Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton the better)

Yeah, this excellent article from earlier in the year chronicled extensive mismanagement. It seems like they weren't able to bounce back from it

Yep, it's real: (Emily is - or rather, was - narrative designer for Telltale) Very sad to see.

It's the sequel to the game upon which (2D) Fallout is based. The scale's a bit smaller (both overworld and settlements), but the writing is solid, the branching based on decisions and stats familiar, and the combat encounters more tightly designed. That said, it's also a purer party RPG, and you do have to balance your characters' skills and loadouts in a way Fallout's more solitary experience avoids, and also feels a little more impersonal for it (you're an entire squad, not a main character and sidekicks). On the other hand, you're not constantly at risk of violent death at the hands of an overenthusiastic machine gun wielding ally, so that's refreshing.

Seeing as there are two interpretations being followed in this thread, two top 10s from me: Literal Arcade Games Wot I Actually Played In An Arcade, Discounting Qualities Of Home Ports: Bubble Bobble Daytona USA Shinobi Afterburner II Outrun 2 Golden Axe Rampage Captain Commando 1942 Dance Dance Revolution [any version] 'Arcade' Games, Irrespective Of Whether They Ever Actually Graced An Arcade Or How I Played Them: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan Binary Domain Soul Calibur F-Zero GX/AX Power Stone Street Fighter III: Third Strike The Last Blade II Bubble Bobble Crazy Taxi House of the Dead 2

See, I get that this is a witty joke at the expense of people complaining about the NES controllers not working with any other games,* but I'm genuinely curious to know if the drums work with the other drum game on Switch. Seeing as the main criticism of that game has been the same as Taiko's - awkward motion controls - depending on how the drum works (i.e. does it just send vertical joycon motions to the Switch?) then it might work with both, which would in turn make both the drums and the games more of interest. *which is still dumb, considering the number of indie games/remasters on the system which only use - indeed benefit from controllers with - only a d-pad and two/four buttons

Will rebuy.

I avoided Steam for a good while, the Always Online thing making it utterly unusable to me in my university days, not to mention my laptop was about as far from a games machine as could be imagined at the time. The game that finally got me to give in and get steam was a doozy though: 20 May, 2007 - X-COM: Terror from the Deep In fact, my first couple of years of Steam use were effectively just repurchases of games I already owned plus some indie titles: 27 Mar, 2009 - Ubisoft Classics Pack 21 Mar, 2009 - Oddworld Abes Oddysee and Exoddus 16 Mar, 2009 - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble* 6 Feb, 2009 - Mount and Blade 11 Oct, 2008 - Peggle Deluxe 5 Sep, 2008 - X-Com: UFO Defense 5 Sep, 2008 - X-Com 3: Apocalypse 10 Jul, 2008 - Trials 2: Second Edition 6 Jul, 2008 - Audiosurf 20 May, 2007 - X-COM: Terror from the Deep *despite the unfortunate name, this is actually a nifty little pseudo-boardgame thing, not a weird porn thing

I'm glad to have been of assistance I had a couple of spare evenings as Jo's been visiting her mother this weekend, so I got the rest of the Red Veil starter pack painted to a basic degree. I had fun with the Ghulams, who I painted as quick testers, and set myself the task of painting using only shades of brown, discounting the guns (which I later went over in non-metallics, as I didn't like the way they looked): Counter-intuitively, I skimped on the Al Fasid (central, largest figure) - largely due to a lack of depth in my selection of green paints. Which is to say, I have one (1) green paint to my name (P3 Iosan Green). I'll go back to him later to tart up, plus the green bits of the Tuareg (sniper lady): Painting these I was reminded of how much I enjoy painting leather and soft materials generally - something Yu Jing tends to lack in its figures, bar the cloaks on the Guilang and Hsien figures. In celebration, I've ordered a raft of extra models, and started to build my Nomads force. Three models down in that respect - slower going than anticipated, due largely to Cassandra Kusanagi being a bit of a nightmare to build, certainly the most painful Infinity model I've yet made. Still, with her, a Reverend Custodier and the old Zero w/ e/mauler figure built, I'm ready to try my first REMs - I've got a Lunokhod Sputnik and two Salyut Zonds to build, so it'll be interesting to see how these chunkier models come together.

I was reminded* of the existence of this track - a great, moody intro to what is a deeply flawed game: Moby/Elmobo - Fascination - Intro Theme (track name: Sea of Love) Poor old Moby** made a range of great soundtracks, but most of them never found a big audience audience outside of Europe thanks to his primary role as composer for Coktel Vision - not exactly the biggest name outside of France. I've also just gone through the thread and added descriptions to all the videos I've posted (and updated the one video which had gone down). A nice trip down memory lane, that! *by a new release of a set of remastered tracks **not that one, this one

My avatar significantly disagrees with that assessment of what lives at the top of American horror games! Also, referring to checking if the game comes from "the east" suggests you're writing off European horror, which is a bit harsh on (say) Alien Isolation and Soma. Or, you know, Alone in the Dark, from which Resi descends. Outside of that specific genre focus, you seem to be tarring all American developers with the brush of their biggest studios, which seems a little unfair on the smaller studios which put out titles that certainly class as "interesting and creative": games like Paratopic, Gone Home or Journey all deserve those labels, for example. I'll certainly agree that the US big budget games industry is the least interesting of its peers, but saying that you "don't think Americans can develop interesting creative games" seems a bit too sweeping a statement.

It just falls outside of my top 100, but it certainly has its strengths and I can see why people like it so much. Just as Halo has its perfect 30 second combat loop, so too is Horizon's stealth/combat cycle deeply satisfying. If it weren't for it featuring some of my least-favourite compulsion/length-adding features in games - an overworld overrun with icons, and mindless crafting - I would rate it a lot higher.

I have undying respect for the Kenka Bancho series for the fact that, a decade into the series of 3D high school brawlers, they released an otome* spin-off where you simultaneously aim to fight your way to becoming the biggest badass in your school while picking which of the other badasses is going to be your boyfriend.** An approach more franchise-milking studios should consider, I think. Or, to put it another way: let me date Kiryu-chan, you cowards! *romance visual novel targetted at a female audience **alas, this isn't an unusually progressive visual novel - rather, you're playing a girl disguised as a boy