The Penultimate Live Episode

[fishbang]

Your Monday, November 3rd episode is now available for download (http://ingamechat.net/audio/IGC20081103.mp3).

Thankfully, today’s title doesn’t refer to the show as a whole, but rather to it’s live broadcast component. IGC has only one more show to produce in this manner, but we can assure you it will be among the most rewarding. While we’d love to discuss specifics, we think it best to let the content speak for itself come Monday the 10th, so mark calendars and clear schedules as necessary, and join us for the end of our long-held tradition.

As for the content of this particular episode, we devote a predictable share to further notes on Fallout, which include, but aren’t limited to, performance comparisons, character flaws manifested in our play styles, and the strangely consistent weight of minor objects in the mid-future. We also retrace our steps through the Mirror’s Edge demo, all the hosts now being on the same page, though not necessarily of the same mind. Finally, we cast an appropriately grim look at our wallets after eyeing the weekly release, and recognize that we’re helpless to resist 8-way coop or a certain gang of thick-necked thugs. Hard times indeed.

[Psykoboy2]

Remember remember the 10th of November.

Yeah, I know...cheesy

[KingGorilla]

I am not sure if this is good for packrats, who cannot help but grab every piece of junk.
The Rock-It Launcher schematic let's you make a gun that shoots junk. You load cups and bottles to shoot them out. It means your hoarding will help.

[Psykoboy2]

Well, that will make Daniel feel a bit better about his...condition.

[danielOut]

i already have 8 Rock-It launchers.

However, they use the "big guns" skill, which is not my primary gun skill. Thus, i can't hit shit with 'em. But loading my 67 baseballs can be pretty fun.

[Iron Past]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with adjusting the difficulty if you're not having fun. For me, I kept the difficulty in Fallout 3 at normal, but I enjoy the challenge. However, in Alien Hominid HD, I just had to slap that bitch on easy after a while (I still haven't beat it, though).

I do the same in the opposite direction, too. Usually, I stay away from the absolute top difficulty on my first playthrough, but if I think it's too easy I'll adjust up (even if it means restarting). That's what I did with Dead Space and it's actually put much more survival into the game. Seriously, going through chapter seven with half my weapons consistently out of ammo was not cool, and there were some combat heavy sections of that level.

[kyrieee]

I had problems with the difficulty in Morrowind
You could buff yourself, but your buffs buffed your buffs, so if you kept doing it you became infinitely powerful. The problem is that the game was pretty hard so you had to buff yourself, but how do you know how much to do it? You ended up with full control over the difficulty, but turning it up made the game frustrating because it's all so stat based, and turning it down made it boring. It ruined the game for me because it removed the whole progression towards power that you have in RPGs

[TheKeck]

Only one more episode?! :eek:

[danielOut]

only one more live episode, at least for a while. i suppose we should have clarified that a bit better in the title

[Karusan]

Was playing around YouTube for Mirrors Edge stuff.

Sounds like the opening song with lyrics, beautiful song, nice video too, definitely needs sound. Possible spoiler warning.

Lisa Miskovsky - Still Alive
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=TERyxFfMqDk

[Ravenlock]

So here's something fascinating. Maybe somebody had discovered this and ranted it about it elsewhere in the forums, but I hadn't found it.

I've gotten a little ways into Fallout 3 (and am adoring it as it deserves to be adored) - got through the Megaton content, am slowly making my way around things like the Mega Mart, checkin' out the Wasteland, etc etc... at some point I notice that every time I load the game, I'm getting this little "Ravenlock is signed into Live" thing at the top of the screen. Hunh. Cool! I had kind of forgotten that this is a game connected cross-platform via Live, and I could probably talk to you dudes while I play it! That's pretty sweet. So I click the button.

This is where it gets fucking annoying.

While it was saying I was signed into Live, I was not, in fact, signed into anything at all. It had just taken my profile name and used it to generate a popup which, when clicked, basically alerts me that "Hey, you should go get a Live account!" ...okay, that's cool, I guess, even though your popup is a lie. So I click yes, and it minimizes Fallout and opens up a browser to allow me to link my Windows Live account (which I had through Hotmail) into a shiny new Games For Windows Live account. Neat!

I do that, go back into the game, get it all linked up... and hey, where did my saves go? Ohhh, we forgot to mention, saves are per profile. The Live account you just created is now a new profile, you're not allowed to use any of the saves from your old profile. We've also done you the favor of auto-removing your old profile from the game UI, because why would you want to use that old thing now that you've got Live? You obviously wouldn't.

Now luckily, it doesn't actually delete the files, and it was fairly trivial to find the savegame files and copy them into the folder for my new profile, and then use those savegames on my Live account (Which by the way is Ravenlock80 and I'll be sending around the friend requests). But damn if it wasn't the most aggravating way they could have done it, since there's no message after you install the game other than that little popup - a popup which claims you're already signed into Live! - to ever even imply that "hey, you should go snag a Live account or go tie your profile into your existing X360 one right now, because later it's gonna be a big pain."

And naturally, it doesn't track any achievements on your savegame unless you're on a Live profile, so if I want any of the ones I missed up til now, it'll be restart time. Oh, and the Live UI in the game is utterly stupid - you can't click on most of the buttons, you need to hit the associated keyboard keys. "X" to sign out, etc.

In short, no goddamn wonder nobody wants to pay for your Games for Windows Live service, Microsoft. It's a joke, especially when put up next to something like Steam, which works better, does more, and has always been free.

[danielOut]

Ravenlock, that sucks. I had no idea it fucked up that hard when making a new account.

I will say this, I really enjoy the service much more than Steam. I find the interface to be faster, less clunky, and with excellent reliability on my PC so far. This is coming from already having a live account on my 360 and pulling it over. Steam can't hold a candle to how well this service integrates itself, which probably is because it is coded into the game itself. I have had no problems clicking the buttons, but I didn't do that for very long anyway. I'm a hotkey kind of guy. So maybe I just didn't play with it enough to notice; I'll give it another go mouse-only when I start Fallout next.

However, judging by what you have posted here, new accounts are teh suck. Which is a shame, since I find it to be quite an awesome service. And I better have a friend request waiting! :)

[Ravenlock]

You do, sir, you do. ;)