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Well it was developed by one person. Andrew Plotkin is one of the modern guards of interactive fiction. This game was Kickstarted for $30,000 in 2010 at which point he quit his job to write IF full time. This just happens to be the Steam port of an iPhone game. Sure would be nice if Emily Short or whoever owns the rights to Blood and Laurels could port that. It ended up breaking on iPhone after the last major update, a common story coming from a lot of developers in the past 2 years, and many of them just said "gently caress it."
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Jun 20, 2016 21:05
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It's a text game but it's very complex one, with a poo poo-ton of moving parts. Here's a p. good article that talks about it: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/01/hadean_lands_the_text_only_video_game_shows_how_the_genre_can_be_beautiful.html
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Jun 20, 2016 21:47
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Was kingdom o magic ever ported to a gog or steam? I remember that game had the funniest manual ever
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Jun 22, 2016 16:34
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Jeeze, I missed this completely but Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix just had a huge information dump with design docs, post mortem, and artwork. It sounds a lot like an early Full Throttle complete with first person vehicle sequences and live-or-die "Dragon's Lair" action segments. But it also has a nice Monkey Island 3-ish cartoon art style. Overall they were fine with shuttering it but man, an official Indiana Jones story post-WW2 featuring an older Indy before Crystal Skull. What could have been.
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Jul 28, 2016 04:53
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al-azad posted:Jeeze, I missed this completely but Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix just had a huge information dump with design docs, post mortem, and artwork.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:08
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I just finished The Book of Unwritten Tales 2. Good game, much better than its predecessor in my opinions. It made me hate Nate Bonnet and I now just wish he never comes back. I also hated that loving romance. Also, a lot of bugs, especially in the bonus content, like the hats and costumes icons were replaced by a generic question mark icon and the dice poker game crapped out on me and forced me to reload an earlier save. What really surprised me with that game is how seriously it took itself compared to the first one. The political conflict has a lot more parallels to real life, Wilbur goes through one hell of a wringer, Rémi is basically the head of an intelligence agency, Bill is even more smarmy than usual and outright exploits good people for profit, Munkus is much more manipulative and nasty than in the first game, etc. The after credit scene was... weird. Also, I really hope for a sequel so that we can have a definite word on Rémi's fate and see more of Tin Lizzy. I don't care for Nate, but I want to see Ivo's child  .
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Jul 31, 2016 18:55
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I know it's been out for a while, but finally got around to playing through Fran Bow. And I really, really liked it. The story started getting a little bonkers the further you went, but the art and the general tone of it was just so drat good. Probably the best point and click I've played in a good while. Not what I expected at all. Kinda reminded me of The Dream Machine (another really good adventure game) in regards to all the hosed up stuff that occurs, and the general tone of it.
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Aug 1, 2016 01:55
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Hey, I just remembered that Obduction is out in three weeks! The previews have looked really cool so far, I badly want this to be good.
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Aug 1, 2016 17:22
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exquisite tea posted:Hey, I just remembered that Obduction is out in three weeks! The previews have looked really cool so far, I badly want this to be good. Oh poo poo, I'm all over that. I also badly want this to not suck.
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Aug 1, 2016 21:25
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exquisite tea posted:Hey, I just remembered that Obduction is out in three weeks! The previews have looked really cool so far, I badly want this to be good. Provided they don't delay it. Again.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:44
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I was looking at their kickstarter page the other day, to see if they were going to do a closed beta or an earlier access to the final build thing for backers pledging above a specific tier (they are not doing either of these), and the only related perk is access to an early build at the $10000 pledge tier (!) -- which is 5 people... Anyway, hopefully the game is alright; fingers crossed it will be at Riven's level of awesomeness but, somehow, I don't really see this happening.
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Aug 2, 2016 10:12
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To be fair, it's hard to make any game approaching Riven's level of awesomeness. But a Myst IV would still be okay.
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Aug 2, 2016 10:23
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Yo fellas. Just a heads up that Dropsy is 50% off on Steam for the next week, and the android version is in the Humble Mobile Bundle. The mobile version has optional sparkly hotspots, which is a quasi-easy mode if you're not very good at adventures generally. We also added sweet lil' feedback effects like smoke poofs and pops and stuff when you press things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It72E3EbJNk Still working on the new beach (and a lil' more desert & dreamworld too) areas, which will be in an automatic free update when we're done.
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Aug 2, 2016 10:30
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I am pretty awesome.
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Aug 2, 2016 14:14
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Riven posted:I am pretty awesome. Not you you, the game you.
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Aug 2, 2016 19:12
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RadicalR posted:Not you you, the game you. Well, yeah, sure, that too.
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Aug 3, 2016 02:54
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RadicalR posted:Not you you, the game you. I disagree.
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Aug 3, 2016 11:52
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Columnae's Kickstarter could use your bucks, if you've got any to spare. It's sitting at 66% funded with one week to go. I'd really love for this game to happen, it's drop dead gorgeous.   Retrocausality, y'all: quote:COLUMNAE relies on classic point & click adventure mechanics, but also features a non–linear approach persistent throughout the gameplay, allowing a huge replayability. Additionally, we introduced a concept of retrocausality: chapters of the game are not played in chronological order, which allows the player to affect not only the future but also the past of the main character and the world surrounding him. Depending on the your actions within each chapter, yet-to-be-played chapters are placed in an appropriate "version" of the past or the future. What'ch'all think?
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Aug 3, 2016 13:01
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Dreamfall Chapters occasionally feels like a poorly translated German adventure game. Did it originally come out in some Scandinavian language? I like the fact that you often get more then the de rigueur two reactions when examining stuff, but a bunch of "look at" results are unvoiced. All the lip movement is hilariously out of sync. None of the dream-time interaction buttons are adequately explained. And the dialogues are just a nightmarish blend that seems to have been auto-translated. I'm listening to all the "dream time" conversations, and I just... have no idea whether I'm immensely stupid or the game is actively loving with me. I've played the previous games, yet I can barely understand what the characters are saying and why. Zoey used to be friendly enough with her dad, and she apparently forgot Reza was taken over by something (?) (never mind her other friends) so why does she feel like she doesn’t have anyone to come back to? The whole point of Zoey’s plotline was to save April / the creepy girl in white / stop the dream machine. She has succeeded in exactly one of those things, so how exactly did she “save the world”? How much of this is a retcon of previous events, and how much is just pure muddled writing?
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Aug 3, 2016 14:50
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Xander77 posted:Dreamfall Chapters occasionally feels like a poorly translated German adventure game. Did it originally come out in some Scandinavian language? I have a few issues of my own with the writing, dialogues and gameplay in Dreamfall Chapters but I think some of your question are answered in-game -- although you might miss some explanations if you don't "look at" stuff persistently. Furthermore, the developer's idea to include a "choose your own path for Zoe and Kian" mechanic may be one of the reasons that some stuff are no longer as clear-cut as they were previously shown to the player (in the original Dreamfall game -- which also had quite a tangled mess of a plot in the first place). But, specifically: - In the prologue (in dream time; starting scene), when examining the photo of Reza, Zoe recalls feeling weird about the Reza-person visiting her in the clinic, which is the callback to her creepy "this is not Reza" quote from the Dreamfall cliffhanger albeit with a retcon-ish approach that makes her sound way less confident. - iirc Zoe does suffer from some memory loss after she wakes up from her comatose state -- which probably explains why she seems to have forgotten her previous thoughts about Reza. - I think up until the beginning of Chapters, Zoe has convinced Faith (the white girl)'s "shadow" in the net to let go, thus ending her influence there (which I think was supposed to be a terrible thing for the world, but I don't recall why or if they ever made that clear in the original Dreamfall). Also, apparently she succeeded in "saving April" (as far as Faith and the "white lady" who Faith mentions are concerned) probably with respect to April's "soul" rather than her life. Saving the world also may refer to saving people trapped in Dreamtime loops, which is what Zoe is doing in the prologue of Chapters. AbstractNapper fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 19:25
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It's more clearly explained in the journal and the first psychiatrist meeting after the prologue. But, basically, Zoë is mad with her dad for not telling the truth about her mom. After she wakes up from Dream Time, she suffers from partial memory loss. She exposed someone at Waticorp wanted to harvest people's dreams but the whole truth hasn't come out and she doesn't remember how deep the conspiracy goes. But yeah, the writing is pretty bad a lot of the time and characters tend to go on and on.
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Aug 3, 2016 20:39
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Tornquist's writing generally has a habit of having some absolutely brilliant world creation and some really genuinely smart dialogue, it just often gets buried because everyone wants to keep talking forever about everything. It's something that's been a constant in pretty much all of his games.
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Aug 3, 2016 20:44
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I thought the wizard duel in TLJ was brilliant. You use a calculator and science to defeat an evil wizard.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:08
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al-azad posted:I thought the wizard duel in TLJ was brilliant. You use a calculator and science to defeat an evil wizard. Well, at least seeing the duck poster in DC was the funniest moment in the game thus far. Meanwhile, Zoey is just phasing through objects. Edit - Resurrecting April and having her story reach an actual point is pretty much the only thing that would hold my interest. I was literally contemplating how much space and time this game was taking up when that was mentioned. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 21:20
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Xander77 posted:Dreamfall Chapters occasionally feels like a poorly translated German adventure game. Did it originally come out in some Scandinavian language? wiki posted:The game is originally written in English, with the Norwegian, German, and French translations confirmed. The Polish translation is to be released by cdp.pl, and the German one, by EuroVideo Medien. Localizing the voice-overs for the game proved problematic (for instance, the German translation of Book Three was delayed for six weeks after the English release), partly because each episode contains 25 to 50 thousand spoken words, and partly because the developers did not lock down the dialogue until several weeks before the release. Funny that you should mention that: I remember that when the first game in the series ("The Longest Journey") came out, Funcom pandered to the home market and released it localised into the language of Ibsen and Hamsun (which is rarely done). It was obvious in places that it was originally written in English, with some closed captions untranslated and some turns of phrase sounding clunky. Chapters was probably written in English first, but by a non-native speaker.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:40
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X_Toad posted:I just finished The Book of Unwritten Tales 2. Good game, much better than its predecessor in my opinions. It made me hate Nate Bonnet and I now just wish he never comes back. I also hated that loving romance. Also, a lot of bugs, especially in the bonus content, like the hats and costumes icons were replaced by a generic question mark icon and the dice poker game crapped out on me and forced me to reload an earlier save. I've played this back when it came out, so my memory is somewhat fuzzy. I think their problem was that they went with the Star Wars parallel thing too far, taking it from having similar main character archetypes to trying to retell Empire Strikes Back. (Spoiler alert: Nate will be saved from the carbonite eventually.) Nate is my least favorite character as well. I think his problem is that he's basically Han Solo, but without any redeeming features. Han Solo was a bit of a wanker, but he's charming (what with being played by Harrison loving Ford) and, outside of the whole getting into debt with Jabba thing, competent and good at what he does. Nate is a pudgy twat who can't even fly 'his' own ship.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:51
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The parallel to carbonite completely flew over my head, good one! I guess it was too subtle a homage for me, especially right before Alastair went Obi-Wan on us. Nice development of that last character, by the way. We never really saw him in the first game and I liked him in this one.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:19
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Dreamfall stuff. My Apostle apparently wrenched his neck while going through the portal. He keeps staring to the right for some reason. Also, shifting into buildings. Also, getting stuck on empty spaces until I have to reload. Isn’t it great that you can’t save in this PC adventure game, and have to rely on checkpoints? Just the best thing. Edit – Everyone is having neck issues today. Also, shifting. I’ve encountered the National Front (just a tiiiiiiiny bit on the nose) meeting before taking Bip along, but obviously I needed him with me to find that place in the vast and sprawling city, so I had no interaction options until I backtracked and followed him. The gameworld keeps getting more vast and more empty and more boring with each subsequent installment. Not only are there so few interaction spots on the street saying anything of interest, but there’s also the incessant cut-and-pasting of the same few. Run around either city, clicking on interaction prompts – you’ll get one or two sentences of genuine interest about the Shuk or the Magic Market, and a thousand repeats of “these pipes” and “these garbage disposals”. I really like TLJ, and I thought Dreamfall was bad because of the gameplay rather than the writing, but holy poo poo does the writing in this game irritate me. Mr Hitleris of the National Front going on about the (magical) immigrants? Seriously? You already have a goddamned white nationalist anti-immigrant party in the real world. (And I’m sure those are still going to be relevant in 2200. I mean the whigs are doing just fine, right?) Alvani did… what? Why the hell is the resistance entirely unconcerned about Azadi soldiers sniping at their members as they stroll about town? Never mind the completely useless potion meant to hide our newest Azadi member, do the Azadis know that these guys members of the resistance now? Follow them back to the hideout? Just compromised their best agents? Zero thought / fucks given. Someone on the steam forums is asking for a way to skip cutscenes and a faster runspeed. I concur so much - I hold up TLJ as the grand example in allowing you to skip (almost) everything, including the running around. Isn’t it grand the sequels took all that convenience away? Everything is just so loving slow. Edit: I’ve spent 3 “books” choosing Zoeys actions regarding what she wants to remember / forget, yet I still have absolutely no loving clue what it is exactly that she does and does not recall. Cursey-girl is such a goddamned terrible character with such a terrible voice actor. Are we trying for a family guy moment, where your lovely lovely “Penis and Vagina tavern” joke actually becomes funny through sheer repetition? Because that moment is never coming. The joke just gets shittier every time. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 5, 2016 |
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Aug 4, 2016 23:59
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Xander77 posted:I’ve encountered the National Front (just a tiiiiiiiny bit on the nose)
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Aug 5, 2016 11:50
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I hated Dreamfall Chapters so much. So much. I actually told a minor lie in a previous post - I dislike Dreamfall TLJ's writing insofar as it really should have been Zoe's story all along. And Ragnar has learned absolutely nothing over the next decade, stuffing every lovely random idea he could come up with into this loving mess of a plot. If only you'd dump all the random digressions that come out of nowhere and amount to nothing - the Undreaming, Soul-Stones (but keep Baba Yaga, because it and the Engine are the only interesting setpieces in this fantastical game) the loving Spear of Gromnir, and particularly Saga (grr) - you'd still have the same basic story about eliminating magic that was started in TLJ. (Looking back, I'm amazed at how comparatively coherent TLJ is). Then, bring back my beloved "skip everything" prompts from TLJ, include a "highlight interactable spots" button, because 90% of the times I was stuck in this game came from lovely pixel hunting in a 3D environment (was the "attention" button supposed to do something like that? Because it did absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell) and you'd have a merely mediocre game occasionally redeemed by stuff like Enu and Crow, instead of the aggressively lovely mess we have right now. PS - I was starting to write up a "what the hell are Enu's sterling qualities as a leader" thing, when I realized all of Kian's qualities as an inspirational blah blah blah were also told rather than shown. We've been stuck with the resistance for a boring ever, yet we never actually got a glimpse of any of that, or interacted with any of the resistance members in a meaningful way. gently caress you Saga. gently caress everything about you. It's been a while since I really hated a game to this extent. Generally I'm all "this is frustrating, this is broken, what a shame, RIP" rather than "grr, gently caress this bullshit so much". Maaaybe Broken Age, but that had the decent first part as a setup for the disappointment of the second one. Finally, here are all the characters that snapped their necks in an effort to escape this game.
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Aug 6, 2016 12:25
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So Infamous Quests is closing down after they finish their current projects. In addition to the blog update, there's also a podcast about it.
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Aug 6, 2016 12:38
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It's been so long since I backed "Mage's Initiation", which was kickstarted around the same time as the "Quest for Infamy", that for a moment I thought that Infamous Quests was behind that one as well, and that meant that it would be canceled. Thankfully -on so many levels- that is not the case; although wtf... why is Himalaya Studios taking their sweet time with Mage's Initiation? It's been a year and a half past their original estimation, and the latest update (from April) is that maybe there's going to be an alpha soon-ish (and yet not ready 3 months later). It is a common place that the original estimate is going to be off target -typically by a long shot- but still, this was a project that I was very interested and hopeful about and now I have nearly lost all my enthusiasm and at times I forget that this is happening. On a project I am still hopeful about (but will take quite a while to be completed), here's the twitch stream from this year's Mysterium on the progress for The Starry Expanse, the fan developed Riven 3D game in the Unreal 4 engine. From quickly browsing the video, it looks good albeit on early design stage with untextured models and missing stuff. Last year's demo, showcased a more polished... area, but the progress is significant. https://www.twitch.tv/mysteriumcon/v/81969995
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Aug 7, 2016 10:44
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AbstractNapper posted:wtf... why is Himalaya Studios taking their sweet time with Mage's Initiation? I threw them six bucks for basically their work on the QFG2 conversion, but I could tell Mage's Initiation was going to be mismanaged. They had a bunch of random rear end rewards like miniatures and stuff at prices that didn't really seem suitable for miniatures and stuff. Hell, the game itself was only $6, which was definitely in that "eh fuckit they did good work with QFG" but was just an odd amount. Like $10 probably would have gotten just as many people, I would feel? I'd be pleasantly surprised if it ever came out and doubly surprised if it ended up becoming good. On the other hand, still waiting for those blu rays of Doublefine's documentary and that's even a company that has more than like two people in it.
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Aug 9, 2016 06:02
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Megazver posted:So Infamous Quests is closing down after they finish their current projects. Speaking of which, Order of Thorne is 70% off on Steam right now. Apparently they only sold a thousand copies of it.
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Aug 9, 2016 11:36
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The issue with kickstarting niche games is your market might be all backers.
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Aug 9, 2016 15:40
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So how's the Batman game?
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Aug 9, 2016 15:42
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Lamont posted:So how's the Batman game? Badly optimized, okay-ish, apparently.
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Aug 9, 2016 16:00
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Lamont posted:So how's the Batman game? Don't bother with the PC port. It crashes so frequently it's unplayable. It's the second Telltale game in a row I regret buying because of piss-poor performance.
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Aug 10, 2016 11:20
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Any opinions on Order of the Throne? Infamous Adventures is closing up shop, and I'm curious to see if this was any good. I avoided Quest for Infamy despite my love of QFG because it frankly looked pretty dumb.
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Aug 17, 2016 13:30
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:05 |
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So in interesting and odd crossovers, a Lifeline-style mobile game for Android and iOS has been released featuring Mr. Robot. It was developed by the team that did Oxenfree, and is distributed by Telltale Games. Those are two sentences I never thought I'd type.
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Aug 17, 2016 15:48
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