Forum Thread: What are you playing May 17-23, 2010

err.. cool me a n00b but i did not know this.

i'm not borrowing any more games from anyone...

lol. Well most of us practice safe bonding, meaning we still leave the plastic wrap on when we do it, but with friends you never know.

One way to tell which game is safe to borrow at a friend's house is to casually look through his titles. Ask him casually, "what about this one, any good?" and if your friend gives a regular response like "It was good", then it's safe to borrow. But if you ask him about a title and then he suddenly stops everything and looks at the game box with loving and tender eyes, DO NOT BORROW THAT GAME!

I managed to grab a copy of the Red Dead Strategy guide yesterday. For some reason they did not print enough for the first run and most places were sold out. There is a 3 week waiting period in Amazon and most gamestops were waiting for more copies.

The guide is around 320 pages. That's just as beefy as the Dragon Age guide. It's a real shame that this guide did not come in a hardcover edition like others do, because paperbacks tend to break down much faster with continuous use. Also, the cover for the guide and the game is the very definition of fugly.

I played Episode 1 of Alan Wake yesterday but tonight is suppose to be L4D2 night with the guys, so I might not be able to play that game today.

Played Alan Wake Ep2 last night, here are some non spoiler random things:

I call this masterpiece "Alan with Bear"

Two great things about this episode:

1. There is a section where you receive help from a person in fighting. You light the enemies and the other shoots them. Really nice diversion from standard play, very fun.

2. The introduction of the flare! Very useful, it brightens your area so that you're not surrounded by enemies like so:

Now for the stupid:

There are many trailers in the area and what bothered me was that none of them had a door! It might seem like a little thing but if you really didn't want the player to enter them, then just make the door locked! You go to the trailer area with multiple mobile homes, and not one door! I mean, who buys these things? 

There all fixed. Maybe in a future patch they'll put them in.

So I'm going through this path and I find this locked gate:

Crap. i don't have a key or a weapon that can bring the gate down. How will I ever cross this huge door and solve this puzzle? Let me look 5 degrees to my left.

Oh, there is a huge rock and a broken fence right next to the rock.

So you mean to tell me they put the solution right next to the puzzle? Who builds a gate that high, locks it, and then makes a crappy fence right next to it.

And why is the fence broken in the first place? Who jumped on it with enough weight to break that first log? It does not even make sense. Bears? Don't blame the bears.

I'm really glad I didn't spend $20 for the strategy guide. I'd like to see what it says to solve this Myst quality type puzzle. Hey, Neytiri, what do you think of all this?

This wasn't the only time this happened in this chapter. I counted three separate times where the door was locked and a huge hole right next to it to pass it.

Failed to save someone's hanging wife yesterday, but at least the last shot was epic.

Just to add on that last youtube:

The game doesn't tell you how to solve the problem. It just says "save his wife". The problem is, how? Do I

1. Kill all bandits and she'll come down herself.
2. Shoot the rope for her to fall down and then kill the bandits.
3. Approach her and wait for a game option to appear like "Press Y to bring her down".  For added complexity, should this be done before/during/after killing the bandits?

In that youtube, I chose option C, obviously the wrong one.

Bad Company 2 all the way (for games that we are playing).