pretty sweet shots :)

Thanks! I just wish they made the pictures at least 720p. As is, the size is a bit small. Still a lot of fun.

Grim Dawn and Batman: Arkham Origins. I finished up Bioshock Infinite's 1st narrative DLC Burial at Sea Part 1, yesterday - overall it was fun and nice to go back to Rapture and luckily I had the season pass; in my opinion only worth the $14.99 if you're seriously chomping at the bit for some more new Bioshock.

You really went to town, or all around it.
At this point of highly detailed worlds taking "pictures" should be quite a viable sport. Especially if the game lets you get past all of that HUD stuff to do it. Maybe we will see devs be nice and let us change time, lighting angles, and focal lengths. Of course maybe it's better if you have to find a good spot and wait for the right moment and all of that.

KOF:XIII, Street fighter X Tekken

Yeah, the logical next step would be to offer actual cameras in game that are higher in quality, like being able to switch lenses and what not. For me tho, I would KILL for a digital representation of a 4x5. That way when you take pictures of architecture, you can correct for converging lines when you tip up or down. As is, you have to be at the perfect height and center everything perfectly if you want your lines to be straight. Tip up or down even a little and....well, it just looks bad. Plus having swings and tilts on a 4x5 allows you to control focus as well. You could do a lot of really cool things and it shouldn't be that hard to replicate in game. You just have to convince the developer that its worthy of inclusion. We will probably see SLR type cameras but I am probably dreaming thinking we will actually see a 4x5 in game. You never know tho.

Changing time however, that would just make things too easy. At least for me, the whole idea is about replicating as much as possible the photographic process and GTA V does that amazing well. Start making it too easy and it loses the very thing that makes it so much fun.

When you are done with some game where you invested lots of time (like Baldur's Gate 2), it is always a bit hard to decide what to play next. Even if it is some game you are playing already, but especially if it is a new game you've yet to play. Should it be different genre, or the same while you are at it etc.

I installed Icewind Dale. The party creation part was a bit overwhelming (in Baldur's Gate games you create only one character), but I'll look into it more. In a way it is nice to be able to create exactly the kind of party composition you want.

Installed also Neverwinter Nights, just in order to import my Baldur's Gate 2 character into the game, as BG2 kept suggesting you'll be able to do that. But apparently you can't, the developers changed their minds when released NWN, you'll have to start NWN with a fresh new character. Fine, so I uninstalled NWN for now.

I also played a bit of Wheel of Time FPS, I'm pretty far in it already. I find that game pretty irritating though, there's not really any good way to fight the incoming soldiers, other than shooting them with your most powerful shots, before they can reach you. Too bad I keep running out of such ammo all the time, it seems that killing only a couple of baddies already depletes you of most of your ammo. And you don't get more ammo from killed enemies so in that sense there's no benefit in fighting them either. Should I just run away at full speed all the time then, speedrun through the whole game?

The basic "blow" weapon, which is the only weapon with unlimited ammo, is near useless with its very low range. It is in practise a melee weapon, making very little damage to enemies. So in order to conserve the ammo of ranged weapons to bosses and such, the best tactic in the game seems to be, at least for the melee enemies (like sworded knights):

- Lure the enemies to some place where some chair or table is between you and them, and they can't jump to you.
- If they remain on the other side, keep shooting them from close range with that "blow" weapon, until they die.

This really seems more like cheating, using the bad enemy AI or game glitches to kill the enemies, but then the game seems to give very little other choice. It would be much better if you could get ammo from killed enemies.

Also the more powerful weapons are quite irritating. Some, like those darts, are quite often blocked by enemy shields, and bounce back hitting you. While others, they have severe splash damage, ie. if the enemy is close to you, you will take serious damage too.

I would play neither IWD nor NWN after BG2, you will be disappointed. After completing a massive and beloved game like the BG-Trilogy, any TES game or the Fallout series I try to switch to either a different genre or different setting, preferably both. If the next game is too similar it leads to disappointments when comparing. I made the mistake of trying to play IWD and NWN too shortly after I helped finishing my then-girlfriend, now wife the BG games. IWD seemed very lifeless after that because of the lacking party interaction. NWN was even more bland with its featureless 3D-World, one one boring Henchman instead of a living party and a story that gets going only after three long chapters and is near devoid of any surprising turn.

So how about blasting some Xenon ass in Freespace? Hitting the road in a GTA game? Perfecting your hacking and sneak skills in Deus Ex?

on Topic: I'm currently playing Skyrim with as many mods as my machine can handle (which unfortunately isn't many). But I absolutely love Scenic Carts!

The good news is that I'm pretty much aware of that, so it shouldn't become as a shock to me that there is probably not much of a story in IWD. :)

And another thing that may ease the pain is that I actually liked BG2 quite much, not only for its story, but the CRPG part with stats, trying to find or make another kickass sword +5, and strategic and challenging combat (e.g. I very much liked the last boss combat in ToB, making my party work in unison so that they have enough stamina for the long battle ahead of them). So if IWD can provide at least that, I think I'll be fine.

But what you say is true, and always makes me wonder in what order I should play some games etc. But nowadays I try not to think about it too much, but just jump between different genres and eras. Like earlier I played through Mirror's Edge and Spec Ops: The Line (which in my book are pretty new AAA games), then went back to playing some much older games etc.

Darn it, FTL! I was doing so well...

So I got all the way to Sector 8 without many problems. I had a few tough encounters here and there, but things worked out pretty well. But then Sector 8 happened. The difficulty spiked significantly. I wasn't able to fight even the Rebel Scout ships. By the time I got to the Rebel Flagship (by accident, by the way), my hull was around 50%. I didn't get any damage on the stinking thing before it blew my ship to pieces. It wasn't even a heroic last stand. I shot twice, got blasted a few times, and then KABOOM! Rest in peace, Hector, Baars, Xemu, and Engri dude (I forgot his name).

Hopefully this current sale will either end soon or the game I want will go on sale. I want to get back to playing STALKER.

Giving another shot at Pitfall: The Lost Expedition.
Not a bad little platformer if I may say so though the camera makes jumping across the crocodiles almost impossible.

Gonna play some Deus Ex.

Alpha Protocol. So far it's been pretty good - a bit Deus Ex in tpp. It does try to cram so many things in one game that I feel obliged to give it some game time.

I started playing one game last evening that I have installed on my PC already. Next thing I know is that my gf is angrily requiring an explanation why am I know sleeping when it is already 6 am??? Oooops, where did all that time go? So I went to sleep, slept 6 hours and got up noon.

So what is that magical wonder-game which transfers you into another dimension that you forget the passage of time altogether? Deus Ex? Fallout 2? GTA V? Bioshock Infinite? Planescape: Torment?

Ummm, no, 7th Guest... :D I refuse to admit it is a good game, but I just got stuck in two puzzles that I just had to win before I could hope to get any sleep. First one was the microscope tabletop game where you play against the computer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVbYO6BV6BI

I recall trying that in 7th Guest already over a decade ago, and stopped playing the game as I considered it unbeatable for me. But now after retrying it like 50 times, I finally was barely able to win the AI. Dang! I was surprised for the AI to proclaim defeat, as it seemed to me it was a very close call and I presumed he still managed to get more pieces than me, but apparently not.

Now it afterwards occurred to me, why didn't I make the computer play against itself, by running the game on two different PCs at the same time, or even two instances of the game on the same PC? I wonder if that would work, each time I move the pieces what the other game AI tells me to, and then use the save game which wins? :) I think I have to try that in practice because I am unsure if it is still possible for the two games to go to different directions. I think it shouldn't, as I am still giving the moves in both games, only for different sides?

After that I ran into the simple piano puzzle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZswTTbRnT4#t=240 (at about 4:00)

First I thought I would clear it by "Simon Says"-method, but the tune started to be so long that I couldn't hope to remember it (the puzzle would always start from the very beginning, if you made one tiny mistake), so in the end I had to write down the exact keys, and even then I quite often made mistakes.

But eventually that was beaten too, and I got to sleep some.

Having had a decent time with 5 Days a Stranger, I finished 7 Days a Skeptic yesterday. Not bad, although it does suffer from the typical point'n'click problem that sometimes you have to do a very specific, obscure thing in order to progress. Consulted a walkthrough twice, I think. No shame. I'm going to play Trilby's Notes at some point, and then finish with 6 Days a Sacrifice if it manages to sustain the tone.

By the way, Yahtzee, if you're reading this, I think you could easily bundle the four games together and sell them on GOG for $5.99. Just saying.

Anyway, I started Giana Sisters afterwards. I'm liking it a lot.

Just started Face Noir and a new game for XCOM (with Enemy Within). I miss the Toolboks mod for XCOM :(