StaceyPowers

I have a cheap laptop which doesn’t play newer games (it barely handles old ones), and didn’t even own a PS3 until last year. Prior to that, my most recent console was … an original Nintendo. Anyway, as you might expect, I am only now catching up on PS3 games from years ago. The downside is that I know every spoiler in the universe about most of the games I play, but the upshot is that I can buy everything I wanted to try ages ago for like $5 each. That actually works out for me, because I don’t really have the deep pockets I’d need to buy everything when it releases. I always wonder how many other people are like me, lagging years behind on games, and how many actually are able to buy new games when they come out. How long do you usually wait (or have to wait) before you buy a new console or game that interests you?

I’ve only recently really gotten back into gaming, but I loved it when I was a kid, and sometimes I really miss some of the classic games I had for console or PC back then, like: · Solstice. An isometric game for Nintendo which I thought was totally amazing at the time because … ISOMETRIC. Plus, it had a super cool theme song and was very atmospheric. · There were some rather primitive-looking point-and-click games for PC that I really got into, but sadly their names are lost to the mist of time. I do recall that they were murder mysteries or something similar. · Myst. The game that got us all to purchase CD-ROMs back in the day. To this day, no other game I’ve played has been that unnerving. Nothing bad ever happened to you in it, and it still made you constantly want to look over your shoulder. · Old Warcraft/Starcraft games. · Half-Life. That game really took shooters to the next level, and while it inspired a lot of great games since, the thrill of playing something so groundbreaking can never be replaced. · Zork. Any and all Zork. What games do you get the most nostalgic wishing you could play again?

I'm pretty sure I've explored almost all of Skyrim. To me, the most beautiful locations to revisit just to look around now and again are: · Eldergleam Sanctuary, especially if it’s around 6-7 in the morning, when the light comes through all golden. · Markarth. I hate the politics of the place (I’m a fan of the Forsworn, wear their armor, and self-identify as one on every playthrough), but the design of the city is absolutely gorgeous. The scenery of the Reach is beautiful as well. · That area with the geysers that is south of Windhelm. · That bridge with the towers that’s near Whiterun, with the bandits that want to charge you a “toll.” I love the view from the towers. · The spot in the marshes where you can build Windstad Manor. · The Rift. All of it, but especially up by Froki’s Shack. · There’s a sort of “outdoor dungeon” area not far from Froki’s Shack with amazing view of the Throat of the World. I can’t recall the name, but the view is awesome. · Once while I was watching someone else play, they found this really cool dungeon which was outdoors and featured a lot of greenery, but you enter through a cave to get there? I have no clue where it was. If anyone can identify it, please let me know. I’ve never found it myself. What are your favorite spots in Skyrim?

When I was a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books because of the challenge of finding a single right pathway through (almost every ending was disastrous, so nearly all choices were bad). A lot of video games are kind of the opposite of that in that player choice plays a factor in outcomes, but quite often, regardless of your choices (especially in dialogue), you can usually find a favourable outcome. The only time so far I’ve had a particularly regrettable outcome was when I decided to be neutral in the Skyrim civil war, and then during the negotiations, Markarth got traded to the Stormcloaks. Unfortunately no matter how you play the game, there’s really nothing you can do to improve Markarth’s situation, but giving it to the Stormcloaks definitely takes it from bad to worse in my opinion. In fact, it was such a hit that I ended up starting over again with a new character not long after, since it felt like I’d “lost” in a meaningful sense. It also made me see how sometimes the worst decision is no decision. Anyway, what are some video game decision points you ended up particularly regretting in any game?

I take as long as I can on a playthrough of any open world game. I don’t want to rush to the end. Plus, sometimes I want a break from killing things, so I have a few silly activities I do in Fallout games. One of them is pretty typical from what I’ve seen, which is collecting teddy bears and piling them up on my bed. Loads of people do this. The other I haven’t seen anyone do, and that’s make a sort of “feature” out of Nuka Cola quantum bottles on my front porch. I noticed my neighbour has a porch light in Fallout 3, and I don’t, so I thought, “How can I outdo his porch light?” And I came up with this idea of lining up Nuka Cola bottles to form a glowing border around the perimeter of my porch. It’s taking forever, but it’s slowly getting there. Hopefully it will look awesome when it’s finished. What are some fun/silly/random things you do in Fallout games?

Hey everyone! What are you listening to right now? Share a track! From Secret Garden by Angra. Your turn!

When I was younger, I used to play MUDs. If you don’t know what those are, don’t sweat it. I’m from the dark ages. If you do, you know how tight-knit some of them could be as gaming communities (and presumably still are—I just have been away a long time). I admit I have next to no experience with current major MMOs, i.e. World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. But part of the reason for that is that I have read time and again that it’s common for players to largely ignore each other in a social sense, simply running past each other on their way to doing one task or another. In short, there’s an environment for PVP combat and such, but not much in the way of actual roleplay and interaction. I was wondering to what extent that impression is actually accurate? If anyone here is into MMOs, have you found any games which provide a tight-knit sense of community?

Multiplayer games can be a lot of fun, but nothing ruins it faster than someone engaging in totally lame behavior. For me, here’s what drives me bonkers: Medics that won’t bother to heal you. Gamers who are in it only to boost their own scores and who ignore team objectives completely (and/or steal frags). Uneven teams where I wind up doing all the offensive work (why am I always the one who has to capture the flag?). Players who ignore in-game logic for the sake of out-of-game convenience. This is mainly an issue in RPG-style MMOs. And not everyone is going to agree with me about it. What are your multiplayer pet peeves?

Kind of like Stormtroopers =D

Banned: DC Reason: So I can take over the forum. Muahahaha.

Thanks for the recommendation! I haven't played Spec Ops: The Line, so now I've got something to check out.

So this is an ancient issue, but I’ve never found a reliable answer on it, and I’m still searching. For some dumb reason, all objects in Skyrim have a tendency to flip over when you’re moving them so that they are “butter-side-down” (except apple pie, for whatever reason). I’ve heard people say “use corners” to turn the objects the right direction, but I’ve only found this to be slightly useful (maybe I’m doing it wrong?). I saw a video once too where a guy used his sword to knock an object into the right orientation, but I can’t make that work at all. Anyone got any good tricks to share? On a related note, any advice for placing objects in Fallout 3 or New Vegas is more than welcome as well.

Obviously there are women in TLOU—there’s Ellie and Tess and quite a few others. There are plenty of female clickers too. But whenever we’re fighting human enemies, they seem to be exclusively men (I can’t remember if there are exceptions to that, but on the whole, they are almost all men). Any theories as to why this might be? I played through about half the game before I even noticed, but once I did, I realized how disproportionate it was. Anyone have any guesses as to where all the women are?

I'm not sure that's actually the case. I mean, insects infected by real-life Cordyceps aren't actually dead while they're still walking around, are they? If they are, that's even more bizarre than I realized. Now I'm curious whether they eat while infected too.

For story, immersion and character development, The Last of Us. To relax, Quake III Arena. What about you?

Okay, so I admit I could just be missing something obvious here, but I can’t figure out how the Infected manage to survive as long as they do in the Last of Us. In fact, on my first play-through, I just assumed that all of the Infected I saw had only been in that state for a week or so, and that those that didn’t get shot probably starved to death (or died of thirst) not long later. But since then, I’ve seen lots of references saying that the Infected take months to progress through the stages to reach the Bloater stage. That’s all good and well, except how do they survive that long? What are they eating? Did we ever actually see them eating in the game (if we did, I can’t recall)? It seems like they can eat, being as they have mouths—but it can’t be easy for a blind Clicker to locate food, unless it only hunts down and consumes live prey. Or is there some kind of photosynthesis at work? I’m not asserting this is a plot hole, because I don’t think it is—but it is unintuitive, and it makes me realize there’s a lot we don’t understand fully about the Infected life cycle. Anyone have thoughts or theories to share? Do you think we might learn more about the life cycle or even see new stages in the next game?

There are a lot of arguments for or against Joel’s decision at the end of The Last of Us, but is a vaccine for Cordyceps is even necessary? I’ve thought about this a lot, and it seems to me that like any parasite, Cordyceps infects a host because it requires a host for survival. If there are no hosts available, Cordyceps should eventually die out. The Infected themselves will all perish eventually, whether from lack of resources or old age. So in theory, it seems to me that if certain populations were able to quarantine themselves effectively, they could “wait out” the infection, which might be self-limiting. I can think of three major problems: 1-Infected animals. 2-Dead bodies. 3-It’s hard to stop the spread of an airborne pathogen. Aside from those Infected monkeys, we don’t have any evidence that animals actually succumb to this strain of Cordyceps (although, how cool would it be if this shows up in the sequel?). In fact, I’m pretty sure the Infected monkeys are only carriers—they don’t actually turn aggressive, progressing into Clickers or such. So it seems unlikely at this point for animals to spread the infection. The next problem is the dead bodies. The tail end of the Cordyceps life cycle seems to be the collapse of the Infected victim in some dark corner somewhere. The corpse then becomes a spore factory. That means the dead remain a threat, at least for a while. But even this cannot continue indefinitely. If the spores do not find new hosts, eventually, the body should decay beyond usefulness, and no longer sustain the spore factory. The third issue seems like the most problematic to me. I have no idea how far the spores could potentially travel on the wind. Considering however that Joel and the others remove their masks pretty quickly when they are out of an immediate threat zone, I’m guessing it may not be a major issue either. Now, I’m not saying that the infection being self-limiting necessarily justifies Joel’s actions (though I think there are other valid defenses for what he did). Nor am I saying that at least a couple of generations wouldn’t suffer horrifically. But it would mean that he didn’t destroy humanity’s last hope. Plus, vaccines do sometimes backfire. Imagine if Cordyceps managed to mutate and became even more virulent. I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the Cordyceps lifecycle and whether the infection could die out on its own with careful quarantining.

Hey everyone! If you keep up with our news posts, you probably know I write for VGR 🙂 Feel free to ask me anything! Stacey

I remember chatting on a COD forum at one point and someone said something that stuck with me. She was complaining that the latest game (I can’t remember which at this point) didn’t have the same “boom value” as previous games, and I knew exactly what she was talking about. This has been a complaint I’ve had about shooter games in general over the years. Sleek graphics, well-balanced play, beautiful maps—all of these are important. But oftentimes, there’s something missing in the general “feel” of the game—the way it handles and plays. It’s too fluid, too clean. It’s like firing a gun with no kick. In fact, I still think one of the shooter games with the best “boom” value is Quake III Arena from way back in 1999. I still easily prefer it over a lot of more modern shooters. Even with its clunky graphics and overall simplicity, playing it just feels awesome, and that’s something I’ve heard a lot of fans mention. It just has more energy and exuberance. Contrast that with another classic shooter, Unreal Tournament 2004. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a fantastic game. Graphically, it is miles beyond Q3A, and it was a cutting edge title in its time. But it’s got zero in the way of “boom” value. Playing it, you feel more removed from the action. With a game like Q3A, you are right in the middle of it all. What FPS games do you feel have the most “boom” value, whether new or old? Which have the least? How important a factor is it to you?

If you recognize my avatar, you can guess that I’m still playing games from the 1990s. In fact, while we’ve obviously had some amazing titles come out over recent years, there are some old game which I think are still unbeaten in their way. We need some of those old games to come back! We’ve seen some reboots in the past which didn’t work (Sonic, ahem), and some which blew our minds (Doom 3), but we’re still waiting on others (how long is Unreal Tournament going to be stranded in pre-alpha? It feels like I’ve been waiting forever). What classic games do you most want to see a reboot of?

I work here :)