Works every -time.

Followup: Started playing Alan Wake tonight. There is something about the camera angle (character is slightly farther off-center than a usual 3rd-person shooter) and/or wonky camera control and/or other controls that was pretty disorienting at first, but I sorted it out.

Counterpoint to "all so good!": Firewalker (ME2). It's just scooting around uselessly in a cool new hovercrafty sort of vehicle. Then again I didn't really try all of the missions because the first two were so awful, so maybe the "Geth Incursion" is halfway decent.

OK, now I can't resist sharing the pictures of my FemShep from the first game:
http://imgur.com/PELck6Q

Thanks for revealing yet another layer of stupid about that stupid thing. SO STUPID.

I got lucky, at least my first set of Mass Effect games (on PS3) came as a gift, complete with maximum DLC. But yeah, I am about to buy it all over again on PC and I will be in the same boat as you if I ever switch back to another console. But I think PC will be adequate for the first trilogy, and I will do Andromeda…

OK, well let's co-inspire each other because I am not completely gung-ho about Alan Wake either. I know that a big part of my problems with the combat before was surely my skill level, which has now improved a lot in general, but I have this feeling that the combat system/controls themselves were also intrinsically a…

And that's what was truly disqualifying about that comment from Gary Johnson.

Heh, Bayonetta 2 and Animal Crossing, what a combo. I haven't played either but I played enough of Bayonetta to see that you've got some pretty eclectic interests.

Yeah, after the "human copper-top" idiocy of The Matrix (which is still just about my favorite sci-fi/action movie), I didn't need another storyline with bad guys going to great effort to collect live humans and turn them into a power source. I thought that collecting all of those different people was supposed to…

I don't even like action movies, but this is a classic. (I even saw Lethal Weapon 2 in the theatre.) And, if nothing else, it helped to give rise to this:

Ugh, that's harsh. Fortunately I do make just enough in my crazy back-and-forth way (massive procrastination followed by late night rushes to catch up), and supported by my wife's equal or slightly higher income, that I am still able to afford games after the bills are paid and the kids have money for lunch… and…

Cool. I am thinking about going back to the previous XCOM game and getting the Long War mod, but in any case I will probably get some sort of XCOM-related DLC sometime soon. This one sounds like it could be fun.

That's exactly right. I saw the options there but they were greyed out. The frustrating thing about Miranda is that I knew I needed a high Paragon score to convince her to change her mind afterwards, so I specifically concentrated on boosting it for the rest of the game (since my Paragon score happened to be a bit…

I saw that on sale but since I am less than awesome at shooters, I wasn't sure that I even wanted to drop $40 (Canadian)… although it's a damn sight better than $80!

Should have asked which platform you were on. I remember the framerate and tearing issues on PC too (pre-patch). Bummer that you're stuck with that for now.

Yay for XCOM 2! Yeah, those limitations on the mission structure really change the way you have to think. As for the patch, a lot of the big issues at launch (like the super long loading screens and excessive pauses between turns) were fixed months ago. Is it possible you didn't actually download/install the patch…

No! On the mission itself, I got to the choice point where I could have presented some evidence to exonerate her or not, but it seemed more important to her to protect her father's image and let herself be exiled. If there is something else I could have done later in the game, I wasn't aware of it. (Admittedly, it was…

Yeah, somewhere around Ilos on my second time through the first game, I actually "got it" (both the Reaper/Prothean/Collector thing and the Turian/Krogan/Rachni/genophage story). But you're absolutely right that the writing is much more effective and convincing on the smaller scale (dialogue, character arcs). And I…

I might be taking it easy on games this weekend and next week after a bit of binging this past week (see my "WHYFTW" post), but if I do get into gaming, here are the options in decreasing order of likeliness…
- Ori and the Blind Forest. I got almost halfway through it several months back, but then a big setpiece where…