THIS is the main reason why the THQ bundle was such a shock, because frankly things are becoming a bit of mess, so giving people less of a reason to take us seriously is really distressing. This is not to say that we have not been given a lot, but the half-hearted here are really beginning to give the committed a bad name by association. Not all of this is Humble's fault, but if they were a school there would definitely be concerns about them sending out this amount of delinquents, to coin a phrase...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Thanks for the stats on who ported what - most interesting there for me. :)

As for your little editorial there on the whole THQ thing, I agree with most of what you said even if I am a little less favourable of HB than you are, and I especially like the talk about how things went toxic and why. All and all a well rounded perspective.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Mostly formatting irking me - but I think I could just be being a little pedantic here. ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 7381, member: 1"Forgive me if this review isn't as good as Hamish's usually are, writing lots isn't a strong point of mine but I wanted to give it a go. If you have feedback go ahead...just be nice!

Well, as a suggestion, you could get me to look over it as an editor. I always get mine checked over by someone else and you are always surprised about all the small little problems another pair of eyes can find.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "berarma, post: 7396, member: 131"It seems they didn't hire any GNU/Linux experts, or they aren't hearing what they might have to say.

I agree with much of what you are saying, but they actually have quite qualified hands on their team such as Sam Lantinga and Forest Hale.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "mirv, post: 7371, member: 214"You can set an environment variable to have TF2 use something other than pulseaudio. I can't remember what exactly - on holidays and can't check right now - but you should be able to google it, check the steam forums, or something.

Do you mean something game specific or just an SDL command such as "export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa"?

Not using Steam or anything, but just though I might save some of you some time.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I personally feel that package managers should only be left to system packages and free software programs. I find that commercial software tends to muddle things.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 7485, member: 122"It'll be interesting to see whether the DLC addresses any outstanding plot points from the game.

Definitely have to agree with that. ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 7476, member: 122"Ah, but it's not about us, it's about John, who's depicted with a fairly level headed and slow-to-anger type persona - without that catalyst, his actions would have been out of character (at least, from my interpretation of him). I'll admit that it was unduly ignored throughout the rest of the game, and could have been used to bring a little more gravitas when the plot called for it.

Yes, the fact that the later half of the game did not live up fully to the expectations placed on it was my main concern with it. Keep in mind that John and Skyler were both depicted as being very caring individuals, so the fact that Zander's death is not really brought up again or mentioned upon meeting Maximillian (as far as I can recall) seems a bit odd to me.

Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 7476, member: 122"I also haven't played it with a review in mind though - I was too busy enjoying it on my first run through to cast a critical eye over it.

Yeah, you do sound a lot more critical when you actually have to write about something objectively. Just don't let me or anyone else ruin the fun for you. ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 7473, member: 122"I'm not sure I agree with some of your story critique - the death towards the end of the first act of the game signals a shift in tone and stakes. It doesn't really seem out of place with the game's pacing, and serves to provide motivation for John's actions and attitudes throughout the rest of the game.

While I can see your point, I still do not agree mostly because it does not seem to add much to the game. His death seemed to contribute very little as we did not need anymore reason to dislike Maximillain, who had been screwing them out of their jobs by getting them to hunt for the asteroid and was now even threatening to fire them for it. Now granted, Zander did not really have any other purpose but to give a noble death, but with Maximilian screwing them and then sending the wild boys after them, his only purpose in life (and death) seemed to contribute virtually nothing of inherent value to the plot. It is not like it really builds up to anything later in the game, other then his vague musings about the connectedness of everything before he snuffed it, and if anything the game gets lighter as it goes along not darker, so to me it just makes things seem incongruous. It is like everyone simply forgot about it, except for when John needs to take Switchblade. It seemed to me to go like this: we kill off a potential main character, and then we spend the rest of the game making bambi jokes. :P

Still, it is not like I really minded the death, but to me it just added to the notion that the plot seemed a little haphazard. Still, thank you for arguing with me about it; I always wanted these things to engender some real discussions about the games. ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments