I did a controversial thing and did a video review of the new Tomb Raider. I put it on a new youtube account cos these (assuming i do more) aren't meant to be funny and exist on a lower level of stuff which is just me talking about crap. The account is called talkingabouter. Here is the video:

this was a really good review and it seemed to clear up my main apprehension to the game, which was the E3 showing that had all these deeply unsettling sexualized violence vibes.  After that showing I pretty much stopped paying attention to this game until just the past few days where I heard it being compared to Metroid Prime in terms of level design and that got me interested again, and I'm glad that the E3 fiasco was just a bad representation and not really indicative of the tone of the game and Lara's portrayal.  I mean I'm not expecting her to be a Female Icon but at least it doesn't feel like it's getting off to her getting brutally beat up anymore.

if it weren't for the cool gameplay/class systems it'd be pretty bad.

yeah, more or less
 
the game is kinda cursed in being situated in that transitional period between games not really being expected to have noteworthy storytelling to actually being a scrutinized, pertinent element. like it's just advanced enough where you can't as easily forgive them for dumping something stale and badly developed, but it was still 1992 when this thing came out, and trying to do really anything with console stories wasn't exactly A THING for a few years as far as i could tell. so yeah, it's bad, but i guess given the context i have a much easier time forgiving the story for being dull and uninteresting than i would forgiving something like 9 or 10, which is not only uninteresting but contextually embarrassing.
 
still, not a lot of magic here. like there's this awkward unintelligible 8-bit rpg aesthetic that earlier games in the series had, but you can't really extend your disbelief that far with this one given how they make it really clear technically that they could have done a lot more with it. the music is pretty good some of the time though, and the gameplay was neat, rather inventive and well-conceived, so it's not a total waste playing it again. just not really engaging. i remember playing this when i was younger and finding myself a bit more able to get into the spirit of it, but it wasn't the same playing it now. a shame, considering i can still get some of that playing the first three in the series.

it's nice to see you again :)

YES!!! for Hundley review, bonzi throws himself in front of Dada, praises his new god for new hundley update
 
also idk if you are interested Hundley (i still remember your thoughts on Torment...) but there's a new Planescape game coming up with lotsa "cooks" in sight in Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/ mabby there's Kotor2 writers etc in it?? maybe it's not complete bullshit this time?? Ah, To Be a FORTUNE TELLER, Now I....

I've been playing a lot of Crawl, but I'm still really terrible. The tedious starting stuff that used to make me really invested in each character & sorrowful at their passing is going a lot faster, though, so the mourning period between characters is decreased, and starting a game & looking up 3 hours later is less common. I think the issue is realizing too late that hoarding helpful scrolls & potions isn't helpful if you never use them.

Also, I'm slowly going through Yume Nikki, which I guess is the only way to do that. I've been playing it for like two months with very large gaps between sessions. Not a huge fan of the walking noise, but otherwise it's pretty great & obtuse.

crawl rules. i'm not good either, but i had an awesome game as a hill orc preist a while back. having friends everywhere feels so cool. i really like how pronounced each of the different character types is compared to, say, nethack. being a sneaky octopus is also great fun. it was a friend of mine's first RPG and she's a billion times better than me at it now. doesn't think she'd play pokemon because it looks too boring. i wouldn't have expected crawl to be a good rpg for someone who doesn't play vidgames much, but apparently it is. i want to play again now. last i was trying skald with limited success.

crawl is good. I had one powerful character, a mummy or something? or something that had weird diet that made it easier to survive, like the vegetarian one or the troll. it was boring. it's the most fun making a complex character and being a weakling and getting murdered x100

YES!!! for Hundley review, bonzi throws himself in front of Dada, praises his new god for new hundley update
 
also idk if you are interested Hundley (i still remember your thoughts on Torment...) but there's a new Planescape game coming up with lotsa "cooks" in sight in Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/ mabby there's Kotor2 writers etc in it?? maybe it's not complete bullshit this time?? Ah, To Be a FORTUNE TELLER, Now I....

not being able to use planescape because of property rights, thinking of how much content the owners of those d&d campaign settings like forgotten realms and planescape have blocked just so a handful of people can have their nerd stuff their way

dungeon crawl stone soup
 
Hope you like rogue-likes. because you will probably end up wasting hours on this one.