As augmented reality games catch on, it may become harder to differentiate between the two.
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There is that. Soon enough, staring at a 2D screen will kinda feel as quaint as gathering around a game board on the kitchen table.
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I have two ONE Steam code for Windward if any one wants them (First come first served)
I thought the first few hours was fun, but then it slogs down with a lot of grinding to get your skill up. Not sure Iāve played in a couple months and just noticed I had two installs from when I bought the 4 pack during the Summer sale.
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Looky, I got a new hat!
Still pictures donāt really show the whole effect. The feathers actually wave back and forth as the character moves! 
It would be even nicer if the different hats had an effect on gameplay somehowā¦ but they donāt. Theyāre only decorative. 
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pfftā¦ Valve learned that hats are where the money is with TF2. I know a lot of people hate it but I enjoy the game enough to toss them some $ every year to get random things to decorate my in game avatars with. It keeps the servers running and amuses me to have ācostume optionsā for playing.
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For Temple Run 2, you collect chests during gameplay, and they may have Artifacts (or cash, or gems) inside. Collect each one of the Artifacts in a collection, earn that collectionās hat. (This is my second hat, but the Relics Hat is a sedate little serpentine crown, hardly flashy enough to show off. 
)
The only other costume I can get right now is a mountaineering outfit, for 60 gems, but I donāt like it, and Iām saving my gems to buy another game level. (If I keep playing long enough to earn that many gems --it takes 500. Thereās a ton of grinding to do, and it gets very frustrating sometimes.)
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Oh you can get hats in TF2 by crafting/recycling drops as well. Just takes longer and I find it nice to have a token reward for what is essentially chipping in to keep the lights on for game play.
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I donāt really have an opinion on this game yet, but being on an intersection of XKCD and games, I figured it should be here.
very clear that there are two things one should note when taking pictures of buns. The first is its size, and the second is its rank, which is a function of its size. The tiniest bun is a de facto āKing Bun.ā
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If Iām not too late, both Windward and Salt are currently on my wishlist as survival-oriented seafaring games. 
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I just got my 46th of 46 achievements for Heat Signature, today. As a lapsed completionist, this tickles me more than it probably should. I even made some new Steam āfriendsā so I could get the last few achievements.
In Heat Signature, youāre a sort of lone super-agent that boards spacecraft in transit and more-or-less fucks shit up, depending on the nature of your mission. Itās ostensibly a rouge-like, but I think of it more as a puzzle game, since it basically comes down to figuring out the proper kit and strategy to take down a particular procedurally generated space ship.
Itās distinguishing game mechanic is an almost infinitely granular pause that lets you switch weapons and string together various moves and attacks that would be impossible in any sort of real-time play.
I bought it mostly because Iād heard others describe it as the sort of thing you could play for 20-30 minutes at a time and still have fun. Thatās definitely true, but I still ended up with a few multi-hour gaming sessions that I hadnāt planned on. Itās definitely engaging, but the mid-to-late-game stretch felt a bit grindy. That being said, thereās a fairly recent patch that seems to have addressed that aspect of game play; I didnāt know thatās what it was at the time, but I definitely noticed the difference in how the game played.
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I have started Bioshock after picking up the trilogy over the last steam sale. So far, not bad.
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I do love the first two, though theyāre much bloodier than they strictly need to be. I wanted to love the third, but could not.
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I considered posting a link to the entire XKCD Game Jam. Now I have:
I havenāt played Bun Snap yet, but this regex card game is pretty rad:
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So, anyone have a view on GTA V? Itās down to AUD$30 for the next 2 days for PS4 (havenāt seen it that cheap in store).
I loved San Andreas (10 years ago when I had more gaming time) and GTA 4 was okay. Would only be playing the singleplayer as wellā¦
Itās an amazing gameworld that is leaps ahead of the previous games in terms of scale and scope.
The combat (always a bit iffy in GTA) is much improved on the previous iterations, with gunplay that feels solid and controllable.
Technologically, itās a stunning achievement, with a rock-solid engine that scales from flight sim to tunnel shooter and barely seems to break a sweat at any point.
The storyline isā¦ Problematic. Thereās a great critique of Hollywood ideas of masculinity and modern American culture hidden away in there and parts of it, I thoroughly enjoyed. Thereās also an entirely gratuitous torture sequence that demands player input without granting the player the option not to torture, which ranks pretty highly on my list of game turn-offs, and a complete lack of any female characters that exist to do anything other than satisfy/annoy the men in the game.
Itās probably the single most misogynistic piece of entertainment I have ever encountered. In previous GTA games, women were essentially non-existent but GTA V seems to actively hate the few female characters that have any spoken dialogue.
The game is not exactly sympathetic to its male protagonists either but the writing for the women is so awful that Mrs. Cynical refuses to be in the room while itās played; Yakuza is the only other game I have played where thatās true and a game in which you rescue the poor, blind girl who exists only as a sex object while you simultaneously make yourself a millionaire running hostess clubs still manages to irritate her less than GTAV.
The multiplayer is excellent, however, and well worth the AUD 30 by itself, even if it does get a bit grindy to try to persuade you to buy cash for real money. You donāt need to spend money though and you can play it entirely PvE if PvP is not your thing. Even if you only ever played the mission where you have players on dirt bikes being chased by other players in fighter jets, itād still be worth $30ā¦
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Thank you, thatās a lot of good info.
I donāt have PS+ currently so MP isnāt going to draw me in at this point.
I tend to like a good story in my single player games (or at least good characters) so Iām now leaning away from it - not too bad, I picked up Horizon Zero Dawn a few weeks back so I wonāt be lacking for open world games. GTA SA did suck up a lot of my time back in the day, so I probably wonāt lose anything by not going back to the old crack pipe there
Oh, and just finished Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Chloe Fraser > Lara Croft by a factor of about 100
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The story in GTAV is good in a way, but you have to fully embrace it as a satire of heist movies, men in general and dysfunctional LA fuck ups to enjoy it, I think. Think GTAIV but less po-faced. I enjoyed it as satire but Mrs Cynical absolutely did not. Your mileage may varyā¦
That said, if youāve run around causing mayhem in one GTA game, youāve pretty much done them all and if youāre not going to play multiplayer, it might have a limited shelf life.
Itās going back a bit but have you played The Last of Us? I only got a PS4 recently and am enjoying going through the games that I have missed since it came out. Definitely my favourite PS4 game so far, with Horizon: Zero Dawn a close secondā¦
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Iāll echo what @Cynical said, and add that, as stunning a technical achievement as it is, I found it the opposite of āan amazing gameworld.ā For better or worse, itās essentially Los Angeles, and pretty much all the bad aspects of living in L.A. I really prefer a bit more escapism in my dystopia. I got too bummed out to get very far in the game (I never met Trevor), but the overall impression I got was that all I had to do was say āFuck it,ā and walk out the front door, and I could literally live out most of the gameās events in real life until the cops caught up with me and I went down in a hail of gunfire.
And as far as I was ever able to determine in the game, you canāt make any good or helpful choices. When it comes to all the unnamed NPCs, you can either completely leave them alone, fuck around with them, or murder them. You canāt help them, or even wish them a good afternoon. Thereās no joy whatsoever to be found playing the game except for whatever joy is to be found in nihilism. Sure, outrunning the cops in a million-dollar car is a hoot, but plowing through pedestrians does begin to pall surprisingly soon.
And as jawdropping as the art direction in the game can be, it never looks any better than the real-life L.A. on any given Thursday. Iād so much rather play Red Dead Redemption, which is much prettier and less nihilistic.
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Cheers! Given the info, I might give it a pass for now thenā¦HZD and Dishonored 2 should tide me over the Xmas period then!
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Yes, I have TLoU on PS3 (which I still have plugged in and even a bit of a backlogā¦should recharge a controller one of these days!)