Dishonored.

does the violent path get more difficult wrt combat? bc i found that stealth was very difficult (but satisfying to persevere) but when stealth failed i never had any trouble killing everyone (before reloading)

ha, i'm the opposite, i don't think i could even play this game violently. whenever i get in a fight i get shot in the back within about five seconds (i'm on the "return to the tower" mission btw).

Tried to do the lady Boyle mission non lethal. Failed miserably.

Just killed the whole party.

stealth vs violence is a dumb binary, why can't it be murderous stealth vs non-lethal stealth vs balls-out slaugher vs i dunno run-past-everyone-to-the-objective

when i did my high-chaos run i was still pretty quiet about it. that 'disappear the corpses' power is handy!

Fun decision when you get to decide how the giant arc welder functions.

^just finished that part.

Tried to do the lady Boyle mission non lethal. Failed miserably.

ha that was my favorite one, also the one i did the best at stealth-wise (ghost etc). i wish there were more missions with a disguise mechanic.

while it turns out that i really enjoy not killing people, i've slipped up a few times late in the game out of necessity (not having sleep darts) and justification (i.e. "he's an assassin and knows the game, and i don't have any sleep darts", granny rags etc).

that mission is great!

you can pickpocket anyone and pick up any valuables and people say humorous cynical things but don't care. the subtext is that everyone is there to get a piece of the rich family anyway, it's pretty funny.

i've been doing forza but i need to finish my 'no kill' run

also it's a plague party

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/MasqueOfTheRedDeath%281964film%29.jpg/220px-MasqueOfTheRedDeath%281964film%29.jpg

so how com every time i run this it performs FIRST TIME SET UP and spends ten minutes INSTALLING DIRECT X STEP 1 OF 1?

That's a pretty common steam problem, I've had it with other games before too. Best workaround is usually to dig into the game folder, find the exe, and launch it direct without starting steam in the first place. Doesn't always work but it's fixed the problem more often than not for me.

Btw I think I gave up on this today, haven't even finished mission 2 but I'm just not having any fun with it. Playing stealth is just too hard for me, I spent a lot of time being super harsh on myself, saving after every guard takedown, reloading every time I got spotted...but that just became a massive slog, I was reloading every 2 minutes. So after spending probably 3 hours on what should've been an hour's worth of game, decided screw it, I'm just going to kill everyone, only to find that it's kinda boring playing that way too, not least because ammo is so tight.

Also, I know I was excited about the level design maybe being similar to half life 2...but actually it feels a bit too similar, it's almost a retread.

A mixture of both has been good for me. Stealth seems to have become much more important later in the game.

So after spending probably 3 hours on what should've been an hour's worth of game

three times the gameplay! value for money!

I'm kinda of doing ok stealth-wise, blink power is a great help. stopping time should be even better, though then i guess mana instead of ammo will become a problem.

done with my stealth run. i love this game but i don't know if i have the chops/interest in doing a violent run. maybe if all your video game friends didn't make you feel so shitty about it!

i did really enjoy not having to kill anyone though, it makes other games seem one-dimensional (like the trailers for Far Cry 3, where you can either stealthily kill some people before openly killing everyone, or just openly kill everyone right away!). maybe this is a sign of getting old.

did you manage it completely kill-free?

almost, but like i said above i slipped up a couple times when i was out of sleep darts/low on resources. i panicked and took out a couple guards and assassins rather than get discovered, also granny rags. i definitely killed less then 10 people total.

fucking "clean hands" achievement is bugged! got all the way through without a death, no achievement.

Finished this, got the good ending (probably killed < 10 people). Spent a lot of time saving & reloading but that was ok, or at least it was ok when I remembered to save regularly and didn't have to replay massive chunks of the game. It was fun, not AWESOME fun but the using powers to aid in stealth lifted it above yr run of the mill fps. Very strong HL2 vibe. The Outsider himself I thought was a) a jerk and ii) a pointless plot/tutorial device. Might have a go at a balls-out speed death run.

My memory of half-life 2 is basically 100% "save every 10 seconds" but I am a wuss so there.

manual + frequent saving is not a negative for me (although fwiw i thought the auto-saves in both HL2 and Dishonored worked pretty well).

Auto save not frequent enough for stealth runs in dishonored, basically 90% of my gameplay was like:

choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...
choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...
choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...
choke one guy, sneak for two mins, OK MAYBE I WILL SAVE NOW

Saving took took long. Maybe I should have installed to hard drive.

choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...
choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...
choke one guy, sneak for two mins, try to choke next guy, get spotted, reload...

Yeah this is exactly why I stopped.

It's a bit unfair to blame the game for that tbh, it's a combination of overconfidence (hoping to pull off spectacular stealth feats first time around, and thinking you can go ages without saving) and carelessness (failing miserably at spectacular stealth feats, and goddamn forgetting to save). The game really tries to help you out, the guards are incredibly myopic, predictable, and stupid. Playing through again in full on violence mode there's no doubt it's easier, but you still can't charge in all guns blazing, you will get attacked on all sides and taken down.

Things from this I would like to see in the mythical next HL2 (or any fps): multiple paths - a second playthrough is great for really discovering richness of the world and the different options open to you; optional goals; and being able to climb over things higher than your knee.

I dunno, one of the great things about Half-life is how well it tells its story, which is kind of tied up in being single-path (albeit with big open setpieces). Optional goals are mostly covered by achievements these days - EG the garden gnome one in Ep2.

Not sure how the optional goals detracted from the story, they were more like bonus sub-plots, as well as offering alternative means of completing the main missions. They could only make for a richer experience imo.

I kinda hated this.

I just ordered it

Anyone play the new DLC?

Last three posts = mainstream gaming in 2012

Started this tonight. Why the fuck do all the characters have american accents

dude, count your blessings. you get john slattery and brad dourif, not a bunch of assholes doing their british.

^this

Hmm, there is that.

Same half dozen phrases repeated ad nauseum suck in any accent.

"Things are going from bad to worse"
"Indeed I believe so"

"Shall we meet for whiskey and cigars tonight?"
"Indeed I believe so"

"Guard duty again"
"Indeed I believe so"

I do like all the Theif-y bits in this.

I love how dense the levels are in this- reminds me of Minerva: Metastasis (and Adam Foster's other maps for HL2). I'm still really, <i>really</i> fucking bad at it, though; even with Darksight I'm having problems finding holes in the guards' patrol patterns.

the new dlc is so good, or at least the first two parts are. after playing Bioshock Infinite it's so fun to interact with a world that feels fully realized. also i assassinated a whale.

wut!

Super sold on this game

i am getting way too reliant on blink lvl 2 and sleep darts tbh. which is making this archive level painfully hard.

spent probably way too much time on the kennels last night. digging the fact that the game def punishes you for doing stuff mindlessly, like pulling any lever you see etc. first time in the kennels i pulled all the gate switches thinking the dogs would fuck over the patrolling overseers, and then duh, just had a shit ton of wandering guard dogs to deal with instead. or the "hmmm i have a key to a pantry i should obv open it despite all the stuff here about starving rats OH FUCK STARVING RATS EVERYWHERE."

got this and borderlands 2 for my bday today o_O

solid birthday presents imo

yeah that should keep you busy for a while

i am so into this game at this point - doing the stealth playthrough vibe right now, and unlike every other game like this, i am actually really excited by the idea of going through it a second time going all killing lethal. also just figured out that grenades are awesome for getting rid of rat swarms.

weirdly small map imo though. end up retracing a lot of the same ground, but the little mods and changes (like these asshole assassins suddenly fucking w/me on rooftops and shit) make it feel interesting to roll through an area a second time. equipment upgrades seem mostly pointless though. blink + better jump + see through walls deal is the shit

it's pretty fun. i'm not that far in yet but i'm enjoying it. so far my mode is "stealth until i get frustrated and then i kill people"