Fronzel Neekburm

First things first: Two thumbs up for getting the GOG version! Also, I'm pretty sure that the patching process will be greatly sped up once they roll out Galaxy. And secondly, I've been pretty impressed with the speed Phoenix takes for fixing things. This is from personal experience, because they somehow managed to misspell my name in the Moebius backer credits (I wonder... How is that even possible? I always assumed that these backer names would be copypastad into some .txt file, but apparently some poor sap had to type a couple thousand names.) I shot them a mail and it was fixed by the time the next patch rolled out a few days later. I know a lot of people were ultimately disappointed with the games that came out of this campaign, but personally, I can say nothing but good things about them.

Beating the dead horse here (or rather the bleaching bones that are left of it), but what the shit... Seems like I got so caught up in that whole #gamergate shebang that I completely neglected to check my go-to-place for lulzy interwebz drama: The LSL Reloaded Kickstarter comment section. A bloody shame, since I completely missed out on this gem left a month ago by Jeroen Dekkers. "Unprofessional and harmful to the company", that's fucking golden! No matter whether it's putting up with my incessant anti-Steam rants, Steve's rampant homophobia or Roland's constant reminders how Tom King's cover artwork is inferior to THAR's, Jeroen's been an enormous assett to Replay by giving that shithole some class. He's an all-around class act!

Improved version: ;)

You know, you're a real sadistic fucker! :P Hopefully being forced to stare at that mug will eventually desensitize me to it...

I wholeheartedly agree on SQ5 being pretty creepy stuff in places. The brief sequence on Clorox II is particularly memorable. I'm repeating myself here, but it's amazing how a comedy game somehow manages to do horror better than most horror games. The deserted colony, the foreboding music... the whole place just oozes eerie. Also, props to the makers for introducing the "Oh God, we're getting slaughtered!"-logs as a horror element some time before System Shock made those fashionable! Come to think of it, this may be one of the reasons why SQ5 might be my favourite: If you took the comedy out of the game, you'd still have a pretty exciting, pulpy space adventure with some heavy horror undertones. But as it stands, the tense parts and the comedy work excellently off each other - the jokes are just that more funny when they also serve to relieve the tension. As for other scary Sierra stuff: There's obviously the original Gabriel Knight. That had a bunch of good stuff in it (the ending and the deaths of various side characters are pretty memorable). The Manhunter games had some icky EGA-close ups of corpses. Then there are the Phantasmagoria games. The first one is at its scariest when it's being subtle (the best part about it is exploring the house every day to see what has changed) instead of being gross. The second one is actually quite chilling as long as it's about some Joe Schmo who is gradually loosing his grip on reality. Unfortunately, the game goes about halfway through by introducing some truly demented sci-fi-shit. It could've been so much better...

You should‘ve seen the beta version... Sweet Jesus, that beta version... I was exchanging PMs with some other backers and I remember saying something to the effect that I hope they‘re not serious about the October release date, because this thing was like a year away from anything remotely worth being released. So yeah, consider me really, deeply impressed that they were able to pull off what I expected would take them a year within two months. What‘s even more impressive is that they did actual bugfixing rather than going for Moebius‘ half-assed approach of restricting movement in tricky areas altogether (Amble Dexter‘s office comes to mind). One thing they didn‘t fix was the title of the book of German poetry. It says „Das Lyrik“, which is gramatically wrong (and makes the author of the book look like an illibured moron). Funny thing is, one of the backers took it onto himself, tinkered with the game‘s files and fixed the title himself, but the correct version didn‘t make it into the final game. I guess JJ decided to keep the wrong title for teh lulz.

Mine is bigger. smugface.jpg Also, your collection shows a disturbing lack of Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000. It's free. Get it, like, NOW!

FYI, in case anybody missed it: Y'all can get Aliens VS Predator for free on GOG for another 12 hours here.

What Frede said. So far I've come across two additional puzzles. One involves an extra bit of plot and is just about the most contrived bunch of bullshit you could think of (apparently they changed that a little due to negative backer feedback, but I haven't played that part in the final version). I did come across the wordpuzzle slot machine and that was total, unneeded shit. And seriously, a sliding puzzle?!? Sorry, but the RPS dude is totally in his rights to call this out for the superfluous rubbish it is. Other than that, I'm really pleasantly surprised so far. The animations may not be top notch, but they did some REALLY good work on some of the things which might have ended up really shitty (such as Gabriel slipping into his coat, which looked atrocious in the beta, or a scene where the fortune teller picks up a snake and dances with it). Some of the animations are really surprisingly well done.

Glad to see that my prophecy of doom as far as GK20 reviews are concerned has gone unfulfilled so far. (Polygon, Kotaku - don't fail me now!) Hell, the Rock, Paper, Shotgun piece is actually worth reading. I didn't get to play a lot of it, but so far I'm quite impressed by the amount of polish they were able to apply since the beta launched. No way did I expect them to fix anything but the most glaring (read: game-breaking) glitches, so it's quite impressive what they were able to do within a few of months.

That is so supremely fucked up! I absolutely love the idea! (As a side note: I find it amazing how one of the most nightmarish scenes in any video game I've ever played is actually in a comedy game. Kudos to suejak for somehow finding a way to make that sequence even more terrifying.)

Taken from an excellent piece by Erik Kain. Thanks for summing up in a single paragraph what I couldn't convey in several pages worth of blather, Mr Kain! PS: Could we please change the name of this topic? It's been bugging me since Day 1: Someone dissects a few random comments from an unrelated thread and slaps a rather vague and misleading name tag on it. I don't think this thread was ever about feminism in any way. It's not like people like me, PurpleTentacle, Steve or MusicallyInspired want to revoke women's right to vote or anything. The thing that people are decrying are the more bizarre offshoots of feminism (see Frede's post for a good example) and I think we need to find some other word for that. PPS: And Happy Birthday to my old PC-thread adversary drdrslashvohaul! Have a great day! (And no, I'm not being sarcastic.)

I have no regrets about SQ6 being my most played SQ game either. Polysorbate gave me a love for cyberpunk settings long before I ever knew what cyberpunk was. Deepship and parts of Delka Burksilon are filled to the brim with Mandellian awesomeness ("Hi, Draulics!"). The Information Superhighway is also great stuff. Who could forget the interactions between Roger and Sis Inny? Since Troels brought up the music, I have to admit that SQ6 probably has my overall favourite soundtrack in the series. And that‘s a tough choice to make, since all the SQ soundtracks are excellent. Now for the embarrassing part: Remember that episode of Space Quest historian where they played a bit of the German version of SQ6? While I do understand the look of horror on everyone‘s face upon hearing the German narrator, personally, I prefer the German version. Now, by any rational standard, the German voice work is complete shit done by a bunch of amateurs. Even from the brief clip played on the show you can clearly tell that the people who did the German version couldn‘t possibly sound any more bored and disinterested - almost to the point of sounding world-weary. The deadpan delivery in the German version in some weird way added a great deal to the sarcastic nature of the game.

SQ6, by virtue of being my first PC game. I replayed that one quite a few times back in the day.

Nah, not edgy enough. I'd rather start a "SQ1 VGA sucks slightly less than SQ1 EGA" club. :P

I had never heard the expression "mealy mouthed" before, so I was quite impressed with that.

No idea why y'all would scream "conspiracy" at the insinuation that they may be on the lookout for investors. It's not like I'm accusing them of anything shady, on the contrary: From what one can assume from the project status updates, it's not exactly been smooth sailing and I would deeply respect and appreciate any attempt on the Two Guys/Chris' part to secure some additional funding/resources to get this game out the door.

I kinda had a feeling that googling "Scott Murphy interview" would provide the answer. Turns out, I was right.

VGA is in the lead again.

"Hey, Scott! A whooping have said they prefer the VGA remake of SQ1!" :D Yup, WilcoGate coming!

I dread what's going to happen when Scott Murphy hears about the results of this poll.

Oh, yeah, these guys are definitely annoying (with the possible exception of Biehn's character)! Like I said, I couldn't stand the gung-ho posturing. But that just makes them getting rekt for the rest of the movie all the more enjoyable.

C'mon, there's tons of great stuff in the Aliens DC: Ripley finding out that her daughter has long since died, Bill Paxton acting all badass around Ripley (which makes his turn into a total wimp all the more effective), Ripley's short moment of hesitation as they first enter a building on LV 426, that nice edge-of-your-seat moment where their defense turrets run out of ammo, that nice moment near the end where Ripley and Hicks exchange their first names. Whenever I watch the theatrical cut of Aliens it feels like there is something missing. Can't speak for T-2 (been too long since I last saw it) and Blade Runner (I like all the versions).

Somewhat off-topic (but hey, it‘s still Cameron, right?), but mark me up as another fan of Aliens. Sure, it doesn‘t have the claustrophobic horror of the original. Perhaps it‘s best viewed as its own thing. I didn‘t care for it much when I first saw it as a kid (Too gung-ho. Too military porn.), but now I consider it one of the most wildly entertaining flicks ever made. It relentlessly keeps piling on the insane mayhem while Horner‘s thundering score plays in the background. And if you thought that planet getting nuked and Lance Henriksen being ripped in two could not possibly be one-upped in awesomeness, just wait for the wrestling match between the alien queen and Ripley in a MOTHERFUCKING MECH! „Get away from her, you BITCH!“ How can you not love this film? It‘s also one of the few films where the director‘s cut is actually an improvement. And of course Sigourney Weaver is fucking terrific! (Watch her in „Death and the maiden“ if you get the chance.)

*takes a look at the poll results* I did not expect this.