As the title said, Payday: The Heist is free on steam today. Download it and it's yours forever. Payday 2 is also on sale and free to try for the weekend.

Payday is one of those series I always wanted but just never got around to buying. I might pick up Payday 2 in addition to the free Payday 1 since I was planning on buying it anyway.

So E3 is underway let's gooo~

The Xbox conference that just wrapped up definitely impressed me. I think it just sold me on the XBone. I'm definitely a fan of Halo and fighting games so the Halo collection, Halo 5, and Killer Instinct are definitely draws to that system for me. The new Fable looked pretty impressive. Sunset Overdrive looks like a blast, it looks like Just Cause 2 meets Infamous meets a colorful vaguely-comic art style. Evolve looks like a really good co-op game, and its nice to see Crackdown make a return. I still don't know what to think of Project Spark. The new Dead Rising 3 content looked awesome. I'd probably just end up getting The Witcher 3 and and Assassin's Creed on PC. I am indifferent towards the new Call of Duty and The Division but I will applaud CoD for finally ditching the CoD4 engine if the demo is to be believed.

I'm really interested to see what Nintendo is going to be announcing, and the smash bros tournament they're hosting is definitely a must-watch to me. Sony would have to do something incredible to get me to buy PS4 over XBone right now because currently I think xbone has the better games and their lineup over the next year looks great.

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There's a lot of anti-blizzard around here lately, with good reason. Blizzard is actually doing really well with Starcraft though, despite all the fuck-ups they've done with Warcraft and Diablo.

The core game of Starcraft 2 has always been great, it was the battle.net service surrounding it that was garbage. They revamped Starcraft's battle.net interface for HotS and it's what I, and a lot of others, always wanted out of SC2.
Wings of Liberty was basically "go ranked or go home." There was no unranked matchmaking and the arcade system was garbage.

The reworked battle.net added the following things:
-Unranked Matchmaking
-An open lobby based arcade system (goodbye horrible popularity matchmaking)
-Better chat
-Clan support
-No more region locking
-Watch replays with friends
-Resume game from replay with friends
-New ladder unlockables like portraits, unit skins and such
-Awesome new training mode

While it needs to be said this is what Starcraft 2 should have had from the get-go, it's at least really good that it has all these features now. The resume from replay feature is really cool, it allows you to pick up and continue the game you're watching from any point in the replay, as long as you have someone to fill in for the other player(s).

The revamped battle.net has been applied to Wings of Liberty and since Heart of the Swarm will use the same game client, it obviously uses all this too.

I don't know if there are any other Starcraft fans in the cc anymore but I'm buying HotS on release week.

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A bit late for this thread, I know, but I am interested to see what games you guys enjoyed the most in 2012.

For me, personally, Guild Wars 2 is my GOTY by a mile.
Rather than the typical MMO style of combat where you pop all your half hour buffs before combat, then press buttons and let the random-number-generation do the work, Guild Wars 2's combat feels like something I'd expect out of a well made single player RPG. Animation based attacks, not RNG. 8-10 second buffs/debuffs that require precise timing, not half hour ones. The dodge rolls, weapon based skills, rather extreme class flexibility for an MMO, and other things make the gameplay great. It never ended up feeling like a grind for me because of the very generous leveling system and the fact that all the end game gear is essentially equal stat-wise. Even the really hard-to-get stuff is really just a cosmetic upgrade to the easy-to-get stuff. The world is one I enjoy exploring every last inch of thanks to the event system and the fantastic art style of the entire game. A soundtrack by Jeremy Soule never hurts either. This is only the second MMO I've managed to hit the level cap and still want to continue playing, the first being GW1. I've had a great 4-5 months with GW2 and I'll definitely still be playing it this year.


I'd also like to point out that if Diablo 3 had launched the way it is now in the upcoming 1.0.7 patch then it would have been a contender for my GOTY as well. It had serious problems at launch even if I did like the underlying game I knew was hidden in there. With this upcoming patch they will have fixed just about every major concern I had with the game (sans terrible story) and it's actually in a rather fun state now. It's a shame it was such an absolute mess at launch because I know there are a lot of people who won't touch it again after that.

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It's been a while since there was a discussion of a general game mechanic in this subforum rather than a specific game.

Over the past few months I have really discovered how awesome permanent death in games is. For years now I've been in sort of a cycle of getting into an RPG and then getting bored of it as it wears on, particularly dungeon crawlers where once you beat the new game plus, you just sort of have to keep repeating that to keep progressing. Getting into Roguelikes showed me just how much fun permanent death adds to a game.

Permanent death is awesome because it forces you not only to make hard decisions with building your character(s) but to approach the game in an entirely different way. I used to be in the same camp of people that didn't like permadeath because I didn't like the idea of losing characters I've put time into but that's the entire fun of it. Playing a game with permadeath isn't about getting to the endgame and doing boring crap to get better gear, it's about getting as far as you can and surviving as long as you can. If you die, oh well, start up a new character and try to get further this time. There's a certain fun, at least for me, in analyzing what I did wrong that lost me the campaign and theorycrafting new ways to approach the problems to make sure I don't lose to it the next time through. It's the same kind of fun I'd get from theorycrafting to improve at League of Legends or Dota. I'm kicking myself for not getting into this feature years ago.

Hardcore mode has seriously revived my interest and renewed my enjoyment of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2. It has also had a similar effect with me and Bethesda games. It makes Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim essentially entirely new games. If you die, just delete the save. I think I'll be applying this to most RPG's.

I'm interested to see if anyone else here has considered this or agrees. I know some of you like roguelikes so I'm probably just behind the times but this seems to be the best way to make games like this entertaining for long periods of time for me.

EDIT Basically the best way I can describe it is: As any game gives me the feeling that it has become "going through the motions" or if it becomes a grind, I lose interest very quickly. Most games do this eventually. Permanent death makes that basically not an issue unless the game is designed terribly from the get go.

There's a new best/worst movie death scene on the block.

Shamelessly taken from Reddit yes I know.

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How should I kill myself?

[video=youtube;G7DonhNflsw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7DonhNflsw[/video]

I'm interested to see if the movie ends up being good. I like the visual style they went for and the trailer seems good except for the auto-tune music in the beginning of it. I'd think that was just for the trailer and not a part of the actual movie.

 Leonardo seems to do a lot of early - mid 1900's era movies. The Aviator, Shutter Island, J. Edgar, The Great Gatsby, not sure if there are others.

The Beastie Boys will surely be missed by many.

I figured I'd post this here so you guys don't panic when you realized I haven't signed on in a few days. Clearly that is what would happen.

Clearly.

Anyway, see you guys in a week!

So the search function didn't bring up any actual discussion threads for Diablo 3. I am surprised. I'm sure any of you reading the thread already know what Diablo is so explaining the game would feel awfully self serving.

At any rate, the open beta has been going on since yesterday. It ends Monday. Battle.net and DRM issues aside, this game is FUN. It's probably going to be a day 1 buy for me. I don't buy barely any games these days, but I'm not going to be able to pass D3 up. Hopefully Starcraft 2: HOTS wont launch until close to the holidays, because after getting D3 I won't be able to get anything else for a while.

I've been playing the Witch Doctor, which will probably end up being what I start as on launch day. I've heard that public multiplayer is currently just sort of a bunch of people in a server doing whatever they want, but co-op with friends is super easy to do. If your friend is playing you can just join him through the friends list, easy.

The graphics are fantastic, the atmosphere is great (screw the naysayers) and the combat is satisfying. Great animation and soundwork make attacks and spells feel like they have a powerful impact, it's far and away from the old days of D2.

Release date is May 15th, in case anyone interested hadn't heard. Is anyone else picking this up near launch? If so, It would be fun to be able to play this with some of you.

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Old, from early 2011. I never saw it before though so I got a kick out of it.

Well, I didn't see that coming.