[a_recording]

Good news a_rec. I pretty much like the ES88. Not instant mind melting like the SR009 and the HE500, but close enough that my "listen to gear" evaluation part of my mind shuts off and got out of the way. Impressed.

 
Yeah, especially for that price It's definitely one of the classier portable options out there.

 

[DigitalFreak]

I think there's a poltergeist out to get me

 

[Makiah S]

Good news a_rec. 

 
Nice shorthand there 

Doc Brown, that you?

Oh thank you so much for that mental picture! 
 
Reminds me of the Back to the Future 4 rumors spreading about 

 

[Coq de Combat]

   
 
Personally I *love* it when magic gets mixed with technology. Perhaps it stems from my being a child of the 80s at heart, but there's something inherently satisfying to me about attacking robots with spells or shooting wizards with guns. I see it as part of an "old versus new" paradigm where the dusty and archaic butts up against the sparkly and new.
 
The thing is, delineating terms such as "magic" and "supernatural" in a medium like videogames can be tricky. Often times things that seem magical in one context could be given a science fiction explanation in another. I'd say it really depends to a large extent on the gameworld in question and how the laws of that universe are written (whether it makes sense or not). In BioShock for instance, shooting bugs and thunderbolts out of your sweaty palms is actually not supernatural. They attribute these things to the chemical properties of some sea slug. The ghosts you see are also effects of the ADAM or something; apparently it stores memories on a molecular level. Obviously if we use the standards of our own universe to judge these things they're supernatural, but if we did that then ALL videogames would have supernatural elements due to characters regaining health from eating candy or surviving multiple gunshots to the head. So yeah, in the context of the BioShock universe, I'd say there isn't much "magic." It's written into the game as crazy-ass science.
 
What appeals to me so much about the first BioShock is the direction. On the one hand, there's the art direction which gives me this amazing underwater city to explore with its speakeasy vibe (an aesthetic that really appeals to me personally). It's like this big film noir haunted house. The mood, the lighting, the color pallet... it all just strikes a chord with me. There's a delightful absurdity in looking out the window and seeing the murky ocean depths, this sense of arrogance about the whole structure told in its very existence and the water ready to breach the glass and swallow up humanity's crumbling hubris. For me Rapture is somehow confining and claustrophobic yet at the same time sprawling and intimidating. I wanted to know more about it, about its history and the people who used to occupy it (and still do), about how things where before it all went to hell and why it went there. The game nourished that sentiment in me by providing exposition in artifacts and moments of varying subtlety: the "found sound" audio clips, the lingering spectral traces, the ruins of leisure. Most of all though the broken and scarred remnants of its tenants, wandering the halls half-barefoot while gibbering to themselves about former obligations and current lamentations.
 
Which brings me to the in-game direction. Using light and shadow and sound it created some of this past generation's most memorable set pieces to my mind. Clever little tricks like turning out the lights and playing a noise, then turning them back on to reveal an object in the room has suddenly gone missing. Or disguising enemies as inanimate objects. Or projecting shadows in a way that fools you into thinking it's something else. Personally I adore that kinda schiit. It's approaching game direction in a way analogous to film direction where these types of variables are always a consideration. In terms of gameplay things were simple enough (even downright primitive in some respects like no simultaneous dual wielding of plasmids and guns), but the game always maintained a masterful command of pace, both in what was going on onscreen and also with the player's perception. Events unfolded in a way that seemed really engaging.
 
I was ultimately disappointed with BioShock Infinite by comparison. It seemed to me as though there was so much pressure to top the last game, the direction ultimately lacked focus. I got the sense that there were many, many different versions of the game during the development period---something that becomes apparent when you see how different some aspects were in previews and read interviews during this process---almost as if they couldn't decide what they wanted and kept trying something new. While this is kind of poetically in keeping with the overall theme, the end result feels like a bit of a rushed patchwork with underdeveloped characters, locations, and plot points that ultimately go nowhere. Some elements feel like leftovers from previous builds where the game was perhaps more strategy oriented or involved stealth or exploration more. Elizabeth telling you to play it cool in town for instance is ultimately inconsequential, and it basically boils down to "don't pilfer anything or the guards will attack" maybe twice during the game.
 
Also early on Elizabeth is much more interactive in some places, basically acting like the developers made her out to be in early clips, only to be dumbed down considerably as your companion NPC for the rest of it. There are elements that seem to encourage exploration and side tracking---lockpicks, code books---but they're mostly afterthoughts and appear disproportionately early on as well (when you've amassed a ton of lockpicks by the end of the game, there's nothing to do with them!). There is no morality system in place despite the game presenting you with several choices that seem to suggest there was one at some point. Plot points and characters are left awkwardly hanging in thin air or brought to swift and highly unsatisfying conclusions. You can only carry two guns at a given time, but somehow you can carry fifty pairs of clothes to change into at a given notice to give you different enhancements. Unlike the first game most of these enhancements seem useless too, mostly due to their being so oddly specific (ex. "25% increase in strength when jumping from a rail onto a platform" or something). 
 
Really though, the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of dynamism in the game. I just couldn't dig my heels into it like I wanted. There's very little exploration for instance, and the rail system (which is billed as being a means of transporting people around Columbia) is instead a series of closed circuits surrounding glorified battle arenas. Your abilities in the first game were also used as a way of connecting with the gameworld too, allowing you to access new areas. Here plasmids vigors are only once used in an environmental checkpoint, and the rest of the time they're just interchangeable combat options. Elizabeth's powers are, disappointingly, much the same way. It would have been cool to use them in a context specific way more, such as in solving puzzles or in choosing environmental-based solutions to handling enemies (as in one of the previews), but instead we get a handful of generic options we can turn on or off. My favorite moments by far were the tidbits that deepened my understanding of the game's world, like the quick little scenes of interaction between characters while waiting for the next area. Also I loved the penny arcade machines and portable record players ('voxophones') that gave exposition much like the tape recorders in the first game. I just wish the game went a little further in detailing some things.
 
 
 
Yeah, I definitely understand the appeal. It's just for someone who is incredibly indecisive and OCD there's a lot of anxiety present in deciding the 'how' part of how to get there. Do I do this, or do I do that? Will I even be able to do the other later if I choose this one? Also what sort of character should I play? I don't want to invest tons of time into building a character only to end up not liking said character, so I better be careful early on in planning this development.
 
 
 
 
I love Arkham City too. Asylum isn't quite so 'open world' and is more focused, but I still enjoyed it as well. Earlier someone made a very good point about open worlds feeling dead. I think this is an apt descriptor of the first Infamous game. The NPCs all stand around and do nothing but convulse or act stupid for some reason. Kind of the same way in Saints Row, but the silly nature of the game adds vibrancy back into the world, and in the 4th game the NPC behavior is kinda explained in the story (again part of that 'stroke of genius' IMHO). In Arkham City I felt the NPCs were really well done, basically pockets of thugs up to no good. Their dialog was actually fun to listen to, they taunted you. I guess the 'citizens' also being the enemies skirted around the usual issue of having to populate the world with aimless spazzes perpetually in transit.

Yeah, I agree that the term "supernatural" in videogames is pretty tricky. At first, I thought I'd define it by simply saying that anything that isn't realistic by our definition but it's not a good definition: super realistic games like Operation Flashpoint would be unrealistic since they use different names for the nations and fractions, and so on. I think though that you get the picture though... I'm looking at it from our pov, not from the game universe's pov. I do get your point though, Saints Row 4 isn't unnatural since they are in a simulation and our friend jumping 300 feet into the air makes sense since it's a hack.
 
Which is what I want to dedicate this post to. I've been playing that game for a few days, and I'm currently at 28% of the game, and while I agree that the missions are fun enough to actually want to do them, I still get caught up in the flying around the city and running at tornado speed so that the cars fly behind me. It's just a super fun game and I like it more than GTA IV, which says a whole lot about it since GTA IV was one of my favorite games. I like that you can listen to a radio station while playing and not being in the car since it does actually add another dimension to the gameplay. I think it's all fine and dandy that these sandbox games have wanted to make the music bound to the radio in the vehicles, but a game without music is just more boring, imo. Do you have a favorite radio station? I'm quite fond of KRhyme.
 
I think they did a good thing to have all these activities all over the place. IIRC they've always had them, but it makes the free roaming much more fun since you can just do one of them whenever you run upon them. As usual, they're quite silly and as usual, that's a good thing that they are silly.
 
I don't know, I just like the game very much, and I play it a lot whenever I have the time to devote to it.

 

[Makiah S]

Oh wait wait wait... is Arkum City that good of an Open World :O I've been meaning to try some other game for my Wii u and.. wait a minuete q.q I LOVE bat man... shame on me for forgetting it was on the Wii u >.> 

 

[jgray91]

Unscientifically, I say that the ES88 interferes with how wifi works with my Nexus 7.

 

[a_recording]

Unscientifically, I say that the ES88 interferes with how wifi works with my Nexus 7.

 
 
That would be very interesting if it did...

 

[333jeffery]

Cortana takes over Window's phones:http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048640/windows-phones-cortana-will-challenge-siri-and-google-now-for-smart-assistant-supremacy.html
Halo fans rejoice!

 

[Hutnicks]

http://www.earsonics.com/en/audiophiles-earphones/s-em6-2/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

 

[vwinter]

http://www.earsonics.com/en/audiophiles-earphones/s-em6-2/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

$945 EUR huh.

 

[jgray91]

Unscientifically, I say that the ES88 interferes with how wifi works with my Nexus 7.

That would be very interesting if it did...

An anecdote from my late night youtube subscription watch time. I mean, at one time, not using the ES88 and being on speaker, it works fine. But the moment I plug in the ES88 the signal goes haywire. Pull it out, and it's fine again. Conclusion:it interferes with stuff.

 

[Mimouille]

  http://www.earsonics.com/en/audiophiles-earphones/s-em6-2/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

You beat me to it....I find them a bit pricy...more expensive than the EM6, their custom equivalent. Unless they aim at being better than the EM6....

 

[Hutnicks]

  You beat me to it....I find them a bit pricy...more expensive than the EM6, their custom equivalent. Unless they aim at being better than the EM6....

If it makes you feel better one of my spies tipped me off, so you probably had the drop on me.
 
Pricey is the new black

 

[DigitalFreak]

Now that's what I call HARDCORE. I remember seeing pics of the prototype awhile back at one of the high end headphone shows. About time Woo Audio released them. Rather snazzy looking in my opinion. The blocks would probably look quite stunning in a room decorated in steampunk.
 

 

 

[Mimouille]

  If it makes you feel better one of my spies tipped me off, so you probably had the drop on me.
 
Pricey is the new black

But I am French ! I am supposed to have better spies than yours on these matters !