Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

And make sure you have friends to play with. If you don't have friends or at least a consistent party to play with, the fun factor is strongly hampered. Single player is an exhausting grind, and multiplayer with complete strangers without a consistent gameplay will end up not being fun either.

I watched some reviews and game play on youtube recently. It looks like a lot of fun.

I looked into getting the Plus membership but just wasn't sure if I'd get my money's worth. If I did that then I would probably drop my gamefly membership. I just don't see me being able to take advantage of both at the same time. It does look pretty awesome though, especially if I decided to get a PS4. I can't see getting a PS4 for at least a year or 2.

yourbeliefs said:

And make sure you have friends to play with. If you don't have friends or at least a consistent party to play with, the fun factor is strongly hampered. Single player is an exhausting grind, and multiplayer with complete strangers without a consistent gameplay will end up not being fun either.

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Though I really enjoyed the few times I played Borderlands 2 with friends, I enjoyed my solo time just as much, if not more. I like to spend a lot of time searching for loot, doing the extra challenges, and managing my gear, which I don't feel free to do (as much) when others are waiting on me. There is enough variety to the missions, interesting enough storylines, and great dialogue to keep it fun and interesting. If you enjoy a game, it doesn't feel like a grind, unless you are impatient to level up quickly. I've replayed the first third of the game five times with different characters and it never got old because I got to play with different builds and weapons.

But you're right about playing online with strangers. I never really had a great experience doing that. A lot of folks would bug me for trading, even in the middle of combat!

If Sherman does get into Borderlands 2, I highly recommend he signs up for SHiFT to get codes for golden keys that unlock superior weapons, armor, and upgrades. I can also tell you about an exploit for getting unlimited golden keys.

Zookster said:

Though I really enjoyed the few times I played Borderlands 2 with friends, I enjoyed my solo time just as much, if not more. I like to spend a lot of time searching for loot, doing the extra challenges, and managing my gear, which I don't feel free to do (as much) when others are waiting on me. There is enough variety to the missions, interesting enough storylines, and great dialogue to keep it fun and interesting. If you enjoy a game, it doesn't feel like a grind, unless you are impatient to level up quickly. I've replayed the first third of the game five times with different characters and it never got old because I got to play with different builds and weapons.

But you're right about playing online with strangers. I never really had a great experience doing that. A lot of folks would bug me for trading, even in the middle of combat!

If Sherman does get into Borderlands 2, I highly recommend he signs up for SHiFT to get codes for golden keys that unlock superior weapons, armor, and upgrades. I can also tell you about an exploit for getting unlimited golden keys.

Click to expand...

I'll have to remember that once I get into the game.

So this is a first for me. Gamefly just shipped out Ryse before they even received AC IV from me. I sent back AC IV on Monday and today (Wednesday) I got an email saying they were sending out my next game thanks to FastReturn. This is still slower than Netflix for me. For Netflix if I put a movie in the mail on Monday I would receive my next one on Wednesday. It's significantly faster than Gamefly usually is for me though.

Typically if I put a game back in the mail on Monday they wouldn't mark it as received until Thursday or sometimes even Friday. Then they often wouldn't even mail out my next game until the next mail day. After that, it would take another 3 to 4 days for the game to show up in my mailbox. That's why I mentioned in an earlier post that I don't think they always mark a game received the same day it comes in the mail. Anyways my game queue is actually showing that I have both games out still because they haven't received AC IV yet.

It would have been nice if the USPS FastReturn service would have scanned my game on Monday when I dropped it in the mail or Tuesday, the day after that instead of waiting till Wednesday. Still, it looks like this may cut a day or two off my turnaround time going forward. I'm all for that.

This is their description of FastReturn.

FastReturn™ is a service, in partnership with the U.S. Postal Service, we developed to improve delivery times for our members.

FastReturn™ will start the processing of your next game as soon as we receive confirmation from the U.S. Postal Service that a game has been returned in the mail. If we receive a valid U.S. Postal Service scan, you will no longer need to wait until we receive the returned game in our warehouse before we send the next available game in your GameQ!
NOTE: GameFly may not receive scans and we will not process a FastReturn™ if one of the following occurs:

• Your mail is processed at a U.S. Postal Service facility that does not have scanning equipment.
• Your mail is not processed according to U.S. Postal Service standard operating procedures.
• The barcode on your mailer is damaged.

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Well I put my game in the mail last Tuesday and I still don't see an update on my list. I'm hoping it didn't get lost in the mail.

Scherrman said:

Well I put my game in the mail last Tuesday and I still don't see an update on my list. I'm hoping it didn't get lost in the mail.

Click to expand...

It's time to report it. Log in to your account and then click support. From there click report a shipping problem. They should be able to report it missing and send your next game out.

I just got the email yesterday saying they shipped Borderlands 2. I'll let you know guys know my initial thoughts once I get a chance to play it.

So I finished Episode 1 of “The Wolf Among Us.”

It’s hard to review the first part of a five part series of games, much like it would be hard to review a movie after seeing just 20 minutes of it, but I can say that what I’ve seen has made me interested in the rest of the game, albeit on a something other than the Xbox 360 (and not as a result of my PC snobbery.)

TWAU is based off a comic book series where apparently all the characters from Fairy Tales we grew up with actually exist and for some reason got kicked out of their own world and now have to live among us. You’ll see characters like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Snow White, Beauty & The Beast and others. It’s like Men In Black meets Hans Christian Andersen. You play as Bigby, aka the Big Bad Wolf, except this time instead of eating old ladies and ruining the real estate of pigs, he acts as the sheriff of these creatures, which are called “Fables.” The game is basically a murder mystery as one of the Fables is killed and it’s up to Bigby to figure out who is responsible. There’s a bit more to it than that but I really don’t want to spoil it.

As far as gameplay goes, if you played Telltale’s The Walking Dead you’ve played this. If you HAVEN’T played that game, please stop reading this, buy the game, and then come back here. And like TWD, we’re not so much playing a game as we are participating in an interactive narrative. Still, like TWD the decisions you make will affect various plot points and how characters perceive you. Thankfully, all of this is played out with good writing and good voice acting, helping to immerse you in the world very easily.

Normally I don’t play episodic games before all (or the majority) of the episodes have been released, but I picked this up when it was made available for free during the last XBLA Christmas sale. I also decided to play it because I guess I was in the mood for a story driven experience, and it that regard the game does quite well. Where it does NOT perform well is in actual game performance. The load times of this game are atrocious, even by console standards. And they can be frequent too in all the wrong places. There’s nothing worse than being involved in an action scene, only to have the thing be broken up by a 10+ second loading animation. In addition, even when the loading screen goes away and the game comes back, it is often laggy, as if the rest of the game hasn’t quite caught up yet. Hell at one part the first line of dialog came out before the loading screen was done. I don’t anticipate I’ll have these problems on my modestly powered gaming machine, but I would avoid the 360 version if at all possible.

Of course, it’s hard to recommend an episodic series when only 2 episodes of said series are available, but for what it’s worth, it looks like Telltale may have another winner on its hands, although the story and characters don’t seem conducive to delivering the same sort of emotions that TWD had with Clementine and Lee. Still, like I said I do have high hopes for the series, and plan on buying the season pass once all the episodes are released (and I’ve found at least a 50% off deal.)

Next I’ll likely delve into Kentucky Route Zero (even though it’s not completed yet) and then I may try something different with Dynasty Warriors 8. Hopefully I won’t miss much by skipping the previous 7.

yourbeliefs said:

So I finished Episode 1 of “The Wolf Among Us.”

It’s hard to review the first part of a five part series of games, much like it would be hard to review a movie after seeing just 20 minutes of it, but I can say that what I’ve seen has made me interested in the rest of the game, albeit on a something other than the Xbox 360 (and not as a result of my PC snobbery.)

TWAU is based off a comic book series where apparently all the characters from Fairy Tales we grew up with actually exist and for some reason got kicked out of their own world and now have to live among us. You’ll see characters like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Snow White, Beauty & The Beast and others. It’s like Men In Black meets Hans Christian Andersen. You play as Bigby, aka the Big Bad Wolf, except this time instead of eating old ladies and ruining the real estate of pigs, he acts as the sheriff of these creatures, which are called “Fables.” The game is basically a murder mystery as one of the Fables is killed and it’s up to Bigby to figure out who is responsible. There’s a bit more to it than that but I really don’t want to spoil it.

As far as gameplay goes, if you played Telltale’s The Walking Dead you’ve played this. If you HAVEN’T played that game, please stop reading this, buy the game, and then come back here. And like TWD, we’re not so much playing a game as we are participating in an interactive narrative. Still, like TWD the decisions you make will affect various plot points and how characters perceive you. Thankfully, all of this is played out with good writing and good voice acting, helping to immerse you in the world very easily.

Normally I don’t play episodic games before all (or the majority) of the episodes have been released, but I picked this up when it was made available for free during the last XBLA Christmas sale. I also decided to play it because I guess I was in the mood for a story driven experience, and it that regard the game does quite well. Where it does NOT perform well is in actual game performance. The load times of this game are atrocious, even by console standards. And they can be frequent too in all the wrong places. There’s nothing worse than being involved in an action scene, only to have the thing be broken up by a 10+ second loading animation. In addition, even when the loading screen goes away and the game comes back, it is often laggy, as if the rest of the game hasn’t quite caught up yet. Hell at one part the first line of dialog came out before the loading screen was done. I don’t anticipate I’ll have these problems on my modestly powered gaming machine, but I would avoid the 360 version if at all possible.

Of course, it’s hard to recommend an episodic series when only 2 episodes of said series are available, but for what it’s worth, it looks like Telltale may have another winner on its hands, although the story and characters don’t seem conducive to delivering the same sort of emotions that TWD had with Clementine and Lee. Still, like I said I do have high hopes for the series, and plan on buying the season pass once all the episodes are released (and I’ve found at least a 50% off deal.)

Next I’ll likely delve into Kentucky Route Zero (even though it’s not completed yet) and then I may try something different with Dynasty Warriors 8. Hopefully I won’t miss much by skipping the previous 7.

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I got the season pass during the steam Christmas sale. I can confirm that episode one ran smooth as butter on my PC. The first thing I noticed about the game is how much better it looked and how much smoother it was than TWD on my PS3. After playing it I played episode 1 of TWD season 2 on my PS3 and it was a little jarring after playing The Wolf Among Us.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I hope Telltale finally figured out how to run games properly on Steam. TWD had issues where they released an update and I couldn't run the game unless I did it in admin mode, and today I tried to play Back to the Future and it just kept crashing on launch. Luckily I had DRM free versions through getting the game on the humble bundle, and that standalone version worked. I think I'm going to get into that next and hold of on KRZ until we get more than 2 Acts on it.

I had the chance to play Borderlands 2 a while this weekend and I'm really impressed. The gameplay is pretty good, the story is good, the characters are great and the weapons steal the shows. Finding items is a joy.

Scherrman said:

I had the chance to play Borderlands 2 a while this weekend and I'm really impressed. The gameplay is pretty good, the story is good, the characters are great and the weapons steal the shows. Finding items is a joy.

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I'm glad you're enjoying it. Here's a link to everything you need to know about Golden Keys to open the Golden Chest in Sanctuary for premium (purple) weapons/gear. In the particular forum thread I've linked, members regularly post codes to get more Golden Keys, but as I mentioned before, there's an exploit (explained at the end of the OP) that gives you access to unlimited keys if you have two controllers and two characters that have progressed as far as Sanctuary. As soon as you get a chance, scroll all the way down to the end of this page for a grid of currently valid keys. Two codes for 10 keys each were just posted, but like most codes, they may expire soon.

Well I’m about 85% through Crysis 3 and I’m almost ready to throw in the towel. Not because I hit a wall of progress or the game is crashing, but because I simply don’t care. I can’t remember the last time a game made me so disinterested in the plot, characters, and plight of humanity. If you don't feel like reading into why this is, Yahtzee's review sums up my feelings pretty well (in a NSFW way.)

Followers of my reviews may remember that I actually quite liked Crysis 2, and I still think it is a good game, but sadly it appears that the forgettable story of that game morphed into complete apathy in this one. I mean Christ, this game came out not even a year after the predecessor. I realize they use the same engine, but I can’t remember the last time a game sequel came out like that that wasn't disappointing.

When considering buying this game for the cheap price of $5 I watched a review from IGN where the reviewer declared that the story was “touching” and had a lot of heart. Maybe he was listening to “Sense and Sensibility” on audiobook while playing because I felt none of these things. IF you’re wondering about the plot of the game, basically it boils down to aliens invade, and it looks like the defense system is going to blow up the world to eliminate this threat. Yes there’s more to it than that but it hardly matters. Like I said, I can’t remember the last time I cared so little about saving humanity.

I suppose I should say why I don’t care. Let’s start with the main character, Prophet. Maybe I felt disinterred in him because I didn’t play Crysis 1, the last game he was the protagonist. If you recall in Crysis 2, Prophet basically comes down with AIDS or something along those lines, finds a heavily wounded soldier named Harbinger, throws him in his suit, and then proceeds to blow his own brains out. So C2 had the cool dynamic where even though you were badass in the suit, without it you were basically a paraplegic. Sadly this is lost in this game because Prophet’s personality has somehow melded with the suit, and then proceeds to take over Harbinger’s. So basically Harbinger is now basically a mode of transportation. Sorry I gave a crap about him in the last game. Also from the Who Gives a sh*t character model is Prophet’s partner, Psycho, who again was not in C2 but was a major player in the first one. His voice acting is fine but I honestly didn’t care about his plight to find out who removed his suit, and when his love interest died I actually held down the X button to skip the scene because I just wanted to get the game over with.

The more I think about it, the plot series of Crysis seems to parallel quite a bit with that of Mass Effect, where the main character starts off on a simple mission which then leads to him unraveling a much greater plot that could have severe worldwide catastrophic implications, but nearly everyone around seems to agree that said character is just crazy until the aliens invade. But whereas ME made you care by fleshing out the universe with interesting characters, good dialog, and the feeling of choice, Crysis doesn’t provide that. As a result while there is literally tons of stuff going on around you, you feel incredibly disattached from it.

Another series that comes to mind in “The RIGHT way to do things” is the Modern Warfare series. As convoluted and crazy as those games became to the point where it seemed to be parodying itself, at least they provided proper context in between missions. Again, this isn’t really provided, and oftentimes I would be thrown into missions with little explanation as to how I got from point A to point B. There was one part early on where Psycho and Prophet drive a gas truck through a barricade into a subway, blow it up, and are then left under a ton of rubble with soldiers trying to come after them. But then a minute later we’re brought to the next mission where we’re suddenly talking with the leader of the rebel army. I don’t think it’s great storytelling to leave a high climactic and energetic scene to just basically saying, “Oh yeah, everyone’s fine from that ordeal.”

As far as everything else is concerned, Crysis 3 does the job fine. The shooting mechanics are sound, the stealth option is nice, and of course the game looks gorgeous. Any graphic issues I had with C2 on my 360 were all but eliminated on my gaming PC. Honestly this is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen and I wasn’t even maxing out the graphic detail. But while normally great graphics could heighten the experience and make it more immersive, in this case it seems to just make clearer just how awful everything else is.

So in conclusion, it’s hard to recommend Crysis 3 unless you a really in the market for a completely mindless shooter, but if that’s the case you’re probably better off picking up Serious Sam or Painkiller. I don’t see my opinion changing much if I even do decide to finish the game. Assuming I don’t and you desperately need a grade, I give it a C-.

Speaking of beautiful games, I finished Ryse: Son of Rome last night on the Xbox One. This is probably the most graphically impressive game I have played on any platform. The animations were very good and the character faces and hair were outstanding. The game was all about big set pieces that might be overkill even for a Michael Bay type movie. At times it does a good job of making you feel like a badass. The voice acting is good too. The story is passable but nothing special.

Even though my PC probably has the power to at least be as strong as the next gen consoles, I haven't played a PC game that looks this good. I think the long console generation probably held PC graphics back a little bit too. Developers and engine builders were building for an audience that was dominated by underpowered consoles. PC games have looked better than console games for several years now but I still think the consoles held them back from hitting some of their potential. If games can look as good as Ryse on the Xbox One I think we are going to see a big leap forward on PC too, even with the existing hardware many of us have in our machines.

Now for the somewhat negative parts of the game. This is about a 6 hour game. That was fine for me as a gamefly renter but if I would have paid $60 for it I would have been pretty disappointed. The thing is, I wouldn't actually want any more than 6 hours of this game though. Even with it's short campaign it was starting to wear out it's welcome by the end. The combat that started out fun was feeling very repetitive by the end of the game. If you want bonuses like regenerating health or extra XP you have to do execution moves after you beat up on a guy for a while. These animations were cool at first but by the end of the game you will have seen all of them many times.

The other thing that will turn off many gamers is that these executions are quicktime events. The enemy will turn blue when you need to hit X or yellow when you need to hit Y. The strange part of this is that even if you hit the wrong button or hit nothing the execution is still carried out. It just doesn't look as fluid and you don't get as many points. If an enemy is launching an unblockable attack he will turn red letting you know you need to hit B to evade. Once you start to memorize the animations you can hit the buttons before the enemy even changes color. This gives you the most fluid combat and legendary hit bonuses. It also feels more rewarding.

This isn't to say that the combat is always easy. Sometimes you will have large amounts of enemies attacking at once and you have to beat them up pretty good before you are giving the option to execute. For the most part I had no trouble with the combat but when I had an unblockable enemy plus several smaller ones it caused me to die a few times. The game also artificially pads it's length in a few areas too. Instead of letting you move forward into new areas they will sometimes send several waves of enemies at you in the same spot to make the game feel longer.

The game did break up the monotony a few times with boss battles that were actually fun. A section where you have to enter the coliseum as a gladiator especially stands out. This game is just average. It wasn't really good or bad. More than anything else it was just a tech demo to show off what the Xbox One is capable off. Unlike some of the games that made it to both PS3/360 and the PS4/Xbox One this is truly a "next gen" experience. That being said, if you are more focused on playing high quality games than getting some eye candy for your new console you might want to skip it. Seeing how there aren't many games available for the new consoles yet I was willing to take some eye candy. I recommend this as a rental instead of a purchase unless you get a great price or think you will play the online versus mode.

Finally finished inFamous last night. I've been playing this one on and off between other games for about a year now. It's not that I didn't like it. It's just that it was already pretty old when I started it and other games kept coming out and stealing my attention. I plan on starting up inFamous 2 sometime this weekend.

Thief for PS4 is the next game in my queue. How fast I finish inFamous 2 will depend on whether Gamefly ships that out on Monday and whether Thief is even any good. The fact that the Thief comes out on Tuesday and the review embargo still hasn't been lifted makes me think it might not be great. Usually if a developer is really confident about their game they lift the embargo early to get the hype started and encourage preorders. From the trailers it looks to have a similar vibe to Dishonored, which I really liked. I hope it's good but worse case scenario I just send it back to Gamefly and increase my chances of getting inFamous: Second Son shipped out from them on release date.

I hear that inFamous: Second Son is only semi-related to the story from the first two games but I won't play it until I beat inFamous 2. I hear that it was a big step up from the first game in a lot of ways and I want to experience that and get all the back story before I jump into the new game. It will probably take me quite a while to get the new one from Gamefly anyways so I should have no trouble with that. This is the game most early adopters of the PS4 have been waiting for so the wait list will probably be pretty long. I think I had to wait about 2 or 3 weeks after release date with nothing but GTA V in my queue before they shipped that one out to me. Hopefully this wait won't be any longer than that but it's not like I don't have a ton of backlog games to play if it is. Plus Titanfall is coming out 10 days before inFamous and I will be downloading that on day one. I prefer renting story based games but games I play online with friends randomly over the course of several months make more sense as a purchase.

So I acquired a copy of Rambo: The Video Game. No, not that one... the new one.

But wait, I hear you saying, why am I only hearing about a new Rambo game now? Surely a badass like Rambo would have an equally kickass game! You could do stealth in First Blood, to just flat out shootouts and gorefests with Rambo 3 and 4! Yes, you COULD, but given the game has a 38/2.6 rating on Metacritic, clearly something went wrong. VERY wrong.

Rambo: The Video Game is bad. I mean, BAD. This is one of the most laughably bad games I've ever played. Everything is bad. The graphics are bad, the gameplay is bad, the audio is bad, and the controls are bad. But it's not like Aliens: Colonial Marines where it's just a complete bugged out mess with horrible design. The mechanics of this game are actually solid. However, what that means is that you're basically dealing with a shiny polished turd.

I can't really go too in depth for a first impressions simply because I KNOW there's going to be a lot to add later in my full review, so I'm just going to wait and encapsulate it all in 1 post. All I'll say is that it's one of the few games I've played in recent memory where I wanted to progress solely to see what pile of crap was coming for me next. So far, I haven't been disappointed in my utter shock of how deliciously awful this game is. I do feel bad though, because Rambo in the hands of a COMPETENT developer could be really cool. Sadly I think Sly Stallone would be more embarrassed by this than he is of Rocky V.

yourbeliefs said:

So I acquired a copy of Rambo: The Video Game. No, not that one... the new one.

But wait, I hear you saying, why am I only hearing about a new Rambo game now? Surely a badass like Rambo would have an equally kickass game! You could do stealth in First Blood, to just flat out shootouts and gorefests with Rambo 3 and 4! Yes, you COULD, but given the game has a 38/2.6 rating on Metacritic, clearly something went wrong. VERY wrong.

Rambo: The Video Game is bad. I mean, BAD. This is one of the most laughably bad games I've ever played. Everything is bad. The graphics are bad, the gameplay is bad, the audio is bad, and the controls are bad. But it's not like Aliens: Colonial Marines where it's just a complete bugged out mess with horrible design. The mechanics of this game are actually solid. However, what that means is that you're basically dealing with a shiny polished turd.

I can't really go too in depth for a first impressions simply because I KNOW there's going to be a lot to add later in my full review, so I'm just going to wait and encapsulate it all in 1 post. All I'll say is that it's one of the few games I've played in recent memory where I wanted to progress solely to see what pile of crap was coming for me next. So far, I haven't been disappointed in my utter shock of how deliciously awful this game is. I do feel bad though, because Rambo in the hands of a COMPETENT developer could be really cool. Sadly I think Sly Stallone would be more embarrassed by this than he is of Rocky V.

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So it's like one of those terrible movies that you feel you need to keep watching just to see if it gets worse.

king3pj said:

Finally finished inFamous last night. I've been playing this one on and off between other games for about a year now. It's not that I didn't like it. It's just that it was already pretty old when I started it and other games kept coming out and stealing my attention. I plan on starting up inFamous 2 sometime this weekend.

Thief for PS4 is the next game in my queue. How fast I finish inFamous 2 will depend on whether Gamefly ships that out on Monday and whether Thief is even any good. The fact that the Thief comes out on Tuesday and the review embargo still hasn't been lifted makes me think it might not be great. Usually if a developer is really confident about their game they lift the embargo early to get the hype started and encourage preorders. From the trailers it looks to have a similar vibe to Dishonored, which I really liked. I hope it's good but worse case scenario I just send it back to Gamefly and increase my chances of getting inFamous: Second Son shipped out from them on release date.

I hear that inFamous: Second Son is only semi-related to the story from the first two games but I won't play it until I beat inFamous 2. I hear that it was a big step up from the first game in a lot of ways and I want to experience that and get all the back story before I jump into the new game. It will probably take me quite a while to get the new one from Gamefly anyways so I should have no trouble with that. This is the game most early adopters of the PS4 have been waiting for so the wait list will probably be pretty long. I think I had to wait about 2 or 3 weeks after release date with nothing but GTA V in my queue before they shipped that one out to me. Hopefully this wait won't be any longer than that but it's not like I don't have a ton of backlog games to play if it is. Plus Titanfall is coming out 10 days before inFamous and I will be downloading that on day one. I prefer renting story based games but games I play online with friends randomly over the course of several months make more sense as a purchase.

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I'm really interested in Thief as well based on the early trailers, so I'll be interested to hear your impressions if you get it from Gamefly. The embargo does have me nervous as well.

You might have to play through inFamous 2 twice to get both endings if you don't know which one Second Son is based on ahead of time. Each one had a major impact on the world as a whole...not just the individual characters involved. I personally don't know enough about Second Son to know which way to go, though I have my suspicions.

Like you with the older inFamous games, I'm going "retro" as well, having just started LA Noire. As a big fan of Mad Men (c.f., my SatGuys avatar), I'm totally loving seeing all the Mad Men actors in this, including the main character, Kenny... er, um, I mean, Cole (Philips). Amazing game so far. Can't believe I dragged my feet so long. This is truly the first game I've played with an open world aspect set in a city I've lived in. If the map was just a little bit bigger, I might even be able to find the old apartment building an ex-gf lived in.

Zookster said:

I'm really interested in Thief as well based on the early trailers, so I'll be interested to hear your impressions if you get it from Gamefly. The embargo does have me nervous as well.

You might have to play through inFamous 2 twice to get both endings if you don't know which one Second Son is based on ahead of time. Each one had a major impact on the world as a whole...not just the individual characters involved. I personally don't know enough about Second Son to know which way to go, though I have my suspicions.

Like you with the older inFamous games, I'm going "retro" as well, having just started LA Noire. As a big fan of Mad Men (c.f., my SatGuys avatar), I'm totally loving seeing all the Mad Men actors in this, including the main character, Kenny... er, um, I mean, Cole (Philips). Amazing game so far. Can't believe I dragged my feet so long. This is truly the first game I've played with an open world aspect set in a city I've lived in. If the map was just a little bit bigger, I might even be able to find the old apartment building an ex-gf lived in.

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http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/thief

It looks like we had reason to be suspicious about the embargo but it was lifted today. After looking at metacritic the reviews are mixed. Most of them seem to range from okay to bad. No one seems to be showering it with praise. My go to for reviews, IGN, gave it a 6.8 out of 10.

Gamefly did ship a copy out to me today and I will at least give it a chance. With inFamous Second Son coming out in about a month I won't hesitate to send it back if I don't like it though. I would be willing to miss out on the first wave of inFamous shipments if I am enjoying my time with Thief, especially because I haven't finished inFamous 2 yet. The demand for Second Son is going to be high and there will probably be a couple weeks of wait time if you aren't in the first shipment. If I don't like Thief I will just send it back and focus on inFamous 2. That would mean going a few weeks without any Gamefly games in my possession but it's not like I don't have plenty of other stuff to play.