GreasyDogMeat

The whole idea of it just made me laugh. It would be like James Bond in a room with the big bad villain at the finale and instead of using his gadgets or guns for an epic showdown he brings out a bag of rats and lets them loose. While all the criminals are screaming and trying to stomp the rats he runs around the room judo chopping the bad guys.

For me it really did. I absolutely hated the game my first time through. Between the bugs (and they were BAD), not being into the whole vampire thing, the main story being interesting, but then turning so pointless, hating the initial ending I got and possibly my biggest mistake: playing as a Malkavian. After that first time with Bloodlines I was raging and quite happy that Troika had gone kaboom. Thats what those bastards get for this steaming pile of game!! A year or two later I gave the game another chance with a fan-patch and with a character who could actually RESPOND to dialogue and I had a much more enjoyable game. I still didn't like the major plot of the game, seemed so pointless, and I'm still not really into vampires, but the game is actually quite good, especially how the seven different vampire races play. The game also has great atmosphere. Temple of Elemental Evil really showed me how important a story is to me. The game's combat is great, the music and atmosphere are also really good (I love the town theme music and would enjoy just exploring and listening to it) but the voice acting and story... I've been more engrossed with Gold Box era games like Pool of Radiance and no I'm not exaggerating. Troika claimed a lot of the game was nerfed because of the publisher, but then I find out stuff like a brothel was cut from the game. I'm sorry, but being able to visit some hookers like Fallout 2 and Arcanum would not have saved ToEE. I did manage to get to the final boss, but just quit because I was just not having a good time with the game. Arcanum was a middle ground for Troika games IMHO. The setting and music was great, the story was ok, but holy heck were the graphics and combat horrible. Many of these three games have some fundamental problems here. SERIOUS problems. With Obsidian, while each of their game has been flawed, it hasn't really been anywhere near the game killers that Troika had IMHO. Part of it may have just been luck for me. People have complained about Alpha Protocol being really buggy, but other than a few minor problems I've never had a game stopper like I've had with EVERY Troika game. Heck, with Neverwinter Nights 2 and, especially, the expansion packs the only real flaw I saw with them was I didn't think it was very well optimized for computers of the time. I used to be worried that Obsidian would go the way of Troika, and who knows maybe they will, but they seem to be doing better and better while Troika was just up and down and sideways all over the place. You might say Obsidian got it easy with big name sequels, but Troika had a D&D release, and D&D held a lot of weight (at least with me) at the time after all those insano-awesome infinity engine games. Temple took D&D to new lows for me. It is a shame Troika went under, but after their record I wasn't surprised and I do hope they found new jobs at other dev companies because there was talent there.

Perhaps not disasters. As someone who actually beat Daikatana, it does put the word 'disaster' into perspective. beating it was a mission of masochism. Obsidian is a bit similar to Troika in that their games often require polish or feel rough around the edges, but the draw has always been immediately apparent for me with Obsidian games. Troika games have required a LOT more scratching at the surface to find the good.

I would save all of my wands of summoning for that final battle and unleash a massive horde of skeletons and gibberlings on Sarevok then trounce him while he was busy swatting them away.

They probably wouldn't care because Lionheart was their first and last RPG. That said, I'd love to see Obz do a proper RPG in the Lionheart setting. The game already used the SPECIAL Fallout rules.

Because you older than 12? If so then you fit in with the societal norm. See you totally do what 'society' tells you too. Because Matter-Eater Lad is your favorite comic book hero. Because you are supposed to put butter on it. Because you are looking at her face. Look at the junk in the trunk. Transplant that junk onto any other trunk and that woman is now the most beautiful one in the world. Because you don't like listening to drunk singing. You are fitting in with that norm again. I did kind of like that 'Poke Her Face' song though... Have you seen Bio's reviews by most players and professional reviewers? Fit in with the norm again. We're just weird here. Society is undecided over this one... so either way you go with this one you are following it's norm.

Didn't you notice how many more enemies appeared in Tutu vs. vanilla BG? Or are you saying you didn't have a problem with said huge mobs. They are possible to beat as you level much faster, but as mentioned by others it kind of hurt the balance of the game.

I was drinking a cup of coffee with my dinner today and after taking a swig of coffee I noticed an odd clump in it. I assumed it was a piece of my dinner that fell into the cup of coffee so I swished this clump around for a bit, wondering if t were perhaps a piece of meat or vegetable that had fallen in. I couldn't really get a taste of it so I spit it back into my cup to get a look at it. I fished out a large dead fly. This is how I reacted. Simply replace 'Einhorn is a man!' with 'Oh my God it is a fly!'

The monster spawns were nuts, but I managed to do a play through of Tutu and I enjoyed having the BG2 stuff in BG1. Is there no fix out yet for the spawns? I did my Tutu play YEARS ago. I did a search and This GOG forum has a response by "blackakari" (3rd down) that talks about fixing the spawn issue. I'll have to do a Tutu play sometime and use this fix.

I have to say I agree with Gromnir. Every Troika game was a disaster in one way or another. I'd say their best game so far was Vampire and even it was a mess at released that is only really playable now thanks to fan patches. There was some talent at Troika and I hope that talent has found new jobs at other companies. Some of them may have even gone to Obsidian.

As if DA 2 is that different to DA 1. Oh yeah, now you have to press A over and over to fight. Big improvement. KotOR 2 has one flaw compared with the original. DA2 has half a dozen. Not playing F:NV is your loss.

This!!!!! Seriously, did they have a single over worked map maker doing ALL of the maps in DA 2? I can actually believe it because, like I mentioned before, there are ONLY around 30 unique maps in the game. Most of them VERY small and all reused over and over. THAT IS ****ING PATHETIC! Could Bio not have hired a few more map creators? It would be one thing if this game was created by a small mom & pop indie game developer, but this is BIOWARE... the guys who SHOULD be rich by now after so many people have bought not only their games, but their TONS of DLC. For those of you defending that they didn't have much time... again look at other companies like Obsidian who have managed to work under far less time than DA 2 had and release games with far more explorable locations. KotOR 2 and New Vegas both had short development times, especially KotOR 2 and neither game suffers from a lack of unique locations to explore.

LOVE that movie! I wonder why the military hasn't made a ZF-1 yet.

I'd agree about Lionheart being more fun but it also got a lot worse. I never finished Lionheart but I did finish Arcanum. While I enjoyed myself, I've only played it once, have little to no interest of playing it again and just don't have as fond a memory of it as I do for other classics like the infinity engine games and Fallout. Lionheart, on the other hand, I'd like to give another chance in the future. Try joining different factions than I joined the first time through, maybe give the later half of the game a more serious try. First time through was with a rogue type character who excelled in city life, talking his way out of situations etc. but got his butt royally kicked when the game turned into a bad Diablo clone.

The bad joke is that he says they recycled 'some' of the caves when in reality all of the caves use the same map. Yes, Bioware & Black Isle have done this in the past but NEVER has a game done it to this extent before. It is particularly pathetic considering that A: This is 2011 and B: The game's scope is extremely small. The entire game takes place in one city and a few sorrounding locations. Kirkwall, the city, isn't even very big when you count the ground you cover. I'd say it covers about the same, maybe even less are of exploration than the original Baldur's Gate city had. Thinking about it, I'd say it covers even less ground than that. I counted up all the unique maps in the game and there are some where around 30, give or take a few. Factor in too that DA 1 was far more ambitious and reused maps far less than DA 2. Many encounter maps in DA 1 were reused, but even then there were about 4-5 random encounter maps in DA 1. To add insult to injury in DA 2, revisiting the same dungeon 15+ times (these dungeons are found in different locations, it would be one thing to visit the same particular dungeon over and over like you visit the coast in the game over and over, but all of them are completely separate locations) during the game they use the exact same minimap despite every dungeon having certain paths blocked off. I would constantly follow the minimap only to run into an ugly placed barrier placed in a pathetic attempt to try and make this version of the cave look unique. There is just no excuse for this. Look at how many unique areas were created in KoTOR 2 with a shorter development time, many of them having completely unique looks opposed to Kirkwall looking the same. I admit, I like the look of Kirkwall, but spending 50 hours in the same city is just tiring. I rant and rave about it, but it just drove me nuts revisiting the same damn locations over and over, whether it was a return visit to an area after the game's story progressed or exploring a 'new' cave that looked like the last 10 caves I had explored.

Why not? As one of those people who played the city sections but gave up when it turned into a grind fest I'd say playing the first half of the game is worth it even if you don't finish it. Lionheart had such a cool setting, good art and quests in the city. It is shocking how great the game starts and then how bad it gets later.

I play AP on the 360 and the texture load in is THE worst I've seen in any game, let alone any game using the Unreal 3 Engine. Mass Effect 1 also had this problem, but it was no where near as bad and ME 2 all but removed the problem. Like I said, it isn't too bad if you are loading a level that starts with control of Mike in a gameplay situation. It looks horrendous though when it loads a cutscene like Leland interrogating Mike and it takes literally 30 seconds to a minute for character face textures to load. This also causes problems when sorting through weapons at the computer, as the game pauses for a moment every time I switch through the weapons and the game needs a second or two to load the gun texture.

Fixed. I've always wondered why they haven't starred together in a buddy cop movie. Would be the best movie ever.

I read the article a few times thinking I was missing something. This happens all the time and the initial shock that someone would dump their baby in the trash is years long gone for me. I've heard the baby in the trash story a dozen times over. If it helps to reduce the hatred of humanity this story has likely brought on, this kind of thing happens in nature frequently as well. Young animal mothers will sometimes abandon their young as they are not prepared to be a mother.

I thought Lionheart was great until you left the city. I don't think there has ever been a game that has gone down hill as fast as Lionheart did once you left the city. It was like two different companies had made each section of the game. By the way, did all the voice actors in Lionheart have lisps or do you actually pronounce Barcelona as Bar-THA-lona. I always thought you pronounced it Bar-saw-lona.

When Elves ride in carriages or horses they use their ears to catch bugs for snacks. Its a fairly handy evolutionary trait.

It would be totally crazy, but only crazy people like Leonardo DiCaprio.

Maybe it's just my dislike of Leonardo Dicrapio but I'm beginning to suspect Lord of Flies is Volo's alt.

The only thing that bothered me about AP graphics were the insane texture load times. It was one thing to wait for environment textures, it looked horrible when a cutscene loaded and the characters faces looked like they came from 1999 for up to 30 seconds.

All the missions (well, except if there is a PS3 exclusive) will eventually be released as DLC missions. So if you preorder the game at one spot, you can just wait a month or so and get the others. Rockstar recently released all the preorder bonuses for Red Dead from various locations as dlc costing a dollar a piece. I'm sure the LA Noire bonuses will cost more when they become DLC. I had already preordered from GameStop and I got the Deadly Assassin outfit so I got the others. I'm disappointed with them though. The Deadly Assassin outfit was cool because A: It looks awesome and B: It fits in with the game. You actually have to work to aquire the outfit. The Golden Guns and Warhorse are given to you at the start of the game and it looks ridiculous to have Bonnie hand Marston a golden repeater at the start of the game as well as getting the Warhorse from the beginning. You should have had to actually pay in-game money to have your guns goldenized etc. If I replay single player I'll delete the two add-ons and then redownload them near the end of the game so it feels like they were earned items. I like the idea of making preorder bonuses minor DLC items. Most of it is junk that is not missed if it is one time only (Golden guns for instance), but some of it is too cool to be lost to people who didn't preorder at the time (If you still play Red Dead, get the Deadly Assassin outfit for a buck, its awesome, plugs into the game requiring work to get and worth it).