GreasyDogMeat

+Fallout 3 I'm cautiously optimistic. So far, I like: -Focus on Fallout 1 style over Fallout 2. I. E. less pop culture references, and silly things being more along the lines of secrets instead of right in your face like Fallout 2. -The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. rule system is WAY better than Oblivion's rules. -Removal of the extremely lame leveled enemies from Oblivion. -The game really looks like Fallout come to 3d life. I'm worried about: -Bethesda's writing and their choice of voice actors. Some of the 'leaked' videos from youtube have confirmed some god-awful acting. One video has the player kill another characters father, then that character responds with all the emotional intensity of someone who has had their ice-cream cone knocked out of their hand. Some of the voice acting is good though. I especially like Liam Neeson as the player's father. -Fallout 3 doesn't ship with an editor. I hope one is added later. Oblivion was a crap game without mods and I'm hoping Fallout 3 can stand on it's own. -Oblivion's engine is one of the crashiest I've seen. I hope it is more stable in F3. +Call of Duty 5 The coop mode looks awesome and multiplayer has replaced the insanely lame helicopter 7-kill streak aimbot award with a pack of rabid dogs. RELEASE THE HOUNDS! Jack Bauer sounds sweet in the game too. Unfortunately, it still features the lame health revive after a few seconds. Whoever thought full health revive in a semi-realistic shooter would be a good idea should be shot. +Farcry 2 Only thing I'm worried about is if the darn thing will run on my computer. +Resident Evil 5 IF it comes to PC it will be a must buy for me. +NwN 2: Storm of Zehir Really looking forward to the new additions. Now if only Atari would stop souring the NwN 2 experience with the delay of MoW. Making EA look like fantastic publishers when it comes to DRM.

Really disliked the first BiA. It was supposedly super realistic, but lacked corner leaning, the prone position, weapons that performed less realistically than some action games, unbalanced multiplayer and even featured respawning enemies on certain levels. I also hated how the game artificially made you miss perfect aim-down-the-site shots trying to force you to play the game's way, which was to use your squad in every single situation.

No disagreements here. DRM may be the bane of humanity, but eight(!!!) threads about it seemed a tad excessive.

I SO wanted to like Mercenaries 2. It looked like it was straight up my alley. GTA sandbox type game, but all about blowing **** up! I tried the demo and it has to be one of the buggiest games I've played. Textures freak out and the game super crashes requiring me to reboot the computer. Freaking shame. I was about ready to rush off and pick this up when it came out. I slapped myself though and said 'NO! Don't do it man! Wait for the demo.'. Best decision I've made in a long time.

And its all Walsh's fault. I'm going to get my Appley Booze from another source.

Episode spoilers follow... of course. Strange episode on Monday. Cameron apparently fries a circuit while grocery shopping for John and starts reliving memories of being human in the future. The version of Cameron from the future is captured and interrogated by terminators. This didn't make a whole lot of sense, being a terminator her self so I came to a rather dark conclusion that turned out to be wrong but, IMHO, might have made the episode better. My first assumption was that Cameron originally was a human who could get close to John and had some sort of relationship with him which is why the terminators had captured her and were interrogating her. Where my theory deviated and was more gruesome, is that the terminators actually skinned her and even used chunks of her brain inside the terminator model to allow quick access to human emotion which would explain why the Cameron terminator was having memories of being a human. Unfortunately, the explanation turned out to be that the terminators simply created a terminator that looks like her and were interrogating her for information about her life so Cameron could more effectively imitate Allison (Cameron's human name). I think the writers really dropped the ball with this explanation though, as Cameron seems to know things that likely would have been forgotten in the future, like her phone number. Call me crazy, but after years of surviving in a post apocalyptic holocaust world I don't think I'd remember my phone number from my childhood. Overall, an odd episode.

Fixed. I think its a pretty good analogy!

Saw episode 3 and really liked it. The whole amber bio-weapon was cool. I think the show has potential. Oh, and Mythbusters it he best show ever.

I think the whole Atari DRM delay situation is ridiculous and that its killing the premium module project before it has a chance to thrive. Its just injury added to insult. Think it boils down to whether a person wants to stand up for treating their customers fairly, or whether they prefer the game. I personally don't think any game is worth rotten treatment.

Transcript of Thompson's Florida Bar Trial. http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/06/10/gp-...torms-out-court Comic gold. This should have been on an episode of Seinfeld. "Castanza, why did you just throw the papers into that mans lap?" "He wouldn't take them so I DROPPED them gently into his lap."

Wasn't it Ubisoft that handled the port?

You make it sound as if ONLY Atari would have been able to 'make' NwN 2 and it's expansions/premium modules and the developers play the minor role. If you were to replace Ossian as the developer as MoW, you would end up with an entirely different adventure, for better or worse. Replace Atari and gamers would have likely been able to play MoW a year ago when it was finished by Ossian. Its a bit of an irony as from what I've read, Atari has a habit of rushing developers and setting deadlines that MUST be met. Yet when a developer finishes a product on time they don't seem to mind delaying it for their own DRM scheme and to hell with the wishes of the NwN 2 community & Ossian. A publisher may be vital to the release of a game, but I frankly think certain publishers are doing a piss poor job lately. It seems to be getting worse and worse. The intrusive big brother schemes and DRM. I couldn't even play Resident Evil 4 on my computer until I uninstalled software that CAME with my computer. I just thought the damn game was glitchy and was refusing to start on my machine or I had some sort of hardware problem. Then the lazy bastards couldn't even implement proper key commands (press x on controller: I'M NOT USING A CONTROLLER!!), use low quality video and offer no mouse support. Half-assed jobs with nasty protection that screws your computer, year long delay for new DRM software nobody wants, and now not allowing people to play a game if they complain about it on a forum. Whats next? I certainly understand your stance that customers can be whiny ungrateful $&%^$ but that is no excuse for crummy publishers giving their ENTIRE fan-bases massive shafts. While an extreme analogy, its like letting a murderer off because he was abused as a child. Yeah... kind of a stupid analogy but I think folks will get my point.

Atari and EA make games you like to play? Really? Here I thought it was developers like Bioware and Obsidian that made games you liked to play. All Atari and EA seem to be doing is gumming up the works of happy customers getting happy games from happy developers.

I think EA, Ubisoft and Atari are in a competition to see who can piss off their customers the most. I had Atari in the lead with a year long delay of MoW for nothing more than their new DRM scheme but banning players from playing a game if they complain on a forum... that gets high marks. Getting to the point where any game you buy you are going to be supporting some scum bag publisher or another.

My favorite trick involved the maxed out force pull skill. Jump directly over enemies heads and then force pull them. They get launched about a thousand feet in the air and slowly plummet back.

The intro to Anachronox.

Even so, it just felt like a big joke. The way she spoke of Will Wright was just over the top. Plus all the wacky images.

I think the game design flaw I've hated the most in games I've played is a combination of the checkpoints too far away and the unskippable cutscenes. Nothing feels more like gamer hell than having a checkpoint before a boss fight, walking up to the boss and having to sit through a 2+ minute cutscene, losing and having to repeat over and over until you figure out the boss pattern, or bash your head into the monitor. Another thing I hate is button mashing sequences & quick time events. ::Glares at the otherwise superb RE4::

I'm amazed so many people took it seriously when there were banner ads off to the side advertising violent video games. Kind of a clue I'd say.

The firefights in FEAR were exciting at first, but it just became tedious as the game went on. I remember how exciting it was to finally run into the flying robots, hoping to fight them for an extended period only to find there were only like 5 in the game. It was also hard to get into the idea of being part of this special squad and ALWAYS being alone. It would have been nice to have some team firefights early in the game before the whole squad was goopified. Prey on the other hand managed to throw some new things into the mix as the game progressed. There was a lot of imagination and artistry put into the game that made up for its faults. Also, what was wrong with the guns? I thought they were fun to shoot and the goop gun and freeze ray were cool.

One of the disappointments about FEAR was my own fault. For some reason, I thought the game would involve investigating different types of paranormal and weird events. Sort of like the X-Files, where each chapter or so of the game would take place in a unique environment, perhaps even around the world. It was a big disappointment when I learned that the creepy girl was the primary plot and the game took place entirely in warehouses and office buildings. FEAR does have fantastic atmosphere, ambient music and a few decent scares. I think they just needed to cram some more interesting environments and a few extra enemies in the game. That was something about their previous games like AvP 2 and the NoLF games. They had tons of great and unique environments. Also, about the name change, IGN has an article on it. One of those who had the rights to what deals. http://pc.ign.com/articles/908/908390p1.html Prey > FEAR

I'll post links later this week once I make sure everything works and does not crash the game. Thanks. I managed to find the Graphics mod with a simple google search and it looks cool, but I can't seem to find anything on the button quick-time event fix. As poor as the port was I still love the game and I hope RE5 finds its way to PC under a better port job.

Graphics mods? A mod to replace the lame controller buttons? Gotta find these! I think whoever was responsible at Ubisoft for the port job of RE4 to PC should be shot. How absolutely lazy and half-assed do you have to be to port a game and not use the proper keys for the reaction events. They also should have used in-game cutscenes instead of movie cutscenes as it would have saved hard drive space and allowed the player to see the characters in the alternate uniforms.

While I've only ever played the demo, the opening cinematic to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is awesome. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/8904.html Blizzard has always produced amazing opening cinematics for the time the game was produced. I was especially amazed by the Diablo II intro. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kPXdtz_c4 Sometimes, especially after they announced WoW, I think Blizzard should stop making games and make cinematic movies. Quake III had a pretty sweet intro. As far as Infinity Engine games go, I think Icewind Dale took the cake. It wasn't flashy, but it had amazing atmosphere that set the tone and feeling of the rest of the game. Fallout also had an incredible opening cinematic for its time.

After beating Dragons of Flame, moved on to the third and final game in the Heroes of the Lance trilogy: Shadow Sorcerer. Unlike the first two games, Shadow Sorcerer is basically one big escort mission where you have to lead the survivors you rescued from the last game to safety. Unfortunately they are whiny, ungrateful pukes who refuse to listen to orders and like to stand around and get killed by Draconians and if the number of survivors falls below 100 you automatically lose the game. This is annoying in so many ways. 1: The 800 survivors are governed by about 4-5 leaders. Every so often the group stops and calls a meeting and you must beg, reason or threaten them to move on. Each of these leaders likes a different method of persuasion though, and every time you attend the meeting there is a high probability that a group will break off with a leader who didn't like your persuasion technique. 2: The survivors only move if they are fed which means you have to locate food supplies by completing quests or locating food in dungeons, all while the draconians are hunting for you and the survivors. Once, I left the 800 survivors outside to explore a cave and exited only to find they had been whittled down to 200 survivors by a hoard of draconians while I was in the dungeon. 3: There is no form of communication with the player about what the status of a group is. Why did they just decide to stop? Are they resting? Do they want food? ARGH! I don't think I've ever hated peasants so much! I want to feed them to a dragon!