LadyCrimson

@'Krezack - I have no idea how many total people comprise Runic Games or Flagship Seattle (wiki says 14 from Flagship Seattle went to Runic) but anyway...yes it's very influenced by Diablo ppl, was just saying Runic Games is not Blizzard North reincarnated. Especially after so many years for those people to get different ideas of what they like in a game then they once had. I can understand disappointment from the 'it's Diablo ppl' perspective, tho. I remember when Peter Molyneux, one of the main guys for Bullfrog/Dungeon Keeper etc. made Lionhead Studios, I was all excited. But....

I know...was just saying it'd be interesting if you could use a combo of such + skill trees. In any action-rpg game. There might be a way to do it that would be fun/cool/effective.

I don't think I'd say it's 'most of the team' behind Diablo 1 & 2. It's most of the founding members/executives of Blizzard North...(who used to be another company before Blizzard bought & renamed them) they went from Blizzard North to making Flagship Studios (Mythos & Hellgate: London) and then teamed up with the guy who made Fate (which is what Torchlight looks a lot like) to create Runic. Or something like that. So it's not like you're taking Blizzard North wholesale & immediately dumping them into Runic. Different team and minds. I don't know if you ever played Fate, but Torchlight is basically Fate but with a lot more Diablo/action-rpg touches. The pets, the fishing, the cartoony look, the item enchanting method (complete w/ability to over abuse it, lol) etc...all Fate.

There's a thread in the Gearbox forums, started yesterday, about a new Borderlands DLC 4. They released a new game update patch and within it some people found all kinds of files/dialogue info etc. that made them think new content...so the (wildly popular) thread is all speculation based on this. Two gearbox staff replied in the thread, saying neither yay or nay, but they sounded "teasing" so I'd say...good bet it's true. If so...awesome for me! Now, if you want to read the thread, go ahead, but be warned that info in there is #1, very spoilery, and #2, possibly inaccurate. http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=108873

Not funny just interesting (to me). Most vids I see of one-hand clapping, the person is shaking their forearm like a spastic madman. But this guy can do it keeping his arms/wrists pretty still. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooj1noUU2NM ...I can't do it at all...

There's something a little off about the mouse-clicking in the game. You/I aren't the only ones to notice. Hard to explain it...most of the time it seems fine, but then it just...doesn't. Also... version 1.005a? I think mine is 1.004a (has the hi-res also). Did u buy on GOG? Can I download the new version from there if I already purchased it? (Hmm. Their page doesn't say what version I'd be downloading...) (edit: nvm, I found the forum thread. Have to uninstall, DL, reinstall).

DS1 was the better game overall, imo. Although when I say that, I'm mostly referring to the MP world map & playing solo which I did for ages, vs. the SP campaign. The SP was fun, don't get me wrong, but while I made several parties of varying sizes (once using only mules) I never did actually finish it... When I first tried DS2, I was 'wtf this sucks' and didn't play long. Later I tried again, forced myself to play further and by the halfway point I'd come to like it quite a lot. It just wasn't what I was expecting in a DS sequel & I had to get used to it. But I came to appreciate it/had fun. DS2's expansion Broken Sword, however...I didn't like that at all. In terms of stats...while the 'use skill to gain skill in it' was tedious & could/would gimp chrs. if you weren't careful, I found it a bit more interesting technically than the now-common skill-tree where you put pts. in pre-determined sequences of pre-made skills and carry on. ie, I actually liked the challenge aspect to switching between sword and spell to raise str/intel more equally. It felt like my chr. strengths, then, where actually based on actions I did, not just leveling up so I could place points. Ho-hum. If that makes sense. I wish there was a way to combine both aspects into one fun system....hm.

I'm kind of in the middle. I think it depends a bit on whether it's single player or multiplayer, too. Multiplayer needs at least some stations/waypoints in various towns or meet-greet hubs, imo. Single player it's a bit optional. If SP and MP have the same maps, then likely you're going to have some teleport aspect. But yes, I'm tired of "town scrolls", ala Diablo. In multiplayer it's kinda disruptive when ppl in your party constantly want to go to town. However, to accommodate loot-gathers, if you don't have 'town scrolls', you need to have moderate backpack space. DS1 was highly frustrating with its original backpack size (try playing it solo), non-stacking potions, length of time between shops, and no stash. Backpack size mods to double & triple size were the first thing I stuck in the mod folder. The multiplayer of DS1 was a nice middle ground for me. Huge relatively open world that had area towns, but a town HUB teleport system you could use. You had to be a certain chr. lvl to use each town's teleport pad, so unless you liked grinding low lvl monsters endlessly to lvl up, you couldn't skip areas 1st time thru by teleporting, thus it retained the exploration factor. Titan Quest, as mentioned, did a fair job with it too.

I remember I liked the semi-random aspect to Diablo1's campaign side quests. Several sets of quests available but you couldn't get all of them in one game. But that was in single-player. In multiplayer it was always the same few, just the boss monster could be in a different spot on the map each time. I used to like random level maze designs when levels were smaller, but after being annoyed with Diablo2's Flayer Jungle one too many times-trying to get past it as fast as possible, made slower by figuring out which 'map' version you had- I decided they didn't add much. Random in games such as these aren't typically 'new over & over again', at least in my experience. It's more a number of set map patterns that the game randomly switches between. If you play the game a lot, you become familiar with them all before long, and thus fan-made designs are still appealing...especially if the mods are interesting in other aspects as well.

Nox was fun. The furniture roadblocks weren't. It is nice when the breakables feel like they make a little sense for the game world. Lots of urns in crypts, check. Tons of crates in town where no one cares that you're robbing & looting, silly. And if there's a chance of finding 'forgotten trinkets' in multiple areas, it helps a little to break up the boss run concept. Diablo2 with its other 'item hunt' areas, for instance. The top-top items were still Baal runs, but you could still get a lot of good gear from those other areas if you were patient.

The concept of being able to patent everything under the sun in broad, over-reaching strokes is becoming a bit ludicrous, imo. Like some of the gene patent situations.

It looks like a cross between the worst bad 80's music videos combined with an early 70's cheesy disco movie. There's even a bionic man sound in there, haha. The costumes are horrible & not sexy...most of the dance moves are robotic & not synchronized very well. Either bad dancers or really bad choreography. The special effects & transitions look like something one can do with cheap home video software. But I dunno, Lady Gaga vids are wildly popular, and aspects of this video reminds me of some of hers only with much lower production values. So maybe I'm out of touch with things & my opinion means nothing. heh I'm not sure what you mean by 'how naturalized' they seem. There's nothing wildly Asian (vs US) about the video, if that's what you mean, unless you count the stylistic trend weirdness of it. But kitsch & bad dancing are universal. I can understand the English lyrics as well as I can any other popular disco-ish dance track & there's no heavy accent. It's strange how singing seems to dilute accents a lot. The music itself...eh...again I'm out of touch. I'm sure it could become popular enough to sell well if marketed right.

Pots/healing: They could put a long timer on potions and increase the rate of chr. healing. I don't mind potions but I can understand just mashing the 'chug' button can get old. In the campaigns I've always used the npc healing mage too. Sometimes half my party would just heal. But if playing solo (esp. in MP), in DS1 at least, potions alone weren't as 'awesome' because of the rooted-in-place delay of actually drinking it. When mobbed, they could damage you fast enough to take off a lot of the health gained from the pot before your chr. was finished with the drinking animation..so you'd either have to run away or do nothing but stand & drink pots. Could hardly get a whack in, lol. So I didn't feel like potions were as much of a crutch as the big purple pots of Diablo2 were. I need to play DS2 again to refresh my memory...did it have the same kind of potion-drinking delay animation?

Well now, that's interesting. Multiplayer, outdoor areas, mod kit. That could improve my desire to play quite a bit. I could play w/hubby on LAN. I bet it'll still be cartoonish tho. heheh

From my personal perspective, in terms of what types of games are typically being produced/marketed these days, I'd say that's my favorite theory too. And I don't even care about being strongly "plot driven". But even the obsessive 'tinkering' aspects or silly goofing off I enjoyed so much in the past - the things that for me made a game replayable - often feels like it's missing. Instead of getting a gobstopper I'm getting a piece of gum.

PC gaming as it was 10-15 years ago has changed into something different, imo, in both infrastructure as well as style - I'd agree with that concept. But dying as an industry? Nah.

...A lot of people disliked The Usual Suspects for similar reasons (that it was likely all a lie). Such never bothers me, personally. I like being surprised like that sometimes. I don't relate well to tables & figures being applied to movie-fake-science. But I still don't think it's consistent. I already know the concept/idea the movie is trying to make you swallow, but what you're saying is the explanation does not, imo, refute the inconsistencies within the movies concept of dream layers, itself. Such as why making a turn in a van cause a ripple in a coffee cup/sonic boom in another layer. and why the ripple in the cup/sonic boom doesn't also take minutes to finish its ripple, if time is so stretched out in the deeper layer - the van whipping around a corner takes a couple seconds too, right? Edit:should clarify, not actual sonic boom. But thumps. Guess u could say it's from the building shaking in response but still time issue. Also, I'm not saying inconsistencies ruin the film or anything. But imo there are some & they can't be explained away...they're just there, like in any sci-fi movie. heh

I'm not sure what what the videos are, at root, really trying to say. That the video game industry is changing? That recession impacts them? Well, yeah. Nothing stays the same forever. Is this a surprise or something? Combined with all the new tech/global networking, which opens up areas that didn't exist when video games started, things will fluctuate/alter as companies try to figure out what works/sells. The video gaming market (imo) has been trying to turn into/maintain a major worldwide culture aspect (like movies, fiction books, fashion)...unfortunately, that costs a lot of money (humanity en masse has a relatively short attention span), which over time alters the way the industry is run. And like any such, it'll have ups & downs in terms of market value & infrastructure. I highly doubt the industry is dying/dead, however. That's complete hyperbole for the sake of attention-grabbing headline. I may personally dislike the way it's going - don't like the trends of book publishing either - but it ain't dead.

I used the mouse for almost everything in both games, except potions & sometimes forcing of spellcasting. I probably used other hotkeys now and then but just not as a primary mode. Keys in DS1 were remappable....were they in DS2? I don't remember. But yes, I agree...keys must be remappable...that way people can have them as they wish.

Dungeon Siege 1. Fun to revisit a little, but one doesn't stay very long. heh It needs a modern-day resolution mod. 1024x768 looks rather terrible on this monitor even when I set monitor to 4:3...not sharp at all. At least zoomed all the way out.

That college humor video was hysterical. Yes, I remember Leo talking about how he & his wife had 'lived a lifetime' in a few minutes or an hour or whatever whilst they lay on the carpet dreaming. But if time proceeds faster as you go deeper, why does it slow down within the deeper layers to allow for the delayed & and very lengthy) reaction of anti-gravity blah blah blah.

My impression was that it was supposed to like

I have no need for/don't want a cell phone/contract & all the cluttering apps/menus that go with a cell. All I want is the video. I don't care about anything else, so not interested in a unit that does 100 other things. Edit: Stand alone units are still better quality than the phone (even the 720) too. Probably not for long, but...

Bought the Kodak zi8 HD video camera for casual use. Initially thinking I'll like it for the features more than the no-feature/fixed internal memory Flip. Only downside is it uses .mov files so need a converter software if want to burn DVD's & the internal mic is mono so if you want stereo you have to buy an external mic. But at least it has ex. mic option, unlike the Flip. Charging battery...we'll see! Can't wait to try it.