Orchomene

To just give my opinion about DRM. I have no personal issue with DRM since it does not impact me anymore (it used to at the begining as I did not have internet connection at home). But I don't really understand publishers since it's evident that DRM has no visible impact on piracy. It may impact second hand sales (but since only preorder and first month sales are important, second hand has little impact on the success), but cracking a game that has a copy protection, CD chack or online activation (even recuring validation) is done the first few days for a game that has a big market. All in all, I think the ones that suffer the most from DRM are publishers since they spend their money on a functionality that is not required (for a good reason) by legitimate customers and that does nothing for the piracy population with the exception of leting a pirate earning some consideration for having broken the protection. Of course piracy remains an imortant issue for publishers. But they should find another way to fight against it rather than DRM. In the end, I still don't know if I will buy DA2. Good thing there may be a demo, it will hopefully help me decide.

Played it. Can't say it's bad, but it lacks something to keep being interesting. Dialogues and characters are not very good even if not awful. I enjoyed the first twenty hours but stoped after that, a bit bored by the story and gameplay. There is too much focus on combat to my taste.

Greed Corp is fun, good concept. But a bit simplist in the gameplay and it becomes a bit repetitive.

Just bought Greed Corp, a turn by turn strategic game that seems interesting and not very expensive.

Div 2 is certainly better than will be DA2 in my opinion. Sure, it has some flaws, like any other game.

This piece of armor is a gorgerin. A pretty strange one.

I have no real issue with the DLC concept itslef. But from what I can judge on the DLC I've purchased is a lack of quality when compared to expansions I've bought for other games. It may just be bad luck on my side, it may also reflect an evolution toward less quality in the evolution aspect of a game after its release. For the DAO DLC, without counting the one that just give items I've found the Stone Prisoner mediocre, the Wrden's keep and Return to Ostagar poor and I've not tried the other ones but I've heard they weren't better if not poorer. On the other hands, even if some expansions are not that great, some other expansions add a lot : MotB, Night of the Raven, Flame of Vengeance, to name a few. I've not seen for the moment a DLC that adds such quality content in a game relatively to its price.

Not really sure. If you want to wait, you can get the ultimate/platinium/goty/whatever version that has all the DLC.

Wouldn't that then make all of modern Eastern Europe into Western Europe, cause no one in Eastern Europe considers an invasion from the West. Except for Russia. But everyone else have spent the last 20 years creating the rhetoric of protecting Europe from Russia, and of Russia as the eternal enemy, and so on and on. An invasion from the West wouldn't come to anyone's mind. Ever. And even if it would happen, it would be welcomed, cause western europeans are white people, unlike russians who are mongoniggajews. Well to be precise, only people of germanic stock are considered to be "white people" (germans, scandinavians, brits), french and meditarrenan people are already considered non-white missing links between ape and man in the racialism of eastern europe. Back to topic. I've only played the Gothic series, but I was always curious about why there seems to be a lack of women in that series. It was especially ridiculous in Gothic 3. I should have written "invasions came from the...". It was more about last thousand years and the different conflicts than just last half century. About Risen and Two Worlds 2, the former has at least a story. Two Worlds 2 is a bit poor in this aspect.

In disk blocked content and pre-order specific DLC is just an incentive to piracy. As much as I want to give my support to developers, I can't help be feeling bad about having a game that is not complete (or for a too high cost) because I've bought it whereas the guy that pirated it gets all of the content for free. Why would someone buy legitimately a second hand game when he will miss some content and in the other hand, geting a pirated version of the game for free would give him all of the content ? All in all, after having tested DLC for DAO, I can just say that I won't buy any more DLCs, even for a game I may appreciate. Either there is an expansion that adds at the same time coherent content with quality and quantity or I just keep playing the base game. Having worked in the development business, I can't restrain from being disgusted at the story behind Shale : if a product is not functioning, you use your maintenance budget to make it work. Shale fix should have been delivered as a patch, not as an expansion. The issue with video game development is that there is no scope statement signed between customer and producer. Thus, the producer may cut any content that ends not really work at the begining and sell it separately. In the development industry, if you don't deliver what the customer is expecting and put in the scope statement, you have either to negotiate a patch delivery or the customer won't pay at all.

Who would want to invade a country which is at 80% mountainous ?

I think the price change depends on countries. At least in France, price has almost tripled from 2000 to 2010. Of course, during those ten years, a lot of things became quite expensive, with the exception of high technology.

The Rhine seems to me to be a bit too much to the West to be a valid limit between western and eastern Europe. Former DDR, former Tchekoslovakia, Hungaria, Rumania are in central Europe. After that you can think about considering eastern Europe. But even there, like in some parts of Poland, this is still very central european. You can sum up things by just considering that : - Western Europe is the part of Europe where countries consider that the invasions come from the East. - Eastern Europe is the part of Europe where countries consider that the invasions come from the West. - Central Europe is the part of Europe where countries consider that the invasions come from the West and the East. Of course, Central Europe suffered a lot more.

What HDR do is just enhancing contrast by dedicating more memory to code the light and color. It's pretty impressive in sunset pictures.

Divinity is far from eastern Europe, Larian Studio is in Belgium. Nonetheless, I think it's Divinity 2 that's the best of the three mentioned games and for its price, giving the most content. Otherwise, Drakensang : The River of Time is also a good candidate. Although, it's less an action RPG, more a party based one.

There is a budget for the game and a budget for the DLC. They could have added automatically the DLC but then the price would have rised. DLC is just a business solution to allow game development with a highest cost and keeping a main part at the market price of a new game. I sure prefer having a game at normal price and decide if I want more of it with a DLC and more money spent or just don't want more. It's even better if you end up not really liking the game because you would really be bothered to have paid for both game and DLC. I would even go further with this logic (as seen for some games, like Winter Voices) : buying chapters seperatly at 5 euro each chapter. Thus, if the game becomes boring, you just stop buying the chapters and end with less money spent.

If mages and rogues are taking too much damages in end game is because of a design issue or playing issue : - if you play a rogue, you shouldn't be a frontliner and should carefully hide and attack only if there is an opportunity to do it without retaliation. - if you play a mage, you should have defense/hide buffs to avoid being targeted. It's done well in D&D with contengencies, protect from magic weapons, immunity, spell absoption, stone skin, ... In DAO, mages were to offensive oriented with few exceptions (and one big exception being a speciality) and rogues were lacking stealth in combat and unable to flee proporly from battle. Increasing penetration or decreasing armor based on level has the same effect of lowering the interest of armor, in my opinion. The potential balance issue I can see is that the rogue will become the true fighter (dex based to avoid being touched, dual wield weapons, high damage bonuses). About free DLC, the goal is clearly to avoid second hand market. Next logical step would be like some professional softwares : you buy a nominative licence that allows you to download the product and can't sell this licence at all without exceptional agreement of the company that sells this licence.

Replaying the Witcher for the third or forth time.

Playing a farewell to dragons. I can't say I'm very impressed with the game which is a steam punk party based diablo clone. But at least, it's fun. Oh, by the way, it's spelled "d

I don't feel shame playing or not playing games. However, it's an entertainment I have difficulties to talk about with collegues since too few of them play video games, so I just keep my enjoyment for myself. About art, difficult subject. Comics in Europe (at least in France) are considered art, the ninth art, they say. But european comics seem to target more to mature audience than US one (for the US one I know). Just have a look at Corto Maltese. For video game, we should consider an interactive art aspect as opposed to a fixed art. We can not really compare experiencing a painting or a book and a video game. So, as an interactive art, we could perhaps have Tetris being an example of art.

Siberia is a good adventure game, but seems to be absent from Steam. Gamersgate may have it : http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SYB12/syberia...dle-pack-bundle Machinarium is fun. Both are point and click adventure games. Gamersgate has a better choice of classic adventure games. I also heard that broken sword is good, but not yet tested.

I think I bought it once.. It was very strange, and it felt like one of those Flash games you play for free on the interwebz. It's split in chapters (6 + prologue) and so far, only the prologue and first two chapters are on sale. The concept on a RPG that revolves around personal introspection seems nice though.

There is the Paradox pack for 55 euro (47 games or extensions) which is very good if you don't have many of those games. Edit : Has anybody tested Winter Voices ? The concept seems very interesting and with 50% reduction, it's cheap.

Thanks, I'll have a look at this. The list is pretty long.