Orchomene

CK2 is pretty good. I found EU 3 a bit disappointing wrt EU 2, but CK 2 is a dign successor of the first opus. Those games are not complicate, they are a bit overwhelming. At first, you don't seem to know what to do, then you do mistakes, then you understand a bit better and are prepared. You may want to try first "easy" countries before trying the most interesting ones.

X-Com enemy unknown has not that many bugs. More like FONV than Vampire Bloodlines. But of course, having a bug when playing on ironman surely has a more impressive psychological effect than playing on normal. After having played Dishonored, I tried Darksiders 2 (fun but not that impressive) and now playing Dark Messiah (it was cheap on gamersgate recently).

In Fallout 2, you can get a power armor after 15 minutes of playing the game. Yet, you don't have too.

You need to consider the psychology of Mr House : for him, both NCR and Brotherhood are a threat for New Vegas. When he identifies threats, he doesn't hesitate to eliminate such threats. It's like business. Since he knows that a peace agreement with one or the other would only be temporary (one day they would be sufficently powerful to overpower Houses robots), he'd rather destroy definitively the threats than keeping the Damocles sword above his head.

Rats are easy in Morrowind. The real plague is cliff racer. I hated those critters.

Morrowind was for me the first TES game I played (I had just played less than ten hours of Daggerfall with a friend, so that doesn't really count). I loved the freedom, the non random generated objects that were in some dungeons. You could steal an entire set of glass armor as a thief if you managed to be stealthy enough. You could levitate. Houses felt very different in their way of living. There were some conflicts between factions (fighters/Thieves guilds). Then I bought day one Oblivion and felt it boring with everything randomly generated and leveled. There was no real interest in exploring since all you will find will be corresponding to your level and could have been found in any other dungeon. Skyrim is a bit better than Oblivion, still too much random loot. The story is bit better than the Oblivion's one and the rpg system a bit less unbalanced. Yet, it lacks something. Novelty, maybe.

Extract : 'Microsoft Kinect 2 will have the ability to intelligently scan a room and pick up on the audience (creepy right?), they’ve even included the ability for age detection. The technology will also be used to enforce ESRB ratings, something no console to date has been able to enforce.' Is it for real ? I mean, are they seriously considering selling this ? Wow, I'm amazed people could buy such Big Brother system. Also it's doomed to be cracked in the first month. About PC/consoles, I just wanted to add that the time where PC gamers had to be careful looking if the game they buy will be able to be played on their PC is over. Hardware evolution has been slowed down a lot due to physical constraints. The only really important evolution are in term of power consumption. Now there is a phase of resource optimization, i.e. better use of memory, especially grphic cards memory. CPU frequency is limited by silicon semi conductor technology at less than 10 GHz for exemple. Above that, you need to have hyper frequency cavities and not use electronic/electricity simple physical laws but Maxwell electromagnetism laws (which is a pain). The challenge has evolved into a better reltionship between hardware and software ( i.e. having hardware (mainly GPU) well designed and software adapted to the hard architecture, like GPGPU for big computations, parallelization if interesting). I don't think that the next ten years will see an evolution as impressive as the last ten. Of course, in ten years, there could also be a technological revolution, but it's not plausible at the moment (quantic processing, as far as I know, is not yet ready). I think it's good news, we may have less focus on graphics.

I've just played both Deponia games. Fun point and click games with humour and a little originality. Playing an anti hero is refreshing and the story is ok. I think at that price, it's a good deal if you like adventure games. Note that the this is a trilogy, so the end of the second opus is not that conclusive (for a good reason). If you don't plan to play it quickly, I would wait for the third game to come out and the typical bundle that will come with.

I've never had a console, but I don't see the advantage of having a console over a PC (with the exception of someone not used to computer tech) : - you can have a PC for the same price (more or less, just avoid the top of the tech) - you can connect the PC to a TV set, put controllers and play on your sofa. - you can mod games with a PC - you can also use your PC as a computer But I'm open to different opinions, since I don't have a console, I can't judge.

It's a matter of balance. In a game like Wasteland or ME, only small small details are fun and shouldn't require a lot of work. In a game like Deus Ex, it's central and may require more effort.

Being really into science (research and things like that), I think there is a need for some level of plausible scientific elements. First, avoiding things that are really offending for people having a bit of scientific culture. It's not that important for the majority of the players, but it doesn't really affect negatively to avoid things like sound propagation in void space. It's just a matter of taking care of details (the devil is in the details, after all). People complain after things that are not realistic in fps (like infinite ammo or things like that). It's the same here. Second, a bit of scientific approach can help the creation of a world where you take care of impacts of new discoveries. It may be like nanotechnology and ethic debates of what is the limit of human/machine. It can also be the social impact of an immortality serum.

Back to the topic, I just wanted to add some relative thinking about DA2 hating/enjoying and BW RPGs evolution. I've not played DA2 (so I won't give an opinion about it), but I remember what I felt when I played ME2 (the last Bio game I've played) : I thought it was an awful game, with bland characters, no story, a shooter gameplay... Not a "real RPG". That was some time ago and I've had time to digest all of this. Now I just think that this game may be a pretty good game, but just not a game I like. After all, if so many people think it's a good game, even a good RPG, who am I to say the inverse and think I am right and they are wrong ? For any game you dislike, you can find tons of elements to justify how poor the game is. It's easy and doesn't require much effort since games are of course not perfect.I'm sure you can find people that hated PS:T that could argue for hours on how the gameplay is terrible and the companions are bland and caricatural. Of course, they would say there arguments are objective and so on. So, in the end, if you don't like DA2, just get over it. There is nothing wrong in Bioware having another target audiance that people that enjoy old school RPGs over more modern gameplay. Ok, you feel some bad taste of trahison in your mouth, but you will quickly get over it. I now can say without remorse that ME2 is certainly a good game, but not a game that I like.

Surprised to hear that, haven't had anything like that. The only issue I've had so far was where my ruler decided to keep removing his armor, which led to him going into battle several times in nothing but his underwear and a cloak. Closing the game and loading up resolved this issue. Just out of curiosity, do you have the steam of stardock version? I bought it on gamersgate. So this is the steam version. I will get back to it, I may just have been unlucky and will reinstall it when KB is over.

As far as I can see, Edwin remains in his state if you kill the red mage before he dispells Edwin. You can do a CTRL+Y if you want it to be safe.

I will pause a bit at FE. I have sufficient freeze/reboot sequences at the moment and will wait for a patch to correct the memory issues. So, now, on to King's Bounty : Warriors of the North.

Thanks for the info on Fallen Enchantress. I think I'll try it.

That's why a system of notes with the average value computation giving the final result is absurd. The idea is that 0 and 10 have more effects on the final result that a middle note. Other systems are better (e.g. like/dislike and give the number of each). About magazine reviews, I have no idea. Even if I read some reviews, it just gives an idea of the critical reception of the game, not if I will appreciate or not.

I'm trying the second wave options mod (at Nexus). Some pretty good things to give the game a bit more of variability.

I'm interested in a small review of it if you have some spare time. I'm not really sure what to expect from it and to what game it can be compared. I'm playing Xcom at the moment and enjoy it.

There are too many mushrooms in BD. And gnomes too. It's close to DD, but more linear and more dungeon crawl than the first one. Yet, there are some interesting novelties, like being able to control two characters instead of one. The story is ok, but not that original. At release, it had a lot of bugs that made the game difficult to play, but it's no pretty stable I think. So yes, weak point of the series but not unenjoyable.

Remade is a bit too much. Rebalanced, yes. The game was a bit too level dependant. Some skills were too powerful and other mostly useless. They also made mind reading more interesting at the end of the game (in exchange of having to search every place of the huge fortresses areas to find the one piece of equipment you missed from your set of armor). They also removed some permanent anti dragon protections because the fjords were a bit too painful to fly in. Larian put a lot of time in it to coorect a lot of small details. And the expansion is pretty good too. A real extension and not some DLC. The only weak point for me is the last fight of the expansion. It reminds all those game where I wondered why do designer want to put excort missions. I curse escort missions.

There is a sploier controlled walkthrough UHSHints http://www.uhs-hints...web/torment.php Not much to add but some minor non spoilerish tips : - WIS/INT/CHA help a lot in dialogues, but it helps you get stronger too : the majority of the xp you get is from memory coming back. The more you have in your mental attributes, the more xp you get. - WIS alone gives a boost to your xp earnings. - you don't have to play directly with high mental stat, but do at least one playthrough with something like 18 WIS and 16 INT from the beginning. It may not be the best choice for your first playthrough since you will uncover most of the dialogues this way. But if you intend to just do one playthrough, well... - take your time, explore the city and the dialogues - play the way you want, your alignment won't close any part of the story. Only some items are alignment restricted but you can go without that. - DON'T TRUST ANYONE, THEY STOLE YOUR NAME. THEY STOLE YOUR FACE. THEY HIDE IN THE SHADOWS WAITING FOR YOU TO DO MISTAKES. BUT YOU KNOW THEY ARE THERE AND YOU WILL KILL THEM ALL. (small joke).

I'm backing it. Ars Magica is one of the only game were I love the magic system. I don't know how they will adapt it on a computer and I'm curious about it.

Wow, great news ! I loved Ars Magicka PnP. The setting is wonderful in its way to depict a substancial and coherent magic system.

I don't really like generalisations and social classifications, but lets consider the "fanboyism". The definition of fanboyism is a bit simplistic. What is important in fanatism is the mean of attraction to the object of the fanatism. Consider a small example (which is a simplification of the situation but used as an illustration, like a picture) : - Bioware games tend to attract people by emotions. Romances, "epic" feelings, companions that you love or hate - Obsidian games are more cerebral. There are few romances,companions are more illustrations of concepts for which you don't feel emotive attraction, story that revolve less around the epic form. Thus, the relationship between the fanboys and the object of the fanatism is in the first case more toward a love/hate relationship (thus highly irrational) and in the second case more a relationship in interest/deception (which generally is less seen as irrational, even if it's still subjective). In the end, since every irrationial behavior is considered immature (because children/teenagers have difficulties to manage their emotions), the first fanboys will be more seen as immature. After that, you can compare religious fanatism and scientific fanatism. Both are extrem, but the latter is less seen as emotive and irrational, for the reason I've advanced. My point is : there may be the same ration of fanboyism in the Obsid boards as in the Bio boards but it may not be felt the same in the end.