Orchomene

I don't really know what to play. I've done another playthrough of the Witcher 2. Now I think I will replay Divinity 2.

The old RPG or the Total war'ish strategy game? Are they both good or bad? The RPG is good in the beginning. After that, you go outside of the city and it becomes a boring and unbalanced hack and slash. So you can just play half the game and forget about the second half.

Yep, you have some choices in the special skills you want to develop for each member of the team. Something like ten skills with 5 levels per skill you get two points per level to put in (or something like that). Still not a lot of choice in equipment.

I also find Grotesque Tactics to be fun. I like this kind of humour, but I may understand some people don't. It's not a chef d'oeuvre, but at a low price, people should check if they like it.

Sam and Max complete pack. I have the season one DVD, but the complete pack is still cheaper than the last two seasons separately.

I don't know what do you mean by "how to get into it". I think the best would be to begin by the campaigns. The original ones. Otherwise, if the question is about strategy tips, I can give you some general tips : 1/ Homm are games of attrition. This is the main point of all scenarios. Thus, as a direct consequence, never do a battle in which you lose units in numbers bigger than a small percentage of your troups, if at all. You can lose some units if the fight is necessary for you to gain access to a mine of high importance (wood/minerals and one of the other resources depending of the race you play). So choose well your fights. Shooters, spells, strong melee units are important to achieve that. 2/ Homm 3 is based greatly on spells. If you build well your major hero, you can win fight were you are greatly outnumbered with spells like mass slow, blind, resurrection, clone... That's why, even if your hero is a fighter, you will want to take the skills : wisdom, most of the school specialization, maybe intelligence. Logistics and pathfinding maybe also very good for your major hero and this leads to the third point. 3/ Be quick. You want those mines as early as possible. You want more cities to produce more units. You want to be able to flee from too big enemies and you want to be able to chase smaller enemies before they take your mines or not well defended cities. 4/ You want to optimise the development of your cities, especially the first. What you want is to get the most potent army possible at the moment you planned. This last moment depend greatly on the map difficulty and size. This is why, for city development you have to go for money earnings (city size, treasures if you play rampart) and unit dwellings. Ex : in big maps, I generally plan to get the 'efficient army' size on weeks two to four (depending on possibilities and neutral unit stacks). If I play the castle (human), I will check how to build monks quickly since I intend some heavy use of those shooters. My next dwellings target will be archangels (if I have access to mines quickly). 5/ This development will orient what your main hero will do in the first weeks with a limited power and a limited number of units. If I plan my city development, I know what resources I need to get. After some yime, you will know quickly what fights you can do and what you can expect as building targets. 6/ During combat, you have as an objective to minimize losses. That means that you want to : - destroy sources of damages in the first round of the enemy. If your units don't move (i.e. wait and maybe move after the enemy units move), most of the enemy units won't be able to destroy some of your units. Thus, you will target shooters and magic users. - only melee attack when you want for either destroying efficiently the adversary (only the units that remain after your attack will retaliate, thus if your first attack destroys 80% of the enemy stack, only 20% will retaliate), to protect your shooters or to avoid that the enemy attacks first. - mass spells are powerful (that's why you will need the magic school specializations) like mass haste, mass slow, mass bless or curse even, and can change greatly the outcome of a battle round. - there are spell tactics that are real army killers. Most are not damage spells. Those are blind (the blinded unit's retaliations do 0 damage and blinded unit can't act until attacked), clone (duplicate your melee units to absorb the retaliation of the enemy stack and then mass attack the unit without losses), berserk, resurrection (or clone on archangels that have the resurrection ability) and other I don't remind at the moment. After that, strategies and tactics begin to be more specific and depend on your race and what map you're on. Normally, the first campaign is relatively easy (castle units). If you want first an idea you can play : - first play the begining of a huge map up to the moment you cross an AI enemy. You will acquire a good idea of how to develop. - then do a very small map to get an idea of how to develop 'efficiently'. - play again the same map above (or just the beginning of it if you get quickly your answers) to see how you are a LOT more efficient. - enjoy anything, you should have the basis to win most maps without 'suffering'. A good internet site for homm resources is celestialheavens.

I was thinking of grabbing a HoMM game in the GOG sale-- is III the consensus-best of the part of the series that they have available (which I think is 1-4)? Some die-hard fans claims that II is better, but I've never played it, so I couldn't say. III did seem to be what made it "popular" (as wargames go). Well, I'm sure you can find die hard fans saying that Pong was at the top of game development and that nothing is better than it. To sum up a bit about Homm : - first one is very limited but it's the begining. - Second one is what was considered the classical Homm. As far as I remember, there are only two campaigns, but good one and very difficult in the end. Some small issues in the gameplay, the UI being a bit heavy at some moments. - the third one is the most complete and developped, but all the expensions made it a bit over developped with a lot of different and very expensive dragons to hire. Certainly the best if you are looking for a strategy game. - the forth one has been criticised a lot by the fans and certainly had at the begining a lot of AI issues, but is not a bad game at all. In fact, it's the only Homm game ith that many RPG elements in it (your hero is a unit itslef, i.e. can be killed in the battlefield). There are some balances issues when heroes are high levels since fighting heroes, like barbarian, become one-man armies. But it's fun. You just can't consider it a very strict strategy game because of this unbalancing element. Yet, I do appreciate the campaigns in it and some improvements with caravans, armies that can move without a hero and monsters that can move a bit. - Homm 5 is like a 'get back' to the third opus, yet is too my taste, inferior. - the sixth one is certainly easier in the empire management and the story is quite well done. In the end, I would say that the third is the best strategy game of the series but the fourth has some interesting elements if you want to try a Homm game a bit different. If you've never played a Homm game, I would say to pick the third installment and if you like it but want to try something with a bit of RPG, try the fourth after.

There is UbiPlay (or something like that) : you can play in offline mode (you have to click in a tiny offline button after disconnection) but then you miss some bonuses and the legendary weapons. It's a bit frustrating, but the game itself is sufficiently fun even with the crap of Uplay

In the volume options in the advanced tab turn down the sound quality to 24 bit 48khz. Or even 16 bits if this doesn't solve. Also check the configuration of your speaker, you may be in 5.1 config and only have two speakers.

I second that. KB and KBAP are really good games.

I've been playing Bioshock 2 last days. A bit too much action oriented (but normal, I guess for a FPS) and certainly too short. Yet, it has some originality and for 5 euro, it's ok.

Runaway is pretty good.

I would say Dead money, Honest hearts, Old world blues and Lonesome road. But as far as I remember, first two have no real link and thus could be played in any order. I'm playing frayed knight after having seen a reference about it in another thread of this forum. It's pretty fun so far.

She doesn't deserve vitriol and harsh language. More like removed permanently from society. Probably something involving padded walls. I work in the software industry and consider myself blessed working with stuff that only fits a particular purpose. Usually tied very closely to corporate business processes and no two businesses are the same. Nobody pirates my stuff. That doesn't mean I can't relate to the sentiments of my colleagues who works with "shrink wrapped" products. They work long hour and holidays too, but get screwed over by pirates and in addition have to suffer mocking, juvenile insults and cajoling for the crime of trying to make a living by creating something. Why exactly those who seems to enjoy monkey style poo flinging should be excempt from contempt I don't understand. I'm working in a computer research center and find many teams of researchers/developers suffering from theft by software companies : since the research center need to find money, they have to mount collaborations with companies so that european research agencies give them money. So, during algorythm development/prototyping and development itslef, many teams have seen the companies they work with put engineers in development in parallel (using what the research centers discovered) and put a licence on a colaboration product at their only name. Research centers can do nothing since companies have armies of lawyers and research centers are by essence poor (in Europe). Of course, it's not in entertainment business, it's in professional software business where a software is much more expensive to buy. Just to moderate the idea that companies are good and the only one suffering from piracy.

I'm not convinced by Bastion after several hours playing it. I don't see what people find good in this game.

Ah, the good old entitlement argument, I knew you'd show up eventually. Orchomene, I skimmed your overly long post and all I got was you are nitpicky and you might be trying to justify piracy, but you don't want to commit fully. Not at all. Otherwise, why would I pay for the games I play with ? Explanation is not justification. Piracy itself is an effect on the choices of our society. That don't means it is a welcome effect, yet it is a natural one. When something has a low production cost compare to its development cost, people will replicate it. This replication is illegal only because the only way developers/producers get paid for the money/time spent is by selling the final product (which itslef, as a product and with only considering its production price has no cost). If developers and producers had an other mean to get paid, that wouldn't be illegal and they would be the first to applause to those that help them deliver the product. Take the music example : some musicians put their lyrics free to download on their own site. Why ? Because they get paid by concerts and events. Thus, having people helping them deliver their songs to other would help them become known and attract people to their concerts.

You can also wait for huge sales or go for the second hand market.

Bastion is at less than 5 euros on both Steam and Gamersgte. Drakensang expansion Phileasson

But piracy is not subjective at all. You are taking property without permission. The people who have worked to create what you are taking are unhappy about that. There isn't any moral 'grey area' here. Not really true. Intellectual property is at the limit of the concept of property and remains in many cultures unaccepted for its absurd constraint put on a society. I won't develop too much in the concept of property and usage, but those two point of views remain a long time in opposition and property became the winner during european dark ages and has been spread to many places in the world by constraint in opposition to most other cultures. In short, property is the merchant ideal : everything has a price (well, as long as it enters the market concept) and obtaining something by a legitimate (i.e. socially accepted) acquisition (being legal theft or by exchange of money or something accepted by the former owner of the 'object') is essentially unchanging (the owner can break it, can sell it has a full control on the usage of it). Whereas usage is a communitarian ideal that is collectively better than property but is individually poorer. With usage concept, no object is the unchanging property of its owner since if the owner/user has no usage of it, the object can be given to someone else. The user has no right to break it or sell it. In China, you don't buy a house for more than ten years. You just buy the usage of it for ten years. After ten years, the house will be given back to the collectivity that can sell its usage to someone else. In many cultures, usage is considered above property because when you are not in an overabundant society, having 'objects' that can't get back to the collective pool can be an unacceptable concept that can trigger a lot of rebellions (especially if food is concerned or any essential goods). Now, to get back to intellectual property, we reach the limit of the property concept because you don't really own a physical object. When you buy a video game, you don't buy a CD or a digital code, you buy a license that allows you to use the software at leisure. At first, second hand market was limited since the intellectual property was linked to a physical support that could see some degredation and was more difficult to exchange that an immaterial information. With internet and the development of second hand markets, the second hand market becomes a lot more difficult to restrain. That's the second hand market issue that is tolerated by comparison with physical property yet reaches the limit of the ideal for merchants. What is absurd is in the sentence : "You are taking property without permission." You don't take anything since there is no deprivation of the owner. The owner has the same thing he had and could not see (without spying you) that you are using the software (or other intellectual property). Piracy at this moment (without considering the economical effect linked to the way developper and producer earn their money from 'selling') is just a multiplication of an intellectual good. Like seeing shoes by a merchant, going home and producing shoes for its own usage. There is nothing morally wrong. After that, producing more shoes and giving shoes to other people is not morally an issue. The moral issue is that the merchant used its margin on the shoes he sells to receive the money he spent (and time he spent if he is the one who developped the shoes) on developping the conecpt of the shoes. But all the banter to say that in usage moral, piracy is not immoral at all. What is immoral is the possibility to deprive both categories of people of something : the merchant deprives the usage to the one that don't pay for something that has almost no production cost (development cost, yet almost no production cost since it can be duplicated with very few resources), and the pirates deprive the producer/developer from the time/money they spent on development. I don't have a lot of solutions since property is such culturally inscribed in western society, yet intellectual property remains heavily refused in some intellectual domains (research being one, no one can put a licence on a new mathematical theorem) and is subject to legitimate contest since it is a very poor way to handle such kind of immaterial goods (high development cost, almost no production cost, i.e. the first produced cost several millio0ns and second one and followers cost almost nothing).

Yep, Gamersgate should be cheaper since GT 2 is a german game and generally those are cheaper on GG. At the moment, it's 20% sale on GG, btw.

I've now played a big part of Grotesque tactics 2. Impressions so far are good. Bad points are controls (especially camera control), but since it's turn based, you can suffer it with not too much pain. I think it's a bit less linear than the first one and keeps refreshing a bit the humour. The PC is less cricatural and there are a bit more banters from the NPC. All in all, I don't think it's a bad sequel and if you enjoyed the first one, you will likely enjoy also this one.

First I just want to say I'm against pirates because it's outlawed and laws are a social agreement in a community that one has to respect if one wants that the social system works. There is no moral issue in information piracy since, contrary to what people say, it's not theft (because nothing is lost). Also, I need to add I'm against intellectual property, but it's not really the point. I'm also strongly against DRM, last Ubisoft game (heroes 6) that I bought used a system in which you had to be continually connected to internet to benefit from all the elements in the game. You could play offline but would then have no weapon and lose some advantages (at least, it was not impossible to play offline). Result : since I'm having erratic internet connexions and since when playing online, a quick disconnection/reconnection would then stop the game (without saving of course and you can't save during a battle), I had to play offline and then had to play a degraded version of the game. Maybe hackers did circumvent the issue and played a game with a higher service, I don't know. It's not the point. The point was to say that DRM in this case just added frustration to legit customers. Piracy ruins the business of only retarded publishers that did not understood how the market has evolved. Let's give two similar examples : - IBM (PC) against Apple (Mac) - and more recently, Apple (iOS) against Google (Android). In both cases, the winner has suffered from "technology piracy". Of course, it wasn't piracy since the technology wasn't protected. But the lack of protection was what determinant in the success. It was not their protection policy that saved Apple, it was just brilliant marketing after very painful years of seeing the ship sink. It's pretty simple : if X people buy your product and 10*X people pirate it, then your market impact is of 11*X people touched by your product. You then gain an impact being 11 times more important than if nobody uses it. This impact is technological (as in creating a standard) for hard/os products. You then are the one which is a technological reference and attracts attention on other service you can offer (see IBM). The impact is cultural for entertainment product : you may create a new trend, some neologism that directly refers to you (like 'diablo clones') This cultural impact is essential for developers/designers/companies for their following titles : people will follow what will comes next (so less marketing needed), people may become more indulgent on smalll issues (better reviews) and so on. Now about sales. There is no legitimate issue to consider that if a product is not pirated, then pirated version would become sold versions. It's just not realistic. It's of course the case when there is overpiracy (whatever the reason for it). In the middle term, it may become the inverse, even maybe in short term, because of the advertisement effect (even if a friend of mine got an illegal copy of a game I would never have thought to be enjoying, if he recommends it to me, I would buy it, thus the pirated copy helped to sell a copy). I think the business world of entertainment has not yet finished to learn from successes like Google and Facebook. It's just the beginning. They need to quickly adapt and History showed sufficiently that people that fight against normal (as in 'in the norm') evolution of a market disappear. All in all, in the end, I never pirate a game because I know that the developer companies need to sell games to survive (I'm also a developer after all, even if it's not in entertainment business). But I'm also hoping they quickly find an alternative to their business policy. Otherwise, they will suffer in a not so far future.

It's interesting. I don't know what can be expected of such a RPG, but if mechanics, dialogues and story are at the rendez-vous, then I would buy it. I can't say I'm a big fan of south park, but it can be fun.

Sure thing.

I've got that one on my wishlist at Gamersgate. I enjoyed the first one tremendously. I enjoyed it too. I can't say for the moment about this second installment since I've not played a lot, but it seems to be close with a bit more attention to graphic details (which wasn't really necessary to my taste, but ok). I thought that 16 euro was a good price for it.