GhostofAnakin

I'm the same way. When I start a game, I stick with it until I'm finished with it. That's why when I discuss a game on here, it's usually the same game for weeks at a time. I don't know how folks can play more than one game at a time.

I don't know if the import-a-Hawke would be a good decision. I know it's a different team/engine (it's a different engine, right?) than Mass Effect, but look at the fiasco of importing a Mass Effect 2 Shepard into ME3. Is it even fixed yet? It wasn't the last time I played ME3. And that was for the main character. Imagine how much time would have to be allocated to the process, and this time it's for a (potential) NPC party member, not even the main character. My personal opinion is this is one of those things that should be steered clear of.

Eh, why? Or do you mean that anything that Bioware does results in a lot of upset? I thought it would be cool in a ballsy way that I haven't seen in ages, if ever, in game design. I mean that lots of people would be upset to see Hawke being an uncontrolled NPC, as it would very likely defy the character the Dragon Age 2 players made him to be. And there's nothing really for Bioware to gain from that. Unless they make Hawke a chick who you can bang. Then it would be like seeing a sex scene from both a first and third person perspective between DA2 and DAI. Isn't that right up BioWare's marketing alley?

I'm tempted to get Splinter Cell Blacklist, but I'm not sure how "stealthy" it is. I don't mind having to do things in a stealthy manner, but I'd like a bit of forgiveness. One spotting by a guard and game over just isn't fun for me. So a couple of missions like that, fine. But I'm worried every single mission will be like that. I bought one way back (forget which one) and that kind of thing turned me off from finishing it. Though I've read that the last installment was a bit more "action focused", which gives me hope that maybe it will be to my liking.

Defiance's servers seem to spend more time down than they do working. Between that and the lag during major arkfalls, they're lucky there aren't any current games that interest me. Otherwise the game would have been shelved awhile ago.

I like Alpha Protocol, but also think reviewers had every reason to hammer it. Maybe, if they actually hammered it for its flaws. It certainly had its share of them. But in most of the reviews I saw that wasn't what the complaints were about. Instead, like I said, they hammered it for not being what they were expecting it to be.

One of the reasons I'm still on the fence about the game is the very reason you've commented on. Sometimes reviews punish a game not for what it is, but for what it isn't. They have preconceived notions about what they believe it will be, then rip it to shreds when it isn't that, even though the game never claimed to be. Obsidian's own Alpha Protocol is a perfect example of this. The reviews hammered it, because they were expecting Splinter Cell. But to this day, it's one of my favorite games to replay.

If I were you and had decided in the end to buy XCOM, I'd definitely wait for the expansion XCOM: Enemy Within and get them together. Replayability was one of the biggest problems with the core-game and the expansion is added a lot of new maps to be cycled for regular missions as well as new research trees, weapons and enemies. Isn't that expansion for the previous XCOM game released last year? I was referring to the newly released Declassified game. Amazon is pretty awesome with its delivery times. Every single time I order some books, I select the "free shipping option" which says it will be shipped within 5-7 days or something. But I've yet to have to wait that long for an order. Usually it arrives two days from the time I order it.

I actually thought it was the worst offering. Gaider seems to be getting better from a technical standpoint, but the subject matter in Asunder bored me to death. Then again I'm not interested in the DA universe for the mage/chantry plot they're shoving down our throats now.

I think the problem with the ME3 ending was they tried to be too smart for their own good, but don't have the talent to pull off the kind of ... philosophical/complex ending they came up with. The BioWare games with the most satisfying conclusions are the ones that tended to be more straightforward. They didn't tend to try and blow peoples minds. ME3's ending was an attempt to show the world they could be "deep" like the top authors in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but the problem is Bio's writers have the talent that's the equivalent of young adult novel writers.

And I was kind of looking forward to that, too. Bummer.

I was thinking of picking up that new XCom game, Declassified or something, but the reviews I've read aren't very glowing. So I might wait until a few folks that I trust play it before I make the leap. By then it might even be a lot cheaper.

They're the only tough Dark Matter enemy you face.

Seriously, the difficulty balance of Defiance is so out of whack, it's downright silly. I'm finally over in San Fran, and so I'm constantly stumbling onto those Dark Matter troops. The in-game dialogue and lore makes them appear "oooohhh so scary", but they give me much, much, MUCH less trouble than the raider blitzers or the elite mutant riflemen, two enemies who are supposed to be "cannon fodder" from the early stages of the game. I just don't know what Trion was thinking. It's like making the very first level of enemies the hardest, then 90% of the rest of the game's enemies are a cake walk, instead of the other way around.

I think this is the first time I've agreed with something Volourn has said. It almost makes me reconsider whether I should feel sorry for Anders after all.

That is because enemies never miss. Only explosives you can actively dodge can miss: grenades, rockets etc. Thus while boses can have amazingly powerful abilities, as you can dodge them if you learn the tells, you can beat them (I find the Volge Visceras are the worst. It is very easy to get the timing wrong when dodging their charge attack...). A raider with an SMG though can't be dodged and as the rate of fire is very high and the reload time is low, he'll chew through your shield and stop it from recharging and your health from regening. Speaking of the Volge, they're overdoing it recently with the Volge spawns. The last couple of days I've been playing, there's a Volge party literally scattered every 100 km. Worst of all, they're always spawned/camped right where the side mission starter points are, so I can't even start a side mission without a bunch of Volge running after me.

Triss is better looking than lazy-eyed Ashley or tentacle-head Liara. So already the Witcher > Mass Effect.

Finally made my way to San Francisco in Defiance's main story. What I'm finding is the game has massive balance issues. For instance, I've yet to have trouble with a single "end boss". Yet friggin' "grunt" raiders seem to take my shields down so easily after a couple of shots that I find myself having to retreat from them and recharging. It's just silly that a random raider that I stumble across while walking around the countryside is more of a threat to me than the main boss I face at the end of a chapter.

So you're referring exclusively to carry-over choices from TW1 to TW2? Fair enough. I haven't been able to play the first one all the way through (my PC is crap), so I can't comment on the ending stuff carrying over to TW2. However, when you say stuff like "little emphasis on player choice", you can't then ignore all the various choices the player is given within the individual game that have an affect on how the rest of the game plays out. Hell, Chapter 2 becomes almost an entirely different experience (in terms of who you interact with, what portions of the story you see, etc.) depending on your choice at the end of Chapter 1. Throughout, some quests aren't even available to you depending on previous decisions you made. If that's not player choice, I don't know what is.

What? If there's one thing the Witcher games have, it's a strong emphasis on player choice and consequences based on those choices. Or am I unclear on what you're saying? Because it sounds like your complaints are the exact opposite of what the Witcher games actually are.

I did all the episodic pursuits that were recently available, but none involved the PvP part of the game. They were just like the usual main mission and side mission structure. They seem to have disappeared now though. I'd finished them all with my main character, but noticed they weren't available for my second character. Honestly, I'm just stumped about why it appears that to kill the enemy in PvP, I need to nail him with literally 6 or 7 shots in a row (not allowing him to recharge), while I'm dead after a couple of shots. I can't count how many times I've actually got the drop on the enemy and plastered him with 2 or 3 shots before he even knows I'm there, only to get killed by said enemy because my shots do nothing while he can turn around and drop me with 2 shots. If my weapons actually did damage, I'd actually be killing in PvP because 90% of the time I get the first couple of shots in.

With CD Project Red, that's a good possibility. If there's one thing they've shown, it's that they tend to do the whole "your decisions affect later events" thing quite well.

The only way I get kills in Defiance PVP is with the turret or passenger side missile riding in the jeep. Otherwise, apparently my guns do the damage of a water pistol. Case in point, I had cloak enabled and snuck up on someone, firing at their back. I hit them 4 times before they'd managed to even evade, doing that stupid little bunny hop, and then hit them twice more before they were able to turn around and shoot me TWICE and kill me. What the crap is that? I shoot them six times, they survive. They hit me twice, I'm dead. And this happens WAY too much. Thank God for the contracts that only require me to actually play the games, not actually do well at them. Because the ones that actually require me to rack up kills go undone.

Like I said, only reason I do them is because one of the pursuits (I can't recall if it's the EGO one) requires maximum reputation with the four groups, including Echelon. I've taken to just hunkering down and using cloak to shoot people in the back, all the while not really caring how the team does since a lot of the contracts are simply "complete X amount of games of whatever game type". After I finished this week's contract, I'll finally have reached "familiar" status with Echelon. So I've still got a while to go to max out the reputation with them.

One EGO power kill away from completing my first daily Echelon contract. You'd think it would be a very easy contract to fulfill, what with only being required to get 5 EGO power kills in death match. You'd think so. But the MP is so horrible, IMO, that it takes me at least five matches to do so.