Calax

I think that this is a better venue for the heroes concept. In warcraft three there was supposed to be an epic war where huge armies clashed. In Warhammer 40k the same is true but Marines in particular are only ever put into play in small contingents.

I've found that sometimes moderators are the spammiest people around.

Wow, thats a really great idea. I wish WoW did that. Not because I mind changing gear, thats the carrot of WoW, but because it sounds so cool. Can you give a few examples of traits that you can apply to weapons/armor? It's almost too complicated to explain, the write ups don't do justice to the way it ends up working. You recover an artifact and take it to a master craftsman to identify it. There are certain properties already given to it, maybe ice or fire damage. Then you can use scrolls to give it a title, and the title also modifies what damage it does (westernesse, dwarf-iron, etc.) Then you can insert three items to enhance the stats. The items can be swapped in and out (although I think it destroys them when you swap out). I went with a strength bonus and a couple other things. Then it levels up as you kill stuff. Each level grants certain bonuses to the stats. The weapons are all class specific, so many of the bonuses enhance my skills. Personally I think that WoW should have done this for the Death knights weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Per..._of_Time_(film) awww hell.

I think that for Yhatzee to be effective as a reviewer he has to hate the game because that's the only time that you actually get a view of the real problems that the game has.I've found that after playing a game or two that are on his crap-list or his "meh It's OK" list that his problems with the games are valid and the willingness of the player to forge on dispite the problems is what makes the game. (his Airborne review is spot about the problems) but alot of what he posts anymore is personal preference rather than game problems or such.

I've played through about have of it and think the game would have been better with different combat. It can be hard to run and jump up a box onto a catwalk and then have a fast enough reaction to turn 90 degrees to your right to hit triangle at the perfect time to block his melee attack and then take his gun (knocking him out in the process) The game really shines (like Prince of Persia) when you are just dicking around on rooftops trying to find your way from point a to point b. The only problem is that usually in order to add some urgency to your running (if you weren't getting a thrill just freerunning) they have a helicopter or guys with guns to keep you moving. This usually means you get to play "die 6 times to figure the EXACT perfect route to get to your target location and because your timing was off just a hair so the guy with a gun bashed your head in". Some of the puzzles are a little bit unintuitive but when you figure them out it can be really satisfying. Unless of course it takes you 15 tries to actually finish the puzzle because you have to wall-run then jump to a suspended maintence walkway thats got a glass floor and then rush along it to jump off the other end into a tight hallway while being shot at from 3 stories down. That puzzle can go jump off a cliff in my opinion. And despite what developers said in the various interviews and QA sessions with the press, the game rewards you for fighting because then you don't have to worry about getting shot at while you figure out the route you need to take. but like I mentioned before the combat is terrible, and you can take two bashes from an opponent or about ten hits from a gun before you go down. Also some of the puzzles don't have enough wiggle room for the player to comfortably perform the acrobatic feat but this isn't nearly as big a problem as I've only encountered it once in the half the game I've played through. All in all I'd reccomend it because it's REALLY fun to free run your way across the rooftops of this whitewashed city. and the combat though terrible is actually pretty easy to do if you know whats coming.

wait wait wait... I thought uwe boll had a lot more movies to his credit than what I'm seeing on his imdb page. also I challenge you all to get through Gladiators and Amazons I did but only because there was boobies and I was 15 at the time.

Red Alert three between leveling my Warrior

Three Kingdoms Attributed to Luo Guangzhong (I think thats how to spell his name) Also goes by Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Try for the Moss Roberts translation. It's somewhat accurate but does throw in a few fictional stories (fortunatly they left out the story of Zhang Yun being killed by being poked by his wifes needle)

Heres the thing about MMO's, because of the nature of their content and how they are set up, you could not have a single player game active at the same time or after in terms of timeline. This is because if you set it during the MMO then you have to have an event or somthing to show the events of the game. If you don't then the two games will appear to be out of sync and the Single player game will be declared "non-cannon" in favor of what people pay monthly for. If you set the game further down the road from the MMO then the MMO will have to have a definite end point for their content. They would have to build themselves to that event or the game has to be so far down the road that it has tenuous connections to the MMO and in this case almost nothing to do with the previous games. In a nutshell: If you run a Singleplayer game that's either cocurrent or post your mmo wile the mmo is still running then you are limiting what you can do in the mmo, and the Devs will never want to do that. This is why Warcraft 4 will only happen if WoW somehow dies. This is a relevant post, and I agree. However, the MMO takes place 300 years after Revan leaves known Space. Still you can't exactly have a galaxy threatening war on the scale of the Sith and Jedi Civil wars without decimating the populations of the Jedi again. Just to get the Jedi population large enough that they can have Jedi be a character class I think they need those 300 years to be relatively peaceful.

From what Little I understand from my mom and former teachers the California Teachers union is one of the most powerful unions in the state and has a stranglehold on every teacher that is willing to work.

Forced Co-op. Co-op is great but when you design a game around it the single player who goes for it gets shafted like no tommarow.

2 things Union's aren't always a good thing. It seems like now a days the Teachers union is designed to keep the teachers from having to do work (My highschool math teacher was the Union rep for the school... she was proud that she had forced the school to literally cut down class times to the bare minimum of what the local Union had to work... and this was done in the scale of minutes). Also at a higher level it seems like the Teachers Union in particular is somewhat useless. Once a teacher gets vested or tenure or some such then they can't be kicked out for being a bad teacher. This was a problem at my highschool where my Science teacher was a drug addict (painkillers) and was also emotionally unstable. half way through my second year the school finally had enough leverage to have him forcefully retired. And two: Was it Nixon who fired every union air traffic controller that was union because the union was asking for outrageous benefits and even higher pay when they were the highest paid group on the planet?

Heres the thing about MMO's, because of the nature of their content and how they are set up, you could not have a single player game active at the same time or after in terms of timeline. This is because if you set it during the MMO then you have to have an event or somthing to show the events of the game. If you don't then the two games will appear to be out of sync and the Single player game will be declared "non-cannon" in favor of what people pay monthly for. If you set the game further down the road from the MMO then the MMO will have to have a definite end point for their content. They would have to build themselves to that event or the game has to be so far down the road that it has tenuous connections to the MMO and in this case almost nothing to do with the previous games. In a nutshell: If you run a Singleplayer game that's either cocurrent or post your mmo wile the mmo is still running then you are limiting what you can do in the mmo, and the Devs will never want to do that. This is why Warcraft 4 will only happen if WoW somehow dies.

I haven't seen quantum yet but I didn't really like the feel of Casino. the beginning struck me as unbond like given that usually instead of showing a no holds barred bathroom fight it would have just been left at the conversation between bond and his target.

Then explain to me why teachers are payed a pittance when the "most valuable resource in the world" is in their hands?

I'm going to disagree. I can't use my crowbar or baton because someone flicked the 'lock-down' switch built into it. That makes no sense. Well I honestly don't remember if there was melee weapons in IW but in Metal Gear Solid they had a way to make your nanites lock out the ability to fire a gun.

Pierce Brosnan faced mostly Business men when you look at it. Goldeneye: a traitor Tommarow never dies: a news magnate TWINE: A Oil Magnate Die Another Day: A Korena Col. **** Dimond magnate.

:attempts to stifle an Enzyte joke:

For something to be popular, someone somewhere would have to find it worthwhile (and hence "good") on some level, wouldn't it? :looks at the sonic franchise: Not entirely true Alan, Sometimes things are popular because of nostalgia.

Red Alert three... My Soviet Campaign stalled out when I had to fight with 2 opposing factions after my funds had been drained. My Allied campaign I just started and I haven't touched the Empire. Thoughts: The game seems to lack a real connection to the previous titles. SURE the Allies still have Chronosphere tech and the Soviets have Tesla Coils but they don't have the level of usage that they had back in RA2 (no Tesla generators. Tesla tanks got replaced by a naval/ground unit.) and the Allies (from what little I've seen) Don't seem to have anything in common with the Allies of RA2. There are little things here and there (Von Eisling AFB in Iceland. Von Eisling was the Supreme Allied Commander during the first war) but they don't have the controlled zanyness that RA2 had. Instead some of the units seem like they've been created at a whim. The allies now use attack dogs, while the Soviets use... bears. yes Grizzly Bears that will maul any infantry and stun them with a cry. No Psychic Commandos, no Rocketeers... I donno, the tone feels different than RA2. Also the Emphasis on hot chicks is misplaced in my opinion. The new Tanya doesn't seem right after the other Two actors were Brunettes. And the Soviet superinfantry is Natasha a sniper chick who's uniform looks like it was made out of plastic rather than anything useful. Why could they stick to the guy that worked... Boris and his dog Ivan? Boris being a AK wielding supersoldier who targeted buildings for airstrikes (not unlike natasha which makes you wonder why they changed the character at all). Also every unit has a secondary ability for a specific situation. Conscripts have the ability to swap to molotovs, Peacekeepers (replacing the Allies standard GI's) can swap to riot shields, and then there's transforming robots that switch between air mode and land mode. There is an Emphasis by the game on the Naval portion of the game, you can actually build most of your base on the water, but not all units are amphibious, and they took away a standard transport and left the Russians at least with a helicopter that can carry.... ONE tank. which means either you spend stupid amounts of cash to get your entire tank force rushed in at the same time (and giving them a chance if landing in hostile territory) Or you find a spot that looks empty do your darndest to secure it with either a team of infantry and maybe a naval team that's missiles don't track moving units very well then nickle and dime your armor into position. and for what I've seen of the new team (Empire of the Sun, who's Emperor is played by George Takei) it seems like the dev team said "what's Iconic about Japan?" and promptly put all of that into the game. You've got transforming robots, a japanese schoolgirl as the commando, a giant robot that looks like a feudal japanese warrior. Also the new Allied commander (ostensibly you're supposed to play the entire game Co-op with a friend) is (depending on the situation) either Really good (he completes objectives before I can get around to it in the early levels) or terrible (can't figure out how to get an aussalt team across the lake to hit the enemies base so it starts building the heaviest navy it can... which is useless when the opponents navy/air force is making constant passes demolishing anything new on the water). The story side of the game is... unsound to say the least, basically the soviets do the exact same thing as Einstien did back in '46 and go back in time and kill someone (Einstien killed hitler, the soviets kill Einstien). the Repercussions from this action are supposed to explain the fact that theres different commanders, different technology, and the fact that the Soviets can't use their staple that's been in the games since their creation, the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal. However this falls flat on it's face when the Allies start zapping in troops with a Chronosphere. For those who weren't paying attention or have never played a red alert game, the Chronosphere is a weapon designed and created by Einstien in 1946. Initially he used it to go back in time (as I mentioned before) and kill Hitler as Hitler is released from prison in Munich(?). Now the Soviets at the beginning of the game are able to jury-rig their own version and go back in time and kill Einstien before the events or Red Alert 1. So, Einstien is not around to give the Soviet Union nukes but somehow the Allies still have the Chronosphere technology and mirrors of the other toys Einstien came up with during Red Alert 2. I donno maybe I'm nostalgic for one of the better Strategy games to grace computers in the past 10 years but this game just doesn't sit right with me. It's an Ok game if you are willing to suspend disbelief at the plot, but the Co-op would have been better implemented with either an entirely different campaign devoted to it for each faction, or they went back and retooled all the levels and designed them around a solo mode and a coop mode and leave the allied commanders out of it. Its a fun game, if you look at the game by itself with a few problems. but I think they should have toned down the unit ideas (I still can't believe one of the units is a trained attack bears... at least with giant squids you had an explanation that Yuri was in their heads.) Also the levels seem to lack a personality that they had back in RA2. I have yet to run into a mission like the one where you had to defend a Soviet Battle Lab from allied spies and troops that were chronoed in behind you're lines. Or the massive siege of Moscow, or any of the set pieces the old team used (how could we forget the collapse of the statue of liberty in the first allied mission? or the defense of the pentagon?) Red Alert three seems to have taken instead of the slightly (only slightly) grounded technology and iconic battles of Red Alert 2 and amped up the tech and left the iconic battlefields behind. All in all I'll just say its an OK game with a few plot holes that you could drive a semi through. I'll probably add a few posts about it as I work with the other factions more.

I don't know. I kinda liked the uncharted planets. I especially liked that they had virtually no tie ins to the story at all. It made me feel like I had a say in what I was doing. What I would have liked is if there would have been a reason for me to do the non-essential stuff. Make the main quest feel a little less rushed (they kept putting emphasis on the fact that time was in short demand) and instead reinforce that the threat you're about to face needed you to get as much resources as you could (and make stuff available that was so expensive that you couldn't afford it if you didn't do a lot of side-stuff). Just make sure that stuff isn't essential to finish the game so the side quests are still optional. Maybe they'll just make the end game a bit easier. Or give cooler bonuses for maxed out characters. Just make it rewarding to do the grinding stuff somehow, while making it feasible that your character would actually consider doing it, instead of going off to fight the big bad rightnow. It helps give that illusion of choice. (and maybe add a bit more variation to the side-planets, not a lot, but maybe have 2-3 different styles of planets at least) I wouldn't have minded the uncharted planets that much if they weren't so disconnected. If they had a connection at least slightly to the story then they might have been more worth doing but as it is I just felt like i was doing the same 2 quests over and over and over and over and that's not necessarily a good thing. It would probably be better if they had fewer planets that were sidquest only but then packed those planets with quests. The Citidel was AWESOME how it did it's quests but after that quests usually went "go here kill X" and I get enough of that in WoW.

what a closed mind you have.

According to the EU Palpatine didn't do this just to himself. He also did it to the designer of the origional Death star. There was a pretty good short story where the guy kept relating how he died in various times (eaten by piranah beetles, Dipped in Nickel, ejected into space...)