Humanoid

Don't really have a lot to add, but am very much in the mood for this kind of thing as I've been utterly addicted to the old spy game Covert Action for the last few days. Of course, wiretapping and bug planting don't really translate all that well into the Eternity setting (aside from 'a wizard did it'), but as I also personally always play the thief class as primary, the idea of breaking into mansions and palaces and eavesdropping and stealing/duplicating physical evidence greatly appeals to me. You could also fit in the idea of tailing important people or staking out certain locales, but that tends to lend itself more to passive, text-driven, gameplay a'la Darklands. To shoot myself down though, there's an obvious issue with introducing an extensive gameplay element potentially linked to only one or two classes out of a pool of eleven. Not impossible to broaden the definition of the various cloak and dagger sections to include a greater range of characters, of course, but difficult to do without diluting the role of each character's individual skills. Now in an ideal world you'd have parallel opportunities for the other class archetypes, such as the wizard accomplishing the same via scrying, the priest via divination, the bard via charming/seduction, and more general things like the strategic application of violence, but I'm not sure doing that extensively throughout a game of this scope is viable. One thing I'm most unsure about is the interpretation of the acquired pieces of intelligence. Would a clue as to a location of a future meeting be presented to the player as individual, obfuscated fragments of information; or would it be translated into a straightforward player-digestible statement once sufficient information is gathered? Would a coded message be presented to the player in raw form, who would then need to manually decode it (with the decryption key perhaps being another acquirable 'thing'); or would it be abstracted using the character's cryptography skill or intelligence stat? The former one of those things that while I like the idea of generally, am unsure of how it would fit in a 'proper' RPG. So, how about a new Alpha Protocol in 2017 with these elements and most of the action taken out then?

I would say a few recent projects kind of overestimated their pull if you look at the projects that have gone previously. Now I realise it's not just a matter of lowering the goal so that it's attainable, but the likes of SpaceVenture, Tex Murphy, Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen only pulled in the range of $400k-$700k, and they'd have a fair bit more brand recognition. More of less the same case with the Pro Pinball reboot that was asking for $400k, it really didn't seem viable from the start.

Both Might and Magic and to a lesser extent early Ultima had some sci-fi backstory too, and it kind of looks like that's what's happening here - guess that's "old-school" in a sense. Reads like you play a "future" guy who gets stranded (in both time and space, unclear) in a medieval world. If you squint, it's kind of like the Avatar arriving in Britannia from Earth. If the big stretch goal is reached, the second game will be a colleague of the first game's protagonist who's stranded on a different, more advanced (sounds almost post-apocalyptic?) world. EDIT: Getting a "Quantum Leap" sort of vibe - I guess the central gameplay conceit is that the "fixed" protagonist jumps into the body of the player character that you create (presumably the party leader of the four members). So you leap into the past to prevent a predicted apocalypse in the future.

Somewhat absurdly, I'll end up with four copies of Wasteland 2 as a result - not because I need four, or even two, but just as a side-effect of wanting the other goodies offered. If the $250+ tiers for Eternity have two digital copies then that's two I won't use, a similar outcome. Still, not really a complaint.

I'm looking at my Witcher 2 entry and there's no patch file listed, just the 10 part game download (which is the new Enhanced Edition) and extras with nary a patch to be seen. Would make sense for games where the dev/publisher has gone the way of the dodo I guess. I'm not a fan of the game client checking for downloads, they tend to be a bit iffy in the long term, even if the companies involved still exist (e.g. KoTOR2's patch server no longer exists, despite LucasArts being still alive), or even in the short term (I've never ever gotten The Sims 3 patcher to work, and it's a still actively developed game). EDIT: I see that same games, e.g. Dungeon Keeper 2, do have 'fixes' - but thinking that may be because it's a compatibility patch created by GoG as opposed to a developer-provided one.

GoG doesn't do patches, as far as I know - it'll likely be a good old fashioned self-extracting executable patch downloadable from, y'know, this website. Even GoG's own Witcher 2 patch was released on that game's own site, not via GoG: all the latter did was, after a short delay, update the regular full game download to be that of the latest version, but no standalone patch.

It's kind of put me on the spot: a boxed imported copy costs pretty much the same as the cheapest digital purchase I can get; I want a physical copy but I also want to play on release day and not wait for ~2 weeks for delivery. Might end up buying both and giving away the product key that's in the box I guess. Still sort of ridiculous since I expect there'll be nothing in the case except for one disc and a leaflet or two, but I really want something on my shelf.... Actually that reminds me, I did more or less the same with The Witcher 2, except for the giving away of the key part - was an even bigger expense since it was the CE.

Zaeed feels like a refugee from another game, so yeah. Not really a complaint though, it's passable comic relief (the accent and tendency to bring down disaster) without getting outright silly.

Kasumi... that's an NPC, right? I might just grab that one too. No idea if it's anything like Shale or Jervik in scope, but how bad can it be (famous last words)? Edit: For the other two, I'll look up some more information on them. Is like Zaeed, the free NPC, except that she's not free. Differs from regular companions by not having a recruitment mission (loyalty mission only) and by not having a dialogue system ('interact' just cues the next line in a linear series of lines)

I miss the days where you could just xcopy the whole directory over from drive to drive without having to worry about registry entries. It's the rare game that allows that now, although I note that WoW is one of them: only installed it once in 7 years. For the Steam drive size thing, you could get around it using symlinks (or one of the utilities that manages them) - my Steam games are split about 50:50 between my spindle drive and my SSD, though it's obviously a pretty tiny library to be able to do that.

Passing the time waiting for that remake of a classic Microprose game with another, sort of classic, Microprose game. Sid Meier's Covert Action - a game I didn't really get first time around: way too young to make sense of it. Sid reportedly doesn't like the finished product all that much, and I can see where's he's coming from - the minigames (for that's all this game is, a collection of minigames) is a little disjointed and doesn't really mesh together all that well. The overarching concept is great fun though, sort of like an advanced "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

I'm missing a bit of context here because the initial quote talks about "the CoD statement" as a thing, and one I'm not aware about (but can sort of infer). I'd imagine any arguments about the topic aren't about this claim in itself, because ultimately it's pretty mild and obvious. Instead I'd assume it's about any perceived mismatch between that statement and the corresponding direction taken by the games. The quote "....so we'd like to entice them in by showing them what we offer" is not valid if you do the enticement by changing the product that is offered.

I don't know the first thing about marketing, but the main thing I would think of in this situation would be to reverse the roles: what would the shooter marketers do if they were instructed to try specifically to grab the RPG/Adventure/Strategy/whathaveyou crowd. For someone fairly stubborn and set in their own ways, like myself, it's not hard to imagine slipping up and sort of offending me instead. I see this not irregularly with other markets, e.g. an outdoor activities ad campaign that denigrates other tastes like video gaming, the opera, fine dining, etc. I suppose that on the other hand, these people are not your market anyway and you're free to annoy them. I don't think for a moment that everyone's like that, but it's something to keep in mind - doing it "wrong" can put one, or indeed both sides, offside. EDIT: I've kind of misread the subject, but anyway - it looks like the debate is one of either simply advertising to the other side, versus adapting (some might say, compromising) your product to try to appeal to the other side.

I don't have a Steam ID (as far as I'm aware) - it looks more or less identical to the regular webpage, Store tab -> wishlist button on top right corner above the search box.

I get the same remove links and I'm in Australia - works both via a browser and via the client. Maybe you're not fully logged in properly?

I wish I had that kind of willpower when dealing with any game.

Heresy I know, but music is something I probably take note of least in a typical game, except a few that really grab me, or tickle the nostalgia bone: Interstate '76 Wing Commander 1/2 The Curse of Monkey Island There was a really cool African sounding track on Civ:Call to Power, no idea what it's called and it's literally the only good thing about that mess of a game. Then there's Baba Yetu, everyone loves Baba Yetu right? Hey it won a Grammy? Fake edit: Wow, Snake Rattle and Roll is a game that it seems gets lost when talking about classic NES games - which I won't blame anyone for because I tend to forget it myself. One of the earliest games I've played no doubt - alas too hard for a fat fingered kid.

And just like that, *ping*, 10 more games to the list for 135. See how that happens? Now I have 23 of those 31 sale titles.... Picked up the god games plus whatever adventure games I didn't already have, except the Phantasmagoria series because I'm a scaredy cat and Roberta Williams is the most sadistic game designer ever.

It went from somewhere around 110-120% of the total available obtainable points to about 90-95% I believe - so still requires a lot of "work" with the menial sidequests and such.

Back to the Bloodlines hotel level for a moment: I liked it, and I *never* play horror games (or watch horror movies). In terms of scare or creepiness factor though, a lot of it is kind of offset by the fact that you, the player character, are not running from monsters, but that you *are* the monster. Sure you're not invincible, but stuff tends to be a bit less intimidating when you're basically the freaking Batman.

"Boyz n da Wood"

"You may be the God of Death, but I am the Death of Gods! Rrrrargh!" Okay, maybe only possible in the third game of the series at the earliest, but still. "....and if there really is a god, it will be necessary to abolish him!" (That's a quote from somewhere, but I forget the source, apologies)

Both mundane and spectacularly decadent at the same time. Baking a loaf of bread in Ultima 7. With a bucket of blood instead of water.

Film-reel style tin

5 minute chocolate cake