Humanoid

Sure, but it's more an example of technological "advancement" leading to less gameplay, not more. It was the same as the dawn of the 3D era where in terms of actual results, the games both looked worse and played worse than their direct predecessors. Rebel Assault's gameplay after all was a looping video overlaid with a targetting cursor. Arcade games in the preceding decade were magnitudes more involved. Star Fox was apparently released earlier that same year. But yeah, the TOR thing is more a case of "whatever, as long as I can ignore it" - people find their own niche in terms of fun in MMOs so I don't mind that it's there. I certainly didn't feel like I was missing out in WoW, not engaging in any PvP whatsoever in my last 4 years of it.

My general experience with Blizzard is that in their dictionary, "usable stealth" is synonymous with "exploitable loophole" and is something that must be stamped out as quickly as possible.

Rebel Assault is possibly the driving reason for my intense dislike of Star Wars in general, since it was my first real exposure to the setting. No, I haven't watched the movies in full to this day. Anyway, like so many other people, I got it with my Sound Blaster 16 + CD-ROM drive bundle, and it certainly was a disappointing introduction to the brave new world of "multimedia" gaming. It was over three years after Wing Commander for goodness. Fortunately the bundle contained some better stuff like Strike Commander, Ultima 8, Syndicate and Civilization.

If it gets less awkward at higher levels then that's good news - certainly wasn't reliable on my level 12 hunter. But yeah, I'm kind of splitting attention at the moment because none of my three current classes really hit the spot. But since I doubt I'll ever play long term, the prize will probably go to the most compelling storyline. And that description of healing does sound nasty - and this is coming from someone who has healed extensively in WoW with all four healing classes. After years of never needing to look at my hotbars during combat, it's certainly a jolt back to the past. I'm definitely not after something like classic WoW's "decursive" mod, which with a single keypress, scanned all 40 people in a raid, then cast the appropriate cleansing spell on the first valid target. But what I wouldn't be able to live without at a high level of play is a "clique" type mod - essentially context-sensitive mouse clicks to activate certain abilities. And I've just had my first taste of space combat and am now having unpleasant flashbacks to the awful Rebel Assault.

The less you can do with the classes today, the more extra classes they can sell you later.

Yeah, the movable UI elements that I didn't have during my first trial are an improvement in an absolute sense, but my problem is less button placement (since I'm fairly used to managing MMO keybinds) but the lack of feedback. How much longer is the cooldown on ability X? Has ability Y triggered? Is debuff Z currently applied to the target? In SWTOR the solution to all three of those issues, and more, is to keep goggling at your main hotbar and/or the tiny buff icons above the player and target unit frames. In that other big MMO, this information is available to the API and can be shown any way I like. A specific example: - The bounty hunter has a "Rail Shot" ability that does high instant damage, but can only be used if the target has a damage-over-time effect on them. Problem is, my source of damage-over-time is applied completely randomly so I have no predictable way of knowing whether Rail Shot can be used currently without focusing all my attention on my buttons. I have no intention of doing that, so presently I just disregard the ability altogether - fine so far for levelling but I expect such an approach is not viable at max level. An ability of this nature is straight out of WoW - however in that game I would typically solve the information issue with any combination of a) having a big horizontal timer bar showing time remaining on my DoT effects; b) having a large 2D graphic overlaid on the middle of the screen pop up; and c) a customisable audio cue every time the ability became available. Other similar examples: - Sith Warrior's Retaliation ability, that only is available after a successful defense (I assume this means after dodging or deflecting a blow). It's nigh-impossible to notice when that actually happens. - Smuggler's Vital Shot. A straightforward enough ability, a DoT with a fixed timer. But even this is more effort than it's worth to use, because to see the duration of the DoT currently, and therefore when I need to reapply it, I have to stare at the tiny icon above the enemy portrait. Suffice it to say, I don't bother using this ability either.

^ Echoing the demihuman fatigue, and I'll toss in alien species in the same breath - which just makes a Darklands-esque take on fantasy, or indeed a similar approach applied instead to sci-fi, very attractive to me. So in the end, I don't care whether they want to throw classical era fantasy, medieval fantasy, Victorian fantasy, contemporary urban, steampunk, cyberpunk or far-future sci-fi at me - just make it a humans-only affair. After all, humans can be as vile, mysterious, deceptive and downright ugly as any monster or alien. Give me a human adversary instead of some ancient god, orcs, dragons, demons, insectoid aliens or indeed reapers.

My completely selfish position is that the big O avoid any horror IPs - because I don't do that genre, and thus would hate to miss out on the anticipation of, and later the playing of, any such announced game.

I tried the Bounty Hunter too - had more fun with it than the smuggler in terms of combat mechanics, but it's not really doing anything for me plotwise. I mean the plot drivers are: Between this and the Sith Warrior that I tried immediately before, I also feel like there's less decision space for me personally when resolving quests - it's fairly frequently either chaotic stupid or obedient patsy. I suppose the cartoon villainy is the fault of the setting more than the game specifically, but yeah, I think I'll lean towards the Republic instead for better roleplaying freedom. And now for the rant which I've delayed a bit prior until I got a taste of how it applies to the different classes. In the end it made no difference however, it's the same one if I had stuck with just the one class. In the end, I think what will be the killer for me are the UI limitations. Sure, it's unfair to compare seven years worth of user-driven interface ingenuity in WoW (at one point, infamously, going to the extent of being able to draw 3D objects directly onto the gameworld). But the closedness of the design in terms of allowing any experimentation user-side at all is potentially a terminal issue for any MMO. Bioware has been able to get aware by making their single-player games progressively less and less customisable over the past decade, but extending such a policy to SWTOR is a case of self-inflicted foot-severing. Further, I think it's also a case of a disparity between the design of character abilities and the backing of the interface required to effectively use them. My UI for WoW circa 2005 was roughly about as functional as TOR's today. Critically, however, TOR's combat complexity aspires to be about the same as WoW's circa 2012. A sensible goal, to be sure, but the player flat out doesn't have the tools to use the abilities effectively. To wit: In 2005, a typical class would use two, maybe three abilities total over the course of a standard battle. In 2012, it's more like 5-6 in constant use, plus 2-3 more that get used every 30-120 seconds. In the former case, it was fully possible to operate at near maximum effectiveness with the game's terrible standard interface. In the latter, the limitations would be crippling and I would elect not to play at all in preference to using it. That's how I'm starting to feel with TOR's combat, and I'm not yet even level 20. Either combat ability usage needs to be simplified to fit the limitations of the UI, or the UI advanced enough to accommodate the desired level of combat complexity.

Wasn't there some hinting about an expansion announcement this year? Could be bridging content so the shift wouldn't be so jarring.

Is there actually a way to properly preview voices other than the word or two they utter when you select the class/gender combination? Creating all 16 combos (necessarily involving deleting some of them to free up character slots) is tedious - especially if one's silly enough like me to spend way too long customising appearance then deciding to change because of the voice. Thus far: Female Smuggler - like the voice ....shame about the class not being fun Female Jedi Knight - didn't work for me Male Sith Warrior - most recent attempt, but about 5 levels in, starting to grate.

Guess even almighty GoG can't find any copies of The Lost Vale, U8's infamously 100% finished expansion which was destroyed when EA decided to not bother releasing it. Though really its only value is just as some sort of historical curio, it's interesting how thoroughly its existence has been scourged from the planet. One thing that has reemerged though, is the Prince of Persia source code, found in the back of Mechner's closets.

If by "cracking" one means "downloading the unprotected DRM-free files from the Internet," sure.

I fully accept the position that backing a game proposal on Kickstarter is not economically rational. But economically rational behaviour is what led us to the lamentable, creatively bankrupt, blockbuster-oriented current state of the gaming industry. Therefore I will embrace and celebrate the irrational amongst us - I paraphrase, but the saying goes "a reasonable man adapts to the world; an unreasonable man adapts the world to suit him - it is therefore upon unreasonable men that change depends on."

Wouldn't even need to change the character graphics for the gender switch!

Apparently the Enhanced Edition is activated now - but there may be an issue with a corrupted patch pre-download which can be manually rectified with replacing parts 1 and 2 from the following: http://en.thewitcher.com/ee_manual reference: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/installer_corrupt/page1

A walled garden within a walled garden. *explodes*

^ Given the budgetary limitations though, I'd rather not see an attempt to create a completely new set of gameplay mechanics which aren't guaranteed to be used again for future projects. Would much rather see the use of mostly established nuts and bolts under the hood and focus the effort on content creation. Question then is what balanced and proven game system can be had for zero-to-minimal cost?

Just because I can do something on a harder difficulty, doesn't mean there's any extra enjoyment to be gained from it. Prime example is DAO's first Ogre in the tower in Ostagar. Just about everyone employed the run around in circles while shooting it strategy, and so did I on the first time around. Wasn't compelling gameplay in any way shape or form though. So next time through I set the game to easy right from the beginning to bypass the tedium.

Which is just another example of ME3 paying for ME2's sins. Biting off more than they can chew and so forth.

Those Heroes Chronicles standalone campaigns based on HoMM3 were such cynical cash-ins, but having skipped them initially, I'm rather happy with them being available on GoG. No matter how questionably written, HoMM campaigns do enough to keep me in.

Voting for which concept gets first dibs is open. Early numbers showing that the Moebius one easily ahead - one imagines because of the Gabriel Knight comparisons.

To fix ME3's plot, the first thing one should do is fix ME2's plot. Seriously, partial reboot up to the end of ME1, but with ME3's gameplay format would be the cleanest way to do it.

Inspired by the Kickstarter discussion thread, MOO2, for the first time in about 7-8 years. Getting crushed on average difficulty a number of times, could only win (and easily at that) with the overpowered Creative perk. Never was particularly good at it, mind, and I remember the reason not loving it as much as I could is one primary annoyance, building bloat. Just so many uninteresting things to build by the lategame that it becomes a chore.

Got to admit I know nothing about the original but what interests me about that picture isn't what's in the foreground - it's that it looks like a city with its skyscrapers mostly intact. That, and how lush the greenery is.