Humanoid

I have to admit TOR has somewhat of an unfair handicap when I compare it to its competitors in that I actively dislike the Star Wars setting, and issues like the above "lightsabres or bust" approach do nothing to help that perception. In the end, the game would have to end up the best option despite the setting for me to even consider picking it up, and there's no real sign of that happening. Not having fun with my preferred CRPG class equivalent because of the setting's conventions is one of the first nails in the coffin for me, not insurmountable an issue, but then I look at the alternatives - unless I want to play a Jedi/Sith (which I absolutely do not want to do), I don't see anything else worth trying even if the trial weren't time restricted. It's not like I like any of the other attempted MMO settings either - Warcraft, Star Trek, LoTR, Conan - my opinion of them ranges from apathy at best to mild condecension, but it's a handicap nonetheless.

I know I said I quit it a week or so ago, but over a boring Easter long weekend I managed to pick up DX:HR again, like it again, dislike it again, then quit it again. The good: Wandering around Hengsha doing short stretches of main quest interspersed with segments of sidequest was fun, probably my preferred mode of gameplay, with a pacing that suited me. The bad: Leaving the quest hub to infiltrate Tai Yong Medical, which in itself was a chore, then being ferried straight off the the Picus infiltration with no break, nothing to mix it up, and what felt like basically repeating the exact same thing in a different setting. Felt like the Deep Roads all over again. The ugly: Learning that the planned new quest hubs after Hengsha were cut out of the game, and that all I'd be seeing from now on would be minor retreads of the previous two hubs and there was nothing else that I would like in what remained of the game. In the end then, I wrapped things up with the sidequesting in Detroit part 2, and am fairly certain I won't be coming back another time, having now the knowledge that I've played the best parts of the game and leaving nothing meaningful on the table. Anyway, if Australia Post don't stuff things up, I should be receiving ME3 this week, both knowing exactly what to expect of it and not having any idea what to make of it. I'll give it a fair shake then if it's a bust, W2EE arrives in little over a week which I know will take me through the rest of the month. EDIT: Urgh, typical, just when I thought I got a reasonable deal at $36, ME3 has dropped down to ~$24 now. That's fast for a new release.

There are choices unlike other MMOs, but the consequences are immediate and pretty much just a number in your light/dark meter - e.g. a quest has you deliver an item to NPC A, then NPC B gives you an alternate offer for delivering the same item to him instead. In the 15 levels I've played, none of those decisions came back in any way (no idea if they might later on given I only played for the trial weekend but if feels unlikely). That's about as extreme as the C&C got in my time with it, and they were exceptions - mostly the choices were just Mass Effect-esque nice vs jerk response as you complete the quests. That's not to say it's not a reasonable motivator - as a smuggler the class questline drove the character pretty well with trying to get your ship back and get back at the guy who stole it (who naturally has cutscene immunity every time you encounter him). That said, I also found the combat unsatisfying and generally a chore - mowing down pack after pack of three-to-four generic thugs to get to a generic computer console to click on - repeat ad nauseam. The Gunslinger subclass feels like trying to shoehorn cover-based combat into an engine utterly unsuited to it, and the scoundrel felt like a melee class who only used guns instead of melee weapons because the silly Star Wars setting isn't accommodating to melee classes who aren't force users. Didn't have the energy to try another class during the trial - I made the mistake of spreading my effort back in WoW into sampling basically every class - but if I ever got the full game it'd be with something else that feels less awkward.

And the customers of the various financial institutions, retailers, and telecommunications companies on that list also have long time and repeat customers, so it's not like they're anything special there. But yeah, as a non-American I'm not familiar with half those companies so it's hard to get a proper perspective, but it sounds like a fun concept. Personally though I would have voted: 1) Facebook 2) Google 3) Apple 4) Paypal 5) Sony 6) EA

Also Ubisoft in non-evil act shocker!

The thresholds for doing more stuff contribute to the backended delays too - it's not hard to see someone willing to kick more in if they know in advance that a certain feature they really want has had its activation threshold reached. Y'know, stuff like MCA's involvement which I can easily see as being the difference between someone kicking in $15 and kicking in $100 - but they won't risk the $100 if there's any chance that they won't reach the target ....which can lead to a bit of a Mexican standoff really. Another example would be a Mac user holding off on the Double Fine kickstarter until the Mac version was guaranteed.

Unless I fail at reading between the lines I think it implies that it's a DLC with no actual gameplay in it? Just the cutscenes and backdrops?

Except Origin will lock you out if you even attempt to mod ME3 - http://social.biowar...7845/2#10648995

You see, Gamebryo has so many issues with alt-tabbing out of the game causing hangs/crashes/general-bugging-out, therefore making this type of content comparatively much more valuable for its convenience than for competitors with more stable engines.

Wish fulfilled, yay!

I bought the Street Fighter movie on Blu-ray earlier this year, it's a guilty pleasure.

I can't really remember much of it so I'm not much use - I did finish it though, and remember sneaking around a Japanese setting shooting ninjas with a crossbow and a weird sort of chase around an Indian city which were the breaks from the pure shooter bits I guess

The only reason I gave it a chance was because they weren't "proper" FPSes. The previous game I was referring to was NOLF2 which had a bit of sneaking and stuff in it too, so it's a consistent comparison for the most part. More purist shooting FPSes I abandoned even earlier - think it was Unreal Tournament most likely, or for something with a story, Jedi Knight. Just totally not my thing - same with RTSes, haven't played any (for more than an hour) since AoE2.

It does sound like I'm just blaming one thing for ruining the game but that's not my intention - after all I still think of The Witcher 2 as the best game I've played in a long time, despite the silly boss fights. For DX3 it was just the last (and worst) straw in a series of annoyances, after which is becomes too much. The silly energy mechanic, the arbitrary lack of melee, the overused hacking mechanic, the inconsistent awarding of XP, the nonsensical level design in some parts, along with other smaller nitpicks. When combined with my personal aversion to first person shooters, it's just not fun enough for me and continuing on would just lead to more frustrated venting. It just feels like in terms of development, there was a small team that knew what they were doing, and a bunch of other ones that didn't have a clue - and crucially didn't really talk to each other. This after overlooking the story/world issues because the DX universe is not one I particularly care of even know about. Just to follow up on the minigame issues - but all rights it's probably one of the ones which had a bit more thought put into its design. My problem is not so much with the minigame itself but how as a result, it steals the focus away from the game itself. Designing a "good" minigame is a counterproductive move in general - I'd much rather a terrible minigame that can be ignored or done while completely zoned out than one which is intricate and involved but completely breaks the flow of the game. After all, if minigames weren't meant to be cheap and shallow methods of padding game content, one would just substitute Tetris - the best minigame of all time - into every segment. The problem with that last move of course, is that people would rather then just keep wanting to continue their game of Tetris rather than resuming the inferior main game.

As much as I'd like to believe that I think last year there was something about wanting to innovate in the web-based (read: Farmville) games.

Yeah I looked up some tips then went back and grenaded him to death - three did it - but it's not so much that but that the design element just turned me off the game regardless. Between that and hacking I realise I have better uses of my time than to sink it into a Jekyll and Hyde sort of a game - I said in some other thread here that I hadn't played a first person shooter in a decade, and this is vindication, just not my thing at all.

Guess that's why the local retailer had about a dozen of these for $2 a piece in the bargain bin.... Vaguely topical - I've just quit DXHR over the first boss battle. I'll go find something, anything, else to do.

Well while we're going on how we'd *like* the plot to unfold, my personal preference would be to have the reapers to be an illusory threat - i.e. that the denialists in the first game were right and that other interests have sent that bumbling human spectre on a wild goose chase while some real powerplay went on behind the scenes. I think the Asari would make perfect villains given how they present themselves as being too good to be true - like y'know, being the sex partners of every sentient species in the galaxy. Dreaming of course, but I always prefer my game antagonists to be close and personal foes rather than big "epic" nebulously defined concepts.

Fired up DX:HR for the first time after buying it in Octoberish last year, thereby paying twice what I would have for it had I purchased it today ...but if I had purchased it today I would probably end up not playing it until the end of the year, so eh, whatever. Anyway, it's the kind of game I really want to like but get some amount of shove back because I'm so terrible at it. Shooting? I can't aim to save my life. Sneaking? I have bugger-all situational awareness and sense of timing. Hacking? Deer in the headlights. At least I finally found out the cover button could be made a toggle instead of press-and-hold - my middle finger is still sore from not discovering that function for almost an hour. But yeah, it's the first genuine first person shooter I've played in literally a decade - NOLF2 being the previous one - and I'm reminded why. Other games I've been able to adapt by almost exclusive use of the third-party camera - think Bloodlines or any Gamebryo engine game - but now I just have to try to adapt and I'm struggling.

If I can get it to work I'll probably edit my savegame to be worse than it actually is really. Most of it was played in 2010 and I regret some of the powergamingish decisions I made back then in hindsight. Nothing major but I feel like killing off a couple squadmates (Miranda and Samara), and keep Grunt in his pod. Also somewhat tempted to kill off Wrex - unpopular as that seems - because it fits better.

ME3 was on sale locally for $36 from a brick and mortar store (almost unprecedented here where this type of store typically sells for $89) so I went ahead and bought it despite my earlier resolve to wait out the resolution of the ending drama. But eh, the saving is about the cost of a couple DLC so it was the rational choice. Not sure what to do though - my super-slow ME2 completion hit a brick wall on reaching the reaper IFF mission - which sapped my will to play as I subsequently put it down for a week. So the question is - are the save game editors for ME2 endsaves full functional yet?

The only thing I'm stunned Skyrim didn't let you do was to become High King, or indeed, Emperor, while being a gigantic dragon, to go along with the leadership of the other couple hundred or so organisations you're affiliated with. That's the level of expectation of a Bethesda game ending.

Missed opportunity, need to start a campaign to get the top three reviews to be "red," "green," and "blue."

Arcanum is an example of a game where I'm happy to turn down the difficulty to easiest level so I can ignore combat and just experience the rest of the game; and it was playable enough for a budget title used in that manner. Would like to see more Victorian-era games (steam without the punk!), though I'm not so hot on including the elves and orcs and stuff.

I thought the 'Witcher 2: Enhance Edition' was the X-Box version and the Witcher 2 2.0 was the Enhanced Edition for the PC? The EE is extra content on top of 2.0 (which wasn't so much new content as much as a better learning curve and added game modes) - the EE will add extra quests more like traditional DLC (except that it's free). It also fixes a ton of outstanding issues - 102 fixes listed on the changelog posted just yesterday.