Humanoid

Spent 10 minutes or so tooling around on ME2 trying to remember where I left off a year and a half ago. 5 minutes of that was trying to figure out why I couldn't save the game before remembering that stupid save limit. One thing I forgot and like is how it's playable in windowed mode after the persistent difficulties with Gamebryo and task switching. Anyway it seems I got farther in my second playthrough (the one I started after playing ME1 for the first time, so the first was junk in terms of my character development) so I guess I may be able to finish it in 5-10 hours (with a couple hours on top regaining my bearings), which I will probably elect to do ....sometime.

I think most of my neurons burned out. Nowadays I'm all for the interaction and damn the mechanics behind them. Maybe it was WoW and its endless character optimisation that broke the camel's back.

Averages out to 64.5 between user and professional scores though - which if game ratings were sensible (i.e. rated on a distribution of 0-10 instead of about 7-10), would mean above average - which isabout where it is based on textual feedback. Round up and you have a 3.5 star game, eminently playable.

I didn't even get the chance to learn anything about 4E. I assume it's like D&D Vista then? Were there even any electronic format games based on it? Though I have to say personally that I don't care all that much for the number crunching these days, preplanning levels, making a properly balanced party covering key abilties, that kind of thing. Would have been inconceivable for me to say a decade ago but yeah.

Gamebryo MMO.... *explodes* I kid, maybe it's when they finally leverage their newly acquired tech for a new, new engine for the first time in yonks, which would be good news for the core series fans too.

I imagine it's because VAT is by nature a consumption tax, so by definition it's applied to the end consumer. The producer I assume pays their national company tax which is a completely separate affair, hence place of production has no effect on the levying of VAT. The only exception I guess is where the cost of collecting VAT exceeds the potential revenue, which may occur with low-value imports. This is why there's generally a lower threshold import value under which no VAT is charged.

Ironically I guess it means the Diablo 3 CE is *technically* cheaper in Sweden than the US since it's 90EUR -> 72VAT excl VAT = ~94USD. The US base price is $100USD. Fortunately for me the Australian government can't be bothered collecting VAT on anything under $1000 so I can pick and choose and get the best of both worlds. I just bought a Kenwood bench mixer from Germany for ~$320 delivered all up - the local price here is $700 with maybe $100 off at most during sales.

I'm not following. Is the 60EUR price VAT exclusive? As Actiblizzard have European offices I assumed the price was all inclusive: My take is this: US price: $60 + any applicable tax from potentially hundreds of different rates depending which county you live in EU price : 60EUR all inclusive. At in the worst case scenario of 15% VAT you are paying 52.17EUR to Blizzard which xe.com tells me is 68.11USD as I type this. In the best case scenario of 25% the cut Blizzard receives is 48EUR or 62.67USD. US = $60 + local sales tax EU = ~$63-$68 + VAT So yes, it's marginally more expensive in Europe, true, but not as massive as the headline figure would suggest - it's 5-13% more expensive.

Well it's less misleading than the other thread's title anyway.

It's fragmented because the US does not mandate listing tax-inclusive prices I believe. The base price is listed, and the originating state believe they should get a cut, and the destination state believes they should get a cut, that kind of thing. Here in Australia it's required by law to show the prices all-inclusive and I assumed it was the same in the EU. But as far as I know the rules for cross-country transactions in Europe are fairly well defined in terms of who collects the tax, where it goes and such. Whereas it feels like in the US it's sort of an all-in melee involving lawsuits and constitutional brawls, etc. But yeah, it's an outsider's uneducated observations rather than analysis of fact.

And somewhere in between bad modern and good modern is stuff like full voice acting, modelled character faces, fancier dismemberment and erm, animated love scenes instead of fade to black?

I feel weird defending regional pricing, but I imagine the EU price is VAT inclusive where the US one is not (because of the incredibly fragmented way states deal with sales tax)? Take off 20% VAT for example (I know it's not the same rate everywhere) and it's 50EUR which is ~65USD. Okay a little more but pricing it at 55EUR is technically selling it for less than the US release. I don't actually know if US people have to pay sales tax on top of their list price for digitally distributed items though - I've only got the various news reports about Amazon's battle with the states over tax collection. Of course my personal preference is always to purchase in the native currency. I pay no conversion fee so generally the credit card exchange rate is much better than the rate charged by the vendor-provided conversion, can be up to a 10% difference.

Whereas most other players would care more about "Lydia will now offer marriage option after player purchases Breezehome in Whiterun". And that's not the first time they've claimed companion sneaking is fixed. So the question is if it's fixed, or just "fixed."

But they're Canadians! Oh wait....

As much as I like to take pot shots at EA, yeah, it's silly to blame them for writing or sundry other creative issues. (Couldn't blame them when a programmer accidentally deleted the only complete copy of the entire source code of Strike Commander a few months into development when attempting to do a compile test....) But yeah, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it - as a conclusion to a first series obstensibly written to set up an ongoing game world ends up removing one of the seemingly fundamental premises of that world. It's like if the first published Dungeons and Dragons adventure involved extermination of all dragons forever. And there's not a whole lot of space in which to create prequels from the human perspective given that it was established there was only one real conflict that occurred between first contact and the events of the first game.

The likes of BC3kAD and Daikatana are also unforgettable, as punchlines. ME3 will probably take up KoTOR2's mantle in terms of punchlines for the next few years. But eh, any jabs at it now just get lost in the tsunami, what am I going to do in my spare time now? Will pick it up in due time as I've gone ahead and totally spoiled myself of the start/early parts and there are no particular turn-offs there - unlike DA:O which I wish I didn't buy blind (or at all) because the establishing plot totally killed any drive to follow the narrative to any sort of conclusion. I can forgive a bad ending far easier than that.

I'll play the name-the-influence game from the facetious non-scifi fan: Planet of the Apes .....as in what Bioware did to the franchise. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! Also - Soylent Green.

I was going to kick in $30 but then I scrolled down and saw LARGE BOX. I LOVE large boxes, the bigger the better. The day games transitioned from large boxes to laughably feeble barely-larger-than-DVD-case boxes was the most tragic day in human civilisation.

If the game had been released a decade ago (identical except with graphics of that era) I probably would have ignored it. Now though, it's probably my call for best CRPG of the millennium (slightly misleading because of the length of the millennium this far), and best 3D CRPG ever. My tastes have drifted a lot, and instead of the micromanagement-obsessed, more-is-better gamer trying to collect the largest, most optimal party possible, I look for more personal experiences. Nowadays I want a game where I still need to think, but not analyse. Where I can find, but not search. Fight but not strategise. Yes, I'd prefer it with (at times significantly) less combat. Yes I'd prefer to be able to sit back at times instead of trying to anticipate a future QTE. Yes I'd prefer a more condensed UI. But put against its competition as a package, I'd take it over any other current game available in stores now.

The implication being that there's just the one path throughout, but choices just add or subtract a bit of scenery outside the train window as you steam past. (Then taking the analogy to its logical conclusion, the train runs off the wrecked wooden bridge at the end )

I daresay that first instance is a perfect example of C&NC - choice and non-consequence. No matter what you do, an equivalent replacement gets drafted in so the plot direction can proceed with zero effective alteration. A number of other spoilers I've read seem to indicate this is pretty much the most common way of dealing with the living/dead status of all the NPCs in the previous games - though that Wrex one seems a little bit better than the norm. (I've gone into don't-care-about-spoilers mode now and just reading freely since I've decided to just wait it out a while)

With a 5-screen wide setup perhaps. Or the player character is wearing blinkers.

In WC1 there were paths to the winning route up to the third-last "bad" mission set. Wing Commander 2 was similar but I forget the detail. Wing Commander 3 was pretty harsh with being able to go on the unwinnable path from relatively early on.

Leads me to thinking now that ME3 would have been a perfect game to reintroduce the concept of the losing path. Fail a key mission and deal with the consequences instead of being made to reload.

Yeah, Mjoll Facelift mod Now if only there was a quest to help her wipe out the Thieves' Guild - feels like cut content given how it's the first thing you're presented with upon entering Riften. Instead almost all the thieves are marked essential - some for the most trivial reasons - which is particularly jarring given the option exists for the Dark Brotherhood. In the case of the latter, sure it may cut you off from a lot of potential content for a relatively rushed alternative option, but it's a valid option nonetheless.