Humanoid

WoW in 2005, finding groups as a rogue (or hunter I guess)... good god. You could say it was a multi-month effort in effect, you had to sort of build a reputation for reliability and competence through the limited opportunities you did get, and generally ingratiate yourself with the people that tended to lead those PUGs. That's what I'll always raise when people try to bring up the point that the game was better "in the good old days". So when I played TOR for a month and found that finding groups was no easier than old WoW, I decided to not bother at all and did zero dungeons in the entirety of my trial month.

Um. I'll gladly participate in any RTwP vs TB vs RT debate but this one time it's not about combat mechanics. It's more about professionalism and attitude towards the community. inXile let TToN backers vote on which combat system would be used. TB fans won but it was pretty close (48% vs 47%). So almost half of the backers believed that RTwP would be preferable and Ziets then said that RTwP exists "to appeal to a mass-market audience." In other words, it's an inherently inferior option and half of TToN backers are mass-market audience, casuals who don't know what's good for them. I guess I'm with the 5% that presumably voted for "no combat". * By 'No Combat' I don't mean it literally as such, more like I'd prefer it use an auto-resolve system.

But DA2 didn't let you use it, IIRC. Then again why do you need a whorehouse when you have Isabella, same number of VDs. You can hire bunch of male and female prostitutes to entertain you in the brothel (The Blooming Rose), so I am not sure what you mean with "DA2 didn't let you use it"? "IIRC" Anyways I never used it. Prostitution in games is stupid, paying for something that doesn't improve your stats. Well, looking at it from the opposite perspective, it could be something that improves your money 'stat'.

Yeah, both Dreamfall and JAF keys were delivered silently through Humble Bundle, if you didn't know you needed to use the key resender to get the games, you'd never get them. Bit of an odd mechanism, since as far as I can tell, Humble doesn't send any notification despite the products being tied to your email address. On using the key resender just today, I found another couple of games tied to my email that I'd never gotten around to 'claiming' to my account in the first place, suspect they'd been there for a good while now. Wish the tool was smart enough to mark which titles in the list are already linked to the account, but I guess usability was never their strong suit.

So this week so far there's Dreamfall Chapters, Jagged Alliance Flashback, Massive Chalice beta, and Long War beta 14 (which is damn near a release candidate). And that's just the stuff that's landed in my inbox, Civ:BE being the obvious omission. Games, games everywhere!

Oh God no, No one should have to join them unless they want to be forced to make TES games forever. If it means that they're not making any Fallout games, then that's great news.

Every time I think of Darklands, I can't help but wish the combat was just abstracted into text based form just like the rest of the game. The 5-week training course I've been on is in its final week now, so I should finally be able to find the time to fire up some non-throwaway games. Wasteland 2 probably at the top of the list, I've missed out on the first wave of discussion about the game here, and that in itself is unfortunate enough. Contingent on being able to get past party creation though, I tend to get paralysed by the tyranny of options, which is a large part of why I prefer single character creation over whole-party planning. Besides that, I kind of feel like playing a little F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 in the meantime. As for WoW, I've been out for about two and a half years now, but I had promised an old guildie to come back for at least a little while if they returned for WoD, so we'll see about that.

Yeah, but if you only play for one second, you can get your money back afterwards from Origin.

Free games this week: XCOM: Enemy Unknown free when you vote in GMG's awards thingie. https://goldenjoysticks.greenmangaming.com/ (Also 80% off Enemy Within) Payday: The Heist being given away free on Steam on Thursday, starting 10AM Pacific time.

To be fair, that thing was an antique even back in 2006.

Unfortunately he's playing the PS4 version, so no nude zombie mods this time...

I have to admit I had a good long giggle at the turn of phrase "lobby the woman" in a romantic context.

Wonder if Jake Solomon is just coincidence.

...generally... P.S. I freely substitute Steam into that statement. I understand people who are fine with both, and people who dislike both. Liking one and disliking the other, ehhhh.

From what I can tell, the older mod clique has tossed all the thread length maintenance drudgework to the new guy.

No reason to ever let Sten out of the cage.

"Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game" doesn't start with 'I'.

This is why you don't take steroids, kids.

it's too bad because that character(Kai leng) had potential and i heard that was totally different in the books he used guns and knives and instead of being a space ninja he was a total badass,written the same guy who did the first game's story but in ME3 If you count stealing breakfast cereal and peeing in vases to be badass, sure.

1TB Blu-rays have been mooted...

You're good to go, definitely no point in upgrading Sandy Bridge for a number of years yet.

I don't feel ME1's combat was meaningfully worse than its sequels, indeed it's superior in a couple of ways - less dependence on cover and better-feeling biotics (Charge aside). And it's not a case of rose-tinted goggles because I played ME2 first. The worst time I've had with raw gameplay in any ME game was playing an Adept in ME2: aside from a few telegraphed "hey, you should totally thow those enemies we'ce placed on this convenient balcony" moments, all my spells felt more or less like slower, weaker bullets.

So I've tried to think back on this year and there aren't actually very many games that I can say I'm 'done' with and therefore am in a position to rate. Indeed only three, and one, The Banner Saga, I can only give an N/A because I abandoned it less than an hour in due to the gamey "don't kill anything" strategy it demands. So, er, yeah, MM10 6/10, MK8 7/10, everything else score pending. It's weird to think about because it's no contest in that it's a no-brainer to say that this year has been a much better year in gaming than 2013, which may have been the worst gaming year I can remember. But I gave Monaco an almost perfect score, and I don't feel any single title will even get near it this year. So lots of good games, but no standout as of yet.

Rant about Star Wars!

Well, if it was any other MMO, they'd probably 'fix' the issue by banning anyone who used it, so there's one point for EA at least...