Tigranes

5th FNV game is on hold at the Strip as I get into Shogun 2. Have only played a couple of hours. Looks promising - nice RPGfied choose-your-traits system, aggressive CAI, seemingly better BAI, some good design decisions (make sieges easier for AI to deal with, etc), very nice UI. But every TW game looks awesome the first few hours. Battles look pretty damn ugly at medium settings but I don't mind too much.

Guy asks "Do you use Steamworks", he says "Yes we use Steam", so not 100%, but bleh. Either Steam becomes less annoying and unncessarily prohibitive, or the future is going to suck.

Do NOT get the 360 version - it was ported by a third party developer who did a ridiculously poor job, making a beautiful game look like 10 year old textures washed over by more bloom than Oblivion. Get the PC version (widely available at any download store, or for physical copies, dvd.co.uk at least has one) - it's not too high spec.

That's not going to fly with us, Johnny. We're going to have to ban you from the Internet. I don't have huge reservations about the vid - in fact game looks generally solid, generally fun, and Deus Exy, from what little you can see in that video, and I'm also happy with the whole gold/black thing. The highlighting is stupid, but in the end it's not a big deal. I do want to know whether the guards are as blind, static and deaf as they are here, whether other dialogue / characters are better than Tutorial Jim with his Happy Airport PA Voice, how level design works in the wider scale.

I think the 3rd person view is silly and interrupts the gameplay - I really liked how in AP or Hitman, etc I could do a takedown smoothly all the while moving, and even as teh character is performing the animation I'm watching out for any witnesses. The 3rd person stuff doesn't even look 'cool'. It's a minor issue though. Main challenge will be level design - bit shown was OK - and then there are a few things like how incredibly blind and deaf the guards seemed to be there, and we have also yet to see if the AI's any better. AP's wasn't the best but it did interesting things sometimes, we'll see how DX3 does. It'd be nice to see a bit more because just that small bit seems pretty mediocre.

Really looks like Alpha Protocol, except graphics are prettier and the UI is freaking horrible. LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME THIS IS A DOOR THIS IS WHEN YOU PRESS X LOOK LOOK Pritchard also is really lifeless and sounds like Tutorial Man #1, but that's only one guy. The core gameplay looks fun.

Ah, so they do. Not sure how I missed that, but doesnt seem exactly what I'm looking for in focus/direction.

Brown doesn't have media or communications, AFAIK. Schedule is complete, going back tomorrow - all in all heard a lot of good things and lots of interesting chats. We'll see.

Zero info one way or the other. Any "info" out there about this is speculation.

I read it too, and it's good news, even though I'd argue that BAI improvements are even more urgent (as you can mod various advantages to AI in campaign mode). And every TW feels pretty cool the first few hours until you work out what they're stupid about. But yes, I felt confident enough to buy... obviously Steam is taking about 8 hours to install the damn thing.

I broke down and bought Shogun 2, since I'm in the US and can take advantage of cheaper prices without downloading 20gb. ...it better really feature better AI like first impressions seem to show, or I'll facepalm myself for (a) rewarding CA for crap again, (b) rewarding Steam for being a pain in the arse

What? Mouse / Keyboard is 100% confirmed. There is zero doubt on it whatsoever. Game has been demoed on controllers because m/kb controls aren't finalised yet. Obsidian have said this again and again and again: M/KB is in, how exactly it works is not yet finished (or ready to be shown).

Off to Philadelphia for the week, visiting UPenn. I look forward to the tender ministrations of the American airport security.

Yeah, it doesn't really matter whether that was his genuine opinion - an employee has no business writing product reviews as a 'customer', period. The C&C example sounds great, I'm interested to hear more as more people finish the game.

To be honest everything I've seen makes me prefer Android. I dislike what Apple does with its content and software (which is why I never got an iPod) and Android certainly seems to do most things the iPhone can. I'm moving to the US/UK in September so I might get one then, but I was considering importing one for the gf. May still do so at some point. For myself the Galaxy II looks interesting - mainly I want something small with a few nice apps, web usage, and something that does things quick and fast. Never been too fussed about mobile gaming though, I already play enough games and if I played them on the move I'd be gaming every moment I'm not doing something else.

Yeah, anyone complaining about internet whiners abusing metacritic user scores needs to keep in mind that there will be just as many DA2 fans inflating user scores with duplicate reviews.... plus the Bio/EA bots apparently? (Source? Just neogaf?)

The whole blog revolution of the early/mid 00's passed me by, proving once again that I will be a fuddy duddy stuck in the 90's until my death even though I was a blubbering kid for the most of it. But here are some; Korea Vision is an excellent source of North Korea-related material from one of the big names in the field. CRPG Addict has decided to play every single RPG ever made in chronological order, and has gotten through a fair few. Sociological Images. A clear bent towards gender politics and feminism which can get knee-jerky sometimes, but if you look past that there is a huge wealth of very interesting examples and commentary on images around us. Bent Objects.

It would be fitting for a spy game.... (Clearly, Alpha Protocol missed a SLAM DUNK here)

I increasingly suspect that simply put, DS3 is not a game where you take a single character and spend a hundred hours getting them up to level 100 or something, but a game where you play the campaign from start to finish, then if you want have another go with a different character. i.e. Spend 20 hours on a co-op campaign with Lucas till level 20-30, finish, maybe start another game with another Lucas or a different person. That would make so much more sense - in that case of course you'd tie characters to specific games, because there's no point importing a maxxed Lucas somewhere else anyway. It might disappoint those who want a Diablo style semi-persistent MP, but I don't mind too much - that does fit in very well with what looks like a campaign that encourages more story and replayability, a huge, huge focus on co-op (which works much better when you have people going through one campaign together at the same level than a random level 17 and a random level 6 grinding mobs wherever they get the best XP), etc.

mandatory.

Um, they're not.

If you can't look at a thread where there are people who actively like the game, people on the fence, people who've played it and don't like it, then people like me who are still curious about it despite hating what they're doing with marketing / stealth securom / etc, then think it's a circle-jerk of negativity, uh, I'm not sure who's the blind and narrow-minded? I am hearing bits and pieces of how C&C might be beetter in DA2, but I guess we won't be sure until most people finish the game.... though you finished it, right?

My only problem is with Obsidian / Squenix themselves for not coming out and clearing this up, because at this point pretty much every preview is either guessing (then admitting they aren't sure later), or limiting themselves to local coop, or just being outdated / being vague. Your links actually support this rafoca - the IGN previewer has clearly just had a go with some demo of DS3 then written things up based on what he's seen, but he doesn't even seem aware that he might not have the full picture. Maybe if they said explicitly "we've been told by Obsidian this is for all coop", but until then... seriously, IGN/Gamespot are people that think Obsidian is called 'Oblivion'. No preview has been "clear" about online/local coop *and* backed its claims up properly, because Obsidian / Squenix have not provided concrete info yet.

UK/EU prices include VAT, so it's fair, I"d think.