Tigranes

ozgameshop = ~25 quid available now, apparently, but I can't bring myself to click the button. I know I want to be able to like this but to be honest everything I've seen so far suggests Oblivion Lite.

One thing - if you're noticing bad controls and/or jerkiness, etc, you might want to make sure you've tried the FAQ fixes and others around the forum. Most people's troubles here came down to a couple of minor issues regarding mouse smoothing, etc. If you're commenting on the quality of the animations themselves, well... for me it's hard to understand how such a thing can be so highly prioritised to ruin a game, but then I'm not you. Interesting.

gooblie goo, I might put in my preorder in GAME then.. though it'd take 2 weeks to get here anyway.

Oh, well in New Zealand you get student loans with zero interest. Not sure about postgrads though.

Shale at least was given for free to most customers. DLCs have always been about using simple tricks ("bonus" character, bonuses are good!) to maximise revenue, no going round it. Even free DLCs are simply part of the scheme to get you on the wagon.

I'll probably need to keep it simpler than roleplay/adventure-inspired ones, where you need to write a lot of story, keep track of lots of items/variables, etc. I also can't draw. So, taking up the overwhelming demand for a dating scenario, maybe something like: The Obsidian Men's Dating Sim, or TOMDS: Each of you will be assigned a dating archetype, best representing the mix of infantile irresponsibility, fantastical imaginations, reckless aggressiveness and unresolved psychological tension that all single men indisputably are. This will come with a specific ability and item that you can make use of as you see fit, as well as some restrictions or weaknesses. The sim will progress in a regular day/night cycle: each day I will introduce a lady, and a specific situation/challenge to win her heart. During the day you will publicly make your moves to try and win the lady (earn TOMDS points and increase chance of success by roleplaying your archetype). At the end of each day, you the players will vote off one hapless male out of contention, unless you have won the hand of the lady that day. During the night, more sinister ways to sabotage your competitors are available, so be wary... Your participation thus involves posting during the day and PM'ing me during the night - we will keep a regular and moderate pacing. Make alliances, find out info, and make use of your skills to be the one that wins the girl. The parallels to reality TV, by the way, is frightening, but hopefully it will be a good mix of roleplay and forum-gameyness. Thoughts? Suggestions? To streamline, let's collect signups, who's playing? Can I assume, to start: Hurlshot Kaftan Scandinavius Mkreku Rosbjerg Shryke Tale Walsingham

The problem is you're going by one guy's one sit-down playthrough where he happened to stumble across some glitches, and then decided to use them. There are tons of variables here - how good is this guy? How rushed was he, playing in limtied time, as it were? As a reviewer was he more concerned about just seeing as much as he can? What is his personal tolerance for challenging combat? What are the chances that the glitches he found would not be found by other players? The thing is, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing that, say, any challenge can be overcome after 5 or 10 minutes or retry and thinking, or that you 'get' the hang of the game within a couple of hours. I mean sure, they reduce frustration, but all too often the effort that goes into making sure the learning curve in the beginning is reasonable and every challenge is reasonable, ends up making the experience as a whole rather stale. That can't compare with an experience where for the first 5 to 10 hours you're stumbling about, but you start to get used to it, you start to pick up new tricks, you hit your forehead thinking why you didn't figure X out before, and it starts to unfold. Anyway, if you personally aren't so inclined as I am that's perfectly fine, I just think one reviewer guy glitching a couple of battles is not a big red flag.

OK, cool, we do have interest. I'll start thinking about what to do - the classic escape from dungeon/island might suit us best, or... in another forum I'm throwing around some weirder settings, such as where we are Kim Jong Un & his posse of Future Leaders of North Korea on a male-bonding mountain trip. ...or I could try make up an Obsidian Dating Objective RP.

Which country in the world pays for postgraduate education? Because I'd be all over that. I'm super sorry to hear about that Wals, as you can imagine my sympathies in this regard are total.

When you make a properly challenging game though, it's inevitable that some sections of the players will choose to resort to glitches rather than do what's necessary to fully enjoy those challenges. btw, I really must be blind to the technical graphical side of games - I never noticed 'not-smooth' movements in Alpha Protocol! But then, I noticed Oblivion... The impressions sound very interesting, though to be honest, it seems like Risen is the only true successor to Gothic in that it also carries over the faction C&C.

Actually, Volourn is right. NWN did nothing for me and its OC was a pile of steaming crap, but as a project it was an extremely ambitious one for Bioware, and in fact a rare example of such an endeavour being successful (on the PW / modding / coop side). BG2 is ambitious in the sense that, of course, it's unlikely that we'll see another game of the same scale - it was big in every imaginable sense.

So... in other words, I am now bound to design a dating simulator for you people.

UK/Aus release seems to have changed to 22nd, according to retailers. why does every game ever do this? edit: I should have known, actually, as all UK releases are Fridays.

I think combat speed issue could indeed be solved with manual jumping and rolling - it makes you busier and also gives you more options when fighting. obviously for this to work really well AI mobs need to not just shuffel about a bit like zombies but actually try and surround you, or even leap at you - even Diablo II had this in many ways, making you navigate and control space/distance as you fight. In the DS3 demo so far, only AOE abilities seem to do that, leading to a more 'static' feel.

I'm not a fan of the causeway, mainly because I think psychologically, when I decide to teleport/move to a new location, that's where I want to be, and I'm already thinking about what to do when I get there - doing some filler battles to get there will just be makework. Causeway enemies seemed to be pretty throwaway as well... although, if they were an actual challenge, that wouldn't be much better, either. In this kind of game I'm not sure it makes sense to limit fast travel. Otherwise, looks super, super pretty - I'm pretty blind to graphics in general and there are only a handful of games where I actually just like looking at things, and in the 3D era it's been even rarer. Game also looks very fun in the Diablo II sense.

We've got enough people, we like role playing, I don't know why we haven't taken off with forum games yet. With another community I host/play a lot of Mafia, Diplomacy and such. Is anybody interested? We could: (a) play a traditional mafia - there are mafia, there are townies, you try and guess who is who and lynch, etc. (b) play a diplomacy game - we'd use a web client thing, though, not so much this thread.

Fixed Gothic. Gothic rules. Still learning how to fight properly. Everything except graphics is good.

untitled.bmp Bah, no way to img tag?

Lay off the personal attacks, I believe none of us are certified psychiatrists and have no business secondguessing what other people's deep secret desires are. Actually, if you are a certified psychiatrist, yargh! Never been a slightest bit interested in TOR and thought it was weird to try it in the first place, just hope Bio don't go bankrupt over this or somethign.

Interesting, thanks Orchomene. If 10 hours you must have reached at least one big town centre, right? 1) How does the level design change after the tutorial island - do things open up and you can explore, or not really? 2) Can you try Gothic difficulty and see how hard it is, and whether it means enemies react faster (faster casting times, etc), or just more HP/damage? If it's halfway positive on those two I might get it after all, since for TW2 I'd have to try and get it off a German site or something..

Gothic 3 is a lovely game. I've heard that the full game runs very badly, what else though? is it that broken?

Bleurgh, I've played about 15 minutes and it looks good, but I can't handle the texture tearing and super-slow-stuttering (lag with every dialogue line, too). I found a fix where you get yourself some old directx dlls and plant it in the Gothic folder which fixed the stuttering, but made the textures even worse, taking away whole swathes of the terrain. I might need to wait for the next driver or try downgrading...

Yep, Gamersgate works now. Oh, and the IGN review, well, never mind: I think this is bwahahahahahahahaha *facepalm*

Face the NPC. Stand ****ing still. Press ctrl+forward. PROFIT. Two buttons to talk to people? OH LORDLY LORD.

That's what you get from people that thought Gothic combat was screwed up, you'll start hearing Arcania has 'fixed' it. But then, people give Fable III super marks, I still don't get that.