Tigranes

Well, there are only 2 bad reviews from major outlets at the moment - and that's Gamespot and bit-tech. Now, everyone has their opinions about which review site is 'crap', but the point to be made about bit-tech is that it's not really a games review site. It's a tech site. They aren't really known for having insightful, accurate, contextual reviews; they seem to have a large readership and are fairly well known as a tech site, but I don't know anybody that'd trust their word on anything games, they're simply too 'general'. Gamespot? Make up your own mind, really. My personal opinion is that these days reviewers seem to have a standard - i.e. bland dialogue might be a minor flaw, but texture popping is a significant flow, whereas I'd reverse those standards. We'll see how they justify their 6.0... in fact, since they don't even have a review up yet, is that even a real score or just a placeholder? Anyway, I'm going out to get my copy now, so will post impressions and answer Qs. Should be more informative...

It won't be easy for you to get an answer yet because in most areas of the world the official release date hasn't hit. But hopefully someone will be able to help you soon..

Won't it be interesting to compare this with the sales numbers, though?

Indeed.

Gamersgate doesn't have anything to do with your game once you install and activate it, it's not Ubisoft or Steam. So that won't be the issue. Either it's some sort of hidden DRM-lock from Sega coming into the works, your install was buggy, or it's a bug in the game itself. Frankly I'd say it's likely to be the middle one, at the moment. Anyway, what the hell is with everybody breaking release dates? It's everywhere!

Again, I see your point, Steam is effectively a DRM from teh consumer point of view, with or without Steamworks. My question is, why not buy a normal retail copy? Because you don't want to keep track of those 5 activations? You don't want to have to keep track of multiple DRMs on your computer? OK. In that case, do you buy NO games with any other DRM? You do not buy any games that don't use Steam and have some form of DRM?

You know, this is why I never make threads. I bought Eschalon (25USD) and it's worth it IMO. I think the game's only going to be around ~20 hours with not a huge scope for replay, but for basically half price indie game that's fine with me. I'm playing a ranger now, rushed the bow skill to 10 to get the special shot and that's making life a lot easier. There's really a 'oh god I am going to die' feel when you're out in the wilderness because if you rest you need food / water, healing potions are hard to come by, weather can really screw you over or give you opportunities (you can't see ANYTHING in a thunderstorm), enemies are fairly tenacious at chasing you and encumbrance is also a factor. Game could have done with a better writer, i.e. an attempt at making interesting dialogue rather than bland fantasy splat, but I mean, it's essentially a one-man game.

Well I just checked the local ebgames, predictably, New Vegas is on preorder shelves but Alpha Protocol is nowhere to be seen. Still 28th release.... and I can't even preorder because I won't be picking it up from that particular shop. O_o

Given that there is so much nonlinearity in the game, I wouldn't be surprised if playthrough lengths wildly varied depending on the choices you make. I mean, you can meet a major character (Sie) or you might never meet her - surely that changes a few hours. I'd imagine 25+ for those who take their time, etc, then ~10 for a rush through on normal/easy difficulty.

Clearly he was passed out from 15:07 to 20:44.

I live in New Zealand, I could actually do it if I was rich.

That's it, I'm catching the next flight to Sydney.

I do see the OP's point, if we get past the Steam/Steamworks distinction (which IS true) and look at his experiences as a consumer, having to use Steam and then getting Uniloc's 5 activations might indeed count as double-DRM'ing. What I'd say is, though, if you look at it like that from a practical point of view, then only one question matters - how invasive and inconvenient is the whole package? The answer? Not very, since you get 5 activations you can easily activate / get back, you will never lose them even if your PC fries, and it will be removed later on. The whole 'double DRM' stuff - well, isn't Steam + Steamworks 'double DRM' too? As it is, you're up against a fairly lax, almost apologetically lax, form of DRM package in Steam client + Uniloc activations. By the way, I'm not sure why you can't just get the retail version? Are you saying that you don't like having multiple DRM on your computer, so you will only ever buy PC games that use Steam and/or Steamworks? If a game has DRM and is not on Steam you won't get it?

In other words, for DRM everyone gets Uniloc: then you can choose whether to use Steam as a game service... or not.

Well they've done every major 'mainstream' period before gunpowder, so I hope they go for something a bit left field, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms era China or... Oh no, it better not be Age of Empires I era ;;

This is awesome wals. Please carry on.

What are you people on about? Cold is great. Observe: When you are cold, you can have hot drinks and wear more clothes. When you are hot, you are tired and taking off your clothes creates all kinds of problems. Your entire country is boiling all the time, there's a reason nobody wears shoes half the time.

I'm sure that Ubisoft, at the board/management level, felt that they had enough research and analysis to back up their decision, that they thought it was a gamble worth taking. It'd be interesting to see what Ubisoft does over the next few months, because that will start to show whether investors/board felt the losses reported here were contributed to by the DRM. So right now, it's not clear yet whether, business-wise, they've made a good decision or not. Certainly I don't think it was a 'huge catastrophe', which is a pity. On the whole fair thing, Thorton, way too black and white. Companies aren't "fair" in that pure white fair sense you mean, but they still have to pretend to be fair, they still have to play the game.

I hope it's Rome 2. no no no... shogun 2 It'll be more cinematic, easier for new players, shinier graphics, MORE FEATURES But to compensate unit sizes won't increase and the AI will still be retarded, destroying replayability.

That's probably a good comparison about 'open-ness', yes. Blood Money was the one I played and it did have quite a bit of roaming - AP should have more, in fact.

Oh, there you go, I knew I got some of those wrong.

My French is pretty crap, but here's a comprehensive look through. The man with the game (or so he claims) says: Xbox360 version He did start playing games with NES & loves Planescape, Fallouts, etc, so he's not coming at this looking for a GTA. You can buy info before a mission. You can choose your missions. The msisions themselves are very open, he says 'sandbox'. But it is NOT open world. You do your mission, you come back to safehouse, you choose your mission. Generally very solid game, "could have been a true great with a bit more extra". Graphics are pretty poor, or rather, 'just decent' But there's a lot of detail put into the game Gameplay is solid...But way too easy to go in and shoot everyone Played on normal, a little easy. AI is 'very uneven' - "very bad in infiltration phases, very good in combat phases". In the former, you hide for 5 seconds and you are 'invisible'. Lots of choice, e.g. 4 ways to enter... something Dialogue is good, plot branching later on is impressive Environment interaction, e.g. cameras, alarms, blow up windows. Very good. But no physics. Really like gadgets you get, like false radio alarm - very fun. Minigames good. You can guide the path of your grenades very precisely. Another player got the game, too, not as positive, but he's only played it for 3 hours, so this is really a 'first impressions': His stuff is harder for me to understand, but does say AI is bad. He's not happy that you start with a shaven generic Mike face for the first few minutes until you can choose... because.. of the emotional attachment factor? WTF. He complains that the dialogue system is way too fast - in his words, characters say 60 words a second and you have to choose before they finish, "wtf?". Thinks Mass effect dialogue was much better, and charactes look ugly. However, he likes the ability to choose missions very freely, the skills and techniques, minigames, the character development

Yep..

Yep, inside NZ, the options are: Ebgames (immediate, $100) Mightyape (~1 week delay, $90) CDWow (up to a month delay, $50) Heard bad things about CDWow's delivery times, apparently they get it so cheap by getting it from all sorts of weird places. If it's 10gb then the extra bandwidth alone would cost me 20-30$ extra, screw it. I'll go down to ebgames. I have my wisdom teeth out on the 27th, hopefully that won't screw up and destroy me

Well, what's your charisma?