Tigranes

Meh. I think its much better for everything to be as manual as possible. You want to roll back patches? Fine. You want to change random settings? Fine. You want to hack the game? Fine. None of this automatic shmuggery. Besdies which, I tried Steam for ETW as I had to, and it takes 30 years for Steam to load so that the game can load. No thanks.

Another case of win from EA.

One thing I do love as a nice touch is how they've taken new innovations in the genre that add to the gameplay, but leave ones out where they are simply annoying, or dumbing-down fluff. You've got pets taking stuff back to sell to eliminate pointless back-and-forth, shared stashes and generally more streamlined loot management; what you don't have is eye-eviscerating bloom that is plagued the world the last 5 years, long boring cinematics waffling on and on, forced, badly-written attempts to make you 'care' or have 'romances'. Win. edit: after another session I've blown through to level 19, and the 21st floor in the dungeon. Hard, Alchemist. I'd definitely recommend most people to start on Hard, as it forces you to quaff potions and watch out for things, but even then I've died only a few times. Alchemist is also a bit broken at the moment as their lv15 spell (ember... lance?) is pretty overpowered. Game remains fun, and probably will until the end of this playthrough at least. After that I'm thinking of playing a Hardcore VH vanquisher, make things exciting.

I havent played Fate, but the torchlight forum feedback (which I've read extensively the last few days) suggests that it is quite Fate-inspired. In comparison to Diablo 2 (which I played to death) and Diablo (which I played), the game *is* a bit simpler and a bit more repetitive, but there is still a lot of appeal. It is also all dungeon, a la Diablo 1. Basically it is Diablo 1, esp. the neverending dungeon, with all the 'modern' enhancements of Diablo 2 / Fate (gems, enchantments, etc), with a few nice fun touches (Pets), but lacking the skill synergies that gave D2 esp. an additional layer of complexity, fun and 'tactics'. A full-length $50 version of Torchlight with outdoor areas, a bit more nonlinearity and more complex skill sets would have been amazing, but I guess that's for Diablo 3 to cover.

And people pay that much for it because it's marked $10. It goes both ways, so there's not really a point here. On topic - I haven't really been intrigued by Borderlands, the graphics don't appeal to me that much and the fun seems to be in co-op / multiplayer, which my crappy internet can't afford to do (you *can* MP on PC, right? There is a PC version, right...?). Got to fix that before Diablo 3 though.

This definitely is the first game to clone Diablo to Diablo standards. I don't like how it's hard to see what's going on when theres a lot of enemies, but the pacing, balance, etc, is all great. The art style is terrible, but I can understand the decision as they're pretty low-budget, and the music/sound makes up for it. Level 11 Alchemist now, great stuff.

Half an hour so far. Seems like what it looked to be, a really solid fun diablo clone. Bit on the easy and simple side even on Hard with alchemist, but we'll see as it progresses.

I'm only buying it on the Obs word of mouth over the last few days, but the few videos I saw makes it look like a good diablo 2 clone. Considering that I haven't found Sacred or that Titan one or whatever to be up to stuff on that... this is the first diablo clone that looks as good as diablo, for me. And that means glorious mindless fun. It finished downloading, so I'll try it once I get home and give first impressions.

Alright, now it's out everywhere, I'm downloading off D2D. About 100kbps so ~2 hours, not bad for a crappy wireless connection in NZ. Excited

Yeah, pretty amateur. It seems that there are still 6-8 hours to go yet, or so. However, GamersGate has already released it; this will be my first time to use direct download and I have bad experiences with things going iffy on launch day, so I might sleep on it and see who the best client is. http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TL/torchlight

I thought that made it even better, since if the 'mundane enemies' supplied your needs enough you could easily afford to be 'good' and skimp on eating plot-central characters, gaming the system. As it is, the experience of avoiding death and carrying a crippled character for the last 2 hours does have an impact when you're deciding whether to suck this guy's soul out in a main plot dialogue.

My comments were on long-term wide industry trends of which Dragon Age: Origins is but a miniscule and early symptom - they should not be taken as indicative of the current state of events for a particular situation, in which case it would simply be hyperbole. Meaning, to stay relevant, I might as well make a comment on DA:O system; I think that extent is fine. If you're going to have a DLC, I'd imagine that being able to d/l in-game and keep going is much more enjoyable than having to go through various shenanigans - the decision to put it in an in-game NPC in itself is simply good work, IMO.

You're going this at it the wrong way alanschu. It's not a question of short-term value, i.e. am I going to pay two more bucks in the end for a certain amount of content for Fable 3. Its a question of a new emerging business model that has the potential to affect game development and consumer value / experience in a negative way (obviously, from my point of view). i.e. A $10 base game with options that led up to a $60 game that provided a similar level of content as, say, Dragon Age: Origins? Sure, for most people that's same value, for some it's better value (e.g. I could save a few bucks, not pay for the crap romances, and actually improve my playing experience.) But you have to think about the fact that: a) There is a most obvious potential for commercial exploitation whereby companies begin to plan out their content in terms of such a business model. Sometimes, though not always, there will be cases where content is deliberately withheld for paid expansions (or rather, content is deliberately apportioned in such a way as to maximise the appeal of these now separate commodities). It's not a case of executives cackling in evil laughter and withholding function X for expansion Y (I think it woudl happen, just rarely) - more a case of devs thinking about how to ensure there are a maximum number of expansions for one base game, maximum level of appeal for each expansion, and that there is a synergy between base game and expansions, and expansions and expansions, so that it makes you want to buy more. So the commercial logic is going to drive much deeper into game development. This is really the big reason I oppose the whole process. I can easily imagine situations in the future where we are going to get more indulgent about development (people want pornography? go ahead, we'll make it an add-on that you can buy, but you don't have to), games that are going to try and use this modular system to appeal to even more customers by creating add-ons of every conceivable mainstream genre-style (think Operation Anchorage, but on a more extreme scale), etc. b) This is related to the fact that there will be a fragmentation of the game text as an integral entity. Some people will just play the base game and stop there (which, I imagine, would eventually replace the demo - 'try the base game for free, want to go further, buy the rest'), others will have this and that add-on, etc, etc. Firstly that's going to change the landscape of consumption - I can hardly talk about Dragon Age with my buddy Bob if I've played the base game with this and that add-on, and he's played completely different add-ons. The advertising discourse tells us that more personalisation, more customisation is always better (and it sometimes is, like my example above about not buying romances if I don't want to), but that's going to change the way we talk about games, it's going to make the modding scene a lot more complicated and thus less thriving (though the increased modularity of game architectures that will come simultaneously with this commercial development would help it). I'm not saying this stuff is bad - it's just one consequence, and lends to the point that this is a major development in the industry. You can just be a Volourn about it and say "I'll just buy what I like and not buy what I like", but that doesn't mean that's all there is to it. c) The kind of language displayed in certain posts in this thread shows that the advent of these kind of microtransactional, modular game commodity models will be supported by a discourse that leverages on the rampant levels of PC piracy to gain legitimacy. I'm not criticising the posts, but I think it's accurate to point out that both amongst the public and from institutional sources we are / will begin to see arguments that imply and leverage off the fact of piracy to subtly undermine the positions of those who argue that this is all capitalist fat cats out to extort more money. I think some would even see and proclaim this model as a partial solution to piracy, a way to rework the commercial model so that there is enough choice and value for consumers to make legitimate purchases the obvious thing to do - breaking down the level of legitimacy or justification piracy has, explicitly or implicitly, in large sections of the gaming populace. Is that good? Not sure... I don't really think it will do a huge amount to reduce piracy (it will increase revenue, I imagine, as a whole, though), but it will be a discursive mechanism used. Oh, nota bene, b) and c) aren't necessarily 'bad' even in my opinion, as I said. I'm just pointing out, for a general audience, that going 'DONT LIKE IT DONT BUY IT' or 'oh this doesnt really change anything' is, IMHO, not very accurate.

I thought the forum disclaimer for viewing single posts was even funnier:

Simply wait until Lord of the Flies has conquered the world, then all video game studios will receive equal budgets and equal job security for the production of leisure games. I'm sure Alpha Protocol will be out by then, featuring much more realistic and prominent depictions of communism.

Nothing earth-shattering, but I enjoyed the expansiveness of the stories when I was in high school and with lots of time. I think I endured up to book 9 or so, but something like 6-9 were total dross. Good to see if they've picked up again, though I probably dont remember enough of it now to pick it up again.

Same 3-day delay with NZ, but that's so much better than most games as I remember it (I think ten years ago they took a couple of months). Sadly games are still about a third cheaper in the US, even with shipping. I just worked out that I could order from amazon with normal shipping for a combined 60USD, and get it about a week late; to buy it off the shelf would cost 75USD. Just continues my trend of buying games from overseas after Risen... goodbuy, idiot retailers.

At least, they were. Now it's just 50% skyway.

While I can only work off your side of the story, your cousin's comments demonstrate tendencies to hypocrisy, public dramatisation and antagonisation that combine to give me the impression that you're fine and you might do best not to give too much time to the melodrama. I'm sorry if you take that the wrong way (it is, after all, your cousin) - and of course this is a silly thing for a family relationship to be fractured over, as well. I just have little patience for people who focus more on a public performance of their identity than its everyday practice.

As alanschu said, it happened in pretty much every Bio/Obsid RPG after KOTOR, and it makes a lot of sense. It's not the ost ideal in terms of gameworld making sense but the gameplay benefits are obvious.

"Play games for a living" is overrated - based on reviewers' commentary as a whole, either that doesn't really chalk up to much in terms of 'inherent skill level', and/or they tone down their own judgments for their own idea of the Average Joe. Point is, Dragon Age looks to be harder than the recent offerings of mush. Whether this will mean a system that rewards tactical ingenuity remains to be seen.

Beth would not lose their original agreement for 3 SP games on the franchise though, so NV is not in danger.

Bump. Finished the game, but did most of Chapter 4 in God mode because I knew there wasn't much to look forward to except for endless combat. Verdict is that ending is indeed poor, and the game isn't worth playing past the end of Chapter 2... but that's still good 15-20 hours of solid entertainment. After an entire game based on 'thoughtful action RPG combat', the Zelda-like puzzle battle for the final boss was stupid as well. if only PB had the resources to keep it up. With no RPG to play I might try to start again with the bandit path and see how far I keep my interest...

The cooldown time for fireball means that in closed spaces like Ch3 Temple you can only get a couple off, though. I agree it was of great use in the outdoors where Risen allows you to use the terrain to scope out good battlegrounds. Seal 3 = Open Locks and Speed Run, so I'll go on a full island tour and scope out every little crack. I did a tour in Chapter 2 but back then even skeletons were a massive challenge.

Fireball's been pretty damn useless so far, though mage still rocks for Speed / Levitate / Berserker / Skeleton runes. Managed to get a +2 amulet so at level 7 fireball now, gonna test it out.