Tigranes

Don't get me wrong, I'd have loved it, but I've long since had the impression that AP devs felt they had so many other things on the plate, they wouldn't be able to invest enough time and resources to craft stealth that's significantly more stealthy than, well, FO3.

Question answered, and I haven't closed a thread in so long I'm getting anxiety attacks, so... Looks like we'll need a stickied FAQ soon.

A checkpoint save system will be used in Alpha Protocol, as seen in E3. It does annoy me when I have to repeat sections, but I find it also makes me think about metagaming less and also play the game more carefully (which meant Thief 3's checkpoints worked very well for me).

Went and watched several movies this week, which is highly unusual for me: Seven Samurai Finally got around to the Kurosawa classic. For those who don't know, it's an old (1954?) B&W film about medieval Japan, where a farming village takes the unprecedented step of directly hiring samurai to defend against bandits. They have no money and thus struggle, but eventually a company of seven eccentric samurai are formed, and a detailed defence against the bandits take place. Kind of like a Citizen Kane that's still fun IMO - nothing new or amazing here now, but you can clearly see that in its time it was a masterful accomplishment of a specific type of cinema and story. I actually enjoyed its slower pace and long-windedness; if made now it would easily lose an hour of screening time. It's been a long time since I saw a cut where someone runs from point A to point B, and you actually watch the entire journey as opposed to the start and end. I prefer it to the frenetic and overplayed editing decisions of contemporary Hollywood cinema, though. Hell, here one of them is allowed to have a drunken rant for a full two minutes. Fargo Another classic, from the Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men, etc). Setting: snow-laden Minneapolis and a small, sleepy town of Brainerd. Jerry has screwed something up, is in debt, and resorts to hiring two criminals to kidnap his wife and demand ransom from the rich, authoritative father. Problem is, nobody in the damn movie is particularly bright, and things don't work out neatly like you'd expect in a movie. People are killed, negotiations break down, Jerry starts feeling more and more trapped, and eventually it all ends face down. It's not as funny as The Big Lebowski, but afterwards you definitely have a sense of what the Coens wanted to do - a movie which isn't populated by perfected, contrived archetypes acting out stories which are wound together to deliver a clean thematic point, but where normal people, with all their flaws and contradictions and mediocrities, stumble about trying to do business. William J. Macy does the job wonderfully as well, as a cowardly, big-eyed automobile dealer (Jerry). Benjamin Button What you'd expect from this kind of movie. Classic Ameri-can storytelling, classic hollywood romancing, so on and so forth with the requisite classical inspirations in the mad sailor and button-maker. It was delivered quite well though. Warms the heart without covering it in cheese. Also dabbled in a bit of In Bruges, but I'm pretty damn sure I can't take 90% of all movies made this century. They're all drenched in this same sensibility that makes me convolute. Not that I can sit and watch, say, a Citizen Kane / 2001 marathon. Did Cannes throw up anything good this year? I need to dig into some good 90's classics I missed, and also some French cinema.

Awesome. Jagged Alliance always looked quite intimidating to me, one of those where I just find it hard to get into. I think with small scale squad tactical games with a lot of variables I don't instinctively grapple with the mechanics, so it's all dizzying. Good to see it in action. I hardly understand what's happening, but will be anticipating some of the more difficult battles and their descriptions.

Perhaps sex should always have been an accepted part of Western culture, too. I mean, I suppose if we were all celibate its depiction might be objectionable... There's no denying that sex occupies a very weird spot in the Western psyche. It's kind of futile to expect video games, with all the other social baggage they have, to make a 'difference' here though.

The ridiculous attire and 'sweetie' lines are much worse than the hair colour, really. I probably wouldn't mind without those shades.

Dugong.

As we have seen a blank-button version already we can only assume that there will at least be a PC version. Hopefully it can actually show the keys you map.

Thanks HK. That looks pretty awesome - great art direction, good atmosphere, useful action maneuvres. AI doesn't look too smart there, but it's not conclusive.

Course it is, are you implying Harry Potter didn't have stealth?

So is there any sort of gameplay / in-game footage around except for HK's youtube link (now defunct)? I never got into these games (I was horrible at them) but could always see the appeal, really enjoyed what little of Chaos Theory I got to play.

They ran out of buttons, so didn't put a pause on the controllers. Problem solved The trailer won't work in the office, and from what I've read I dont' really want to see the completely retarded sex stuff anyway, but tell me - apparently there was a bit where you can jump on the dragon and attack it or from underneath? Is that kind of interaction actually shown? It's going to be really interesting just how much divergence there will be between this idiotic PR campaign and the actual playing experience - are they going somewhere out there hand in hand, or is the PR doing something on its own?

Anything from Blizzard this E3? I have no idea why I can't finda nything.

I didn't expect a Thief light gem & detection mechanism kind of system, given that it's only one of the many focuses in the game... but surely they could have gone with an Oblivion style stealth at least, as opposed to, well, basically taking FO3's Stealth Boy. It may be short but it's long enough for you to 'jump' over the LOS zone of the guard, as the trailer demonstrated in the very first usage.

Finally saw it. Looks awesome, but yeah, the AI is a worry. The main thing that pisses me off is actually the sequence where they're demonstrating cover (just before chain shot) - it really reminds you of Fallout 3, the way you stay in cover and they all come running to you one by one. If your'e going to implement cover in your game then you need the AI to understand the concept of covering fire and flanking. One without the other just ends up in silly istuations.

What exactly is so terrible about Gordon Brown? I've been woefully ignorant of the British political situation since the Blair days.

That last one is very Disney.

Crappy net at home so can't watch at the mo, but awesome stuff. Pity the first screenie funcroc posted looks horrible. Main theme sounds pretty reasonable and what you'd expect from the genre/game.

Whoa, my post never got posted? Thank chub jubb for the back button. The Oblivion reviews, at least the first batch, were pretty damn consistent in how they described the game and what they praised - and removed from the history of RPG gaming, i.e. without having that framework of standards and expectations already set in place, Oblivion (for the first 5-10 hours) is an impressive experience. You get a nearly unrivalled accomplishment in expansive, lush environments (only marred by terrible long-distance textures), a relatively stable and very fast engine for such a large game/world, a visceral and immediately fun mix of sword/bow/stealth/magic (if completely abused in mid-late game), the fairly well implemented gimmick of horse riding, and of course a large and well built RPG structure with quests and NPCs. Flaws in the game that can be identified as flaws even without the aforementioned framework, such as the entropic implosion of game balance halfway through (combined with the idiotic level scaling), the terrible faces and stitched-together VO, nonsensical quest plots and ridiculous main story (which involved even more ridiculous Oblivion Gates) are more or less difficult to appreciate until much later on. I sunk 60 hours into the first (and only) playthrough and thought, without passing judgment on whether reviews should judge Oblivion by past RPGs in the way fans of past RPGs do or not, or whether its realistic to expect them to play 20+ hours before reviewing, it's fair enough and honest enough of the reviewers to say what they did based on what they played and how they saw the game. Certainly no more conspiracy theory going on here than what is pretty standard in the vidgame industry these days.

Okay, wow. That's the first piece of AP media that really nailed everything for me - nothing to cringe at or feel uneasy about. Of course the CGI trailer doesn't reflect the gameplay / in-game graphics, but for me the trailer shows Obsidian have the feel and style down. This one was great from start to finish - pacing, dialogue, camera angles, plot, etc. And you probably do get the range of options shown in the trailer (if not the exact same ones), I'm not worried on Obsid shortchanging us on C&C for this one.

I'm pretty sure twitter and whatnot lets us know more about these departures, so that the turnover rate seems higher.

Because it's a more accurate way to describe the issue? Gorgon is right.

I liked Guild Wars for a while, because you could go on cooperative missions with a few people (i.e. your friends). I'll stick to Diablo 3, thanks. the current crop of MMOs have way too much grinding and not enough awesome co-op/pvp moments per time spent.

Man, I must have completely missed that quest, where do you get it? Sounds fun.