Tigranes

No, all that stuff on the front page's a load of crap. As usual. (Ha, Good fun, etc.) We'll see if they have any new info though.

Why exactly does that dragon destroy processors for breakfast, anyway? Apart from the summoning effects, I mean.

That's my aim. I'm gathering the necessary drivers, etc. for a clean format & Xp install, to get rid of all the bloatware (including the biggest one of them all *cough*)

Picking it up myself when I get back to NZ next wednesday. HP dv5-1131tx Intel Core2Duo P7350 (2.0 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB) 3gb ram DDR2 320gb HDD 5400RPM GeForce 9600M GT 512mb (dedicated) 15'4" screen WXGA Can't really afford the next step up and this should be able to run most 2008 games at high settings, I think. We'll see how it handles NWN2 though, the hog. Pretty excited since my current comp lags on IE games.

I think some people get bored having to do that all the time, or just want to only control 1 char, or something.

I'd bet money on that, yes. I'd also bet money that Origins will end with some ancient crap being awakened, beginning a massive war which changes the world, then there is that war in Heroes, and someone betrays the PC or something at the end of that, which ends in Villains where everything is postapocalyptic or whatever. Ptoing. Were any of Obsidian's founders working at Troika? Does the video game industry have one of the highest turnover rates in the entertainment industry? Is the video game industry also famous for a dearth of talent, which results in said talent being shared across companies? The second sentence has nothing to do with the first, though. Is there a specific logic you are trying to put forward? LucasArts takes the blame on one issue, and that is forcing an early release of K2. Nothing more, nothing less. Obsidian does have something of a track record in buggy games now, but now they are releasing their new IPs with different engines, they have a good chance of fixing that. I think taking the decrepit Aurora was a calculated risk the company took, and it did pay off, overall.

What else is so disappointing about SoZ? I'm not provoking, I just really want to know what people think about it.

Horse Armour with Guns.

Well, I'm sure you'd agree that that's all we can really expect at this stage. And for me, with a lot of optimisation, electron is very playable (if possessing some ugly boils from the very beginning). NWN2 took as much computer processing power as the Matrix, MOTB improved it a lot. Anyway, I usually don't take this kind of position, but I'm sort of happy that the buff-removal 'workaround' was used. Battles are way too easy in every incarnation of NWN, and it's a nice challenge. I guess if they could have, Obsidian would have implemented a similar system to IE engine games where there is actually a timer for the buffs while travelling, though. Now if only I could get my bloody new laptop so I could play this thing.

Both true for every NWN product ever... although you could argue NWN2 vanilla was broken out of the box for a few people. But then, so was NWN, when the engine first graced millions' computers.

Yes. And that is, as always, one of the most important things you need in life. If you don't have that, it could be argued that it's your fault / the onus is on you... but blame is rather parochial at that juncture.

Deus Ex, and it's nothing special. Decent stuff collected into a well polished game. Although, that might be because I don't see a lot of 'C&C' or nonlinearity yet. Like,

For once, funcroc is late.

Except none of this is new with the internet. Just like people were cursing and cutting in when driving chariots in ancient Rome, before highways and cars.

Exciting.

SoZ is out?! Where was the fanfare? Getting a new laptop this Sunday, though I'll have to wait until I get back home and get my NWN2/MOTB cds the week after to buy this. Come on people, early impressions!

Better technology = better game? (obviously i havent played fo3 yet and im actually planning on buying it blah blah caveats.) also, wow, its poolofpoo. been a while.

Very very few are unkillable though, i.e. Elminster due to licensing reasons, Gorion, and... that's it, really.

Thanks for the info ML. That's a good bargain on your link. Unfortunately I can only buy from Korea (visiting now) or NZ when I get back home, and the range of models and bargains available are much more limited. I'm braving a famous electronic goods market in Korea (lots of bargains in the hundreds, but sometimes second-hand or modified goods) with an expert, and probably looking at something a step below that - penryn, 3gb ddr2 ram, 9600m gt 512mb ddr2, etc. I'd have thought you could pull a bit more than that out of your laptop regarding FO3, but I suppose you haven't pushed it yet. Sounds fairly promising though, I'm not that bothered about massive resolutions.

Well this has certainly been an interesting saga. It's 90% confirmed that I'll be getting myself a fairly good, shiny laptop at the end of next week; I'll try and borrow FO3, or perhaps just buy it, around end of the month. I read a lot of player reviews including here, Codex, Iron Tower Studios, etc, and it feels like I'm going to get an Oblivionish experience from it - by which I mean, I'll have a lot of fun for quite a few hours, though probably not endlessly replayable or best-ever fantastic. I expect some flaws or detractions, but there seems to be enough in there to have fun the first time round. Besides, new laptop, needs to go for a whirl.

This is it, right? Looks great, and the proc is a P-series too. I'm looking at laptops right now, though my budget limits me to something like 9600M GT. D'you mind letting me/us know how your laptop performs with the newer games? I can never trust benchmarks.

I think it's been overhyped by RPS and certain sites - it's not anything "revolutionary" and "super amazing". But it's a damn good game and worth it for everyone. Beat it yesterday. Sound/music and graphics are very nice and characterised; the challenges very rarely get repetitive or silly. Basically the game is very well paced in moving onto something new and different before it gets stale, and each challenge is never so long or gruelling. You need to learn a new trick, experiment, then show you can do it a couple of times, then you move on - not learn it and do it ad nauseum. Only control annoyance is when there are 5000 goos flying around, and you want to select a specific type. This makes it very difficult to play quickly and dynamically. Instead it encourages you to build slowly and methodically, fearing a topple and tumble each step of the way. Which is good too, but some levels would have benefited from adding goos on the fly as your structure hurtles down.

Eh? What complaints? I can't play the game yet, remember? And your description is really exactly what I mean. I suppose the term 'standard Oblivion quality' leaves it up to interpretation. I felt Oblivion had plain-speaking dialogue that did the job, and rarely made me cringed, but equally, there was nothing really positive about the dialogue - no memorable lines, no real funnies, no real character. From what I've seen and read, I expect FO3 to be the same, but perhaps with a bit more colour and style than before - I think Beth made a conscious effort on that line. How many companions are there btw?

Gawd, I won't get to play this till December at least, either.

Heh. Conflicting opinions, as we all expected, right? I won't even have the option of buying it till I get a new computer around January, so let's wait and see. Haven't found anyone who's enamoured with the dialogue yet, so I assume it's standard Oblivion quality, but upgraded. What's all this talk about invisible walls? Really? Loved newc(?)'s mention of clever traps, honestly think that was the biggest missed opportunity with Oblivion. I got some amazing thrills in the first few hours with the traps they had and the nice animations, but it really sucked when that turned out to be the entire repertoire. With better traps (and more tactical environments instead of, uh, flat rocks) Oblivion dungeons might have been really fun.