Tigranes

So.. uh, is there a reason you copy and pasted my comments about the interview? Rofl.

The thing is, spearheaded by Gaider as it is, it's nothing more or less than what we expect of him. A detailed and expansive world: not a very original, but polished and very well-working setting and plot: dialogue that is "good" but perhaps rather lukewarm for the most part, with occasional delights. That's just how he does it, I think. Which is why I'm relying on what were really the strenghts of, say, SoA: an expansive world with heaps of everything, a solid and entertaining tactical combat, and decent levels of everything else to carry it all home. Just diappointed from fan's perspective that we've seen very little of the gameplay mechanics, because cinematic dialogue and DA's generic look doesn't really excite me.

Played a bit of civilisation stage today before it crashed, cause the friend is starting to want it back and I want to see the Space stage. Really hard to motivate myself though, the tribe/civ stages are truly horrible in terms of gameplay. I think one could easily spend hours making their own vehicles and buildings, but without the ability to create a proper city (just buildings you place in a very small, pre-set circle) and with low graphics settings that makes everything look blurry I'm not so inspired. Pity, because while that part is great, the actual gameplay in these stages are absolutely dire. There's no saving grace. Thinking of just playing in Easy so I can blast through it and get to space. Hopefully I can find time to do that before I give the game back.

Fair enough. I found Jade Empire and Mass Effect disappointing in its execution, though - and when you have a game that is neither well executed/polished nor original, well, that's hell. The one thing I was really glad to see is how other people in the world are actually aware their King is a knob. From their earlier coverage it looked as if he was just a 'good guy' with really bad VA; now we see that he's meant to be a young, brash fool. Everybody looks a bit stiff with their default military stance and the dialogue flow isn't quite as smooth as it could be, but that's not something I mind so much. Right not it looks pretty good to look at, pretty good to play, but I think it's really going to depend on gameplay mechanisms. edit: Oh, if anyone thought Todd Howard's voice was annoying? Who was that narrator?

Only saw the first one so far, but come now, Morgoth, it does look damn generic. I was never looking for anything strikingly original (heck, BG2 was pretty generic and it was awesome), so I don't mind too much, but yeah.

Angles, angles! Yeah, that was actually a while ago. Should have Rob McGinnis soon if he gets back to me, but I think he's pretty busy at the moment with SoZ.

pretty expensive 4 a crack krookie amirite

I'd want an expansion pack that adds nothing big, but just fleshes out the first four stages and adds lots more options on what you can do, allow more freeform and larger tribes/cities, adds more appendages, etc... but that'll never happen because that's just not a viable model in today's market for xpacks (apparently). We probably will see an aquatic expansion pack which comes with some of the aforementioned. I do have high hopes for Spore 2, though.

I really do think that it's quite difficult for the companies to judge exactly (or roughly) how many sales were lost (or even more difficult, nearly lost) to DRM concerns, how many buyers were driven to piracy by DRM, etc. (Especially since it's usually not black and white.) Which is why making a fuss and raising voices (without being, I don't know, a jerk) on the internet does serve a purpose. As rn says, silent protests alone are basically making you and your buying power a sucker. It's important to get the word out 'on the street' about what you're doing and why. I think it's great that ME and Spore's DRm are getting so much press, and in some cases bad press, everywhere. It won't have as big an impact as the protesters would like it to have, but suggesting it's futile or silly is logically bankrupt.

MINSC! I'm sold.

Recently finished a very nice IWD2 campaign, I paid some attention to character builds and was a bit more canny this time round, so I was actually able to beat Isair & Madae without cheating or cheesing. Never done that before, because I'd usually make some silly characters that were total deadweights by then. Weimer's shapeshifting is a bit OP though. Now on BG2, uh, again. God.

You want me to deal with EA Customer Service? Man, that's cruel. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Age of Mythology, Arcanum, BGI, BGII, Democracy 2 Demo, Eschalon: Book 1 Demo, Fallout, Fallout 2, Football Manager 08, Halo (uh, yeah), Icewind Dale I, Icewind Dale II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Planescape: Torment, Pro Evo Soccer 6, Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV, RoTK XI, Spore, Thief, Thief 2, Thief 3, Unreal Tournament, and three tactical combat RPGs set in RoTK world = 25. Total Wars and some others died from disuse + small hard drive.

Oops, uh, that's a "there may come a time", not will. It was more of a general statement - maybe we can't stop something that we dislike from becoming standard practice, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop opposing it. Just doesn't do anybody good (except, uh, I guess I'd get to play Mass Effect?)

I'm playing my umpteenth installation of BGII with lots of fanmade mods. Five minutes of this is a lot more fun than my entire stint with Mass Effect. Of course there will come a time when the alternative to accepting install-limit DRM or [insert some currently draconian thing here] will basically mean a refusal to play most games, but hey, I'm sure as hell going to do my part to make sure that doesn't happen.

Confirmed as a rickroll. Geez gais.

Yep. In the short term it's the most moral and practical thing to do for you (not stealin', not getting screwed by DRM) but it sends all the wrong messages. Pity. I'm sorta enjoying Spore, but once I return my friend's copy I won't be playing it again, and I never did get to try most of ME. But I care about the industry more than I do a couple of decent games.

I was kinda hoping Mike could hook up with the local metal bands and use their look as a disguise.

And why would they risk bags of money in revenue to spite a totally inconsequential censor decision, when (a) games sold in AUS have a massive markup and (b) it wouldn't change the australian board's attitude one iota, as the roots lie in a different kind of political climate?

Played tribe and moving on to civilisation if I can get my work done fast enough. Tribe, I believe, is the much-maligned stage - well, I thought it was okay. I wanted to do peaceful at the start, but the buggers kept attacking me so I got fed up and conquered everybody. Small control flaws continue to plague Spore - in the cell stage movement is much too lethargic even with speed upgrades, which is accurate for deep underwater but still frustrating; in the tribe stage selection you can't use Ctrl+Number to assign groups, and if you want to select multiple creatures through portraits you have to shift+click every one, which really irritated me. Thought the city hall / vehicle creators were really cool, although I thought the base for the city hall was much too small. I would have happily spent hours building a big building five times the size.

Well that's a surprise. I suppose ES' comments that most of its buyers never even try playing online were right.

It hardly matters, does it? I mean, it's just a name change. It's pedantic to enforce and trivial to obey.

AOE3 didn't sell that well, did it? It certainly never got above a few thousand at any given moment in online matchmaking. A real shame, since AOK really brought me into strategy gaming, and I sunk a lot of hours into the series. They didn't really seem to know where to go after AOE3 though, and I'm ambivalent about Halo Wars, although it'll probably do decent. I don't know. I still don't see a real reason to close the place, and do it before release... either it's part of a general policy on MS' part or it's behind the scenes troubles I guess.

More like about a hundred for the BG series, but that's because of WeiDu.

And yet we still get saddled with moronic DRM, Hurlshot. I've installed every Infinity Engine game at least 10 times, and will be installing them again on my new computer soon.