Tigranes

Fantastic news, and we haven't even seen Purgatorio yet. I'm another of the silent fans waiting for its release - I have yet to be happy with any fanmade mod for the NWN series except a couple, but the trilogy has looked very solid so I'm anticipating. Congrats!

I don't know, I picked up skiing in one day and was reasonably proficient by the day's end, whereas the snowboarders never really got the hang of it. They'd just skittle down a few metres then fall on their butts. And I fell and rolled about fifty times, but never really had the skis trouble me. But then, I just jumped onto my side and rolled on purpose when it looked like I was going to lose control.

Chaotic Commands.

Insta-sig!

It's difficult for a developer company to hire its own people and start publishing themselves, especially because if you're trying to get some good marketing out, then that costs a lot of money. Definitely, if you're making your first game, there's really no hope. Digital Downloads offered from their own website (i.e. Paradox)? Sure, but that's only going to get word of mouth and stumble-upon sales. I think what we can hope for, rather, is big successful developers taking on the role of publisher as well from a more understanding pov - companies with higher revenue and nous such as Bioware and Blizzard. Anyway, while the bad dollar does make the problem seem worse atm, it's definitely not new. I've complained about this for well nigh 7 years, ever since the 13-year-old-me found out just how much the cost difference is between here (NZ) and USA or even Europe. Add to that, that in those days, the delay between releases was up to 10 weeks, even for triple-A titles! Your links are pretty cool Tale, thanks - I'll check them out.

Volo, that's fair enough, but how would you explain games being 20-40% more expensive in Europe or Aus/NZ? You can justify the games coming out later due to shipping and whatnot, and the logistics behind global release, but why is a game 1.5x the price it is in the US? I was mainly working on that, I don't know enough behind the production costs to say whether games are 'overpriced' in US. But yeah, I didn't make this clear, sorry. Oh: But it's ok Volo, I sort of expected it.

As a personal and moral decision it's not defensible (it very rarely is). I've already said theft is not 'justified' just by high prices. My point is, however, that piracy in music especially and to a degree games has become in many sectors of the population to be, if not 'accepted', a 'silent crime' or one that many are complicit in and turn a blind eye to. So by defensible - not quite the word in the sense you seem to ask about. Funny how comparable it is to the history of masturbation, fetish sexuality or pornography viewing in western society really. First it was taboo to do or say with horrible consequences - then it was subject to the sort of complicit guilt stage where everyone knew (or, rather, thought they knew) everyoone else was doing it, it wasn't 'right', but it wasn't good to accuse people about it - then, of course, now we get stories of how masturbation can be healthy and is natural; or jokes on TV and other popular mainstream media that take for granted the complicity: and so forth. I'm definitely not commenting here on whether such acts are 'right' or 'wrong' or defensible or indefensible. I'm just talking about how they manifest in our society. Same with piracy - I'm not going into (yet) the morality of whether it's right for me or you to download games, whether it's okay if you like games you buy and delete ones you dont, whatever. I'm simply talking about the reasons. We're at the stage for music downloading where it's, like masturbation/etc above, shedding its skin as a complicit and silent thing to a blatant or self-righteous diatribe against the industry, at least in some areas. Not really at that stage with video games, as it still occupies a 'minority' position in our culture (and that position is totally irrespective of how many people actually play games). But it may well follow the same trajectory, because the way the industry and the government react to piracy for games is exactly the same as the music: raising prices, blaming it on piracy, and attacking pirates with protection that harms and inconveniences innocent consumers as well on the way. France has just announced anti-piracy measures against casual pirates with the punishment of cutting internet access; they also 'promise' and 'pledge' DRM-free music, but everyone knows promises and pledges by corporates mean nothing until it is actually realised. I'm not saying the corporations' actions are wrong, as such: as Volourn or Sand might say, they legally own the rights to the products and they have every right to pursue legal action against those who would pirate the products illegally. I accept that and it doesn't throw any sort of wrench in my logic. My point is that the law is not the be-all and end-all of the world, and while it is good enough for many individuals to simply act in accordance to the law, when talking about the movement of the industry as a whole, that's a very limited position that yields incomplete analyses. So. The companies *are* within their right to punish pirates. But the way in which they do so, while RIGHT, is not the most sensible way to go about it for their own sakes, as we are seeing with the profit decilne for the major labels. While it is indefensible to pirate and say it's because music / games are too expensive, and it is legal and correct for companies to pursue legal action and attach DRMs and safediscs, "right' and "wrong", "legal" and "illegal" are not the only frameworks to consider: as we see with the music industry, persisting in expensive games, especially nonrefundable as they are in some countries, while trying to destroy piracy by limited legal action, is never going to be a very sensible or feasible strategy for the corporations themselves. It's like the Lord and his peasants. The Lord has, for whatever reason, decreed that rabbit stew costs a sixpence: the peasants are resorting to thieving because they believe it is too expensive. The Lord employs his guards to catch then castrate the thieves to teach them a lesson, while upping stew prices to, he says, make up for the loss. But his guards can never stop all, or even, most, or even, half of the thieves: meanwhile, less and less people buy the stew because it is so expensive. From the perspective of the Lord, he is in the right and hisa ction is legally defensible but the results are not, and will not, be very desirable for him. Now, if the Lord accepts that, though before, it was possible for him to charge his price for the stew and have his customers, due to cruel fate, it is no longer possible (changing tech/soc/etc): he reduces his price for the stew, and uh, lifts DRM on it (heh), he will still get thieves. He will still lose revenue to them. But many peasants will probably return to legal circles, in which they feel more comfortable. Yes, perhaps it is wrong that the thieves have seemingly benefited from their illegal activities. Yes, perhaps the Lord was always in the right. But what the Lord is doing now isn't helping the Lord himself. And that's not even going into the backstory behind why games are priced so high in the first place and what's the 'right price'. Wow, that was long. Sorry, I'll cut it down if I can later. But I'm trying to make clear that I'm not saying piracy is a justifiable act. I'm talking about the industry in general and the way it might flow, not whether me or you are justified in pirating a game or song.

New games have always been $100NZ, $80-90 for less prominent releases; standard for expansion packs are $50NZ. Since the PS2 age, that's jumped to $120NZ per game, really. That's $90US, though keep in mind the dollar has recently plummeted; it's probably closer to $75US normally. The irony is that whereas a few years ago some stores, such as Electronic Boutique, used to offer 7-day refund packages, allowing you to try games out, you now have a situation where basically there is no possibility of refund short of a totally malfunctioning game. Furthermore, internet is ridiculously expensive here, and broadband is often capped at 5, 10 or 20GB per month. With demos coming in gigabytes nowadays, it costs you dearly to even try out a few demos before your totally nonrefundable, superexpensive product. Of course high price doesn't 'justify' theft of games. But that's an extremely simplistic and ultimately pointless dialectic that doesn't contribute to an understanding of the industry. On a personal level? Sure. High price doesn't justify theft. But it's a similar argument as the music industry where you pay $40NZ for a single CD (especially since most of that goes to the labels). In neither case, theft is 'justified'. But the *reason* people steal (whether its good reason or not is irrelevant) is made clear when you think about the fact that, unlike clothes or books (that you can open up and read), and to a limited degree (though increasingly better), music, it's much harder to sample games and a lot more work to sample games, especially since demos are not representative for many games, not released for some games, and in NZ you have limited and costly bandwidth. Why should you pay $120NZ for a product that came out a month ago in the US for half the price? Why should you buy it without a refund policy, especially a PC game that is notorious for never being guaranteed to work well on your system even if it meets the requirements? The 'solution' isn't piracy, because theft can never be 'justified'. To argue that is argue to the wrong thing. The point is that the increase in piracy reflects the discontent and injustice of the industry model in the only way that the companies willa ctually recognise and listen to (protests? boycotts? bad press? what? really? yeah right), and ultimately may result in improved market conditions. If nothing else, that will make piracy even less defensible than it is now.

If you want to compare it to a JRPG, it's more like Final Fantasy Tactics series, which is considered for them an 'outsider'. But then, hey, I only ever played 5 minutes of Fallout Tactics.

Yeah, you can have a Fighter with 18 wisdom and 9 strength if you want to. I guess what EvaUnit meant was that if he played a Fighter, he would feel compelled to put most of his points down STR/DEX/CON, and thus not get much out of the game. I'd say go for high WIS, and decent (13+) INT/CHA anyway; Torment's combat is not especially difficult, and the dialogue / roleplay benefits are so high I'd even just knock down the difficulty scales if you needed to, and get high wis/int/cha.

Well, that paragraph makes it sound totally crap. But I know most stories do sound crap and cliche if compressed into a paragraph.

I'd say take your time with Torment - talking to everyone is no mean feat because there is so much text. But when I first played it I was an impatient 15 year old and rushed past a lot of it - it really raped the experience. Take the time and invest yourself mentally in each dialogue and really go around exploring (cause the game's beautiful). And if you get tired, take a break. Hard for me to say the total hours, Meshugger might be right. I played it through last week, but i was home a lot. Now, does anybody else get a tear in the eye when talking to the Paranoid Incarnation?

Sigh. I guess its good in execution. Right?

McClaren, it seems, has already been sacked, and the upcoming press conference is only a formality. I agree that he needs to go, but only because he hsould never have been picked in the first place. The FA never gives its managers the time, really. I saw the game and well.... I don't know why Robinson wasn't replaced a long time ago to bleed in the new keeper; and if you had to throw one in the depths, why not David James, experienced and on form, but a young and nervy Carson? Why play Barry, Gerrard AND Lampard? Why play a 4-5-1 when neither Joe Cole nor Shaun Wright Phillips are proven goalscorers, and why play Crouch if you don't have Beckham or Owen? I would have been apoplectic if the game remained 2-2, since the penalty was so soft it's probably better to sleep on than a feather bed. If the referee wasn't paid off at half time, I have no explanation for how he gave England fourty free kicks afterwards - I mean, surely you can't be that bad at your job? Well done to Croatia who played with composure and skill, and gave the viewers a good show. They've been unlucky to not get anywehre since WC98 and I hope they put on a show in the Euro.

Good, good. I take it fromi nventory criticism that it pulled the idiotic KOTOR thing again? I mean, it was excusable in Fallout but.. If dialogue is standard bio quality, then yeah, ME looks a decent enough game - another KOTOR / JE - ish game. That's fair enough. After all, who actually believed the hype?

Well, my expectation remains unchanged so far (i.e. not expecting anything in terms of combat / sidequest / nonlinearity / exploration but main story should be solid and music/graphics good).... but we'll see. How is the dialogue system? I haven't heard much about that yet, but I haven't been reading game website reviews, since most of them are useless. I'm really thinking that it pretty much turned out as expected - i.e. about, Oblivion dialogue quality.

It's straight out my noggin', but I wouldn't be surprised to see quite a few others hold the same view. In comparison with other places, I think it's a lot worse than in, say, France or Italy. I hear the Spanish press can be quite devilish as well (obviously, I can't read them), but look at how their Football Association has kept hold of Aragones even after a disappointingly early exit. In England, the FA bow to pressure, and the fact that they sacked Sven without a decent manager marked up and agreed is farcical. It's quite similar to South Korea, actually. Some of you might remember how, memorably, former great player and 'national hero' Cha Bum-Keun (who was in his time quite well known and valued in the Bundesliga) was sacked from the manager seat during the 5-0 drubbing by Holland in WC'98, even before the game had ended - you can imagine, the players go into the game with one manager and he's not their boss anymore when they're back in the dressing room. Hiddink is the only one to leave with grace (but then, that's the only time Korea ever did very well in a major competition) and since then the team has seen one Dutch manager replace another. The thing is, there is so much press and public speculation about every little thing, they are followed so closely, every squad selection is scrutinised and every result picked apart. The Koreans dont' seem to realise - or want to admit - that the Korean national team actually is pretty crap and that won't really change until the national output of players and quality of the league improves, which can only come with infrastructural changes regarding youth players and academies. Similarly in England, the zonal rule, which prohibits clubs from recruiting young players that live too far away, means promising youngsters can't be plucked out into well-built academies but may ply their trade for lower clubs, receiving lower standards of training. More fundamentally, the emphasis in the English game is so strongly on 'passion and committment': in other words, a blind eye is turned to fouling and cheating, horrendous tackles and pushing and shoving, as long as you get the ball (or stop them from getting it): whereas a French academy might focus on technical play more, and the Brazilians in their streets fire up individual tricks, English training much more consists simply of throwing people together in a 5-a-side and letting them run with 'passion and committment'. Meanwhile, Aaron Lennon, one of England's most promising youngsters, may not have much of a future in the game if Tottenham continue to play him when unfit with all kinds of workarounds and injections, doing irreparable damage to his body: though the first team players in England at the moment do have a level of technical skill in and of themselves (i.e. Joe Cole), the second-string is not so promising (D. Bent, Jenas, Reo-Coker, Gareth Barry). So yeah, on one hand, if the English want to get the most out of what players they have, then my first post talks about that: if they are not satisfied with the players they do have, well, theres a good reason, and it's not 'foreign players' or 'too much money in the game'.

Every single Bioware release since NWN1 has been described exactly the same by reviewers and PR agents, yet everybody still visits these sites and the great delusion of gaming journalism lives on. I mean, why stop talking out of your arse if everyone listens to you? Friend's getting ME on xbox, I'll wait and try it there. I didn't buy JE and I dont' think I'll buy ME, but we'll see. Sand, I do that with games I like. I let the voiceover run on MOTB for example, and often sat around taking screenshots from silly angles. I just didn't find Jade Empire compelling that way, since I guessed the big plot twist the very first time you talk to the Master. (The British explorer dude was cool, though.)

That's fair enough, but I remember the same being said against Sven, and Sven is actually a very good manager, as he showed with Lazio and is showing with Man. City (though it hasn't been long). Sven is, also, a man who isn't 'soft' like McClaren is. Many speculated that Sven was afraid to drop the big names, but the truth is that if England drops the big names, it doesn't have a lot to fall back on. Sure, Gerrard-Lampard isn't working. Sure, Robinson is an idiot and needs to be dropped. But other than that? There's not a whole lot wrong with the selection. Uh, except for picking Jenas. Haha. I think the problem is that the English fans want a manager who can overcome the ridiculous level of pressure and the positively disgusting English press, AND impose his will on English players who are notorious for loving the party life and having a big head, and then manage a team. Hey, the actual solution would be for the country to create an environment where the manager is NOT the most stressful job in the entire world. There are some managers who say they would never ever manage England, and there's a very good reason for that. Why would you, under all those circumstances? The English press needs to shut up a little bit (about everything), the fans need to calm down a little bit and the players need to learn to respect the manager even if the things don't go well. If that happens, even a manager out of his depth like McClaren can help them achieve. If not, Guus Hiddink (uh, well, maybe not Hiddink) would find it difficult to get anything out of them.

Sand, I finished Jade in one day, something like 13 hours. With no walkthroughs, so I later discovered I missed a fair number of sidequests, but that's what I was going by. I did play it pretty fast though, since I'm a fast reader, the dialogue bored me and the interface/mechanics were familiar. Apparently it generally took other people a lot longer (hence your 32)... hard to know where on that scale Tycho's 17 fits. Definitely doesn't seem like a very very long game though.

It's pretty short, he skipped lots of sidequests though. Which means it has to be longer than Jade Empire at least...

I love how the reviewer complains about too much fannying around, when his own review is a drawn out and boring affair. From the videos I've seen I dont' expect ME's combat to really interest me, but we'll see. I wonder if my PC can even handle it.

rofl, I see my unedited version survives. Comment still applies I think for the incident, if not for the game.

The controversial 'free kick': http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZO1ysiicro The Italian fellow falls over pretty well doesn't he? Edit: There's also talk of Italy having a goal wrongly ruled out before, so maybe karma comes round for the game itself. Who knows.