alanschu

Executing people doesn't protect us from those who withdraw from the social contract though. How can you fail to be protected from someone who is dead? I'd say being dead put a spanner in most criminal enterprises. Except possibly necrophilia. How are you any less protected from that same person if he was in prison for life? The death penalty is not a deterrence. Murders still occur, often times at a higher rate than places where the death penalty does not exist (I'll be nice and assume that there's other confounding variables that explain this). The only way you can justify that the execution of a murderer will protect others from being harmed by the murderer is if you assume that the murderer will be a repeat offender. What is the recidivism rate for repeat murders? The best I can find is recidivism rate for murderers, but that just means they have returned the jail for any reason (not necessarily murder).

LOL @ Final Fantasy mention. So what if that game had save points? Maybe if I was 11 years old I would have enjoyed that garbage. FF7 is crap when compared to true RPGs like Arcanum, BG, Vampire: Bloodlines, Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, KOTOR 2 (from the fellas working on AP) and hundreds of other PC RPGs that allow you to save anywhere. You know, when you say "RPGs all have <x feature> excluding those that don't because I don't consider them RPGs" then you pretty much make yourself unfalsifiable, and hence, irrelevant. Cheers.

Executing people doesn't protect us from those who withdraw from the social contract though.

Nom nom nom nom

I played FF7 on my PC, and it had save points.

LOL!

Just to be curious, are the people criticizing the CQC preferring that the CQC be like Splinter Cell where (historically) you would click the mouse button once and watch Sam kickass?

OKey doke. After watching the video it almost looked like "you pick an option" and wait for the timer to run out. Which is a bit slow maybe, but acceptable haha.

What happens if you do not respond to a conversation in time? Does the NPC respond as if you are hesitating/not saying anything?

But it's a lot easier to sell a product that has more features in it that aren't in a previous product. Especially if fans want those features.

Having not seen it actually in play I can't really comment.

Okay I lied. It's nigh impossible not to click on a thread you've posted previously in. I enjoyed Rock, Paper, Shotgun's preview of it. The more previews I read up of the game, the more it seems like they've expanded on the game. Could they have patched this stuff into the game? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But it seems to me that these patches would have altered an awful lot of the L4D game. So much so that it would literally seem like a different game. Especially things such as the dynamic level layout (which I doubt could be patched into the game). Some of the easier additions, though, were likely decided to be added to L4D2 to create more reason to purchase L4D2 (lets be honest here, Valve is a company in this to make money). Ironically, I think that releasing these smaller additions would further diminsh L4D2 as a standalone game, and the ire of upset gamers would not be quelled. I know it's easy to say reviews and previews are bought out and meaningless, but I haven't seen any (admittedly I haven't seen many period) that weren't explicit in stating to readers that they felt this was more than just a little expansion.

According to write up I read, the weapons are all modified. I think it was IGN. So what it was an assault rifle, it played different with different characteristics of the M16 from the original one. I think I'm going to take my leave of this thread however. I've said my piece.

Did they actually say it'd be a full price release?

Lulz

Then don't buy it until it's cheaper. Problem solved.

Haha my bad. Fans are fickle.

They really should start doing this again, it's going to kick their ass in the long term. Is it really going to affect Bethesda that they release The Pitt, Alaska, and so forth as paid for DLC rather than free updates?

Well, Bethsoft didn't screw up by offering gamers updates for free at one point.

They'll never do it, but man that would be laugh out loud funny if they did ban those people.

Your guild dropped Twin Princes in AQ40. Pretty casual indeed.

Meh, I think it makes sense in a society that seems to value public health care.

It wasn't intended to be a sequel, but as they worked on it they realized it was more of a stand-alone game. I bought L4D because I played the demo and loved it. The unfortunate thing is that I see something like this encouraging Valve to NOT do stuff like they did with TF2, because other games that don't do it will result in a rabid fanbase. It's a PR boondoggle for sure for them, but seriously, if you don't want to buy L4D2 because you don't feel it's worth the money, then don't. I think that the concerns over splitting the user base and the original L4D being left in the dust are overstated. People play games that they own. If lots of people don't feel it's worth the money, I think quietly hitting Valve in their pocketbook, rather than ranting and raving and demonstrating how frothing at the mouth you are by signing petitions and so forth, would be more effective. Because I think this mockery of a Steam group and mountains of people with (IMO) behaving stupidly, you're just going to encourage Valve to tell fans to **** off and not bother releasing free updates because then they set a standard that all their games will have to uphold. I mean seriously, a lot of the **** they are griping about is retarded. The MUSIC! It's like someone said "Hey, we need a bigger list of stuff because if the list is too small it won't look as impressive." So rather than focusing on the real concerns, they widen their argument to include pretty petty things, which defeats the entire purpose. I'm skeptical that half of those people will stick to their guns, especially if L4D2 turns out to be a pretty good improvement and turns out to be ****loads of fun. It's always your choice to decide what to do with your money. I never understood the people that slam EA for releasing the new sports games every year, often with only cosmetic improvements. They do it because people buy them. I like their sports games but I never buy them year after year because I don't feel it's worth the money. I'll do the same thing with L4D franchise.

Wow this and Alpha Protocol will = some awesomeness for sure!