alanschu

That makes sense though. I'm a half-wit with a firearm as well, but I can still walk up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head and kill you. It's the shooting rapidly while moving that I'd not be so good at, and that's where his skill improvements came in.

I used the sniper rifle almost exclusively, given it's accuracy was 102% by the time I was done with it. I'm not familiar with the lag though. When I clicked, I shot. Given how much I would snipe moving targets, I would have noticed it otherwise.

I speak English, so I refer to it as Japan.

Not a fan of Silent Storm? I thought it had a phenomenal squad based combat engine personally.

If you're going to nitpick, you could argue that the phrase "Meridian 59 came first" when used as a comparison to EQ, means little more than Meridian 59 was out before EQ. Also, given the exposure the original Neverwinter Nights had, it's hardly a huge gaffe to overlook it.

Yes I know. You've stated this several times. I figure since you seem be free wheeling in stating your preferences, I figure I'd state mine.

The bigger events are scripted via the date. And if you're playing the Turks, as a counterpoint to "build up" for the Turks (which I hear are a pain anyways, even at the slower rate), you'll also have to suffer against the Catholic factions that do more build up themselves, and go on Crusades. And if you play with the latest patch, I hear the level of naval assaults flies through the roof. I'd also strongly recommend playing on "Very Hard" for the battle difficulty. The AI no longer gets fake bonuses to morale and attack power, but rather actually tries to use its units more effectively (charge with units that have high charge, and so on), and it makes morale a bigger issue for the battle on the whole.

The only time I usually have a preference to third person is when there is melee combat. Though at the same time, I played through Morrowind and Oblivion entirely in first person, so it's obviously not a deal breaker for me. A lot of the time I prefer the perspective through the camera of FPS.

I think it was more of a length issue. It takes significantly longer to get to many landmarks in the game such as Gunpowder and the New World otherwise.

But looking behind you is A-OK!

You can edit the turn cycle so that every turn is a half-season, if you are finding the ages of the people to be a distractor. I haven't played with the new patch yet (been distracted by a War in the Pacific!!!), but open up desc_strat.txt and change the time scale from 2.00 to 0.50. Here's the FAQ from Total War Center. Be careful about making things too expensive though, as it may affect the way the AI plays the game (may opt to just buy units, rather than saving up for buildings or something like that). Also, look for Shaga Wangby's diplomacy mod. It helps override some of the inherent bloodthirstyness that the AI typically has. But don't be a jerk and become untrustworthy (by executing prisoners, executing/sacking too many towns), lest you want people to always be at war with you.

^_^

I'm guessing the MiSTLand idea has been scrapped? Appropriate that they use the Silent Storm engine. The whole time while playing Silent Storm, I was thinking how awesome it would be for Jagged Alliance. And yes, I remember Mike. A C7 Full Auto Burst was his undoing.

Sorry, but how exactly does any of that have to do with the when the projects started, years ago? I think the only people more bitter are the ones that play the other MMOs that they prefer, and are annoyed with how wildly successful WoW is.

I'm familiar with the term 'Nip" as well. Though I'm not as familiar with the term 'jap' being affectionate. And Singapore as become an annoying base for which the Bettys can bomb me and cause heavy damages to my airfields in the dutch east indies!!!

Actually I doubt that sales would see any appreciable change. I'd be surprised if there were enough people hung up on whether or not a game was first person or third person.

Kids these days probably don't really know nor care much about James Brown.

Unfortunately those little details like time and money come into play.

What?

Oh yes, no peripheral vision really makes the immersion feel like I am playing a "role." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But seeing behind you is A-OK!

Final Fantasy 7 was fairly well balanced. Each map was a puzzle in and of itself, there was a sense of exploration and adventure, there was just enough playing the game and just the right amount of watching an "Interactive story book" and man, what a story to interact with. I think nostalgia may be slanting your perspective. I loved the game too, but if you step back and look at it, it's a pretty straight forward game. Any sense of exploration and adventure likely came into how large the game was. Outside of acquiring Vincent and Yuffie, there really isn't a whole lot of exploration in the game. And each map (I'm assuming you mean each area, as in a collection of individual maps) being a puzzle in and of itself is being somewhat generous IMO. Again, it seems to me like the nostalgia of the experience is winning over. The game was more about Sephiroth than it was about Cloud. The big thing about the game was the huge WOW factor when it came out. But show me some RPGs where you don't move things along. You're placing your personal subjective bias on something that can't really be quantified. Combat was not challenging, and even the harder fights were little more than figuring out what spell was appropriate to use. And if you were still having trouble, it was easily remedied by wandering around aimlessly fighting random encounters. Given the 1000s of fights in the game, I can't honestly remember there being 100 fights that required a particularly large amount of thought. Unfortunately, the ones that were the most diifficult typically seemed to come after lengthy dialogue sequences, so dying meant enduring it all again. I never once said Linear is bad. You were talking about "dumbing things down" and how games today have no choice, and then proceeded to state how a game that pretty much had zero choice is still significantly better than most other games. I tried to pick a map that contained actual characters in it. Posting screenshots of prerendered backgrounds or prerendered videos are poor representations of graphics (as an aside, it did have people talking about the "awesome" graphical capabilities of the PSX). It was always funny coming back to the in game characters after a FMV sequence, or even combat itself. Given FF8 was able to have much better looking characters, it seemed more like an artistic choice. It wasn't one I was fond of (though I may be in the minority, as I remember a lot of people complaining about the character models in FF8. Big giant blocks for hands I figured you did, when you started critcizing "modern RPGs" about their lack of choice. I have nothing against a linear game. I'd rather have the more linear and streamlined Baldur's Gate 2, than the more open and exploratation friendly Baldur's Gate 1.

I'm betting he'll be remembered as the Godfather of Soul.

Wooo, my first successul night strike with torpedoes. And it hit a good target! While not shown here, hitting Carriers also adds plane damage, and can also suspend it's flight operations, so hopefully they'll be a little less annoying over in this area!

I don't know if I'd be able to say that EQ2 was in development longer than WOW. And from people that I know that did play SWG, it sounds like a lot of the revamping they did seemed inspired by WOW.

It's probably more the right-wing captialists that want to market the game to as many people as possible, so as to make as much money as possible, that would be to blame.