Llyranor

That might still make it better than BG.

Boohoo looks. The underlying turn-based combat system is actually pretty neat, and tries a lot of new and different concepts. As a design experiment, I think it succeeds. I'm not sure which part the demo takes place in, but it may or may not accurately depict the overall gameplay; the first few hours stick you in 'tutorial' mode. The game really picks up once you get more unions/leaders/units.

Wrong game. That's Carth Onasi.

*Heavily*? Really? JE is a piece of crap with a very superficial 'it's not really ancient China, it's really our own mythology but influenced by Chinese mythology but not really Chinese mythology' layer that's otherwise just standard mediocre Bioware shovelware.

Well, the thing is, alanschu, the longer you stay married to Magical Volo, and the more you'll find yourself turning into him.

As bad as Dragon Age will be, it'll probably still be better than LOTR Online. Sorry, I meant World of Darkness Online LOL

You're just saying that to defend Mass Effect's masterfully implemented system. Regenerating shields, and free medpacks! Genius!

Well, the Gears 1/2 campaigns are a bit on the easy side, but it never really felt like it was due to hp regen. Having medpacks inserted randomly along the maps wouldn't have really added much to the gameplay. The balancing would have to be changed significantly, anyway. Having hp regen would mean that your maximum total hp would generally be a lot less than it would in a game where you need to rely on medpacks (as a general rule - there are still the games where hp doesn't regen, but where you also have very little hp to begin with - in which case, medpacks add little; a more 'realistic' approach). In Gears, you take potshots and shrug them off, but if you take a good spray of good bullets, you'll usually be near death. You can rest a bit and recover, but you need to get yourself out of harm's way or you're dead very soon. If the game had medpacks, it wouldn't work in the same way. Either you'd have a lot more base hp, or there'd be a lot of medpacks lying around anyway. Of course, there are ways in which it could be designed differently; as a quick example, no medpacks, no usual health regen, and you only get your health back at every checkpoint. Thus, every battle becomes a struggle for survival. You don't recover by hiding, and you don't need to look around for medpacks. The designers can also design each battle to be as challenging as they want it to be, knowing that the player *starts* off the battle at full health. It's less about surviving the entire game and more about surviving individual battles; completely different approaches, though in this case the devs can probably afford to make individual battles *harder*. Different challenges and all. Gears campaign is easy. The Gears system itself doesn't inherently make the game easy. In Gears2, there's a 5-player co-op mode where the team is put up against waves of increasingly difficulty enemy waves. It starts off easy enough, but as enemy types become harder, or their hp/damage output/accuracy increases as the wave number increases, things become pretty challenging pretty fast. Since you're often put against overwhelming odds, and your positions are often overran from multiple flanks, it quickly becomes a game of setting up defensive perimeters (deploying portable shields, proximity grenades, setting up mortars and heavy MG positions), coordinating flanking maneuvers, pulling off retreats when you need to. Essentially, the game overwhelms you with enemies; it's constant high action stuff. Would hp + medpacks really add to the challenge? Can't say it would. Sure, health could be treated as an additional resource that you'd need to keep an eye on (and medpack runs would be something else that'd be important). On the other hand, given the current balance of the system, they'd also have to give you significant more base hp (as in, actual balance, rather than 'lol I beat DX without upgrades or medkits or weapons'). The thing is, with hp regen, the devs can afford to put you in near death status whenever you're exposed for more than a split-second. They wouldn't be able to do that with a conventional hp system (without sucking the gameplay out of it, anyway). It's a completely different focus, and the game still remains extremely challenging. But yeah, I beat DX without weapons or upgrades or medpacks anyway lol.

ROFL Bioshock

Wait, are you playing both 360 and PC versions at the same time?

Why do I get the feeling that it doesn't matter WHAT I say to you, because I'm a woman?

There are tons of challenging games. You just don't play them. Bioshock is in your genre, though. Enjoy that!

I'm going to miss Krookie's updates on those behavior updates.

Then stop complaining about easy games. DX was an easy game anyway.

Heh-HEH http://www.gamersyde.com/news_7573_en.html heheehaheheaheahaehaehae multi-station mechs

It's a great way to fuel your limited perspective, too.

Hey Nick, Nick. Guess what?

It's an element that may have worked in DX, but that doesn't make it crucial in an exploration game. You could just as well focus the gameplay on other aspects of exploration and make it just as enticing. For example, in this game I'm making for the PS3, there are toilets hidden throughout the gameworld. The player character can only go through a certain amount of time before his/her bladder/bowels give out, which then leads to interesting gameplay situations. As such, the player is encouraged to explore the environment, and search for the toilets of the world. Some of them are even very well-concealed. Furthermore, we even added time as an incentive to explore on a deadline, given that your bladder/bowels only have finite space. Now see, in our secret PS3 game, time is also another important resource in exploration, much as health was in DX. As developers, we thought it was a novel and different approach to exploration, rather than just hiding health kits or star maps like in every game ever made.

If you're ever near Charlottesville, feel free to contact Deadly_Nightshade in any way you can.

Hey, maybe this time they'll introduce interesting, well-developed characters like Carth Onasi.

More like you're fighting an army of Hades who all have the ability of pausing the game in order to put their crosshair square on your face.

This list is made obsolete by the inclusion of Jonathan Blow

Depends on the people. If you find a good group, playing against overwhelming challenges/odds can be pretty rewarding if the other players don't have Hades'es stuck up their Hades. Fun should, obviously, always be the first priority. I'd rather a game be too hard than too easy.

Yeah, ArmA (unpatched) didn't provide particularly enticing gameplay; or maybe it was just the badly designed campaign. One early mission had you sneak into a heavily-patrolled enemy camp at night and take out a bunch of tanks, by yourself. Enemy soldiers, of course, had the ability to shoot you down with deadly accuracy. Single shots from miles away during nighttime would take you out.

As a rental, it might work as a decent co-op action tactics-lite game, but don't expect any amount of higher-level strategy/tactics.