Darth InSidious

How strange, then, that there were so many good ST games to come out of Interplay in the 1990s/early 2000s, and indeed generally - The 25th Anniversary, Elite Force/2, The Fallen, the Starfleet Command series, Armada/2, etc. Can anyone tell me how to actually win a space combat in 25th anniversary? It dropped me into the game and I had no idea what to do then I died. IIRC, with difficulty. I haven't played it in years, though, and never beat the final mission's extended combat sequence... don't think I even managed to destroy a single ship... Going on what I remember, though, moving the cursor moves the ship's direction, and I think various consoles on the bridge cause you to raise shields etc. But it's been so long this could all be total BS...

Yes. The first one is rambling (incidentally, "determination" takes "in" as its negation), not terribly coherent and over-the-top. The second is just banal, and the occasionally unusual constructions are badly employed. The effect is clunking.

How strange, then, that there were so many good ST games to come out of Interplay in the 1990s/early 2000s, and indeed generally - The 25th Anniversary, Elite Force/2, The Fallen, the Starfleet Command series, Armada/2, etc.

To be fair, I really don't think graphics (or sound) would be valid critiques of the game. These are things that, to get right, require some pretty expensive skill-sets. I think Tig (?) hit the nail with the "does not hurt eyes" comment. Similarly, I really wouldn't expect the kind of sound design a pro studio could afford.

This. The wormhole means there's plenty of room for the exploration kind of thing, and the factional setup in DS9, particularly by season 7, could make for fun. Also, The Fallen was fun. Not heard of Section 31? DS9 undercut a lot of the utopian crap.

Games with dialogue I did like? PS:T, KotOR 2 and MotB all come to mind.

You can knit pick ANYTHING to death and bash it to it's basic elements. Still the final product, and how it is enjoyable to YOU as a gamer, is the ultimate end. As someone who does a bunch of mods for KotOR/KotOR2 how about I do a review of your mods based on the the same criteria you have already stated? AoD *has* the potential to be one of the better RPG's released in the past few years. REAL choice and Consequences (Not Biowarian... It all leads to the same thing), Multiple ways to achieve quests (Not seen since Bloodlines), Stats that actually matter (See anything done by Bethesda) etc etc... Wow. That's an impressive fanboy lash-out there. So, discussing the writing and quest design, which are, of course, going to be a fairly large part of the game is "knit picking" (sic). I also hardly bashed them to death. Could it be that you don't actually have a rebuttal and are lashing out in the hope of distracting attention from this, while reaffirming your own points in its favour? If you want to send me your thoughts on my mods, go right ahead. I'll probably agree with you.

Yes: me. Reading the dialogue in the "choices and consequences" thread, what I see is uninspired quest design and puke-inducing infodump dialogues. It's not as immersion breaking and just right down horrific as say Fallout 3's writing is (Not ALL of Fallout 3 is this bad... just a large part of it is). I thought "immersion" was a hype concept? Certainly VD's definition seems to be that "immersion" is a pernicious element of dumbing-down and a destruction of all that fun number-crunching. I haven't played FO3, so I really can't comment on that, but that FO3's dialogues are bad nevertheless does not equate to meaning that VD can write. It's still awful. From the latest example posted, it isn't.

My money's on at least one complaint there that the camera's awful and there's too much bloom.

Yes: me. I question VD's ability to write, especially based on what he considers to be good writing. Reading the dialogue in the "choices and consequences" thread, what I see is uninspired quest design and puke-inducing infodump dialogues.

You get one lucky guess...

Not really, I suppose, given that most of the industry seems to be bereft of ideas - or original ideas, anyway - and too afraid of failure to gamble on a new formula. So look forward to CoD 9, Medal of Honor (sic): Malay Melee, and Fable VIII: That Bit of the Regency with Magic Swords 'N' Stuff. Granted, things seem a little better than they were a while back, but still...

4e is the devil! Maybe they could call it the Never Neverwinter Nights? Neverwinter Nevermore? Or is that too much like an airport novel?

Good point. The words "sausage-machine" come to mind.

I suppose. Last time I played the mod properly was... v.0.63, I think? Or was it 0.64? Anyways, the systems were mostly empty, and the cash requirements for a decent ship were insane. Starting off in a TIE/Z-95 is a short way to die on your first mission.

Played and finished Jade Empire over the weekend. Shiny tat with amusing gameplay and little else, but fun nevertheless for a single playthough every so often. Dialogue is terrible, and the characters absurd. Started Fallout and... either I'm missing something, or perhaps because I'm a bit new to this whole arr-pee-gee thing, really not finding it much fun at the moment. At Junktown, so... blah. The rad-scorpion sidequest in Shady Sands is MMOtastic, the dialogue is OK but not great. Mostly find the game frustrating rather than fun. The dialogue is OK but pretty dull so far, and the hex system/switching between cursor modes is wearisome. Combat is also quite dull. Also, the game has about as much immersiveness as the drops at the bottom of a Coke can. But since most Fallout fans seem to believe that immersion is a dirty word, perhaps I'm simply not getting it. Possibly the juxtaposition of this with JE is just too great. *Ducks rotten fruit*

Speed mod. Especially if you decide to try Freeworlds, about which my advice would be "ignore unless you have eight weeks free to cross the first damn system".

Great. First TOR, now this. Yet more reason to buy two copies of AP.

From the technical point of view, K2 had many more problems than The Original Trilogy Remake KOTOR 1 had. But from the artistic point of view, TSL owned K1's existance and threw it right here: When KotOR I came out, it was probably about as buggy, if not moreso. KotOR II is still perfectly playable. Almost all the times th game has crashed on me were due to mod issues.

Ramses II ftw.

Now you know whyI want all 600-odd of them burnt at the stake for treason.

Only about him. Brown is about as memorable as a shoe-full of wet sand... and about as interesting. You... really don't understand the Queen. On-topic, hells yes the Queen should go.I'd rather be represented by an unelected Hanoverian bred for the job than by an unelected Scots wanker who has been particularly to blame for the current economic ****storm, and is one of the most repugnant pieces of **** in British politics... But then, he's on the front benches, so that isn't much of a surprise, all told.

You also don't understand why J.E. Sawyer won't make The Black Hound in the Infinity engine, though, so it's just possible you also don't understand the workings of these things. Possibly because that's what happened to KotOR II in the first place? All content that will be in the mod is completed; the current beta builds are being gone through to ensure that there are no major bugs left. I'll let you in on a secret. >.> <.< Rule 1 of modding is: "**** the audience". Seriously. It's where a lot of people fail. So... this was just more moaning without real cause?

More clich

Their tendency to blacklist people who give negative reviews and rampant advertising machine might have something to do with it. Why does the Fable series sell?