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I'm pretty sure Double Agent is already out. The next Splinter Cell will be a 360 exclusive, actually.

It ain't grabbing me, I must say. I look forward to it as much as I look forward to this, but I like Bioware in general, the only real letdown they gave me that I can think of was the NWN OC, so this has a slight edge.

Hell, what else am I going to look forward to this year? I'd like to see that too, but before even considering it you'd have to make a conscious effort to make the "evil" path just as relevant to a game as the "good" path, and it doesn't seem like anybody's willing to really, truly do that. The "good = talk / evil = violence" rut is just too easy to fall into. If you're planning on incorporating both combat and dialogue into a game, it's much easier to just tie "good" to the latter and "evil" to the former, rather than put extra work into accomodating both good and bad meaningfully into both aspects of the game. Even when the evil path is a legitimate choice in a game, it's always the lesser behind the good path. Even in a game like Fallout 2, which gives quite a bit of freedom, there's karma at work, where being evil is generally more difficult than being good (both in the sense that it was difficult to have negative karma without resorting to random violence often, and in that plot-critical sequences like Vault 13 are made virtually impossible to get through without violence when significant negative karma points are accumulated) I don't know if I really got my meaning through there. *edit - added response.

"Funnier quests"? I had about as much Bethesda humor as I could stand every time a wood elf gave me a quest in Oblivion. I want to play something Lovecraft insane, not Lewis Carroll insane. I'd check it out regardless, but my copy of Oblivion is a 360 version, so I don't get mods, and thus the game isn't worth much to play.

Runs fine on my machine, but it'll hiccup every once in awhile. Nothing drastic. I guess I just might have an abundance of extra space to let the game play around in.

Yeah, animal parts are random, which can get frustrating. In fact, I've found that blind dog parts are generally pretty rare too, despite the commonality of the dogs.

The pseudodog is actually the big thing that kind of looks like a giant black raccoon, and they're generally nastier than the blind dogs. There's usually one around where you find the perfected suit, in the first area.

When you're given the quest, there's a set amount of bandits that you have to kill. Kill them, you complete the quest. Bandits will spawn, but not while you're fighting the quest bandits, so you're not running up an escalator. Does that make sense? This isn't Final Fantasy, you're not punished for not going around and smashing **** up at every turn. You can easily avoid most everything you can fight, and that's probably a smart thing to do in most cases.

No wai But seriously, I don't want to see Obsidian making an Oblivion-esque game. Boo boo boo boo boo.

Relatively random. Weird. I was wondering because when I was down in the catacombs beneath the Agroprom Research building, I found that corridor that has all the lightning anomalies in it, and there were a few artifacts there, which I snapped up. Then a bunch of bandits came in through the door I had just entered, which forced me to run down the lightning corridor, and I came out lightly wounded. The bandits, being not smart, pursued me and got slaughtered. I came back around about 3 minutes later and there were new artifacts where the bodies had been.

There are a few points at which the game seems to stop for a second or two, I think to load terrain or something. That happens to me just before the broken train bridge in the first area, and at the entrance to the bar town, but it's nothing terribly noticeable. And just to clarify, artifacts are created by things getting killed by anomolies, right? Or are they just random?

On the upside, the dynamic AI ensures a lot of replay value. If somebody found a way to ensure that the randomized quests don't eventually stop, you could play a never-ending game. Even then, there are the 8 different endings, no?

Reached the bar and the area beyond, which switches out the military and bandits with Freedom and Duty. I helped the Duty guys raid the big Freedom base, but it was my job to take out all the snipers, and damn it all if I didn't have time. I got one down before the entire Duty force got killed, and I became a sitting duck. So I charged the building at the center of the map and dug in, while the Freedom guys regrouped. Switched out my rapid-shot AK-74 for a GP 37 (finally, a scoped gun) and the sawed-off for the Chaser 13. Luckily enough for me, the Freedom leader was in my building on a different floor, so I killed him and picked off the rest of the guys as they climbed the stairs. I killed enough people that I could effectively replace my AK-74 with the superior gun, with +500 bullets. The nice thing about the game now is that most of the enemies that you fight take 4 or 5 bullets to kill, and carry 20-30 bullets on them, so it's no longer the case that you leak ammo as you fight. I think I may have hit the point where the game becomes easy. I have found out that there is eventually a point at which the enemy respawns weaken to such an extent that they are no longer able to overrun any encampments in an area. You just have to kill a lot of them. I killed about 60 or 70 bandits before the Garbage / train station area stopped respawning bandits in groups of over 5 people. Now the only encampment that's not in neutral hands is the one that doesn't spawn neutrals, towards the southern end of the map. btw, does anyone know how to use the attachable grenade launcher on that assault rifle? It's not an alternate fire mode, so I'm lost.

I had a nice little experience with the game so far, as difficult as it is. I was scavenging at the old farm house where you complete your first mission, and I went up to the attic, where I looked out of the hole in the roof and saw a group of about 10 bandits running across the countryside, 2 of them getting annihilated by anomalies. They were moving towards the stalker camp I was ultimately heading to. So I follow them, and find out that they're camping out under a bridge, and they don't see me. So I sneak up near them and throw a grenade into their little camp. I killed about 7 bandits, and the eighth fell quickly to my pistol. It was glorious.

How can he be back? He was never really there in the first place.

Find some good cover. I usually take the first opportunity to sprint forwards to the right side of the train cars and double back so you have a clear shot of the military from behind, they probably won't even notice you till you start taking pot shots at them. Lean and do the zoom-in thing with the right mouse button, crouch behind the big concrete platform. Your best bet gun-wise is the AK-74. For some reason none of the other guns I've tried do much against the military (it's not impossible, but it's certainly difficult) Also, this is a highly tactical game, so don't skimp on the grenades. They also **** up military dudes. But save most of those for the catacombs, because you'll really wish you had some then. Also, once you're done cleaning up the first wave of military ****s in the trainyard, loot bodies and heal your buddies, or what's left of them. The second military wave will kill them easily, but you'll distract the enemies enough to maybe get a good defensible point. But yeah, get the AK and start stockpiling ammo.

How darkly ironic that she's wearing women's clothes in that rendering.

Went down to Denver for a NIN listening party. Basically I stood around in a theater and listened to the new album over the sound system. It was quite impressive, definitely music meant for systems with thick bottom ends. After that we walked down to the 16th Street PF Chang's and ate exorbinantly overpriced food. But the waitress was cute. So that was a good day, I'd say.

A dozen hours? That many?

Awesome offensive spells and wildshape forms. I'll give it a whirl, then.

A druid and a cleric, eh? That never occurred to me. being an avid BG2 player, it is a common practice for me because i always keep jaheira. no way in IWD2, however. taks When I kept Jaheira on, she was my cleric. She had all the relevant healing spells ( - restoration, but + negative protection) and her super special Harper raise dead. I'm just not quite sure what the definite benefits are in regard to druids and IWD2.

More leaks, diff'rent artiste. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Took Out a Loan Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Berlin Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - All You Do Is Talk The whole album's out on the torrent sites, I don't want to eat up the Gallery by hosting it all. Speaking of which, I need to clean up all my pictures.

Got it, and maybe it's just me being an American, but with the accents and all I can't help but feel like every time I come across a group of bandits I'm being ambushed by Borat. I hit a bug healing up an NPC, and my game crashed. Honestly, I'm finding it hard to start it back up again. It's not that it's a bad game, on the contrary, for all the time this game's been in development hell it turned out okay. I'm just a bit confused. The kids over at NMA and DAC are going to point at this and say this is what Fallout 3 is going to be, because it's quite a bit like Oblivion + guns. But the problem is that even as Oblivion-y as it is, it doesn't lend itself to looting, what with the 50 kg carry limit, which allows you to carry about 3 guns + ammo before overloading yourself. The traders are few and far between, and you'll walk a long way, avoiding mutants and anomalies, to get to your next objective, which up to the point I'm at has been "kill things > secure loot / heal NPC > get cash". The combat is certainly not your average FPS twitch fighting. It reminds me of the old Jurassic Park:Lost World FPS, where you had to line up the sights on your guns manually and all of your shots were way off target (it's not that difficult in STALKER, obviously, but it feels just as tedious). Most of the time the enemies don't seem to notice when they've been shot, however the enemy tactical AI is pretty decent, especially that of the animals I've seen so far. It was a neat trick to put coordinates to stashes of loot on random baddies. Hope it gets better as it goes on. The story seems to be unfolding very slowly, and the combat isn't good enough to support the game on its own.

A druid and a cleric, eh? That never occurred to me. I usually had (fighter / monk / cleric / thief / arcane / bard) or (fighter / fighter / cleric / thief / arcane / bard). Perhaps I should cut down on the bard.

Band: Ministry Movie: Princess Mononoke TV Series: Three-way tie between The Shield, Homicide: Life on the Street and Arrested Development. Seasons 4-7 of The Simpsons, as well. Cartoon: The Venture Brothers Book: Maybe The Shining, maybe A Wrinkle in Time PC Video Game: Fallout Console Video Game: Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence or Resident Evil Games Console: Xbox 360