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Echoingthesound, a Nine Inch Nails forum Piss Army, a Ministry forum Used to post on some of the Fallout fansites, but I wasn't nearly as spiteful towards Bethesda as ettiquette required, so I was more or less run off.

So I'm going to try IWD2 again here. My main weakness playing the game has been a lack of foresight in regard to party creation. So I thought I'd ask what the best party configuration is. Any recommendations?

My ideal game would be an interactive novel kind of thing. I like narrative. But I play games for fun, and can enjoy games that have no narrative.

Pssh, the Big Cheese comes back for the smileys. Nice to see you, Feargus. 7 3 8 5 6 11 2 4

If something is important in that sense, that usually means it is good though, right? People still talk Doom because while HL and so forth may have refined the gameplay, they still aren't appreciably different. They certainly do look better, no doubt, but graphics are really of no consequence in this sense because newer games will always look better due to the advancing technology. The physics implementations that are possible now are also cool, but that is still a refinement of the core gameplay. It means it was good, not that it still is. A newer game that refines the gameplay still improves upon the game and is inherently a better game for that improvement. This, plus newer features, constitutes an appreciable difference. Scripted events, friendly AI, puzzles, are all things not even included in Doom that help make Half-Life "appreciably" different and a better game than Doom is. And this is beside the fact that what you are trying to attribute to Doom actually belongs to Wolfenstein 3D and the main reason people mentioned Doom instead of Wolfenstein 3D is that Doom is considered a better game. Wolfenstein 3D is the greatest game ever for one simple reason: ROBOT HITLER. Beat that, Valve.

I've got one of those too. It's modeled after those "city guide" books or pamphlets you'd get at an airport, and outlines all the stuff in the game through that guise. It's creative. All of Rockstar's manuals are like that. I remember Manhunt had a nifty manual too, and the GTA:Vice City Stories book is a tabloid.

Gerard Butler will never, ever outlive Phantom of the Opera in my eyes. He will forever suck.

That's "suspend your disbelief", gah. Well, okay, the Great Old Ones can be fazed. But who knows how they die? I thought Cthulu was practically already dead in R'ileyh (did I spell that right?) and just waiting to be resurrected when the stars were right. Besides, there are plenty of Cthulu stories that deal with imprisoning the Great Old Ones instead of killing them. I think that's all you can really do, so long as you've got a big rock with an elder sign on it.

If you're referring to the city in the Mountains of Madness, I was under the impression (maybe I got an abridged version?) that it was located not in Antarctica but on some other plane that one enters when crossing the mountains, possibly a dreamscape. Then again, Lovecraft was always a bit thick. That's what I love about him. This is a bit off topic, but Guillermo del Toro has reportedly been angling for the rights to the Mountains of Madness in film form. I would kill for that. But I digress. Well, you're going to have to suspend your belief a bit. Maybe the Great Old Ones are beyond nuclear weapons. They are supposed to be invincible, right?

So your liberals are libertarians, eh? Wild. btw, Guard Dog, the Social Contract is a conservative ideal, it doesn't tolerate a welfare state (those who don't keep their end of the contract are not privy to its benefits). Liberals by and large tend to be utilitarian.

God, you're all bringing me back through the advertisement pages of the PC Gamers I used to steal when I was a kid. I remember when they had Doom II on the cover...

Always found it kind of odd that America was the only developed democracy without a socialist element / party. No wait, that makes perfect sense. It's also odd that we seem to be the only country with overwhelming 2-party rule. What's your rate of incumbency?

Modern Lovecraft, eh? Intriguing. But I thought the whole Cthulu spiel was that all the protagonists are always doomed and powerless to stop whatever malign cosmic forces they encounter. That limits the promise somewhat. *edit - And I'm assuming that game "to be released in 2003" never made it?

As far as "real-world" settings go, I'd like to see some kind of organized crime game, or a law enforcement game, or maybe a "Departed" kind of halfway deal, that's not a linear action game but an open-ended RPG. Like the Godfather game, but less enamored of GTA. I'd like a Metal Gear Solid RPG but word is that MGS is pretty much dead after 4.

I don't know about that. From the time the demo hit and crashed its hosting server, up until Quake's debut, Doom was the Jaws of PC Gaming, its first blockbuster and what everybody thought of when they considered PC gaming at all. It's also the forebear of every other FPS on the list, with maybe the exception of System Shock. It's still fun for me, so the only reason I'd consider dropping it is its age, but then I'd have to drop plenty of other great games, including the #1.

Too true. Honestly I prefer 1 to 2, mainly because I find the 3rd edition ruleset to be a little akward, just in that all the other IE games are 2nd edition. I don't know why that bothers me so much.

So, what are all you whiners playing?

This is actually my secondary forum. My primary is a Nine Inch Nails board I joined when I was a young'un, and my tertiary is a swirling hellhole of a "forum" dedicated to Ministry, that I joined before that. I'd probably just retreat further into ETS (the NIN forum). But quite frankly, losing the Obsidian forums would be the furthest thing from my mind in the event of the company going out of business. I'd be more preoccupied with who would make quality CRPGs in their stead, and where the staff would end up post-dissolution.

Didn't Deekin hammer that last nail into IWD's coffin in NWN2? Kind of a shame, being sent off by such a terrible character. Tsk. But yeah, I liked the FR Northern setting, I'd certainly like to see it more.

I would have put Oregon Trail up there on top. Nothing like slaughtering dozens of animals and just taking one of the buffalo back to camp. It was the only thing remotely resembling fun that you could do in school.

Beat MGS3 again, then graduated to Subsistence, and I'm beating that slowly. Certainly my favorite Metal Gear Solid so far, and I think they'll have a hard time topping it with 4 (although I am curious as to what kind of supernatural superteam of superbaddies they'll cook up) I'm itching to play NWN2 again, but it's hard for me to get too far through the beginning. I'm in a bad way with games these days. BG and BG2 have almost gone the way of the Fallouts, that is, games I love but can't squeeze enjoyment out of playing anymore. That's pretty distressing for me. *edit - So, uh, anybody know of good mods for NWN2?

Every time I play through IWD2 I always get to the end and find out that I ****ed up my team in some way that prevents me from winning, and I don't have the ability to beat the twins. Other than that, it's a fine enough game. I liked the villains, and that's about all I ask from a game these days. It was pretty heavy on combat, though, and since I'm so anal about keeping track of healing potions and such I had some trouble actually enjoying it all that much. Most of the time I just stressed.

It went beyond stupid and straight to crazy when Doom failed to get on. Or any early id game, for that matter. I would have been satisfied with a Wolfenstein 3D.

If the game's good enough, I'll make time. This is sometimes actually good for my schoolwork, as I'll freak out about not having enough time and then finish the assignment when I might have just blown it off at any other time.

People, people, this is IGN. How seriously do you take IGN? How seriously do you take "best of all time" lists? Have you seen "The Definitive 200 albums of all time"? It will melt your brain. This list is kind of like that (but not nearly as painful) But stuff like this is still fun. I'm going to take a guess as to what games they could possibly include in the top 10. Fallout Doom Half-Life Starcraft Command & Conquer Civilization 2 Quake Diablo Baldur's Gate Some of those, and some other games I've never played or never cared to play.