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I'm wondering if this isn't the harbinger of a new game announcement. It wouldn't be the only hint, Irrational apparently had job listings that mentioned Xcom. Steam did the same thing with Dead Space right around the time the sequel was formally announced.

Man, I don't know about those combat snippets. They looked a little weird.

I don't believe so. If you try and use the Galaxy Map Joker tells you that you can't.

Considering that they eliminated speech skills and made alignment scores the effective "skill level" for alignment-based dialogue choices, it makes sense that throughout the game's dialogue you accumulate residual alignment points, usually to the tune of 2-4 points per conversation. Your class skill then multiplies your score further - A level 4 adept / soldier / whatever gets 50% more alignment points than not. It doesn't really matter anyway, since alignment is not Manichean in Mass Effect. I prefer it that way, really. If games don't give us the opportunity to be villains, they have to at least make the low path seem on some level close in efficacy to the high road. ME1 failed in this regard, as do the vast majority of games - proverbs about honey and vinegar apply. By not making being a renegade completely counterproductive to your stated goals (and indeed, removing many of the aspects of RPGs that made being a nice guy so much better, namely l00t), the low road becomes something resembling a choice.

Correction - there are no "armor bonuses" in ME2. The helmet (open- or closed-face) adds 5% to your total health, which isn't a whole lot, all things considered. You can easily do without. I usually ran with the visor, which adds 10% damage to headshots.

No I think he means where are the weapons out there in the world. There's not a lot of choice for what you carry outside of heavy weapons - depending on what order you choose your missions, you could end up going through 80% or so of the game with the weapons you started out with. And if you're not observant, you could end the game with what you started out with. I don't mind it, actually. I was a little annoyed that upgrading the heavy pistol involved cutting the ammo pool by over 50%, but this system is actually far preferable to the largely superfluous system of ME1.

Note that I've only had the one playthrough - The game made a lot of noise about outcomes being different had I done something different but I'm not 100% sure how different it would be. Also the variability in consequences for endgame choices are hard to gauge at this point.

Wasn't Tactics 2 going to take place in Florida? I thought the idea of a ****ed up out of control GECK to be rather interesting

Well, in general each core mission is 1 hour, every recruitment mission is 1 hour, and every "loyalty" mission is 1 hour. Intro = 1 1/2 hours Recruitment missions ( - Miranda and Jacob, who you start with) = 8 hours "Loyalty" missions = 10 hours Core Path Missions = 4 hours or so (?) Side Missions = ? So blowing through it, around 22 hours or so. I can take a look at my final save when I get home.

Not bad. Kinda tough to judge what any of that means without knowing how quickly you would earn that XP normally, what all the minerals & credits can be used for, and how much of each is considered "a lot." The alignment points are particularly confusing-- what is that on a scale of? Having beaten the game, I can tell you that the added resources at the start of the game are a big help. One of the things that ME2 does pretty well that a lot of games don't is the balancing of currency and resources. There's not a lot of stuff to buy, but most of it is incredibly expensive, and you generally acculumate enough cash for one or two upgrades per mission. Anyway now that the game's actually out and nobody's going to go Nurse Ratchet on me, non-spoiler review! Pros: - Combat is much improved. I've got to hand it to the lady who designed the system but it actually works pretty well, and the Soldier will probably turn out to be more useful than we all believed he would be - the weapons have relatively distinct strengths and drawbacks, and as far as I can tell only the assault rifle works against all types of defense. Direct damage powers (incinerate, throw, etc.) only have their intended effect when all defenses are destroyed and the enemy is left with only their health bar, but in the meantime they do some damage to defenses. Tech and Biotics both have powers specifically designed for reducing defenses as well. - Pace. It's good, and varies a bit. As a whole it feels a lot more like KOTOR than ME, and that's good. - Characters are all pretty well done, the adverts were always bull**** meant to draw in the Halo crowds. Subject Zero and especially Grunt are not nearly as ridiculous as they might seem initially. Mordin remains the best character. - Exploring planets is now a bit better. You don't do any exploring of worlds ala ME1, instead you scour the planet using a sensor and send probes to collect resources. It's not bad, usually takes no more than a few minutes per planet. "Anomalies" that you investigate are relegated to approximately one planet per star system (there are several in a cluster) and in general these are about as robust as the side missions in ME1 which is to say they're usually boring. - Jennifer Hale is great as Shepard. Meer is ehhh. Cons: - I'm disappointed by the "Loyalty" system. They played this part up a whole bunch but since there's no influence system to speak of, it ends up just like any other Bioware game, wherein you go out and go on missions that are of personal interest to your squad and they get "loyal" when you complete them. It's not really bad, it's just a letdown since they made it seem like gaining trust would be, you know, hard. These side missions are actually quite robust otherwise, about as lengthy and involved as a core path mission. - The inventory system's a letdown too. Maybe it's just the way Bioware's conditioned me, but it doesn't seem right somehow when I'm 80% through the game and I'm still using the submachine gun I started the game with. Far as I can tell there are three different variations per weapon type you can use (aside from heavy weapons, of which there are 5) and I'm tired of the machine pistol. - No Lance Henriksen. All in all this is probably the most consistently good game they've put out since Baldur's Gate II, and in my opinion it's much, much better than Dragon Age. One of the things that kind of annoyed me about the unending Talking Points promotions for ME2 (do Bioware and Obsidz use the same PR people? Because games seem to really be all about the message now) was the whole emphasis on the "SUICIDE MISSION" but by golly just when you're getting complacent Bioware did a really good job of actually raising the stakes. They also instituted choice and consequence satisfactorily - Not to get into spoilers, but there was a point at which I was given the choice to either undertake a mission or do my own thing for a little while longer. Knowing how ingratiating to the player Bioware tends to be, I figured that I could go and neglect the core path for a bit and come back and nothing will change, but it turned out that my decision not to act quickly had actual consequences. Which was a nice surprise.

Sawyer being the big 'ol Systems Queen that he is, I honestly don't know how you'd expect New Vegas to be mechanically similar to its predecessor to a great degree. I honestly believe he's going to be tinkering with a lot of things, if not outright fixing them.

Man now I'm thinking about how I've been here for over 3 years. What is wrong with my life.

Bro you've been here for 2 weeks. Hold your ****ing horses. Most of us have been here through actual cancellations.

Apparently the scars can also "naturally heal" through consistent accumulation of Paragon points.

Because you can just turn on the radio if you want that?

I was talkin' bout the Water Lords, who are definitely Star Spawn.

June. They're guessing now just as much as they were then. But at least this one isn't as ludicrous.

I'm recalcitrant to say that they "ripped off" anything. The Lovecraft Mythos has always been sort of common property amongst pulp fiction writers. As it should be. Besides, they weren't deep ones. I'm pretty sure they were star spawn. As for their being poorly shoehorned into the gameworld, yeah probably. It helps to make oblique references to things if you want to make your gameworld seem like it has hidden depths and goings-on far beyond the immediate concerns of the player character. As far as references go it was actually pretty good. Say what you will about the Lovecraft Mythos, it's not the type of relentlessly dull stuff you usually see in the Witcher gameworld.

I don't know, I made it to Chapter 3 and I'll tell you right now - you have more porno cards to look forward to, and more vulgar dwarves. Other than that, nothing changes.

The ridiculous photoshop is a placeholder - They probably didn't have / couldn't show actual screenshots.

Crysis is a very well done action movie pastiche, and the dynamics that the suit adds are interesting and fun.

I didn't think Jade Empire's visual design was that good, honestly. Most of the blame falls on the engine, which was never all that impressive. Besides that it just never gets that exotic. It sure is bright though. Pretty much everything in the game was subpar. The character mechanics were awful and there was a minimum of elements that could differentiate one character build from another. The Demon Girl (Wildflower? Something like that) was a nice idea. Besides that, the characters were unremarkable. I liked NWN more than JE.

Because they shoulder costs / risks and help raise capital?

Their last PR firm was doing great, you just had to have a CB radio on at 1 in the morning, or have access to Whitefish MT's public access television station.

Pop stars become celebrities because people do listen their crap. I don't get it.