Pop

Nay, I did that my first playthrough, and I ended the game at level 16, I think. I basically only completed sidequests that started in Megaton. And that was on Easy. My second playthrough on Medium I'm at level 11 having not advanced through any of the main story at all. I'm going to get rather bored once I hit 20.

The game gets a bit harder with higher difficulty. Enemies do more damage, so you have to watch your health when fighting super mutants especially. One thing that Fallout 3 improves over both Oblivion and the original Fallouts is the use of traps. They're fairly creative, and mines complicate combat situations nicely. Also, grenades are actually useful! They read up on the Vault City / Gecko docs, I bet. I'm fairly impressed by the quality of the quests in the game. The Family quest was pretty lame, but there's some pretty nice stuff elsewhere. Nothing New Reno caliber, but nice.

Do not fret, conservatives. It could be far worse. We could have a dragon as president. Say what you will about Obama, he does not breathe fire. And he has 3 attacks per combat round, maximum. Which isn't to say he isn't an inherently magical creature.

Which is it, Obsidz? Both, really. You can tweak his appearance (add glasses, hats, a beard, camo facepaint), but there isn't an Oblivion-esque "I want to make a guy with a prognathous jaw and a unibrow" facial editor or anything. No no, the use of disguise and whatnot from mission to mission, that much is obvious. What I was curious about is whether or not you can alter Mike's appearance during creation in some limited way. Ryan suggests not, Matt suggests so. I was thinking specifically something like DX, where you had different skin / hair color presets. Do we as players have any say at all over the Mike's default appearance? Or is Mike only the dude we see in the screenies?

Wait wait. Which is it, Obsidz?

Well, I certainly hope there are William Kristol choices in the game, not just **** ones. So you hope that we can be utterly wrong about everything in-game? Maybe Mike will have the opportunity to get repeatedly browbeaten on the Daily Show. That would be a nice minigame. NWN2 OC court case all over again.

I AM HIGH FIVING EVERYTHING. o/ Really, the Obama win was really just icing on the cake of Marilyn Musgrave getting booted out of office in my district.

The lever allows for an allowed disconnect between the action and the consequence. But as The Milgram Experiment showed, if you've got a sufficiently justifying factor (and it doesn't take much, at least according to that experiment) people will be willing to take action even when the ill effects of said action were abundantly clear. We're saving the world in this game, are we not?

What are you up to now, Patrick K Mills. Drumming for Spinal Tap?

Dogmeat is in the junkyard to the East of the Minefield (where the Megaton shopkeep sends you) killing raiders. He's tough. I accidentally shot him in the head with a combat shotgun.

The original concept for Van Buren was more or less exactly that. Changed a bit over development, though.

I wouldn't even venture a guess until we get gameplay footage, probably a developer walkthrough.

O'course, we have to ask... Will such takedowns be only h2h or will there be tranqs and the like? And will the game respond to you differently if you take the no-kill route? Are there enemies we have to kill? MGS4, for example, only really had one enemy you had to kill, and the game sort of rewarded you for knocking out the minibosses. I smell achievements!

Gerstmann gives it 4/5, though he has an awful lot of complaints. This is one of those games, like Oblivion or anything out of Lionhead, that requires a good few weeks of digestion before a proper verdict is to be rendered. The combination of polish and apparent ambition is enough to bowl over any reviewer who gets less than that amount of time with the game. As evidenced by the ridiculous scores.

Random spawns would've upped the scare factor a lot more. As it stands you only fight enemies when you first enter an area or when you come through an area again after completing a mission objective. Once you clear a room you can run around with impunity, though out of habit from Resident Evil 4 I always had my gun up and I backed away whenever I opened a door.

I think he means appearance-wise. I think I read somewhere that you'll be able to choose Thorton's basic look. Skin color, hair style etc. (I think they said facial hair was out, but you could use fake moustaches and the like in subterfuge) Of course, if that's the case we'll probably get the same VA problems you got as a black dude in Mass Effect, but whatever.

That seems to be the consensus amongst the right-wing blogosphere. I mean, you have to expect that these people would stick together. O' course, this all conveniently ignores the only part of Powell's endorsement that was unexpected and important, which was his admonishment of the republican party for its unapologetic and rigorous fearmongering vis a vis Islam. No doubt McCain will parrot those words with a rigor he somehow couldn't find before. But it won't matter, because the real, representative voice of the McCain campaign for its devotees, Sarah Palin, will do no such thing. No words of comfort for the enemies of God.

Jacob Weisberg drops the knowledge. Kick 'em when they're down, I guess. For anyone still interested in the mortgage / credit crisis, there's an excellent NPR report (originally aired on This American Life) you can download here, which explores the origins and the particulars of how it all happened.

I'll gameplay you!

Couple 'o things: Let it be said that the shaky-cam aesthetic does not jibe well with crisp, clean CGI. After the first time I saw it, I was concerned that the woman in the bed didn't have a weapon that she was hiding from Mike. The second time I watched it, a pistol had been added. Kudos for the quick response. Mike is seen drinking wine in the clip. Can we drink wine in the game? Can we get Mike drunk? If I make Mike a master of martial maneuvers, can he be a drunken master? What kind of woman wears heels that don't fall off when she's clinging to the edge of a building?

That was pretty short. Liked it, though.

What sort of stat choices? Is the system like Mass Effect's, where there are only skills, and your health can be upgraded through a pertinent one, or is it like most other RPGs, where you have a separate set of stats that govern basic character traits? I've been meaning to ask that, anyway. Also, are there going to be game choices, like in MotB, that influence your stats, or are they strictly a leveled deal?

Abuse your boom! Good for kicks. Unkillable characters! The great Lebedev jaunt! The basketball killer strikes again!

Attack of the premature reply button!

I stopped playing Clear Sky when I got to the first enemy base and found a good dozen or so enemies all clumped together in a courtyard. They detected me and could shoot me from any distance, whereas my guns hit an invisible wall a good 30 feet in front of the enemies (as in, you could actually see the bullets spark as though they hit an actual solid surface). It made strategically taking on the enemies without taking massive amounts of damage basically impossible. Cover was no good at all unless you were at a distance at which you could be easily flanked anyway.