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Jay Reatard - Singles '06-'07 + a newer single. http://www.mediaf!re.com/?2wdg1k03jmt

MGS4 might suffer from a lot of that, but MGS3 in particular is relatively lean. "Poorly written" is the correct description. The plots can be sufficiently twisty but the dialogue is really stiff.

Wow, you just perfectly described The Witcher.

So the Originals line has supported online play? Interesting.

The MGS arc is over and Snake will just live a civvie life until death. Ho hum. I have one main gripe with the game, that they took MGS' greatest character, Revolver Ocelot, and mulched him in favor of Liquid's "mwahaha" eurotrash Bond villain. Seriously, Ocelot's in the game for a third of a fight, and he's given at most 3 lines. Total bull****. But the game is good, IF you know all there is to know about MGS up to this point (there's a fairly good 6-part retrospective on Gametrailers for the uninitiated) every single still-living character in the game universe gets face time. There are homages and references galore (The man who sells "Naked" Snake his Guns? Drebbin.) to eat up. In particular the relationship dynamics of the MGS games have been recycled over and over, with several different characters having the same cyclical life stories, and scenes from past games being constantly replayed. Still, the storyline is negligible. Kojima did the best job he could tying up all his disparate games into a single monolithic arc, but the results aren't entirely convincing, even if they pack some fun thrills here and there. I can accept the melodrama, it's part of the package.

Sun Spider

Tsk tsk.

A mid-range computer by today's standards ought to be able to run NWN2 without much of a hitch. Lower level comps can run it choppily or not at all.

But the cohorts are going to be optional, right? In that case 4 slots ought to be more palatable. Hmmm, now that it's been brought up, would you be able to BG it and have one PC and a bunch of cohorts instead of a party of PCs, or is it like NWN, where you can only have one or two at a time?

Romances are probably ill-advised, considering there won't be much of a central protagonist. Obsidz can make all the noise it wants but at the end of the day the PCs are going to be combat stat sheets without any sort of detectable personality, just like in IWD. Which is fine, I'm glad they're getting around to this, better with D&D than AP or Aliens (we'll still see about that one) But let's not kid ourselves. Anyway: - I will join the chorus of people wanting new base classes and PrCs. Just a few would be nice, preferably representing those classes that don't already have a natural "step up" (I'm thinking mainly the druid. A monk PrC might be cool, but they're already pretty fancy plain) - Big one: An interesting villain. Kreia was good. The King of Shadows, not so much. And MotB went all Torment, which is fine, but still, a good story needs a good villain. As far as D&D goes I was never really enamoured with the Yuan-Ti, but I think Obsidz could work something out well enough. There are plenty of economic power player antagonists to throw around. The Iron Throne, The Knights of the Shield, the Zhentarim (of course) and the Thayvians, plus any number of thieves' guilds and pirates all come to mind. Chances are we'll only see any of these as stooges or fodder to be cut down, but one can hope. - Oh, wouldn't it be nice if we as players got to tool around with FR canon, but we'll probably never get that. Obsidz have done very well with what they've been given so far, I expect them to continue. - I'd like to hold out hope for an third xpac. I'd like to think Atari is desperate enough and NWN2 has done well enough to warrant one, but... the "connecting 3E to 4E!" business makes it sound like a bookend, a ligament, the end of 3E. NWN got 3 xpacs, NWN2 might as well get the same. Best Obsidz get as much out of it as possible before Atari carts the IP off to MMO land or into some lesser studio's hands, or both. I'm sure there's still more to give to the modding community as well.

Guys. Obvious troll is obvious.

We might not see any non-MMO 4th ed games. Atari owns the license, and Phil Harrison (of Sony fame) has said that they will be focusing on multiplayer endeavors and shifting focus away from "Big budget single player games".

Oh hai. I'm here to collect my winnings.

Whenever the next round of forumite questions get answered we'll probably see some dialogue examples. Or they could wait till E3.

I doubt he played it long enough to figure out the major cracks in the design. That first 9 hour playthrough the only flaws I noticed were the ones Yahtzee mentions and the fact that I was only fighting weak scamps in the final levels. Besides, considering Yahtzee is the type to consider the "nnnnnn roleplaying!" types to be tossers, and that he likes twitch gameplay, it's to his credit that he saw the game as the ball of bland it is and not God's Own ****, unlike most other reviewers.

Charisma was my dump stat. Unless I was a paladin or bard variant, the ring of human influence was permanently grafted to my finger. And I never use Viconia as a front-line fighter, since there's no item that has a static con boost effect. She's tissue paper.

Pretty soon here you'll be able to play the Fallouts for free online via ad-supported Gametap.

In Oblivion (but much, much moreso in Morrowind, to a staggering degree) all you really need to go toe-to-toe with any powerful monster is an investment in alchemy. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to play Morrowind without alchemy.

That compulsive resource management is not a necessary or sufficient element of a good game, even an RPG. Rorrrrrrrrrrie, tell us about this Mitsoda deal. Did the mag get it wrong or is he off the case?

I've played all of these games multiple times and have never run out of ammo, except in those cases where the weapon is "special" and designed to be used only in extreme circumstances, like the rocket rifle in JA2 (were designers retarded back then?) or the plasma cannon in Deus Ex, or the... Ruger, was it? In Fallout. You only ran out of ammo in Deus Ex or Fallout if you relied exclusively on one weapon, and in most cases not even then. Only if you chose a weapon that was meant to be scarce. I don't see how you can make the argument that scarcity of ammo adds to a game when all the games you mention only have scarcity if you strictly adhere to an unusual style of play. A normal person running through Deus Ex or Fallout will never ever run out of 10mm ammo.

having a Bottomless Pocket of Clips is no less absurd than having a Bottomless Clip. You just have the gunfire punctuated at regular intervals with the sound of reloading.

I don't remember the last time I ran out of ranged in a non-shooter. Usually you'd stock up so heavily on ammo that it became a non-issue. And AP isn't going to be a Jagged Alliance game where there are 30 different types of ammunition. Baddies will be using the same sort of gun you do. There's not much reason why ammo rationing should make it into the game as a matter of practicality. The most serious thing I can think of is the problem that Rise of the Triad had. If you got the machine gun you had no use at all for the pistol (though given the games of the time it was by design and not considered unusual) AP could easily get around this by making weaker, slower weapons useful despite the immediate advantage of having an M2 or a combat shotgun. Given that this is going to be an RPG that shouldn't be hard at all. However, there is something distinctly odd about a game being literally like Rambo, where the main character can fire a machine gun continuously for 30 minutes and never have to worry about hearing a click. More recent sci-fi themed games have gotten around it by limiting fire via weapon overheating, but we're not going to have that luxury.

Give me some of that crack you're always smoking.

Some clarification on the Mitsoda situation would be appreciated, if anyone can talk about it.

What I'm saying is, Alpha Protocol requires trampolines.