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If you're going to play a Burnout game, play the third one. We kids who played games in the 90's are going to be the Baby Boomers of the gaming world. We already are, in a lot of ways. They never have and never will make a band game as good as Led Zeppelin / The Who / The Beatles Starcraft / JA2 / Fallout. Why do they even record music make games anymore? It's all garbage, with the rippin' and the rappin' and the hippin and the hoppin' emphasis on visuals and visceral gameplay. Bloo bla bloo. I remember when when I attended Woodstock played Pool of Radiance. People cared about music games back then. Not like these days.

hurrrr

CBS confirming that it's real and not a hoax You do have to admit that the picture of a stereotypical Republican lawyer in his neat business suit standing at a podium in front of a picture of Adolf Hitler surrounded by Swastikas and guys with Swastika arm-bands is, in its own deranged way, perfect, though, no-doubt running through the stereotypical talking points, plus his extra-special fixation on prostitution and pornography: You'd think they'd kick the guy out at some point.

The only people to blame for Michigan and Florida getting cut out of the process are the state parties of Michigan and Florida. The DNC told them what the consequences were for moving up their primary dates, and they moved them anyway. It's pretty delicious too, they would have been tremendously important states had they not tried to muscle themselves into an artificial position of importance.

Couldn't be any worse than the backlash that met with the Zelda review.

Okay Obsidian let's shut it down.

Frank Miller.

Is there any indication at all of an intent to develop the property? Any indication that this isn't a routine move, ala Rockstar trademarking GTA: Tokyo?

Either you intended to play the game, or you're a terrible impulse spender. Either are definite possibilities.

If you look at their careers, Obsidian is more akin to Scorsese, I would suppose. Coppola is unmistakably Troika.

Halflings. They were halfling villages.

I'm pretty sure we've gone through this routine 8 or 9 times already.

Playing TF2, mostly.

That the game was replayable didn't matter because none of the playthroughs felt complete. The CNPCs became less characters and more "find the new dialogue in the loop" puzzles. Which happens, I guess. Which wouldn't be much of a problem (Bioware avoids this through meticulously railing their exposition, but it's no more satisfying) except that the ending's payoff largely hinges on your knowing these characters, no pun intended. I never unlocked the characters, even after 3 playthroughs.

Guys, ISOs. Use them.

PS:T has the same problems that The Witcher has, namely a propensity for dragging the player through tedium to get to the interesting bits. Combat in PS:T was atrocious, even more atrocious than the IE usual (which makes Baator particularly aggravating). And the way that the (meaningful) dialogue and the quests were set up was confusing. I've played through it three times and I've gotten different, but always incomplete, sets of dialogue from the CNPCs. Each time I beat it I was unsatisfied. The bad parts overshadowed the good parts. And if you're going to make an argument for ambition overshadowing ****ty gameplay in one case than it ought to apply consistently. It just happens to be the case that ****ty FPS gameplay is infinitely more tolerable than ****ty IE gameplay, which I suppose is a null point if you consider FPSes to be Crimes Against Gaming. In the end, Bioshock was a wildly ambitious game that also happened to be wildly successful, because its design was more favorable to the whims of the market. PS:T was then and is now an ambitious game that was uncommonly set against what the market made successful. The difference is only significant if you consider eclecticism to be a virtue. I don't think it is. Bioshock's the one that has the better chance of informing the direction gaming's going to take in the future.

Easier said than done, especially when you have big consequences for decisions. What if you inadvertently kill a character you like / need?

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It's an interesting concept, but it's a little punishing. If you're 22 hours into a game and you accidentally press the wrong button you'd have to go back through 22 hours to rectify the mistake.

If you thought you were getting your ass handed to you in STALKER, wait till you play the Oblivion Lost mod. Shoot a blind dog and 17 or 18 of them come out of nowhere. And you lose your anomaly detector. And bandages don't do anything more than stop bleeding.

By my estimation, none of the obvious strengths of the better Black Isle games outweigh any of the obvious strengths of the better Bioware games. But most people seem to favor the Bioware games, and this to me is explained through the flaws in BI's games being more immediately observable. In the broadest terms possible, Bioware games appealed to more casual RPG gamers and BI games were more for enthusiasts and PnP nuts. You get more out of PS:T in terms of potential story content and such, but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of patience and a lot of dealing. Bioware games are easy-breezy in comparison, but the game won't change in many basic ways from playthrough to playthrough.

There's a serious case of rose-colored glasses for Black Isle. They were hell of inconsistent, and really, BI's successes weren't necessarily better than Bioware's. They were just less adept at hiding their biggest flaws.