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Have you even played BG2? Mazzy was a halfling. Geez.

OPPRESSOR

First DLC out March 10. Extra 90 minutes of gameplay, introduction of Batarians. 50 more achievement points. 400 XBL points.

Nature has easily reclaimed the land previously devastated by Chernobyl. And that was only about, what, 20 years ago? Totally. All those giant mutated scorpions are running all over the place, and even now, the survivors are turning into green, lumpy-skinned immortal mutants. What I'm saying is, we should be expecting realism down to the specific details of this post-nuclear environment.

To the ruleset, or to the FR? The FR's oft-neglected areas (Mulhorand, Unther, Halruaa, the Shaar) are being thrown out in favor of wild magic-ravaged badlands. The popular areas are more or less exactly the same as they were before. Looks like the Red Wizards are being replaced by the Shadovar as the magic using ubervillains of the setting. So overall, not much has changed at all.

Need I remind you all that this is a pretty straight parody of JRPGs (the savepoints are otaku forumites) in which the characters are all athletes and the "magick" or whatever is basketball-oriented. And it is also a sequel to the Academy Award winning Space Jam. It also happens to be supremely fun. Battle Zombe Bryant! Marvel at the underground Furry Village! Struggle against the Ghost of Bill Cosby!

No, please, Mr. Yahtzee, don't degrade our precious precious babies. See, most everybody here operates under the pretension that RPGs are "special" and "different" and you have to play them differently (and coincidentally, put up with all sorts of bull****) to really appreciate their true greatness. Yahtzee has no such illusions. He sees them as games, not works of beautiful, unique art. He holds them to the same standard he holds other games to, and if a platformer had all the pretension of an RPG, he'd fail it too. Fact - Mass Effect has more dialogue than 20 average length feature films. Fact - The Witcher is 90% grind, 1% "show-me-the-ring/let's-play-a-game" and 9% reminding the player what's happening. Incidentally, I've given up on the game after 12 hours of grinding before they tell me "oh, now, yeah, seriously, now you have to make choices that are going to matter. Now, if you would, kill 10 alghouls and bring their skulls to me!". Also, 25% "**** me now, Geralt".

http://www.mediafire.com/?7dnf2ztyaln

I AM ****ING SERIOUS. I HAVE BEEN CLEANSED IN THE B-BALL FIRE. I WILL BECOME ONE WITH THE BALL. I WILL SLAM. BACK ME UP HERE, OBSIDIAN. **** BARKLEY THERE IS A GOD AND HE LOVES US SO MUCH

GOOD PEOPLE. . ACHIEVE NIRVANA HERE. WHAT WE ARE EXPERIENCING NOW IS A MIRACLE IN THE TRUEST AND MOST PROFOUND SENSE OF THE WORD. HOLY ****ING **** I'M EXHAUSTED FROM THE SHEER GREATNESS. OH LORD. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELVES. BECOME ENRAPTURED. THIS GAME IS BEING GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE FOR YOUR SINS. TRUE DIVINITY HAS NO PRICE.

The visuals look just about exactly as I'd expect them to. It's a post-apoc world how many years after the fact? 180? All we've seen is urban areas so far, and they've been grey, and honestly, what else would they be. A blue sky would be all the color you'd need. The concept art showed some foliage out in the wastes, but I guess they either haven't gotten to that yet or aren't showing their work. It's pretty obvious that everything we've seen so far has been from the same build from 6 months ago.

I think that most people who watch Yahtzee's videos are actually smart enough to realize that he's making valid points, it's just that they don't agree with him. The sad thing is that it seems as though some people aren't willing to really address what he says. Usually with game reviews, an aversion to honest argument is expressed as "he's biased" or "she obviously didn't play the game well / enough", although the latter can sometimes be apparent as true. With Yahtzee, it's also expressed as "he's just an entertainer" or "it's comedy". Such statements are obviously dismissive, not even tacit denials of points given, but denial that points can actually be made. It's an insult to discourse and thought.

That's because it was an ironic, funny game.

What do you mean by "haven't aged well"? I mean, I'm with you on everything else, but for the most part, the strength of the IE games were never in the visuals. No game really ages well, and as such it's not really a good measure of quality. If you're implying better games have come out since then, well, them's fighting words.

Stop it, stop it. It's like fish in a barrel out here.

You're old school. We get it. don't laugh. This is serious business.

Totally, dude. I keep emailing all the gaming sites, imploring them to include some sort of text-based game review alongside their numerical scores, but they keep defying me. If only there was something I could read other than the numerical scores. This sucks. Anyway, that's completely relevant to Yahtzee, who never fails to include a summary numerical score in every single one of his reviews.

See, it's when people say things like this that I'm glad I still frequent this forum. This is the reason why even if Yahtzee has the potential to create a dialogue concerning the state of gaming, he won't. The critical thinking skills of your average gamer (at least, the average gamer who hears something he doesn't like) are equivalent to those of a high schooler who totally knows the score, man, so don't come at him with your "opinions", man, because that's all argument really is, man, and opinions are like ****, man, and mine's just as good as yours, man, so, like, stop imposing and live and let live. Man. It's amazing how unassailable your preconceptions are when criticism is meaningless. Some days, I dream of a world in which someone could both crack jokes and actually say things worth hearing and addressing. Maybe... maybe they could do both at the same time! That's a concept so heavy I can't even really fathom it. I can't imagine doing anything but choosing between the two. Anyway, people tend to laugh at what Yahtzee says, so it seems pretty obvious that he's not really saying anything at all. I think I'm going to go turn on the Daily Show and watch Jon Stewart talk about nothing at all relevant or noteworthy, as he has for the last 10 years. Politics and the media are fraught with hypocrisy and insanity, but you'd never know that watching a show so obviously dedicated to comedy.

I suppose that's a more comforting thought than the alternative.

Now, I do understand that yahtzee has some kind of childhood syndrome that prevents him from enjoying an RPG, but complaining that there are quests in a game genre that usually includes them is kind of strange. I actually found that there were very little running in the game, unless you have som kind of Obsessive-compulsive disorder that forces you to do only one thing at a time. I understand that RPG gamers have some kind of childhood syndrome that causes them to accept (nay, demand) ****ty quest design and gameplay. You must have been playing a different game, because the fedex quests were many and there was a ****-ton of running around in the Witcher. Valid complaint, and one I've made about the game, especially considering that it's an action-rpg, which I'm guessing is supposed to have proper combat. This is not a refutation of the point. Yes. If you totally ignore the focus on actual roleplaying. This statement is meaningless. How? If I remember correctly then there are 'meetings' with the baddies at the end of every chapter. So how he can forget the plot at the start of a chapter, which funnily comes right after an end with a baddie 'meeting', is beyond me. The chapters are as long as an old man's balls. In a way, The Witcher is much like a pen & paper D&D game, in that it starts off with some sort of plot but the players become more interested in banging chicks and killing things until the DM has to throw them a reminder that there's some reason they're playing. Until the next chapter starts and we get back to banging chicks and killing things. The purpose of Yahtzee is to be funny and review games without regard for their pretensions, which is exactly what he's doing. And Yahtzee is painfully correct in that the Witcher is padded so hard it makes Neverwinter Nights 2 look like ****ing Portal.

I don't think I received a manual. However, Yahtzee is pointing out the inherent Eastern European-ness of the game, in that everything is needlessly complex. Saying "I don't mind that" isn't really a refutation of the point. This might have been because I've been desenticized by games such as JA2 and similar games with horrible interfaces, but I actually don't see his point. Case in point. If I were a game designer then I would probably have told him that this isn't a case of amnesia, but is instead a case of Geralt not knowing how to remove something, like a skull, without damaging its alchemical properties. Oh and balancing too of course. Yahtzee is pointing out the ridiculousness of it. It doesn't matter how it "balances" the game, it's still goddamned stupid. Like how in the first Commandos only one person on your team knew how to drive a car, and only one knew how to row a boat. You could make up bull**** excuses like "durr, the alchemical process requires educated removal", but that's functionally the same as saying "Durr, it's that way because I said so." It's a rationalization, not a refutation, of the point. Yahtzee has no reason to care about the grand vision of a game designer. He plays games. He is a gamer. The role of a gamer isn't to appreciate the vision of the designer, it's to have fun. I'll give him this one as much of The Witcher's writing were quite bad, especially when you quite after a few hours, totally missing the good parts which come afterwards. Contrary to popular belief, a badass ending doesn't really justify a ****ty beginning. Yahtzee is not wrong in walking away from an unsatisfactory game when it demands that he eat **** today to get a hamburger on Tuesday. I'm about 10 hours in and the game is fundamentally the same as it was before. I'm taking a break, but it looks like I'm not actually going to ever actually finish this game. I keep waiting for it to justify itself, and it never does.

A BLOO BLA BLOO As per the norm, Yahtzee obviously has a distaste for what he's playing, but he also has a myriad of valid and sound points to back up his foul language. In fact, dare I say that he was even more right than usual this time.

The ending's different if you harvest just one little sister. As far as I'm aware, harvesting all of them just makes the epilogue music more ominous.