Spider

Yeah, Tolkien created an amazing world, I'll give you that. I meant Sanderson is second to none among currently active fantasy writers though, historically there are others that rival him. Like Michael Moorcok (damn language filter) although in a very different way...

Sanderson is an underrated writer, his newest series The Stormlight Archive is easily comparable to Jordan, Martin, Wolfe, Erikson in the quality of writing. Agreed. I'n my mind he's top of the line among fantasy writers today. his world building is second to none (which is a good thing since he creates so many of them) and his characters are very well built (even though he reuses some personality type in most of his books).

You get steam keys for Dead Space, Burnout, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and Mirror's Edge. It's possible to activate keys on both Origin and Steam, but the license says you're not allowed to give surplus keys away. Personal use only.

If it was in the original game, I missed it. Just saw it mentioned in the IGN article above. It's a set of gameplay options that will change how the game rules work. Not sure if they're set up in a case by case basis or if it's all or nothing. The examples in the IGN article is allowing non-cover using aliens to take a shot wehn you encounter them instead of a move, and randomized skill trees for all soldiers after their first rank. Edit: Probably missed it since it came with the third patch, not sure I was still playing then.

Agree completely.

Firaxis seems adamant on getting all of my money. new XCOM stuff sounds awesome.

I'm suspecting that just as with NWN 1 and 2, the toolkit is only going to get used by a minority of users. Most players will buy the game for the official campaign only. Given the niche nature of the game, I do expect the ratio to be more in favor of people being interested in the toolset, but still don't think it will be enough people to say that's the purpose of the product. I wouldn't have paid for just the toolset, but I would have paid for just the campaign.

That actually makes me want to buy games over Origin instead of Steam... Not that I would have the choice with EA published games anyway, but still.

NKKK don't you see the difference in what you're saying and what Maria is? You're telling us why you dislike Anders (or rather why others would) based on his actions. Maria's gut reaction comes from someone saying "Anders was a [homosexual slur] that got what was coming to him": The difference is fairly huge.

I like fights that use the wave mechanic well enough. But, like Alan said, when 90% of the fights use that single trick it gets annoying and loses it's surprise factor. But used sparingly and where it makes sense, it can make for awesome encounter design.

It's called bounty contract week, so my guess is that it'll end on wednesday's reset (since that's when it started)

I'm pretty sure it's rather a console controller limitation. Like was suggested, they probably ran out of buttons.

Console versions couldn't zoom out that far, so I'm guessing most posting those comments played DA:O on a console.

There are a few different henchmen. I think it's random in some way which is on which planet when you get a mission. I know I've had two different henchmen on Alderaan, both on imperial side and less than an hour apart. But the Kingpin contracts are more fun that way. I don't quite understand their rewards design on this event though. Since it's all reputation driven, once you've maxed out your reputation you won't need to do these ever again, regardless if they add additional rewards. At least with the ilum event you had to get more coms if you wanted the newer rewards they added. Anyway, the most fun I've had with this event so far was figuring out how to get to the sniper. Though there should have been a cutscene or something when reaching him, not just the achievement.

How long roughly are the missions? If they take 15 minutes to complete, then the game may be a bit short even for $30. If they're closer to an hour it makes the game more interesting.

Hutta is still awful from what I hear. All others are fine though. Voss and Alderaan seem to be the best for me so far. I'm also running this on 5 characters total, and have 2 of the Kingpin ones unlocked. They at least use a different mechanic to locate (and the end fight have different mechanics to them, if only slightly), so it makes things a little more varied. They're also marked as group content, so are slightly tougher. The can be soloed by a geared player, but otherwise any group of two should be able to do them.

Probably because it's the lowest level? Maybe, but since you have to be level 10 to get to the fleet, Hutta is something you'd have to go back to anyway, and Ord mantell was nowhere near as bad (mostly because a much larger spawn area).

Wasn't the DLC Berlin one of the stretch goals though? So the kickstarter funding should partially go to developing that as well? So for kickstarters (and preorderers like myself) the content should really be judged with that taking into account. Which of course doesn't help anyone who's contemplating buying the game now.

Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1 & 2 (technically in 2, though one or two people have to die, you just don't have to fight them).

I am considering the bundle, but it would only be for Mirror's Edge in that case I think. I am a bit curious though why they'd bundle Dead Spaec 1 and 3, but not 2.

There are at least five spawn points outside the cantinga, and when I was there not a lot of people were fighting for them. Took me five minutes tops. But Hutta was by far the worst one (I think most people went there because it's the smallest planet). I did Dromund Kaas, Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant and Ord mantell as well and they were all much faster. But there's not a lot of variation in the missions, so I fear it will start to feel real grindy before you reach legend status. My current plan is to do that grind this time around and the next, by then I should have enough reputation trophies for Legend, and then I probably won't do these again (since only reputation matters, once you're legend credits buy you all the rewards). I also did one of the Kingpin contracts, which was at least slightly different. Hopefully those will be more varied in execution.

To be fair though, SR is a more polished game than Expeditions: Conquistador is. I personally like EC better, it had that special kind of magic that made the game greater than the sum of it's parts. But it's a game with it's own flaws for sure. That being said, SR had 25 times the budget and it certainly isn't THAT much more polished. I do think the team ebhind EX did a lot of the work for free though, while the Shadowrun guys had full time salaries and so on. As for HBS themselves, being good developers is not the same as being good management (lex troika if you will). Hopefully, for their sake, this experience will help them improve on that for the future.

yes, and the contracts are tradable. so you can get them fro other players, or from other characters of your own.

The main problem for me is how linear the story is and how easy the combat is. None of which is really easy to fix with a patch. The story is really only a problem for subsequent playthroughs though, playing it once and it's not a huge deal (although I still like at least the illusion of reactivity here and there). Another problem I have (now that I've had time to think about it) is the lack of companions with any sort of character. There is, afaik, one you can bring with you regularly that has a story, but once she's available for missions, there is no more interacting with her. So companions were basically just stat mules, which is a bit of a shame I think. They don't need full fledged character arcs or anything, just something to inject them with a little personality.

You can do 2 when you unlock the higher tier