Spider
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The registry cleaner I use (TuneUp Utilities) checks for keys that no longer have software associated with them. So far I haven't had a problem with just letting it remove everything it finds. So it'll probably work for you as well.
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I also find it interesting that the original NWN got 8.75 (and 9 in the second comment) while this review says that NWN 2 improves on basically everything except AI and pathfinding, issues that (according to the review) was present in the first game as well.
So equal or better at everything = lower score.
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Then you have to clean your XP more often (as I am a reviewer of games, I know this.. the hard way..) as the registry tends to become cluttered after a while, and that can slow down your system severely.
Or you can get a registry cleaner/defragger.
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Not compatible with 2.0 though. I had this before I upgraded and it's very slick and stylish.
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I was using BlackJapan, but since that isn't compatible with 2.0 I switched to Noia 2.0. I also have a Halloween theme installed.
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With Oblivion, I spent 60 hours in the first playthrough and pretty much visited every single dungeon, cave, and whatever in the game. I'm also pretty sure I did over 80% of the quests, except for very rare ones and the ones that were mutually exclusive.
First of all, how the hell did you manage that? I played for some 150 hours and while I did do every quest, there were plenty of caves and ruins I didn't do. Doing them all in 60 hours is definitely impressive.
Second, I definitely understand the value of a replayable game. I am definitely one of those who can play the death out of a game if it's fun enough. I've played BG 2 over ten times I think and all IE games at least three times. I've started five different characters in Titan Quest (one of whom has completed legendary and one that is halfway through). So I see the appeal.
What made me curious was the statement that a game must be replayable to be worth the money spent on it. The only reason I can see behind such statement is that you get more gameplay for your buck, which roughly translates to more hours. And I feel that if a game has enough content (or if the content is of a certain quality, but since I'm comparing to multiple playthroughs, length is what is mostly relevant here) then it can definitely be worth the money, even if it only brings a single playthrough.
I can agree that when it comes to a game like Fallout 3 (trying to at least be a little on topic), replayability becomes much more important. Because in a Fallout game I want choices to matter. Every single one of them. How I develop my character, what dialogue I chose, who I side with, and so on. But if it turns out to be something else it can still be a fun game.
Edit: Oh, and FOT was a pretty good game. Except for the robots. Man I really hated fighting robots. And I wasn't a huge fan of how they turned the Brotherhood into a fascist organisation (but they were a splinter cell) but other than that it was pretty fun. I couldn't care less whether or not the deathclaws had hair.
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It's a hypothetical question so I can understand Dark Raven's position better. So I am working under the assumption that each playthrough changes the game significantly enough to make it equally fun as the first. It's a gross simplification and it may very well be that no such game exists (although I have seen movies that are better the second time, so why not games?), but that's really beside the point.
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It was only an example. Multiply the numbers with two if it makes you feel better.
Also, it needs to be assumed that each playthrough of the game is just as much fun as the first one.
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So by your reasoning a 10 hour game that you can replay in a satisfactory way 5 times is better than a game that lasts you 60 hours but has limited (let's say none) replayability? The games (and all playthroughs) being identical where the fin factor is concerned.
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Ive got a radeon 9800 256 mb card that can support the pixel shader thing. Unfortunately its on a laptop and my drivers are about a year old, and I cant update them. Does NWN2 require the latest drivers?
omegadrivers.net is your friend. They make it possible for laptop users to update to fairly recent ATI drivers. It's modded drivers, but I've never had any problems with them.
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Vol, if you had quoted the last sentence it would have been taken drastically out of context. My post was a direct response to DR's post directly ahead of mine. Specifically "Nah must be replayable. I wnt my moneys worth gfrom a product. "
And all I was saying is that if you like the type of game Oblivion is, replayability is a non-issue because you will have been able to get more play-time in than you'd get from most games doing five playthroughs.
The only thing replayability does is add more hours to your game experience, and if you get enough hours the first time, then it doesn't matter.
Note that I'm not trying to say that Oblivion is a great game and that either of you two will like it. You know your tastes better than I do. All I was ever saying is that it's certainly worth the price of admission if you like that type of game.
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Note how I said "If you like the game". If you think Oblivion sucks you clearly won't get your money's worth of it, regardless of how replayable or not it is.
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Replayability in a game like Oblivion is kind of a moot point though. If you like the game, you'll be playing it enough the first time that you will have gotten your money worth.
I think I clocked something like 150 hours, which is more than four playthroughs of KotOR. And there were still stuff to be done if I wanted to (didn't reach maxlevel, didn't clear all dungeons, but I think I did most of the quests except the Bark Brotherhood ones). You complain about a lot of things when it comes to Oblivion, but not getting your money's worth isn't one of them.
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I actually thought Stewart was very good in Oblivion. By far the best voice acting in the game. Of course he only had what, ten lines? So it's not like he made that big of an impact.
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I have the following add-ons:
* Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4 (pre-defined blacklist for Adblock that gets updated every now and then, pretty much never see any ads thanks to it)
* Adblock Plus 0.7.2.1 (needs no description, except that the plus version is more actively developed than the normal one)
* Allow Right-Click 0.4
* BBCodeXtra 0.2.5.6 (I could probably uninstall this, since I never use it. Adds BBcode options to the context menu to make that faster, but I always type them anyway)
* DOM Inspector 1.8.1
* Download Manager Tweak 0.7.1 (download manager in tab instead of window? Yes please!)
* Full Screen 0.5 (another extension that I could do without since I never use it, but when I do remember it it's pretty nice)
* Html Validator 0.7.9.5 (for webdesign purposes)
* IE Tab 1.1.1.4 (In theory this is a great extension, but it almost never works properly for me)
* IE View 1.3.1 (which is why I also have this, to quickly open a page in IE)
* InfoLister 0.9f (compiled this nice list of add-ons)
* Sort Extensions and Themes 3.0.3
* Super DragAndGo 0.2.6 (an extension I can't live without. enables you to drag links to have them open in a new tab. This and Ad-block are the first two I get after a fresh install)
* Web Developer 1.0.2 (This extension is the reason I changed to FF, from Netscape, in the first place. Essential for anyone who does anything with webdesign)
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Except that there won't be a TES game out for it to compete with. At the time of Fallout 3's release Oblivion will no longer be making any money for Bethesda, but TES 5 probably won't be released.
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PB simply did so in a way a bit more excessive and apparent than others.
More excessive and apparent? It really isn't THAT bad. Besides, the game, once you get used to how combat works (specifically how the auto targeting system works) and the somewhat low performance, it's an absolute gem. I love PB for reaching for the stars because this game is loads of fun, despite the bugs (and other than the low performance and occasional crash the bugs aren't that noticable). I'm having a blast playing it. Probably a bit too much since I've played it for far too many hours now. So if bugs is the price to pay for a game this ambitious (and fun), then I can actually live with that.
The stunlock issue really isn't that bad either. It's gruesome in the beginning, but when you level up some wolves and boars stop being scary. Unless they manage to get you from behind or if you get stuck in terrain somehow (if you can't back away or turn and run, you will be killed).
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I personally don't feel Gothic 3 is as buggy as all that. I've certainly played worse (ToEE comes to mind). The biggest issue with the game is that the code feels very unoptimized and thus performance is pretty bad. I'm running the game on low settings with a setup that could play Oblivion on medium to high and on those settings it's playable but not exactly a feast for the eyes. It still stutters on occasion, especially in the forest, but nothing too bad.
It does freeze or crash on occasion, but again not frequently enough for it to be a huge issue. Just quicksave a lot and it's not so bad.
There are some strange graphical glitches every now and then (wolves running on cave walls and such) but again nothing major.
There are a few other issues though. First, load times are pretty bad. It takes me about 15 seconds to save the game (I have a P4 3.0, 1 GB RAM and the game is installed on a Raptor) which is acceptable, but then it takes 45+ seconds to load a save game, which is far too long. Especially given how often you die in this game.
The combat is not great and your opponents are kinda stupid. A lot of the time where there are multiple opponents, most of them will stand by and do nothing while you pummel one of their friends (which in a way is kinda nice since combat is difficult enough as is). The stun effect from being hit is very annoying, and if you ever get caught between an enemy and a piece of terrain, you're dead. But once you get into how it all works, it stops being so bad. I can now dispatch boars and wolves without being panicked in fear for my own life. I do hate the Bloodflies however.
So in my opinion, the game is playable and worth checking out. Because the rest of the game is very good (and if you have a machine to run it at medium or higher specs, the visuals are pretty good as well).
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I will say IE is better at reading web page code compared to the Mozilla browsers. Bugs I do not recall any on either software. But I have had more crashes and freeze ups with IE than FF or Netscape.
I take it you haven't been designing webpages much? Although IE7 is supposed to be better in this regard and is rendering pages more along the open standards (in other words, Microsoft realizes they were wrong and are taking steps to adapt).
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I'm not a fan of randomization in character creation either. Although most such systems include some ways to give the player at least a modicum of control (like rolling your characteristics and then being allowed to redistribute them as you see fit).
Although having some random element to character creation can be fun. Like background tables or some such (of course with the option to ignore if it's totally out of line for your character).
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NWN is placed in Neverwinter (quite obvious), there should be lots of Half-Drow NPC-s, an thus making it possible for a PC too.
I think your sarcasm-o-meter needs some maintenance.
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I've always liked the Black Viper guide.
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12
It's a tad outdated (it was written before SP2 iirc) but it's still pretty good and it explains what every service does.
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The problem is that D&D has defined Paladin as a religious warrior dedicated to all things good and righteous. So going by D&D standard you can't be a Paladin unless your're good.
Of course there exists counterparts for evil and neutral religious warriors, they just have other names. I have no idea what those are though (Dark Paladin?), I'm not exactly well educated when it comes to D&D rules.
I'd personally be fine with Paladin being used for any devoted religious fighter, it's just not the way it's done.
Never much liked the D&D versions of Paladins anyway. Don't like to roleplay those type of characters and if I just want to create a tank for a computer game, I tend to go with pure fighters anyway. Extra feats beats Paladin abilities any day (I like feats a lot though, so I'm a bit biased).
The only exception being Keldorn in BG2. If I'm powergaming through that game, he is the first NPC to get inclcuded, but that's because his dispel-ability is just insane.
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You don't think a 80% price increase just to get a Blu-ray player is expensive?
That's about twice what the PS3 will cost and people are saying that one is priced too high.
NWN2: Major disappointment - Character creation
in Computer and Console
Posted
The thing here is that Oblivion is a very different style of game from NWN2. I'd even go as far as call it a different genre altogether. It's much more of a sandbox game than an RPG really. It is basically a fantasy version of GTA more than anything else (minus the excessive language and violence). From that perspective, roleplaying options, party members and replayability really doesn't come into it. What matters is gameplay and a sense of exploration. And it does those things well, I think. Which is why it deserved it's high scores. It's not for everyone (hell, I hated the previous TES games), but for those into that type of game, it is fantastic.
Just like NWN2 shouldn't be looked at with the same considerations as F.E.A.R., Oblivion shouldn't be looked at in the same way as NWN2.
Oh, another thing. As far as replayability is concerned, Oblivion's lack thereof is greatly exaggerated. It certainly isn't any less replayable than say the IWD games (or Diablo). It all depends on how you go about your first playthrough. If you run about, doing all quests, learning all skills you can and clean out every single dungeon, then sure there won't be much reason to play it again. But if you mostly follow the main quest and stick to your class skills, then there is plenty reason to play the game again. A stealthy archer plays much differently compared to a savage fighter or a cunning mage. The thing is you CAN experience all three of these styles during your first romp through the game if you want to, but you certainly don't have to.