Serrano

It was visually very impressive but once you took out the tendrils there was an annoying "what the hell do I do now?" moment that had a lot of people repeating the entire fight over several times because it's not clear you have to head to the left. I know people knock sign-posting but seriously, I'd have a appreciated a literal sign-post for that battle.

I liked the combat too. It has room for improvement, but I thought it was a massive step up from TW1. To be fair I thought highly of the combat in The Witcher 1 too; The potions and coatings were a really nice strategic element and although games like dragon age have tried to use similar systems both before and after, they've never managed to make it feel as important, practical or especially fun when you can just hit things with a big sword and do everything else with magic. I guess that was one of the big advantages of not being able to play a proper spellcaster in a fantasy RPG for a change, they took a lot of the things that you'd be able to use freely like buffs and crowed control and put a monetary value on it, so rather than just throwing those things out in combat you always had to decide if it was worth using a coat or grenade or what-not. Witcher 2 did have a lot of crafting options too mind you but I found much less need for them once I cleared the first act.

I miss Chuck

I seem to be in the minority but apart from that god awful Kraken battle I really liked Witcher 2's combat. So long as CDP have made encounters more diverse both in what the player is doing and how the enemy attacks I think it will work out better than a complete overhaul. For me anyway .

Someone should do a military shooter MOBA and clean house.

No but you can probably expect it to be like Witcher 2 for the most part.

Yes sorry, I'd forgotten about the 3rd person shooter

If I were you and had decided in the end to buy XCOM, I'd definitely wait for the expansion XCOM: Enemy Within and get them together. Replayability was one of the biggest problems with the core-game and the expansion is added a lot of new maps to be cycled for regular missions as well as new research trees, weapons and enemies.

Is that an open world crime game? It's a barbershop simulator set in the 41st millennium. The pitch was Sweeny Todd in space with Vikings, it cannot possibly fail.

Also worth noting that there are only 12 missions not counting the three tutorials. They've said they're going to add a co-op campaign and also add more missions as and when they release new chapters, so I look forward to that so long as they aren't intending to milk & dime for it.

Best played with a friend btw, It handled co-op better than even RE5.

That's going to add a whole new layer of depth to the phrase "I am the architect of your destruction".

I hope they bring back the necromancer

I actually liked the other look as well. She looks great in the new screenshot though. Nice hall by the way, it bodes well for interior aesthetic.

http://youtu.be/Bx1vuBWKttk

Inquisition takes place over a wide area of Thedas including parts of Ferelden.

I'm re-listening to an audiobook called Hard Magic, which is part one of the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia. It's a detective noir type story set in an alternate 1930's America with magic and super powers and sci-fi technology. It's a bit of everything thrown together and it works very well, it would probably go down well with people who enjoy the Shadowrun setting. The narrator is also really good for the most part and is perfect for the lead, Jake Sullivan.

That reminds me of Tom Francis' GalCiv2 diary where he went for a totally pacifist victory, it's a funny article even if you've not played the game before.

Icewind Dale isn't a story-driven RPG Bruce, there are maybe a handful of class specific dialogue options but those are just for flavour and don't really change anything. Any dialogue option that will lead to a different quest outcome like talking someone down will be available to everyone and will be few and far between. Icewind Dale focuses on the dungeon crawling aspect of D&D so think of it more as a tabletop game than pen & paper. Design a party that's going to be able to survive a variety of situations and forget about roleplaying or smooth talking NPCs. - You will need a thief who is as good at finding and disarming traps as possible, lock picking is also quite important. - I'd suggest maybe not rolling any elves, the first raise dead spell in the cleric's spellbook doesn't work on them and it will be more expensive raising them at the temple. - Turn dead is pretty useful in IWD. - Don't scrimp on potions and scrolls, buy lots of them and use them often. - Archery and ranged combat is pretty useful in IWD, especially combined with bottlenecks and spells like web. I'd suggest giving most if not all of the party some points with ranged weapons. - You'll be fighting hordes a lot. - You'll be fighting powerful individuals a lot. - The enemies are varied and there are lots of elements, spells and status effects to watch out for. - The dungeons can get really large and multi-levelled. edit: If you are playing IWD2 then ignore this post.

http://youtu.be/nb9mslFnWMo

Looks like a new X-Com expansion is on the way.

You don't necessarily have to stop romancing them just because they're dead you know. I think the real issue with permadeath will be if you lose people because of a bug or because of a minor issue with the hud or something. I'm definitely not the kind of person who will like that option although I do see the merit in using permadeath to make combat tense and exciting.

Dead State kickstarter updates Sounds like they're making good progress.

Nope, I liked her too. She was actually one of my favourite companions.