Serrano

Sorry, doublepost

Even though the kickstarter has ended, the paypal pledges are still running until the 30th of this month. At the moment there is just under $100,000 to go before hitting the final stretch goal.

They have been working on it but I seem to remember rumours about it not going smoothly and then there was that whole outcry from EVE fans about CCP not giving them enough attention, so they either took staff off of WOD or halted it completely for a while. Some of the systems they were talking about sounded novel though; A single player in each city can be elected prince and one of the perks of the job includes issuing "blood hunts" on other players which opens them up to perma-death, but if you don't manage to keep enough players happy then they can revolt and you will be overthrown. It sounds a bit like roleplaying President Aladeen from The Dictator. http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/world-of-darkness-mmo-detailed-permadeath-player-controlled-cities-and-huma

It uses nice tech if nothing else.

However unlikely it is, I really hope that is Columbo in the last screenshot.

The game looks a bit similar (aesthetically) to Silent Hill Homecoming, which I consider to be a good thing. I hope the live-action and teaser trailers were just bad marketing.

Or he may fall in love with it and have one of those weird marriages everyone raises an eyebrow at.

If you liked the new X-Com and were curious about the older X-Coms then you may like this game that's not called X-Com but is more like the old X-Com than the new X-Com when it's released later this year.

What kills replay value of DAO for me is, ironically, the origins and then Ostagar. Not that either are necessarily bad, but that they're LOOOOOONG. If I can get past those two sections and make my way to Lothering, I can generally get back into replaying the game. the mage tower is insufferable for me now There's a mod that lets you skip the fade section while still getting the stat boosts. I'm not sure if it will effect any choice carryover into the sequels though.

How is your Finnish?

That's a good point, how do you manage in real life?

Fallout Tactics is worth getting too and while I haven't played them, I've heard good things about Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business and Lionheart.

The thing about Baldur's Gate 1 is that it's an rpg from before the time when Bioware started doing companions. Some of the party members will have personal quests like Minsc rescuing Dynaheir but that's really about the extent of your interacting with them or their impact on the story after they get recruited. They won't chip in with comments when you talk to people, they won't talk to each other except for pairs who may rarely say two lines to each other about this or that. They won't get an epilogue at the end either. So think of them less as personalities and more like expendable puppets. I'd almost suggest letting them perma death and recruiting new ones as you go, you'd get more quests and you'd get to hear more character quips, some of the least recruited characters are really entertaining and a few have something unique about them like Xan and his moonblade. If you decide to do that though remember that if you dismiss a party member they will still be the same character level when you recruit them again, and if you dismiss a dead party member then they're gone forever. You should still be able to finish the game no matter of what combo of characters you use though, but having at least one mage, cleric, rogue and fighter will make things much easier. Also if you host a multiplayer game and play by yourself you can make all 6 characters, you wouldn't even have to restart, just load the session you're on at the moment.

at first I was like "wha?!" but then I saw it was still a platformer and I went like "eew" Flashback was one of the best platformers ever. The dialog was cringeworthy but if they recreate the game part faithfully then it's going to be worth picking up.

I'm not sure they could have actually, I thought that was one of the stipulations of using Steam as a distributer. There's tons of games that that use a different system inside of steam for DLC etc. For example Bioshock 2 uses GFWL for DLC, all the Trackmania games use its own crappy frontend for all addon stuff. That's true but even then I'd argue that since you still need to use Steam to run the game to play the DLC that isn't tied to your steam account it's more practical and convenient to use Steam to distribute the DLC as well. I get why people are upset but if they are going with it as a mandatory requirement for patches then they may as well go all in rather that use an extra layer of annoyance like LIVE or Bioware Social.

I'm not sure they could have actually, I thought that was one of the stipulations of using Steam as a distributer.

Yeah, I'm getting the itch to play an old-school-ish RPG, but I'm not feeling particularly inspired by any of the options in front of me. (Or, at least, I am sufficiently deterred by the prospect of getting them running, patched, and sufficiently modded.) When is Wasteland 2 supposed to be hitting the streets? (I didn't back it, so I'm not getting the updates, but the cash I threw at Eternity was apparently enough to merit a free copy.) I think the estimate from InXile was October this year.

Very pretty in a bleak post-apocalyptic kind of way.