Magnum Opus

It was a lot of beef. Seriously.

"I swear, officer, all I asked for were the cold cuts!"

Still Diablo 2. The save game system is gradually wearing me down: I hatehatehate having to metagame my way through the world, basing my playing time around when I find a waypoint or when I think it's "Safe" to quit. Wish I had more Runes, though... those things are hard to come by, aren't they? The Stash size is frustratingly small, considering the entire game's overwhelming feature is item hoarding... gonna have to poke around 'netland a bit and see if anyone's managed to fix any of these aspects. Oh, also dusted off Quest for Glory. Hopefully that remake of QfG2 will see the light of day some time soon.

Diablo 2: LoD. *sigh* Yep.. I caved. Got me a hankerin' for something new, but with that 'old-skool' flavour to it, so I picked it up. Still... not a bad game. Movies are absolutely brilliant. Save game/respawn system blows chunks: obviously designed with multiplayer foremost in mind. Quite a few more character development opportunities than the first one, too. Haven't tried battle.net yet, though; not sure if I will. Maybe some day, if I'm feeling masochistic. Duriel ate my level 52 Necromancer on Nightmare. Bugger. Bastard even went so far as to corrupt my save game and I had to load a backup that put me back an Act and a half. S'pose the really nasty demons have to have some sort of uber power, though. Gems seem to be doled out on the principle of "if I've got 2 of one type in my stash, don't hand out a third." Just one more gem of any type, and I'll be able to Cube up a Perfect gem of that type, but no such luck so far. Aside from those irritations, though... not bad.

Baby steps, man, baby steps. They tried scaling the entire world with you, and when they found out that people didn't like it, they decided to scale back the scaling to a per-area basis. My bet is that their "brushstrokes" are still WAY too broad for this to feel in any plausible or accomplish what level scaling is intended to, and that it'll still draw a boatload of criticism when all is said and done. IMO, level scaling needs a lot of fine detail in its application if it's going to work all the way around (game difficulty and consistency with the setting) and this approach is still too heavy handed. Still... Baby steps. By the time Fallout 6 comes around, they should have fine-tuned it to something that almost works.

I find it to be prohibitive. Now it's not just a matter of having broadband for multiplayer games, you've got to have it just to get the game that they were supposed to have delivered in the first place? Truly, the gaming industry has passed me by. Oh well.

Tradewinds: Legends. Surprisingly fun, but then, my standards aren't very high either.

I love lists like this, personally. Being neither all that prolific a gamer nor willing to comb through all the bajillion or so reviews/web sites/media hype-fests which inevitably spring up around each and every game that gets released, but still enjoying the odd romp every now and again, these sorts of lists throw out the names of games that I might possibly enjoy, that someone else out there (in this case, three someones) thought were pretty darn good, but that I probably haven't played yet. What order they happen to be in is compeltely irrelevant. My only complaint with this particular list is that it's a little too broad in scope. "All time" and "all genres", even for just the PC, picks up a lot of fluff . . . "fluff" being defined as "things I probably wouldn't bother playing".

Of the games I own but haven't bothered to finish... the only ones in that category would be Ultimas 3 and 5. U3 rubbed me the wrong way at the time I tried to play it (might go back to it if I can get it running), and U5 was too long. I think I got lost in the Underworld with that one. The "cRPGs" which I do own and have finished: The Bard's Tale I, II, III Quest for Glory 1 - 5 King's Quest 1, 2, 4 (damned bridle!!) Ultima 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, SI, 8, 9 (yes, even 9), Savage Empire Gold Box games PoR, CotAB, SotSB, PoD, CoK, DKK, DQK, GttSF, and TotSV EoB1, 2, 3 Lands of Lore (Patrick Stewart edition) Menzoberranzan, Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, Ravenloft: Stone Prophet (surprisingly good story with this one) Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager (took a while to luck my way past most of the game-stopping bugs, but I did it eventually), Al-Qadim: Genie's Curse Fallout 1, 2 Diablo + Hellfire NWN1 OC Baldur's Gate + TotSC, BG2 + ToB, IWD +HoW+TotL, IWD2, PS:T ToEE PoR2 Morrowind +Tribunal+Bloodmoon I might have forgotten one or two, but only one or two. Not a lot of games, considering I started playing most of them when were actually released, but I tend to finish what I start. I'm just freakish that way, I guess.

Seconded. One of the reasons I prefer BG1's setting to BG2's. BG1 was classic high fantasy that didn't mix and match in the way BG2 did, despite being in the same region of the same continent in the same world. Even as overused as fantasy is, it's still refreshing to me to see something so unabashedly low-tech. No space ships or stasis tubes or cloning jars or machines or crazy gnomish inventions; just plain old high fantasy.

While I might question the validity of a poll taken from a niche audience (and a small niche audience at that) to gauge the potential support of a wider audience for anything, I'm going to throw my vote in with the "Fantasy" crowd. Give me soaring towers; formidable battlements; sighing ladies with pointy hats, ribbons in their hair, and heaving bosoms; and gentry in goofy-lookin' tights with their codpieces filled to the brim. Just so long as my characters don't have to wear such frippery, I'm good with it. Impossible heroic/buxom is fine, but I draw the line at goofy or clownish. Most times. Oh, and if I were feeling contrary, I also might question the notion that the Fallout and the Star Wars universes aren't fantasy, but such were the definitons given. Kudos for providing definitons. Might cut through a lot of drivel. Edit: ... or not.

And they keep trying to tell me that 3D portraits are better than 2D ones... pht. @Oerwinde: You actually visualize your characters to that degree when creating them? Neat. Seems like swimming upstream a little, though. Art resources in a game are always going to be more finite than my imagination, so I take a gander through the portraits first and then come up with a suitable character concept for the one that I want to use, not try to find a portrait that'll fit my conceptualization. Spend from now until eternity trying to do that, I suspect.

If only they'd gone back another thousand on their supported Radeon series cards. Ah, well. I knew the day would come and it's finally here: the bare-bones minimum requirements for new games have officially outstripped my hardware. Now it's up to either 1) hardware failure, or 2) the accumulation of enough of a back catalogue of "games I really want to play" to justify an otherwise unnecessary hardware upgrade. I've hereby been officially deprecated as a gamer. :D Oh, and I like the sounds of the reviewers complaining that the dungeons might be "too long". Seems to me that the genre (story-heavy cRPGs, I mean, of the sort that Bioware and Black Isle typically produced -- the Oblivions of the world have always had enough of it for my tastes) has pretty much streamlined most of the adventure out of games which feature adventurers, and as someone who felt that the dungeons in PoR2 might, in places, have flirted with being "too large", this is a welcome little bit of criticism.

Did you perchance do a full install? It's not an option in the installation program, but you can do it. If so, you might try just copying over the Mortuary area file again. Have run into this sort of thing a lot with all of the IE games since making the move to Windows XP (don't know if that's what you're using or not), and simply copying the problem file from disk to hard drive always does the trick, if a simple reboot doesn't (which it sometimes does).

I pulled out NWN a while back and borrowed the expansions for this mod. Aside from the fact that I was playing on a below-specs machine (for the mod, not for the original NWN game) and encountered a lot of bugs (even after updating to 1.1), I found it to be a breath of fresh air WRT the core package. Liked the overland map. The new tilesets were nice, although somewhat annoying in that the 2nd story tiles wouldn't vanish no matter how I arranged my game options, to they were constantly blocking off my field of view. The pathfinding is still absolute crud, far far worse than anything they threw at me in Baldur's Gate, and those "rolling hills" just made it worse, but still... I can put up with that. I missed out on the "mist shrine", though, I think. So far as I can recall, there are only those two coastal areas in the game: the Crab Claw area and the one with the castle in it. Picked up the , but never actually found a use for it. Just like I never found the way to , if such a thing is even possible. The journal suggests that it is. Oh, and speaking of the Crab Claw coast area, what's up with that Anything? And those Just a few unanswered questions is all.. All in all, though, I agree; it's a pretty straightforward mod. No real standout moments, but just a consistent level of fun throughout. Well developed setting, a couple neat little secrets, quite a few fun little quests, a little bit of intrigue to keep things going, a couple interesting characters... ok, maybe just the one interesting character. Nothing spectacular, but "spectacular" isn't required for me; just a solid mod all around. Good stuff, even if the final fight was a little pedestrian. That fighter's voice was grating, though, wasn't it? Holy... "Of course I can!" Yikes. Cough drop, anyone? Xan at least was fun to laugh at with his overbearing morose-ness. This one was just... yikes.

Good lord, even the indie games are outstripping my video card now... *shakes head*

Not quite the only one, perhaps. :D I've seen one of them played, though. You might be interested in this for that little surge of nostalgia... or even if you just want something a little more retro. Haven't played in too far yet, but what I've seen seems to be quite well done. Am still waiting on the Quest for Glory 2 remake, though. Trailer for it looks good, at least. The game that got me "hooked" was The Bard's Tale for PC... around '89 or so. I'd been interested for some time before then, but that was the first time it got to be more than a passing interest. But, then I got unhooked. Then I got re-hooked with Baldur's Gate and the IE games. Now I'm unhooked again.

Yes. Although I don't know that "lend" would really be the appropriate term, since you probably don't have to give it back, per s

It's all right :D. Your "mean face" looks a lot like my "happy face" though. It's all relative.

It's because they've realized the harmful effects of technology on humanity in general and society in particular. See, by saving your high score, they're encouraging a plethora of harmful behaviour: 1. Increased competitiveness/aggression. Clearly, humanity is already competitive enough without our entertainment encouraging us yet more. Road rage, hostilities and backstabbing at work... all of these are manifestations of our drive to "be the best" and "get ahead". Every time you see someone pass by a panhandler on the street without giving them anything, it's because they've been conditioned to "look out for number 1", and because of their smug desire to not be the bottom feeder of society. At least there's someone else who's worse off than you. Providing a list of our accomplishments serves only two purposes: self-congratulatory ego-stroking, and increased competitiveness and aggression. Status comes first. 2. Decreased memory retention. Being allowed to save one's score, and thus essentially recall it at a whim, relieves the player of the burden of remembering what that score was. With the human memory, it's been clinically shown that it is indeed a case of "use it or lose it". Basic math skills atrophy in the new generations as they become accustomed to having calulators perform each and every task for them; the same will happen with memory. Providing a list of high scores for the player encourages mindless play. 3. Increased mistrust. Time was when a person's word meant something. Time was, a person could seal a binding contract with another by merely shaking their hand and saying the words, instead of signing papers with a herd of lawyers behind them. Look how sadly far we've come from that ideal. "Trust" is a dirty word in business, and unheard-of in law. Nay... The cry today is loud and clear: "Proof!" the masses scream! We believe in nothing unless we can see it, touch it, or unless it has some sort of number backing it up. Will your friend, who also plays Pac Man on GBA, even believe you if you say you reached such and such a score? I don't think so! Not without.... proof. A number. A saved high score. Saving high scores creates rifts between friends and family! So, why doesn't Pac Man, the oldest and wisest of the video games, allow you to save your high score? It's for you own good, you ungrateful bastard! Pac Man : putting Humanity first since 1980.... or thereabouts. Seriously. *nods soberly*

Well... there's art, and then there's art. There's the sort of art that your daughter brings home from kindergarten and that you, as a parent, are ecstatic to put up on the fridge, because you know that everything she put in there is genuine, and expressive of who she is and what she was thinking when she made it. It connects with the parent at a pretty deep level, a level that goes beyond the blobs of hand-shaped paint on the paper, which, after all, are probably pretty ugly in and of themselves. And then there's the "collective human soul" sort of art; more profound, more universal, more widely recognized. Famous Art. Technically, art like this has a lot to recommend it as well as being expressive of something more profound than what the piece is merely showing. ie. It looks good, or it uses a particular technique or medium particularly well or with a certain degree of skill. On that continuum, I look at video games as being more toward the "gindergarten" end. Games, at present, are still fighting mightily with their medium. Games are pushed out the door half-baked, there are bugs on top of bugs and the surrounded with more bugs, often to the point that the actual game is obscured by them. Beyond that, though, games are, IMO, typically there to make money and to provide a very visceral thrill. There's not a lot to recommend them beyond that quick adrenaline rush; it's there, and it's forgotten. It provides no insights, and it doesn't make you think about anything. Hell, some games go even further and succeed only when they prevent you from actively thinking. So, from that perspective, I look at games as being something similar to that Summer Hollywood Blockbuster or internet porn; takes a certain skill to pull it off well, and so can be considered an art -- it takes a great deal of skill, many skills, to pull off any sort sort of video game, and so their creation is most certainly an art, IMO -- but do I consider them art? Not really. On the "kindergarten scrawlings --> Picasso" scale, there's only one game I've played that I'd even consider putting on that scale, and that just below kindergarten scrawlings. The potential is certainly there, but right now they're being produced for a different purpose, and they're just too clumsy. 'Cause at the end of the day, I see things as being "an art", and then there are things that end up being art. The former doesn't necessarily lead to the latter. And then, naturally, there's art, and then there's Art. And of course, this only applies to me, so take that for what it's worth. Clear as mud? Good.

Can't see the big deal, personally. Regardless of the horsie issue in particular, there simply comes a time in any product's life cycle when the company that made it stops supporting it. Circular saws... sure. Happens there, too, and they've typically got a longer shelf life than any piece of software. Go into any Skil repair shop and ask them for an "inner washer", and they'll tell you they don't carry parts for models that old anymore. Atari may or may not be in trouble finanically... doesn't make a difference to me either way, but just exactly how long did you expect them to keep actively backing this product, even if they were rolling in cash? The game itself may be unlimited in scope, but it's ridiculous to assume that the NWN1 party would just keep going ad infinitum from the corporate side. Products simply get deprecated; that's the way it works. Especially in the face of a new version of the same product. They WANT people to buy. They WANT people to buy the NEW version. They don't want people to keep playing the same single game forever. Bad business, that; companies don't turn a profit from that hardcore group of 200 'net geeks who're happy to keep playing the same system year in and year out, and there's nothing to be gained by pouring money into a pit to support them. Frankly, I'm surprised NWN1 was supported for as long as it was. Don't look for more of the same from NWN2.

Imoen's the one who disappears if she takes too much damage in Irenicus' little hell hole. Yoshimo can die, though. If "the Coordinator" doesn't see him when you talk to him at Spellhold, he'll assume he's not with you and blather on about Saemon slipping a spell component into your soup while you were on his ship.

I like the DnD Bleed and Die method, myself. The examples given for BG and Torment... they worked well for those specific games in that there was a very solid story-related reason for handling death in the ways those game did. I'd have loathed BG's method of handling death in IWD, for instance. Otherwise, though, the BG series seemed to me to be waffling between wanting to go with a Dead is Dead philosophy, and the regular Bleed and Die DnD method. 0hp in that game meant you were dead, but not Dead-dead, and resurrection was cheap enough, and accessible enough, that I felt the overall effect was quite similar to having an NPC falling unconscious in battle (ie. "dead"), only they didn't have a truly skill- or environment-based way of waking them up... not until you gained a bunch of levels, anyway, and they let you use your wake-up stick (rod of resurrection) or consume a spell slot or two with an Awaken spell (raise dead). It worked all right, but... not my personal preference. In battle, it still meant it was just a straight-up fight to the death, even if it wasn't death-death. You either survived or you didn't. What I like about the Bleed and Die method is the variability and choice it presents me with. Do I stop fighting the monster I'm currently facing and try to bandage the bleeder to stop him from dying? Do I hope that his injuries aren't serious to cause him to bleed to death, that he'll stabilize on his own? What will it cost me to just stop fighting in the middle of battle and go all 4077 for a while? Adds a bit of drama to a battle, IMO, and presents me with situations that the now-requisite Bigger Monsters/More Power mechanism simply doesn't give me. Besides, as mentioned, it allows for the use of skills other than those used in combat.