Atom523

calling me old? (just teasing) Well the best advice i could give is to read through the previous weeks and see if you get to like any of the factions then make up a person and send a message addressed to that person and explain what you want to do to help or hinder. Ether a message directly to a faction or perhaps a journal entry explaining your plan about what you want to do. If you don't have time to read through all of the updates try reading the last few and try to make a small group (perhaps a mercenary group or militia force) and look at which factions are left and offer to lend your assistance to them. Don't just offer help, offer to help in a specific way, that way you can stand out from the rest of the letters. If you help the Coalition there is a higher chance of being mentioned but their future looks a bit bleak though. For example in my first letter i spoke as a Bastard named Bibs forming a small faction called the Daggoga Underground and i sent a message to the EEF (Earth Expeditionary Force) about how i wanted to start a guerrilla resistance against the Coalition of Enlightened nations, mainly because I just didn't like them or their actions.

First off i apologize for necroing my own thread as it has been a long time since anything was said here. I just wanted to mention this to anyone who is interested. On http://darkrefuge.net/BorderWars.html there is an on line campaign going on which has been going on for 25 weeks now. The campaign shows a boarder war between the Southern Earther Colonies and the Northern Kingdoms. What might be interesting is that it is being done by the creator of the game and encourages people who are keeping track with it to make a character and "write letters" about what the guy has been doing in response to what is happening in the war. Each week he reads all the letters and he takes the best ones and implements them into the storyline. He also accepts new spells, weapons, and vehicles that seem interesting and include them into the game. Like i have said before i am not the best with explaining these things so if this sounds even remotely interesting to anyone please check out the site and click on the "Free Stuff" link to check it out. There is nothing to buy for the free campaign anyone can participate in it if their idea is good. Heck the Coalition of Enlightened nations which is a large faction in the Northern Kingdoms was started by a bunch of people who didn't own a single source book, they had just run into us at a Con and were told about the game and visited the website. My own contribution to the campaign is the Daggoga Underground which is a small resistance group of Bastards (Pyromaniac Halflings with no sense of self Preservation) I enjoy this because it allows anyone who is creative to actually effect the official lore and storyline of the game world without demanding that they buy all the source books. Though if you want to buy they are in general cheaper then D&D books and are far more fun then 4th edition..... ....just sayin I hope that some of you check the border wars out and find it interesting and hope that people give it a chance and submit some letters. The email address that you can send the letters to is on the website i displayed on the first line of the first paragraph.

I agree, I never understood how a man/woman who has studied magic all their lives a master of the arcane can cast a spell.....and then totally forget how to do it again for an entire day. I prefer magic systems that use belief to use magic. If you know the magic you can keep casting it no matter what. Sure game rules limit how often you can do it but you don't suddenly just arbitrarily lose your ability. I like this system a bit more then standard D&D but i dislike that system overall.

Nice Summery, not very bias list at all Fighting with the old patriotic music in the background in the destroyed capital of the US is a bit ironic which is kinda funny. I don't see how wearing hats is a strike against the game. You can target the body of someone with the grenade not specific parts of them. People wanting to be vampires is really so much odder then Yakuza fighting Gangsters in New Reno, i believe even Chris Avalone criticized New Reno. Well drugs can easily spread, the idea that over 30 years people who use drugs could spread across the country is hardly too surprising. Where does it say that the Brotherhood of Steel serves the Enclave? They are two totally separate groups You forgot to mention being able to solve quest in multiple ways using your skills and not just violence The fact that the reviewer was able to convince the "Family" to not only stop their attacks on the town but to provide protection means something. Plus the fact that the player worked hard to not only save the town but to provide future protection then butchered the entire town captures the feeling of Fallout very well. If someone played an hour of Fallout 1 and gave a preview of it, i am sure that it wouldn't even come close to doing the game justice, i think we need to wait until we know more before condemning the game.

In case people haven't seen this, probably the best hands on preview of Fallout 3. Made by someone who seems to actually know what he is talking about. http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/fallout-3/pre...327151320531089 I wish this guy was in charge of demoing the game to people instead of Todd Howard

It is depressing that people are actually reacting this way to Final Fantasy going multiplatform. I mean if this guy could handle FF jumping from Nintendo to Sony i don't see how the game being released on more then one console suddenly causes his world to collapse.

That looks pretty cool, though it kind of looks like an RTS version of Quake, at least when it comes to the units.

I also have trouble coming up with adventures which is why when i do i use a simple formula. I think of an adventure i really like (be it from P&P, movie, or a video game) i think about the core things about it that made me like it, and then dump everything else. Then i am left with a bare bones adventure, then i start making side quests, each of them only partially related to the primary quest. This way my group has a goal that they are striving for but at the same time they aren't just going straight toward it. I believe that this keeps the players guessing and gives them more variety. Most of the time my groups enjoy it. I use the choices that the players make to fill in the main quest as i go along. This works well for me as i am decent at coming up with stuff on the fly. Of course there are many moments where my players will kill the wrong person, or go off on a tangent which throws a wrench into so many well laid plans, which is why i don't like strict scrips and plans, if i do that then i become a slave to the plan and it is hard for me to adapt to my players.

Well i have only played Vampire once and it wasn't a good experience. The DM was horrible, she gave us no freedom at all. One of our guys got tired of being led around by the nose and tried to destroy this church but we couldn't do any damage. nothing would burn, when we would throw around furniture nothing would break. I want, no demand freedom to make choices in my games. For a video game they have to limit you though, there is too much content in any game world to allow the player free run anywhere. There is no way for a programer to think of any and all situations. Most of the time you just get a watered down version of everything which isn't that fun like pop mentioned. games like Fallout did it well but even then when presented with that much choice, it makes you want even more. After a dozen playthroughs i would get fustrated with each fallout game for not letting me do what i wanted to do

Well the controls are quite different when it comes to an FPS and third person like RE. Aiming in Resident Evil is far slower then in most FPS game so i don't think consoles will have the problem when it comes to tracking small fast moving targets. I had the same reaction the first time a Facehugger got me. AVP 1 was an amazing game and i do hope that this one takes some ideas from it.

Keep in mind its also a console game, so its unlikely to be identical facehugger as AvP1. Avp1 Facehugger = Fast, deadly, one hit kill. Qutie impossible to aim with a console controller huh unless you make it crawl like a turtle. So pretty much its going to be a CoD4 kind of dog enemy. Not saying they should use this but it could be a timed button press like in Resident Evil 4. It had plenty of moments of you react fast or you die in one hit, heck at once point there was a section where you had to do around 6 of those carefully times button presses in a row and even if you miss one you die. Just because it is on a console doesn't mean that the player can't make fast reactions. This is only one example, i am sure they could do justice to AVP1 when it came to face huggers. If they actually do it well that is yet to be seen.

Where did you get that idea? It could be like Gears of War, where your computer allies are more or less useless, but they were also invincible (at least, that's how I remember them being) and reviving is only a part of multiplayer. Or it could be a largely solo game with teammates only in certain parts of the game in which they're not easily killed ala AVP2, with multiplayer changing the dynamics of the game a bit. In Gears of War your allies were able to be "knocked out" and you had to help them up. I believe it was Killzone where your allies were useless but invincible. The allied AI in Gears wasn't that bad, they couldn't handle the enemy without you but they could handle a a few.

Well, it is a C&C game. The main difference between the two lines of games has always been that red alert in many ways is less serious and more about having lots of fun with a less than believable but fun story (Einstein goes back in the future and erases Hitler, the soviets have mind control technology, armored bears etc.). Some people dislike that part of the RA games but most think that they are an interesting spin. Anyway if you can enjoy a game which is mostly about having fun then try RA2 as it evolved further in that direction than the predecessor. That explains the cartoony graphics. Reminds me of Warcraft 3, for some reason... Red Alert 1 was more of a "serious" game then 2 but i kind of like the way they took the series. Red Alert 2 dove right into the wackiness and never looked back. Though i wish they kept the same actor of Einstein i liked him a lot better then the porky fellow they for the second game. The Coop campaign has perked my interest. I have wanted something like that for years. I always loved missions in RTS games with allied bases though most of the few times that happens your allies tend to have cripplingly bad A.I. I hope they can find a way to give you intelligent allies while not making the game too easy. I cannot stand the idea of babysitting your retarded AI ally through an entire campaign, i will have to make more friends who like RTS games to have a human helping me.

I would love social random encounters. As i mainly play non fighting characters. I fully welcome an official addition to this. When i GM i have them and when i play the GM i usually play with also uses them as well. Can add a lot of fun to a session that might otherwise be purely a romp in violence. There is an easy way out of having players simple roll a bluff check and simply go on. Force them to actually talk and convince you. Make the roll only count as something to help a slightly faltering explanation. If there are wanted posters everywhere for your character you shouldn't be able to simply make a good roll and say something like "dude that totally isn't me". No matter how sincere you sound they will know you are full of crap. Force the players to make a good argument. I have this character who is a pathological liar, not a bad person he just is incapable of telling the truth, I have just about every point i have ever gotten invested in convincing people that i am right but my GM never lets me go with a half ass lie. Even with all my points invested i have to sound convincing. Also on the reverse of that, i have spun amazing lies together but totally screwed up the roll which has caused my beautiful story to fall on it's face as my guy was chucking the entire time due to my roll. heh heh. Force your players to roll play, they will thank you in the end. Also it is more fun for the GM.

I thought so too, cause shooting fish in there is much harder, especially if they are the really tiny ones. Ah Crazy Ivan, you crazy crazy guy.

I blame kiddies and their uber graphix consoles. I blame people who want a gaming experience that doesn't require a calculator, is easy to get friends into, and avoids bickering over conflicting interpretations of ambiguous or poorly defined rules. totally, if i don't have to stop the game to look up stuff on charts every 5 minutes during combat then it just isn't worth it. People will do what they always do with this version. They will take the rules they like and dump the ones they don't. I have yet to meet a single person who actually follows all the rules in any edition, they all merge what they feel to be the best elements of several. Just take what you feel to be an improvement and stick with the system that has the most that you like applying new rules that fit.

Great stuff, definitly has breathed new life in this game for me, a great addition to a great game. Amazing stuff man.

Well if you are a fan of Final Fantasy then yeah go get those two games but lot of final fantasy fans disliked X-2 due to the all female cast and much lighter story then usual. I would recomend Xenosaga episodes 1 and 3, 2 was just horrible. Jade Empire is decent, I wasn't a huge fan of FF12 but most people tend to like it.

Some of these setting were a major loss (and losing FR would also be a major loss). I still look back fondly at Dark Sun. Even Dark Sun CRPGs were great - I have fond memories of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and the sequel Dark Sun: The Wake of the Ravager (though extensive game-breaking bugs hampered the latter experience). I loved Dark Sun Shattered Lands, even now a days i can still play it. The second game was too bug riddled for my taste personally. I would love to see remakes for these two games if only so i can actually finish the second game.

I like the idea but i am not a seasoned D&D player. I mainly play other games and i am not a big fan of the ruleset for D&D so i don't think i would be a good player here.

nothing from UbiSoft? Why? I not a huge fan of them but i do like the Heroes of Might and Magic series. They aren't anywhere close to as bad as EA.

Why don't you make Jack Bouer first and on the second time around play as a Kirk type guy?

I personally enjoyed playing Oblivion when i got it. I would play for several hours, and then make a new character, play for several hours, make a new character. I loved to see the different reactions people would give me based on my race (i know it didn't happen that often but there are parts where people notice) I bought the houses, i did the quests i became the leader of the guilds. Then i beat the game.....i tried to make a new guy after that, it just didn't appeal to me any more. There are games that i can beat over and over and still enjoy, Fallout, Final Fantasy 4, Command and Conquer 3, Super Metroid, but this game i just couldn't do it. Sure the downloadable content added some life to the game but it just got boring. Now i won't bash the game like many RPG fanatics do, i think this game does deliver a solid gaming experience, it just lacks real replay value in my opinion. I have done the beginning quests so many times that i am sick of them. I have no interest in doing the same quests as a mage as i did as a fighter, or with a different weapon. Like i mentioned in previous posts, Oblivion is just like this newest plug in. It has great potential to be something wonderful, it has all the elements of something good. It just needed the developers to go that extra mile and they didn't.

The spoiler part, was that in any books or just some comics? I didn't know there was anything past the whole Vong storyline, i read about what happens on wookiepedia but i would like to actually read the books that contain those stories. But i am not a comic person so i am hoping that it is in actual book form.

Fair enough, i liked the game enough to see it through, it was fun but it had many many flaws. Kind of like this add on pack, good idea, nice look to it, but they could have done so much more with it.