Starwars

Playing some STALKER, Call of Pripyat: Almost managed to capture a lightning strike, but not quite.

I haven't played for too long yet so I can't really comment on the length, but I'll say that the first area definetely feels open and large enough. I really don't feel "boxed in", and it's a lot of fun to explore. About the only flaw of the bigger maps is that I think they had to tone down some of the graphics options. For example, if you want to have textures at max plus all the fancy lighting, you have run a 64bit OS. I haven't looked into it much, but I read about it at their forums. I'm guessing it's the engine starting to show its age. But yeah, for me (I'm running 32bit XP) it's totally worth it. It's honestly a bit hard to compare with the others given the changes in the maps. But as of yet, I really don't think this one feel overpopulated. But I haven't really learned the spawns yet either so we'll see. Again, given that the levels are more opened up, most of the time you can avoid conflict. But yeah, keep in mind that this is all first impressions of the game. The other STALKERs really went downhill in the final segments of the game, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that CoP also had one of those lovely corridor shooting sequences, though don't quote me on that. And here's a cool thing that happened to me (typed on another forum first):

Picked up the Russian version of STALKER, Call of Pripyat (yes, I didn't want to wait anymore) yesterday, applied a fan translation (work in progress) and am playing it. I am very impressed with this so far, it's far better than Clear Sky and I can easily see myself liking it more than Shadow of Chernobyl if it keeps up. I kinda regret getting the Russian version now though since most quests are a bit more involved than what we've seen before in the series, and it would've been nice to get the best experience right away. But oh well, the game is fun as hell at least. Really good so far and I'd highly recommend picking it up once it gets released outside of Russia. Also, still playing Tropico 3 every now and then. I'm finding it's a great game to relax with, just like Tropico 1.

And a small tidbit from Chris Avellone's blog which may or may not be of interest: Pretty low bug queues, and most people have moved off to other projects? Dun dun dun.

Yeah, seriously. Screw unskippable cutscenes. Character creator if good for getting an overview of the skills and all that. Not much customization available though (apart from the visual side which is not something I care too much about personally), you can allocate your stat points. But I think the initial feat (or whatever it's called) selection is determined by the background you choose? Those get chosen for you at any rate.

Cool man, I didn't know there was a LOTR RPG in the making! Very dark, mature and gritty. Now, if the character really was a porn star, then it'd get interesting.

E8400 processor, HD4890 card and 4 gigs of RAM. Running on XP. All settings at their highest, on 1400x1050 resolution. And yeah, the game looks and plays great.

Hehe, yeah. This particular campaign mission was very generous with natural resources. At the start, I just put up a few mines. I had both Iron and Gold deposits on the island. That built up the treasury pretty nicely. Once those were depleted, I saw that you could grow both coffee and sugar at good spots. So near the endgame I had 2 coffee farms and 3 sugar farms, plus 1 cannery (for the coffee) and two rum distilleries for the sugar. And I had pretty much done what was needed in the mission several years prior to the mission ending, so the last years was just watching the treasury grow, hehe. The mission ends in 1990 so the screens were pretty near the end.

I also liked that about the game and still play it occasionally. I really wish there was some more depth and varying levels of challenge though. It can be tough at the start, but once you've set up the base of your town, the challenge tends to go away unfortunately. I think the initial plan was to have lots of patches, adding little things to the game and so on, but unfortunately that never played out. Anyways, still playing Risen and Tropico 3.

Sunset in paradise: Another part of town: Looking down the street: The weather isn't always nice in Tropico:

I'd rather have them developed into a faction of non-idiots. Cruel people perhaps, without scruples. But not necessarily idiots. Maybe we can have Beavis and Butthead run a radio station though.

No 3 dog would be an improvement. But yeah, being less player character centred would be nice. And I really hated how the radio constantly referred to my character as the "hero of the wasteland" and all that. Personally, I'd like a radio station that was less about the "attitude" and more about facts you know. So the radio guy isn't a DJ, but just a dude who reads the news, informs people of what's going on and plays some music. Not a howling idiot screaming about the good fight. And as such, I'd like it if it were more localized. I liked GNR the best before you do the radio dish quest, because it feels like you're heading into the wilderness/danger when you head outside its radius. Increasing static the further away you go, to the point where it really just is static. Completely alone, out in the goddamn post-apocalyptic desert, with not even the radio to take comfort in. Hell yeah. That will all depend on how the world is built of course. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the game was completely radioless but it'd probably be a risky move to drop it since it seems to be quite popular in Fallout 3.

I'm a bit further into the game now, and I don't think it's quite as good as Chapter 1. But that is due to my own tastes in games as well. I think Risen does its exploration and all that well, but it is something that I tend to lose interest in fairly quickly. I think the best part of the game was undoubtedly choosing what side to aid in the town, doing the quests there etc. And training as a mage for the Order was also very good. As mkreku says, the quest content kinda dry up a bit, which is a shame because I *really* enjoyed the conflicts between the factions and that the game gave you the choice on how to handle it and rewarded you with unique content such as the Mage training. I am still having fun though.

If I understand things correctly, the developers do not make a whole lot of money on the actual sales. The publisher does however. Of course, a developer would still benefit from big sales because it would make them more attractive to publishers for upcoming games. I believe that was Troikas main problem. If I remember it right, none of their games failed to make a profit, but they did not make a profit big enough for any publisher to be interested in their post-apocalyptic project they had in the works. It would seem to me that OEI is not in immediate danger because they're doing FO:NV for Bethesda, and I believe it was confirmed there was a publisher on board for their unannounced project.

At least that may be some indication. While I don't particularly trust SEGA now with release dates, logically it should mean that they're aiming for Spring then. Hopefully.

Was about to post that. Darklands rocks, though I'm not a fan of RTwP generally. And combat is definetely one of the weakest links in the game if you ask me.

http://tvgry.pl/ Click the vid that says Gramy w Dragon Age. Polish commentary, but you'll be able to witness some next-gen rat killing, complete with blood everywhere.

I've never thought it was enormously exciting myself, but I think there is a place for it. I think the way that feels most rewarding is when you can use it to extract unique information from the gameworld, or to solve quests using the skill. I think that's my preference for most skills. I haven't really looked at the numbers, or how well one can do with a very low repair skill. But, I most definetely got a lot of use from it in the game. But again, something that I would've liked in Fallout 3 is having stats and skills influence ways to solve quests and so on. There are quite a few stat checks in the game, but for me personally, they failed to really feel important and instead they were nice as "flavour". This need not be bad (I liked how Storm of Zehir did it, though that's quite a different design of course) but for Fallout I really prefer it when the character you create at the start has a huge impact on how you will see and experience the world. I want to get that feeling in the world of "goddamnit, I really wish I had spent points in *that* skill." I never quite got that in Fallout 3.

I almost wish the trading system had been the way mkreku thought it was at first. That would've added a nice challenge, hehe. I really suck at this game (just like I suck at the Gothics) but I'm having a lot of fun. I really like how the factions were done. It's great how the first NPCs you encounter really makes you think that the Order are practically evil bastards, but if you take the time you discover that both factions have their good and bad sides. And so I find myself training as a Mage in the Order Monastery.

"Oh Gods of the cRPGs. Please forgive this poor lost soul called Jaesun. He has sinned but he does not know better." *sacrifices 10 Xbricks to the PC Gods*

I'm up to the HK factory now and playing through that. So far it's been fun to see some of the restored stuff, but I think quality wise it generally is a mixed bag. Not the quality of the mod mind you, but the content itself. There's a lot of stuff in there that I think is completely unnecessary to the game and should've stayed cut. Also while stuff like the more in-depth bounty hunter stuff on Nar Shadaa is pretty cool, the actual gameplay sections are pretty horrendous. With the bounty hunters, it means that we have to endure a slog through millions of bounty hunters on the streets of Nar Shadaa. It's just... urgh. I'm glad they decided to not implement the Genohardan (or whatever it's called) stuff in the main mod. The same goes for the HK factory. Yeah, the dialogues are golden and fun as hell. But the gameplay here is just terrible. Watching HK-47 sloooowly taking down the health of a million different droids in the horrendous KOTOR combat engine is about the most boring thing I can think of. Again, nothing against the modders who have done such an awesome job but unless these sections are tweaked, my next replay of KOTOR2 will be vanilla style. Or simply read the cool bits in Scorchys Let's Play KOTOR2 thread. So yeah, it's great fun to see some of the cut bits (some of them definetely deserve to be in the game), but as it stands now I'm not sure I would consider it to be worth it. Hope they can tweak the mod after they get the initial kinks out though.

Though that is based off the assumption that Obsidian will actually be doing work on Alpha Protocol. If it's just SEGA screwing with their release planning, then OEI most likely won't be getting any funding to improve the game. It's happened before where publishers have just sat on a game that is finished. We really don't know what the cause of the delay is. After all, the game has been reported finished in late August or whenever it was. And it seems to be confirmed that there is no new release date as of now as most retailers seems to be guessing or just putting up placeholder dates. Of course, if the game is gonna be delayed, I hope that Obsidian will be getting the opportunity to work on it and improve it. But yeah, it's obviously on a much smaller scale but Atari delayed Mysteries of Westgate forever because of their own stupid reasons, even though the game was finished around the time of Mask of the Betrayer came out. And Ossian didn't get to do any work or improving upon the game in all that time (aside from updating it to avoid all the patches breaking it). Basically, anything can happen in the wonderful world of the gaming industry.

I haven't gotten to much playtime yet, but I'm also enjoying it. I usually have a kind of a hard time with exploration games in that I get bored with them before they end. But I can still definetely recognize the quality here (and in the Gothics for that matter). It's also a pretty good example of how to do an action-RPG combat system IMO. It's definetely action-oriented, but you need to be on your toes and be careful in timing attacks. It's too bad that I really suck at this kind of gameplay, haha. But it is fun. It's refreshing to play games where you can actually die. I'm happy with my purchase.

One of the worst reviews I've read this year I'd say.

"Romanes Eunt Domus? People called Romanes they go the house?"