Starwars

Atari did say that they were looking to do something with the Baldurs Gate license, so I'm sure it'll come eventually. Whether it be Obsidian or some other company remains to be seen though. Not that I particularly agree though. I feel it's better left alone, just like I feel Fallout should've been left alone. Let's have new stuff instead please. And the Black Hound was never meant to be BG3, it was just named that for a while since it was the only D&D title (along with IWD I believe) that Interplay had permission to use. Black Hound was gonna be its own thing in the end.

While it's nice to see Chris Avellone get the recognition, the list as a whole is down right laughable.

The main thing I want (and what I often find lacking in RPGs) is that meaningful interactions start off as soon as possible. I liked the idea of Peragus for example, but I think it A) went on for to long and B) just wasn't interesting enough in terms of what the player can do. Even the "big choice" at the end of the level is not really a choice. Now (just to bring another Avellone game into the discussion) I think Torment was pretty good, why? Because there was quite a lot of direct interactions in the Mortuary, there was a lot of stuff to do with the zombies and so on. But even so, the Mortuary definetely feels like the "opening level". I'm not a huge fan of that feel... I was so happy in STALKER that the game just let you loose really. Even though the first mission could be considered a tutorial or introduction of some kind, it absolutely felt like it was a part of the game, and death is definetely a real possibility there. It feels like it's a part of the rest of the game, and not some seperate "easy introduction level". But yeah, I suspect AP will definetely have an opening level. I just hope it will be good and stuff. And I'm just rambling here...

After having finished KOTOR2 I figured, what the hell... Might as well give KOTOR1 a replay as well. And yeah, it's only confirming my belief that KOTOR2 is a much more interesting game than KOTOR1... Still, I'm determined to at least play to that last planet (before the Star Forge). We'll see if I can take the boredom beyond that. I always hated that last planet and the Star Forge. At least Canderous is pretty cool. And KOTOR2 is one of those experiences where it sort of gives the prior game some extra layer. I always felt that way about the Star Wars prequels -> the originals also. Yeah, there's a lot one can complain about in the prequels, no doubt about it. But all in all, I think the story presented there made the originals far stronger. Obviously, the KOTORs are a bit different since they're in order, but yeah... I feel KOTOR2s added depth really "spilled over" to KOTOR1 as well.

First one is fixed in upcoming patch. Meanwhile, it works (if I recall my own tests accurately) if you use your main character to "talk" with the tress after casting the spell on them. If you use a party member (most likely Elanee I would assume), then it freezes. No clue what's going on with the second one though. It worked for me when I played that area with the current patch... No idea how to solve it either.

I've been replaying Knights of the Old Republic 2. One of the games that I'm extremely torn on. On one hand, what it brings over from KOTOR1 still sucks. Unfortunately this means the entire gameplay section, the combat is so goddamn dull that it's just... argh. Ruleset is a real snore, heavily dumbed down. Encounter design is generally awful. On the other hand, while the quality certainly goes up and down, I find it quite hard to resist some of the scenes presented in the game. Confronting Atris (both times) as well as Returning to the Jedi enclave are just powerful. And Kreia is a really interesting character. It's an uneven game to be sure, but there is quite a lot of interesting stuff to be found if one can mine beneath the rather shoddy surface and gameplay.

John Cunningham - Archibald McDonald of Keppoch

I tried it out, and it seems to be quite faithful from what I remember (haven't played BG in a long time). There are features missing though that will make it in. I guess the visual side of it is the hardest. With the IE games you often built your image of characters based on the portraits alone, and since this mod makes use of the cutscene conversation style in NWN2 you end up face-to-face with the wonderful NWN2 heads (hehe). I think it would've been a better idea to just keep the old-style conversations with no zoom-in, but lots of people like the cutscene style. I find one of the strengths of isometric is that the world gets abstracted to the player in a way, and makes him accept the gameworld on another level. Whereas as in more close-up camera angles, you might get nice looking things, but when things do look weird it's hard to look past that. The best feature of the area design was the flowery entrance to the actual keep (where you meet Gorion), that looked great. It's a bit bland in the areas surrounding it though, the area outside the Inn and all that. Also, I find that the actual content of Baldurs Gate have not aged well. The writing is really quite bad, and the fetch-quests in the Keep are just... urgh. I'm mostly looking forward to trying it out with the NWN2 ruleset, that's the main draw for me. The conversion seems to be quite faithful, though certain areas of it could be improved.

I must say that I didn't enjoy Oblivion Lost particularly when I tried it out. Some features are cool, but it's really not "how STALKER was supposed to be from the start" (which I've heard many people say) as far as I'm concerned. It feels very... un-subtle. That's also my main complaint as to many of the larger mods, they just unleash to much crap for my taste. I've always viewed STALKER as a really slow, 'creeping' and lonely game (even though the original partially failed at this also with respawn problems and the endgame). That said, I was looking at the forums and saw that there is a Faction War mod released, that basically just unleashes all the factions. I think the author is planning on adding a freeplay mode for it, and once he does that... I'll likely try it out. To tell the truth, just seeing the A-life system "unlocked" can be a lot of fun even if that mod will likely make the Zone feel like a crazy circus rather than the subtle horror of the original. Also, I gotta say... I really like the Wild Territory area. Love how it's laid out and how it looks. It's a pity that we never really get to explore Pripyat and the Power Plant exterior without being in a warzone at the same time, because those areas are amazingly done as well.

Here's a report from someone who got to play the game a bit: http://dragonage.bioware.com/forums/viewto...um=135&sp=0 He has more posts throughout the thread, so it's not just the first post. The injury system sounds all-right I suppose, though I still find the lack of a real death system extremely disappointing. What is a bit worriesome is that the guy only had one character "death" throughout the demo despite never having played the game before. Still, I suppose the difficulty could be tweaked since it's a demo, but... eh. Seems to play quite a bit like NWN2 judging from this guys impressions.

Combat looks pretty much like NWN2 as far as I can see. It also seems to suffe89r a bit from the same thing (which Chris Priestly kinda confirmed on his report after playing the game over Christmas) which is that it mostly seems to be balanced towards having the AI (which is generally el stupido in these types of games) controlling your party members. Chris said something like "sometimes the game is so challenging that I had to take control of my party members", which is not exactly a good sign as far as I'm concerned. Will this lead to every battle being a cakewalk for us people who like to micromanage the party? I hope not, but I really won't be surprised if that is how it turns out.

I'd recommend taking Hellfire Warlock levels as soon as you can (I believe level 9 if you plan out your abilities/skills right). It makes the class a lot more fun to play.

Notation = reading notes. As far as learning it, it just depends on what kind of person you are. I know people who've dived right into it, found it enjoyable and learned reading it at an early point in their playing. But yeah, for me it was definetely better to hold that off until I could play the guitar decently. I made the connection between notes on the paper and actually playing the guitar much easier then, but yeah... It's subjective. Pinky is usually "overlooked" by many players, at least in the beginning (since it's hard to use at first). It's great if you're trying to train that little guy right off the bat also. Building strength in all of your fingers is good. Also, don't forget your thumb also (on your fretting hand). You can bring it over and get some bass notes, and make some fingerings a bit easier to play. It isn't the "correct" way of playing according to classical guitarists, but hey... It's there, I say make use of it if you can make your playing flow better. Tears in Heaven is a piece that most guitarists starting out eventually runs into, and using your thumb there can be a great help.

I was looking around a bit at some cool NWN2 custom stuff and ran across this again: Don't know if people here have seen it, so might as well post it. Made by the same guy who modeled the popular Beholder among some other stuff (he's also working on driders and new werewolves that I think will be released for the mod called Misery Stone). Pretty amazing what you can do with the engine with a little talent, hehe.

Yeah, I'm talking about Shadow of Chernobyl.

I use this: http://www.metronomeonline.com/ Again, I really encourage you to use it. There are soooo many players (and it really is especially true for guitarists) who think they're the sh*t, but can't keep proper time at all.

Still playing STALKER. Just did the Underground/Find documents at Agroprom mission and it was incredibly awesome. When I got out of the underground it was in the middle of the night so I really couldn't see much. Managed to take out 1 soldier before I messed up and was spotted. Then it started raining really heavily. To top it off, I was very low on medkits (they never drop when you need them it seems). Sitting there alone in the pitch-black, rainy night, while all these soldiers are looking for ya, while hanging on to your last medkit... Expecting a burst of hot lead scare you to death at any time. Man, it's so awesome. There are not many games that would make me write this way about them, but occasionally STALKER just kicks your ass with all kinds of win.

If you're gonna learn basic theory, then I generally think it's much better to try and get a good private guitar teacher rather than attending a class somewhere. If it's just you and your teacher, you can personalize the lessons much more, likely dive much more into your particular taste(s) in music and then work out the theory from there. Music should be fun, first and foremost. Even so, if you don't feel like going into theory anytime soon, you shouldn't. There are many, many succesful musicians who don't know how to read music. But, knowing how *is* a great help if you choose to develop your playing. Personally I tried to get into theory early on in my playing and I found it boring as hell at that time. A few years later of "self-teaching" I found it much easier and fun as I could "dissect" my playing. Also, this is a bit overboard, but... Keep in mind that once you start soloing and stuff (and maybe rythm playing to I imagine), the type of soloing you do at that time (blues for example) is very likely to stay as the "base" for your improvising and general playing style. It's that mode of thinking you will generally revert to when you happen to run out of guitar licks to play in a solo or whatever the case may be. So even if I'm playing gypsy jazz, the blues style can still be heard through that since that's really what I started as.

Learning to read tablature can be good, especially when starting. But I would really, really, really, really encourage you to try learning stuff by ear as soon as you possibly can so you don't become overreliant on things like tablature (and even notation if you learn that someday). And of course, try to learn those songs that you really like. But yeah, learning chords and practicing switching between them is a good way to start. Practicing with a metronome is also recommend as it will teach you how to keep time, which is vital. Have fun!

I haven't tried Drakensang yet, but yeah, haha... The interface does look quite similar.

Replaying STALKER, Shadow of Chernobyl. Lightly modded this time. The bug fixing project, some graphics enhancers and a repair mod. I wish I could find another mod that I've used previously though. It affected all the traders, and made them sell more varied stuff (you could buy some of the more powerful stuff off of them). What was great though was that they also made traders really stingy with money, so you really had to save up if you wanted to get a particular item. I believe it may also have affected drop rates on enemies, but not sure about that one. Can't find the bloody thing, argh. The game was so much better with it. Still greatly enjoy it though. As much as I like the gameplay of Clear Sky and some of the improvements, Shadow of Chernobyl is so much more atmospheric and "barren".

I haven't watched any films I actually haven't seen in quite a while. The other day I rewatched The Ninth Gate, which is quite awesome. A few minor things that I don't like, but on the whole a very well executed thriller which doesn't go to far into the supernatural or fantastic on-screen (there are a few moments though). The investigative part of the plot is great to watch. I also rewatched Once Upon a Time in the West, which is one of my favourite westerns (though my favourite is still probably The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Sophia Loren, mmm...

Revenge of the Sith soundtrack (John Williams) - The Immolation scene. Chilling.

I think OEI should organize an Upper Class Twit of the Year contest.

I can't remember the name of the game atm (I don't even know if it exists anymore since it seemed to be such a small game), if it pops up in my head I'll post it. But just so you know, the reason I held off on trying it is also that it *was* rather focused on teh sexx0rz stuff (some of which was rather tasteless) which don't appeal to me much in a game. But I was rather impressed with how people handled it based on what I read. And I really liked some of the additional ideas beyond that, even though I don't know how well they worked in practice.