Starwars

It's not a huge difference. You'll miss out on some skill points (will mostly be felt during the start of the game) but if you pick Recruit options in the dialogues, you can get some bonus skill points from that so.

ED-E is in the Mojave Express office in Primm (a dead courier just outside). And yeah, you can "park" companions wherever you wish. If you do park them, they are still considered part of your party though. You can also tell them to leave, at which point they will leave the party and return to the point where you recruited them (or to your "base" that you acquire a bit later in the game). This is what you do if you wish to bring a new party member with you.

I really don't like the increased level caps after the DLC so I just downloaded a mod that let me select additional traits plus made Logan's Loophole a simple lvl 30 cap instead. Then use an XP adjust mod, or a mod that increases XP needed for next level, and the game can feel pretty good. I'll still hit the cap if doing all the DLCs obviously but I think the progression feels nice. It just becomes too stupid and meaningless when you go over level 30, even level 30 itself is stretching it I think. Anyways, I did Honest Hearts at level 11 or so, liked that level range. Think the scaled equipment at that level fit nicely into the tribal feel of it all. My choice of companions tend to be completely different on each playthrough I do. I do tend to like Cass, Veronica and Arcade a bit more than the rest though. The one I've actually never taken along (should do that sometime) is Lily and that's because I tend to go to Jacobstown fairly late in the game and I've always picked up another companion at that point.

No more story-based DLCs and no more patches mentioned. So aside from the two item DLCs coming next week, I'm guessing this is it for Fallout New Vegas.

I'm somewhat in Lexx's boat. Dead Money, Honest Hearts received mixed reviews, and I think Lonesome Road will as well. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed them to various extents. Old World Blues got amazing praise overall and I found it to the worst of the bunch. Oh well. It deserves to be said though, while I have a fair bunch of critique for each one of the DLCs, they are easily the best DLCs I've seen released period. They're experimental, feature strong themes and feel meaty enough (Honest Hearts possible exception). I think they feel a lot more genuine than most DLCs do, most DLCs tend to feel either like A) obvious money grabs that feels a lot worse in quality when compared to the main game or B) just a bit more of the same. The NV DLCs make far better use of the DLC medium than most games I'd say. Bethesda also deserves praise in that they've moved away from the Horse Armor DLCs to some pretty meaty experiences. Some of the F3 DLCs also felt pretty genuine though I don't think they had the same overall quality to them.

Was wondering if the game would let you do that when I approached myself. What happened exactly (in spoiler tags for those who haven't finished)?

It recommends that you are level 25+. I went in at 23. It's very doable so far but you can most definitely die (rather quickly) if you screw up. I'm not finished but so far... Pros: -Tone is a bit darker, reminiscant of Dead Money in that regard. While I found OWB funny, I thought it was a bit overbearing. This is closer to my tastes. -Ulysses is interesting, the conversations with him and logs you find are very nice. -The whole thing has a really nice "hell on earth" feel to it, the visuals work well. -Various ties to the vanilla game (and even Fallout 3 *gasp*). Also ties to Honest Hearts which is nice since that DLC kinda felt like the odd man out in terms of the stories in the DLC. -New weaponry is fun. Cons: - The linearity works well this first playthrough (and to be fair, some areas are more open than others) but might hurt replayability. - Like all the DLCs, it's very shooty-shooty overall compared to the main game, the encounters are fairly close together. I think this is pretty annoying in the long run and shows off that, while NV improved combat a whole lot overall, it's still not exactly tight. - Very "hey guys, look at the explossions!!!" One of the main gimmicks of it is related to this feels very... "gamey"

I just completed a Hardcore run with Reinhart, lots of fun. Playing on Hardcore really makes one appreciate the characters and the way they work more IMO, it's much more important to try and learn their intricacies. However, I think it also highlights some problems. I play with keyboard and mouse and while I don't have any problem controlling the game any more (I'm pretty good at it now actually), one thing I consistently have problems with is placing Geometry of Annihilation. Sometimes it seems to place itself on Reinhart, even though I have an enemy targeted (his health bar showing means that he is targetted right?), and sometimes it drops on the enemy. Did you guys use Clockwork Trap a lot? I used it a lot near the start of the game where your arsenal is limited but once you get into the more hectic parts of the game, I found it was pretty hard to place the trap effectively. Geometry of Annihilation is so big that it's bound to get *someone* in there, but I often found that my Clockwork Traps sputtered out because noone wanted to step in them. Mirror Leap really helped out in some fights on Hardcore, had to rely on it quite a bit.

I sat through worse than that a month ago or so when playing Darklands, and I did it with the realization that hey, this is still a kick-ass game. Same with Daggerfall when I replayed it last. That doesn't mean that some parts are more or less painful nowadays of course. But whenver I play through those games now I can't help but feel it's a shame that not more games were built upon and improved upon that amibition. Refined that vision of really open gameplay. But now we have Max Von Sydow voicing games so I guess it's alright, yeah.

Insert some turnbased goodness into Onyx. IT COULD HAPPEN!

Unless I'm mistaken attribute increases have been dropped from the game. Your attributes don't change, only your skills. A huge improvement on the completely broken and unbalanced leveling system of MW and OB, imo. You haven't seen unbalanced and completely broken unless you've accidentally maxed out Daggerfall's speed and climbing skills. I remember running through Daggerfall (the city Daggerfall inside the game) with my high-speed character, accidentally climb a building that I couldn't avoid in time, fling myself up up and away into the sky (because of my great speed, you see) and immediately die on impact with the ground when I finally landed five seconds later. It was hilarious. Unbalanced and broken yes.... and also FRACKING AWESOME! Oblivion was just unbalanced and broken in boring ways.

Juice for power spheres is only gained by using special abilities I believe. In fact, you lose Focus (or whatever the blue energy bar is called) if you get hit when you're blocking. If you don't have any focus, you don't block any damage. Enemies do have attack patterns but like I said, most of the time you'll be better off dodging completely. I only use block when I encounter enemies where I find it very difficult to time my dodges, this is mostly enemies who use ranged attacks.

Splitting my limited time between beta-testing the demo for Age of Decadence and playing some Dungeon Siege 3. In DS3, started up a new game as Reinhart on Hardcore, lots of fun. Really hope the DS3 DLC will be able to live up to the New Vegas DLCs in terms of content, hopefully it will meaty enough. Speaking of which, will jump into the Lonesome Road when that comes out next week. Have a character in store for that, just over level 20. Since I'm not a huge fan of how you can utterly break the game with the increased level caps/high exp from the DLCs, downloaded a mod to adjust the XP gains a bit. Currently I'm keeping XP at 80% of the vanilla rate, this feels almost perfect for me. If I went through all the DLCs I would keep it even lower but I typically only do one or two on any particular playthrough.

Dodging is *almost* always the way to go in terms of avoiding damage. However, there will are times when blocking can really save your butt if you're not a master of timing dodges (I am not personally). Most notably against certain enemies which have devastating ranged attacks

If we look to Oblivion, there was little to "immerse" you or whatever into the game besides its good looks and rendition of the gameworld. There is little in the way of good RPG-mechanics that I look for in a Bethesda game anymore, the visuals are becoming increasingly the main focal point of their games. Just look at the way they present the videos where the player slooowly pans the camera around as if saying "come, look how beautiful it is". Writing your path in the stars, and rendering the map like that and so and so forth. It's practically designed to "dazzle". Except I don't think it works as well as it did when Oblivion was coming out. If the game can be prove me wrong about the mechanics and all that, I'll be one happy camper.

Quick question about how much I've got left of the game, if I can finish it somewhat quickly despite not much free time. How much left of the game?

Played Deus Ex but save is currently stopped (think I'm in the final third of the game) due to lots of work. And what gaming time I have I'm currently trying to devote to helping with testing the Age of Decadence beta.

Don't think so.

Hope they can squeeze out some info soon.

Crouch + walk key lets you get close enough to deactivate them and loot them.

I really suck at stealth games as well (and I'd definitely say that this game is harder in regards to stealthing than AP, though a lot more rewarding as well) but I wouldn't let that stop you. There's still a lot of room to maneuver in terms of your different augs and weapons, there are many approaches to most situations. I'd say that the level design in the game is one of the absolute best features of it. Most of the time you really feel quite empowered in terms of how you can approach things, they really support and encourage experimentation in many ways. There have been many times where I've just thought to myself "hell yeah, I *rock*" after doing something particularly cool. And some of the worst parts of the game (just like Alpha Protocol IMO) is when the game takes control away from you, mostly in cutscenes or so where Jensen turns into an idiot completely separate from how you've been playing him. Thankfully it doesn't happen enough to take away from the great parts of the game.

Really enjoy the hacking as well, probably one of the best minigames I've seen. Though once you upgrade it enough (capturing as well as the "stealth hack" path), you'll be breezing through most hacks very easily.

I really dislike the takedown system as well. Not only does the cutscene thing feel kinda clunky and weird to use (especially when you're sneaking around), the use of energy bars feels so damn artificial. Like I said before, I can see why they wanted to do it because the game would be really easy to just takedown everything but even so. It's a bit lame. Really miss a melee weapon system.

Heng Sha is one of the most beautiful areas I've seen in a game I think. I liked the Detroit hub but it really pales in comparison with Heng Sha.

Yeah, it's easy to see the gameplay reason for it when you're playing the game. You really could breeze through the game, but it feels like a backwards design somehow. I normally like micromanaging resources in RPGs as well but using energy for something like takedowns just feels weird to me. And I really hate that the game switches to a cutscene style when you do them. I don't know how it works in terms of enemies being able to detect you or not but it just feels really awkward in that the camera gets taken away from the player in a moment where you might very well be surrounded by enemies who could spot you at any time. I mean, the result might still be the same if I was stuck in an animation in first-person mode but it just *feels* wrong to have the camera detach like that and watch the animation play out. Would've really preferred a melee-weapon system of some kind.