Starwars

I think everyone should be aware that this can be viewed as quite spoilery depending on how sensitive to that stuff you are. Also, a few minutes ago there were 3 more trailers up on gametrailers that were dealing with Surkov as well (a different scene where you get choices on how to deal with him, including Mike being a *real* bastard I might add) but they went away. Maybe they weren't supposed to be up yet or something. EDIT: The trailer is a bit disjointed in how it's set up, but it gives a good view of convos and how they flow. The face on that guard looks rather crappy (probably the worst I've seen in the game so far) but Mike smooth-talking him is awesome. Great dialogue there. Facial animation and acting on Surkov is great. Very well done there.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the PR push have done that much of an impact, the numbers changed is pretty low considering it's to be released very soon. Still, have no real context to put the sales in, we don't know what SEGA is expecting considering it's a brand new IP or the budget of the game and all that stuff. But considering the long development I can't help but feel they would want more sales from the game.

I'm inclined to agree. All my attempts at creating fresh faces in face editors end up pretty horrible and I almost never stray very far from the preset faces. If there's on critique against Mike that I agree with, it's that the face looks a bit plastic-like. But I think the voice fits him just fine.

I also expect reviews to be in the 80s range generally, which I think I'll be pretty fine with. 88 is a good score. I believe there will occasionally be peaks up into the 90s but dips as well into the 70s, and maybe even lower in some reviews. The flaws of the game are easily picked out and requires no in-depth analysis of the game, which are things reviewers love to bring out.

No complete customization. You can change some features like adding various beards, changing hair-do, tan or no-tan, glasses etc. But you can't "re-morph" the face itself so to speak.

After interest dropping for a period, I think my interest level is higher than it ever was before for this game. My interest level has gone from "third-person action gameplay MEH" to "Ok, this looks like it might have some rather cool features" to "..........." to "Alright, this game looks like a lot of fun!"

Wow, really? Did they use music specifically composed for MW2 or did the MW2 trailer get it from somewhere else?

This shows off a bit of the various hubs. Not much new but well put together I think, and we see a bit more of that mysterious robed guy. EDIT: Also, Conrad Marburg seems to be a badass.

The germans seem to like their video previews: http://www.gamepro.de/index.cfm?pid=386&pk=2363 Not much new, a slightly longer look at some of the intro and a short clip of gameplay in a level I don't think we've seen so far. Other than that, mostly the same stuff we've seen in Saudi Arabia so far.

It gives a pretty good look at the early game but it's sooo annoying to have to listen to these people, man. The AI and enemy behavior is probably one of my bigger fears about the game at the moment. It sort of depends whether the game will feel like it really *needs* better AI, the game is still rather "arcade-y" in some ways. The Metal Gear games have pretty damn wonky AI in some places but in those games it almost makes it more fun to play. Regardless, there's some really weird behavior in this vid that I wish weren't there. But the action itself looks like a lot of fun I think.

The Dungeon Keeper games are awesome. I'm replaying Dragon Age, still enjoy the game quite a lot despite the fact that I think they could've really cut out a fair amount of the combat and some of the lesser quests. When the game is at its best, it's really up there. But there are so many areas where the quality dips really low as well. Anyway, I might get Awakening depending on when I finish Dragon Age. Will be playing Alpha Protocol once that comes out and I don't think I'll be able to finish both Dragon Age and Awakening before that so might have to put off buying Awakening until later.

I take my time with my games but I honestly have *no* idea how anyone could squeeze out 76 hours from ME2 on a single playthrough. I think my time was around 30 hours or so, a bit under. If AP is similar but have the great replayability then it's gonna be great. Something that I really disagree with many RPG fans on is the notion that RPGs should be long. I can't think of any "epic length" game where the devs have managed to keep the steam up throughout the entire game. I'd much rather have games like Fallout 1, which are short, have very few dips in quality (it's pretty damn consistent) and with great replayability. That's not to say long RPGs are bad because of that. I greatly enjoyed sinking my teeth into Dragon Age for example. But even so, there's a rather huge amount of the game that I would've rather had them cut out.

Good previews are really hard to find, for any game. Most struggle to go beyond info that the PR development gives out (hey, you can play this using stealth or go guns blazing!) or just miss the point of the game entirely. And then, some are just downright bad, giving out bad info and all that. Standards aren't exactly high in gaming "journalism" unfortunately.

Nah, that's Yance Westridge. The Darcy guy is another agent or something from what I can remember (have no idea where I read this so I might have dreamt it up).

One guy we still haven't seen much about is that weird-looking dude in the robe (or coat or whatever it is). He can be seen in some trailer walking up to Mike in a subway I think with a gun in his hand.

Rome and Taipei I think. I don't think we've seen too much of Rome (the safehouse looks nice at least), and Taipei sounds like an interesting area for a game such as this.

Even when setting aside the fact that they're closer to the original Super Mutant, I think these just look a *lot* better than the F3 ones in general. I can't remember exactly now, but I think the F3 ones had a different color as well? Either way, this green color just seems *right* somehow.

Obviously we don't know any in-depth stuff, but which characters do you look forward to interacting with and which characters do you look forward to shoot in the head? Likes: Henry Leland: This guy seems like such a smug bastard judging from trailers and his character vignette. Looking forward to trading words with him. Conrad Marburg: Don't know much about him, but in the character vignette he seems like a real bad-ass. SIE: Yeah... Something about the whole sado-masochistic, ex-stasi, German cougar with a huge gun is just appealing. Seems like she will be a fun character though my first character will probably not get along too well with her. Mina Tang: She just seems likeable overall. I wonder what she's really up to. Albatross: We don't know much at all about this guy, but as a handler he likes the stealthy way. Which is obviously good, hehe. Dislikes: Brayko: I dunno... I think he can turn out to be a fun character but from what we've seen so far I just wanna shoot him. Scarlet Lake: Seems a bit vanilla judging from the vignette, and I find her looks sorta boring as well. I'm sure she'll have some nice secret as well.

The hospital clothes are probably tied to the starting areas I guess. I'm not sure how the clothing stuff works. But my best bet is that for missions where you expect combat, you'll have to choose gear related to combat (whether it be heavy armor, stealthy stuff or gear with plenty of pockets for gadgets) and in missions where you do talking you'll choose between "regular" clothes. I really have no idea though, just guessing.

Those two lines of code you see at the top, you need to find those in the changing mess of numbers. They are static while all the other numbers constantly change. I think with higher levels of sabotage, the lines of code gets larger which makes them easier to spot. Given how tied the skill level of a weapon is to the aiming reticule, I doubt it.

How did the point balancing work? Was that just evaluating if one skill was more powerful than the other and so forth? I actually thought all skills had the same cost, must've missed a memo somewhere.

I don't know if it was trying to be funny or not but I think it encapsulated that whole "oh god, everyone is trying to kill each other" in a funny (in a good way) manner.

Pretty fun stuff, hehe. Wish they had presented some of the motivations or what they're about though.

I don't think the pacifist thing (if you really go for not killing anyone) is a sort of developed path through the game, just something that they discovered that it was indeed possible. Personally I believe you're gonna be in for a very hard (and possibly frustrating) time if you do that on the first playthrough. But what do I know? Something that the 1up vid succeeded in doing for me was that it got me interested in the Rambo route. I wasn't interested in doing a combat playthrough at all earlier but I think the action looks genuinely fun (if a bit unpolished in terms of enemy behaviour). But yeah, I still think I'll go for Stealth, pistols and sabotage for my first run. That or I might take the stealth class (whatever it's called) and have the Martial Arts instead of sabotage, punching people around looked fun as well.

I think it *does* shrink even when people are aware of you, you can kinda see it near the start of the 1up videos. But it does take a fair amount of time at that skill level before it starts shrinking.