Moatilliatta

Doug Lombardi has said that HL doesn't end with ep. 3 (sometime 2007), take that for what you will.

No Half Life game should be judged solely as a raw FPS. If we're going to discuss HL then I'll say that I'm unsure whether Valve can take HL3 in an interesting direction, as HL2 and its episodes haven't impressed me much in any other way than incredible polish and quality that other games haven't and the HL series has always been about advancing in directions that other companies don't see as valid.

I'll put down some words here: Gamersgate: Has stopped using a downloader and you only need access to your site account to download and view your games. This means that it is very easy to install, patch and then burn the game to a cd/dvd. Tends to be expensive here in euroland and might be so in USA. GG doesn't have an autopatcher and I'm not sure how it works with all games as I primarily use it for Paradox Interactive games that are nice with a lack of DRM, other games would need special patches to prevent having to use a CD and I'm not sure who provides those or where you get them. GamersGate FAQ. Nifty FAQ Q&A: Steam: Uses a program to allow you to view the store and browse your games, it has an offline mode but this tends to be stupid for some people. Steam is expensive too but has nifty sales every weekend and at other special times so you practically never need to pay full price. Steam has an autopatcher which is usually good at being up-to-date relatively fast and manages well for people who aren't prissy. EA and most other coorporate driven stores: Stay away! EA is the worst and the others aren't quite as bad but I wouldn't use them if there are alternatives. Good rule of thumb: If you're nervous about getting ripped off (a few digital downloads on steam and other places are broken) then ask here or somewhere else or look at the forums. Informed consumers are happy consumers! Needlessly argumentative response: Why do you need something tangible? Your digital downloads aren't gonna dissappear suddenly and without warning and your insistence on having something tangible will only cause you grief and loss of money and time. Just realize this and you'll be enlightened*. *Should be read like the black doorman dude at the downtown doomsday cult in VtM:B. This article should interest you.

There was texture popping on the PC in Mass Effect, just much less.

I personally love these "pretend the other guys are the only ones with ridiculous arguments" threads. I tried to play ME again a while back and it couldn't hold my attention beyond the first Citadel visit. If anyone cares then that would make it worse than KOTOR if you count replayability as important and doesn't assume that I've simply grown up. It'll be really exciting for me to see whether DA will be able to make me keep coming back to a Bioware game again.

Awwww, and here I had gone and wasted my time looking through all those crappy DRM threads. Also be careful about judging someone simply because they have a strange/obscure bug since it may be legitimate even if only one person gets them. I currently have an extremely obscure and strange one in Medieval: total war 2 and haven't been able to fix it, not even by reinstalling properly. I can say that I've noticed EA being heavy on hidden hooks that make bad cracks unplayable, which in turn craps up their tech support forums something fierce.

I'll post this here article as I don't think it has been posted before and there is a lot of good stuff in there. Mind you there are flaws in it, but just because you can find a few flaws doesn't mean that you can ignore the rest. It also has the benefit of trying (whether it succeeds or fails is up to the reader) to be objective, something which is quite rare on the internet. @Alanschu No one could ever prove it and a court case failed (mentioned in above article) against Ubisoft. We should remember that something like that is very hard to prove as being caused by Starforce and as such while it is unlikely we shouldn't dismiss the possibility either.

I think the "Nobody is innocent" part had more to do with Leonardo and his relation to the girl. His relation to the girl was selfish considering the kind of risk he puts her in and that part was meant as an attack, unless of course I read it wrong.

The end was left ambiguous if I remember correctly. I wouldn't call it hollywood romance though.

There are potential stability issues? I was mostly refering to the content updates that Valve hands out like candy.

Leonardo's acting wasn't that bland.

Oh, I would not have done that. Valve has been, accourding to the Steam forums, neglecting the 360 when it comes to patches - or rather the patches are always late, if they come at all, due to Microsoft's handling of them. Isn't that par for the course with Valve? The dirty failboxers haven't gotten any of the TF2 updates either, as I remember.

@Tigranes DRM is always relevant in todays internet. @Purkake There have been many examples of DRM that hasn't been broken in the first week, and when people report something being broken in the first week they usually forget that there can be, and often are, deliberatley built in bugs that make the game unplayable even if you can get it to start. The actual info on this is notoriously hard to get (and not allowed, something I learned after being bitten by a moderator/ agent of the man) and no discussion should be allowed to get bogged in that swamp, suffice it to say that certain devlopers have stated success in their use of DRM and that it lasted long enough that it brought them a significant amount of sales. You could try and dispute that, but that would likely descend into rampant paranoia and that doesn't help anyone. We should believe that the devlopers aren't lying untill we have reason to believe that they are lying. We also shouldn't believe that they are unintelligent until they prove otherwise. Your last questions is really strange as it should be obvious that the reason why piracy has become the whining-topic for developers is that it has become increasinly easy and people like to get stuff for free. They have to stomp out piracy in some manner for them to survive and I don't belive that the Valve/stardock/other-shining-knights-of-PC-centrism will work for everyone neccessarily. Some compromise must be found between the consumer and the developer or the PC won't be viable for anything. This is assuming people don't stop buying console since a significant boost in potential buyers could be enough to make pc-developing viable. @Starforce The whole ruining disk-drives is highly disputed (i.e. who knows who is right and who isn't) and shouldn't be used as an argument. Starforce did seem to work really bad together with many different and not entirely stupid combinations of software and hardware (like all the other DRM) and that obviously isn't acceptable ever. I must admit that I'm wondering why I haven't heard of "The great disk drive shortage" in Russia where Starforce is used all the time. I think I've covered everything now.

Are you one of the people who expect the solution to be completely no-DRM-at-all? If so, then yeah, treatment is completely fair. I do think that DRM needs to be used in some form in order to actually curb piracy enough and that it, given enough time, is possible to use properly. EA et al. will have to do a lot of tweaking and perhaps even complete revisions before that time has come and their survival as PC publishers depend on it.

It just irks me that people compare the treatment of a consumer by a company to segregation which is still a problem in certain places for people who were born into their fate. It's a horrible expression and people should stop using it. Also DRM complaints are so last year. Edit: Or any other kind of second class citizenry for that matter

Bioware isn't a country and you're not a citizen of Biolandia.

The original plan was to release the PC version six months before the console version. I should have mentioned that I was also expecting some kind of incentive for buying the console version, similar to the ones the PC ports had. @Enoch The obvious question is why they didn't figure that out back when they announced it as PC-exclusive.

Then we disagree or I didn't see it and neither did anyone I know.

I thought simultaneous PC and console releases was taboo because the pirates would just pirate the PC version. Aren't we afraid of the evil pirates anymore?

I'd agree wth Tiggy if he is saying that it was uninteresting thematically, as it was. Body of Lies is an extremely well made movie and it will drag you along if you aren't kicking and screaming. Then it'll punch you in the gut, whith you begging for more tough love. All the weak ACTIOUN!!!11! movie directors could learn a lot from sir Scott.

Is that with or without the patch? (they have made one, right?) Bok is partly right though, since they do allow people to change all sorts of awesome setting in GTA4 PC.

The truth in bold. This game better not let me down.

Something tells me that I've asked this before but nevermind that. How is the combat? Is it comparable to any games in complexity or fun factor?

The guy who wrote that article seem to be a big Orwell fan. Nope. Three consoles means that I need to buy three consoles, and that means that my games are significantly more expensive on the PS3, as I don't want a lot of the PS3 games. I'm still waiting for them to build up enough of a library for it to feel like it is worth it. Has anyone mentioned how awesome the PC is yet? I love my PC.

I'm glad that you mentioned the horde mode as it reminded me to check up on CoH: Tales of Valor, unfortunately the invasion game mode that I remembered hearing about wasn't what I had expected: I personally hope that some RTS makers will try and make an easily scaleable horde mode where you have to defend for a certain amount of time with friends, since AI wouldn't matter in such a situation. Skirmish/compstomps are still stuck in their position of being replacements for actual human beings which they are terrible at. @Musopticon? I haven't tried KW yet and put down the other two down to me being too young to beat the AI. How was the C&C3 vanilla AI? I still need to play that.