DemonKing

Ign exclusive, early review: 9.9 OMFG!!!! 9.9 is too low a score!!! Gamespot review a few days later: 8.4. Good but with some problems holding it back from "classic" (9+) status. Who's score would you trust more? I'd go with the GS one myself.

I have no problem with: "Look - we got a good review" type promotion, ala the Obsidian front page, but what I don't get is this kind of nonsense (Bio employees reaction to an exclusive and therefore automatically somewhat biased) review: "Rock. On." "I was only on the team for a short period and during that time ive never seen a more dedicated group of people at work. Good on ya guys and gals." "Wow. Great to see such a positive review. It is great to see our team receive such a fantastic accolade. I encourage everyone to read it, as mentioned it deliberately stays spoiler free, as it answers many questions that I read here daily." The overall impression is that Bio is just one big circle-jerking hype machine.

Yeah - but it seems that at Bio it's almost company policy to publicly congratulate yourself when you get an award/decent review...the orgy that went on when Kingmaker was "RPG of the Year" got my bile up a bit, I'll admit. I mean, I have at some stages of my life been told by other people that something I did involving work was OK, but I never felt the need to then go into a public space and blow my own trumpet about it. Maybe this is a Canadian cultural thing I'm not aware of?

Not that hard to believe really...review is an "exclusive". Journalistic integrity is probably not ign's strong point and the Bio developers are already slapping themselves on the back on their own forums (all part of the carefully stage-managed hype-machine, I'm sure).

With the expansion pack it's awesome - sprinting, smoke nades, explosive packs, flame throwers, vehicles. Plus about 10 different game types and tons of maps. My only complaint is that on a map with lots of tanks it can lag a bit. I play as TeufelHund, if anyone spots me say hi.

LOL - there's a fine line between taking the p*ss and being too subtle, you know. I must admit I cried tears of joy when it was all over - because I could now uninstall it and never bother with it again.

So...why was POR2 so great then? TOEE had much better TB combat IMHO - even if it wasn't always well balanced.

What are you smoking? I didn't include POR2 because it is generally considered to be one of the worst D&D games ever - buggy, slow-motion combat, terrible design (how many ugly, endless, brown dungeons can you endure?) and for some it had a nasty bug where it would format your hard drive. A few people said it should be listed as a Virus rather than a program. I played and finished both POR and the sequel and I have to say that the first was a joy and a revelation but the sequel was a pure slog.

I replayed it fairly recently and it really didn't do much for me...it's just as linear as IWD, the combat is terrible compared to other IE games and while it has a decent story sometimes I felt like I was reading a book rather than playing a game. I don't have anything against reading books but it's not what I want to do on my PC. Also the Planescape setting never did much for me...it just doesn't feel like D&D to me.

A completely arbitary selection from me of what are generally regarded as the best D&D computer games released to date. If you can think of another worthy, then feel free to nominate it and say why. I nominate the original IWD because for me it really captured the classic feel of early D&D modules with a tight original story, beautiful graphics and fantastic music. Eye of the Beholder 2 and the original Baldur's Gate fighting it out for second and third.

Not possible...since Atari has exclusive rights to the D&D licence for computer/video games.

I don't doubt it, but is Atari really the kind of company likely to nurture such a company as BIS/Interplay did with Bio?

That is why it's frustrating - who on earth else is out there with the qualifications to produce a BG3 that has any real chance of living up to audience expectations?

I hope there will be some more information at E3 but I wouldn't hold my breath...it may well be that NWN2 and Dragon Age get some decent coverage/more screen shots though. It is a bit frustrating not knowing who the BG3 developer is, although I suspect Bio will be closely involved somewhere along the line - either as the developer or engine provider.

LOL - true - I forgot that everyone used to spawn with 4 nades in the original which made chokepoints more like artillery bombardments (eg the Ally entrance to "The Hunt"). However, I thought the speed of the game was better - not quite the ultra-fast speed of the Quake games, for example. The worst thing for me though was the lean abuse...it looked completely ridiculous and was of dubious use.

Medal of Honor Allied Assault by a long way...I remember laoding up the demo with no great expectations but was pleasantly surprised -the sound effects really were top notch and the multi-play (with its reduced speed) really did feel like urban combat in WW2, plus they got grenades just right. Haven't played any of the consle versions but the expansion packs and sequel on PC haven't matched the quality of the original (unless you consider COD to be an AA sequel, of course).

Orlando Bloom is a skinny pretty boy who's primary appeal is to teenage girls - not a great actor but he brings a certain demographic into the cinema, which is what it's all about for the film companies. I thought he did a better job than River Phoenix would have - if only because he's taller and skinnier and not quite so dead. I thought Viggo was a pretty good Aragorn, but maybe that's because my wife is always playing the BBC radio adaptation of LOTR while she potters around the house and in that Aragorn is constantly declaiming in his best RSC style "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn...".

That sounds like a good idea - I think Leon from Troika stated recently that they should have been pursuing new projects/publishers during their production schedules because their demise came about when they finished one cycle but had no new projects to move on to, mainly because the management were so busy acting as developers, they never had time to properly pursue new projects.

I think my basic problem is that it is that if magic exists, then the need for technology is not so great - for instance if a wizard can teleport or fly he doesn't need an airplane, and vice versa. Look at Wizardry 8 - it makes no sense that a bunch of guys with swords can take on a civilization which can design a bomb capable of destroying a planet and win...even if they have fireball spells. The only time I've seen magic and tech work well is when a magic-based civilization evolves upon the ruins of an old tech-based one and the tech is very limited and mysterious, eg: Hugh Cook's sadly out of print "Chronicles of an Age of darkness" books.

I enjoyed it on PC - the S/FX, graphics, voice-acting and gameplay were all top notch, and it didn't feel like a crappy console port. Fairly normal length for a shooter game - I finished it in about 3 days heavy playing. The multiplayer is good, dumb fun ala Quake 3. The only thing I didn't like was the Super Battle Droids being a little too tough. Dang those thing were hard to kill.

One of the endings had you finding and climbing into a spaceship that then took off, but that was the limit re: sci-fi stuff in Wiz6 (thank god).

He he - I remember going over to the house of a guy I didn't even like that much after school so we could play Wizardry I on his AppleIIe - we each controlled 3 characters in combat, so it was kind of multiplayer, I guess! I remember we used to reboot the computer whenever one of our characters died because otherwise you had to lug his corpse back to town (the only place to save) and resurrect the bugger. After that I didn't have access to a computer that could play any Wizardry title until I got my first IBM compatible around the time Wizardry VI came out. That remains me all time favourite because I never liked all the silly lasers and spaceships added in 7&8. I've got the old Interplay Wizardry compilation lying around somewhere but it is pretty hard to play some of the old game given the lack of automap and quicksaving these days - although the combat is still great!

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Exactly! I'm 24 and gaming makes me feel like I an old codger. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You young whippersnappers don't know old! (34 next month...grabs back and reaches for cane before doddering home to search for false teeth).