Matthew Rorie

It has some of the best production values of any game, ever. But yes, it also has cutscenes that account for about half the "playing" time. Unfortunately the story will be too dense to understand unless you played Metal Gear Solid 2 and probably MGS1 as well. If you want to catch up on the storyline, you can read this FAQ: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/914828/35568 But it might take a while. MGS3: Subsistance is probably the high point of the series, if you're looking for a jumping-on point. It's actually the very first game in the series chronologically speaking (it's a prequel to everything else), so it's not quite as dense with backstory as MGS2 or MGS4 are. There are still some pretty long cutscenes, but the story is engaging and it has one of the best female characters to ever appear in a game.

A lot of the focus is on print press right now - there'll be more online coverage pretty soon, I believe. (Although my conception of "pretty soon" is probably different than all of yours, since I have this massive schedule of PR/Marketing stuff in front of me.)

There are a number of different outfits that you can select before the mission begins, whether you want combat armor, a tactical stealth-oriented suit, or a number of normal clothing options.

Big version here: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/alphaprotoc...ev-diary-1?hd=1

Like me, I'm betting funcroc has Google Alerts set up for a number of search terms. I have them for Alpha Protocol and Storm of Zehir, which turns up a lot of interesting stuff, but you'll find out about most stories and previews as soon as Google indexes them if you have real-time alerts.

As you noted in a post earlier in this thread, there is a first-day patch available already. Simply install, run the autopatcher, and you should be good to go. The SOZ disc has the patch history in its install, so if you install SOZ, then your MOB installation should be brought up to date with the most recent major patch, even if you don't run the first-day patch for SOZ. But it's always advisable to patch when possible, obviously, especially if you want to play multiplayer. Here is the conundrum. I don't have that particular computer attatched to the internet, so downloading the patch through the updater is not possible. Any suggestions? The patch should not be necessary to play SOZ, although it's a good idea to always have your game as updated as possible. If you wish to patch the game, I would suggest downloading the file on another computer and burning it to a CD, or putting it on a flash drive, or use some other portable storage solution to move it over to the system where you play most often.

As you noted in a post earlier in this thread, there is a first-day patch available already. Simply install, run the autopatcher, and you should be good to go. The SOZ disc has the patch history in its install, so if you install SOZ, then your MOB installation should be brought up to date with the most recent major patch, even if you don't run the first-day patch for SOZ. But it's always advisable to patch when possible, obviously, especially if you want to play multiplayer.

at the moment, my view on the awesomeness of SoZ is inhibited by the UK release date inexplicably being a day behind the US one. feh. I think that's just the way things are. Games in the U.S. are usually released in Tuesday, while in the U.K. it's more often the case that they come out on a Friday, AFAIK. But you'd probably know better than I would.

Let's keep the discussion on the game itself, its release, and its awesomeness, and not the marketing of it. If anyone has any problems with the the way the game was represented in the press, they know how to reach me (PM).

Pissed at what? I'm just letting you know what's been our company line on the product since we first started talking about it. If you thought it was some kind of attack, then I certainly am sorry about that, but that wasn't my intent.

1998... wait, even the BGs were $40, right? i think i was paying between $20 and $30 for the C64 games in the late 80s, actually. taks I remember paying 70 bucks for an awful game called Iron Helix that came out right as CD-ROM games were first appearing. If you go back into old copies of CGW from 1995 and look at the advertisements for those early game warehouses, most games were 70-80 dollars. I know Final Fantasy II was 80 bucks when I bought it.

Well we appreciate that you tried, at any rate. God knows I've played some games for a lot longer than they deserved, in retrospect. But let's keep the discussion on SOZ! If you really like games that keep the mean-time-between-Yuan-ti-asskicking to a minimum, it'll be right up your alley.

"ALL TIME: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords - 85 hours "

I don't remember. Can anyone else confirm this? We've consistently used Icewind Dale as a comparison for the game, along with Fallout and Darklands and a few other inspirations, although we've never said it would be devoid of dialogue (there's still a decent amount of VO in the game, just not for every single conversation option from every party member). The focus here is on Full Party Creation with fewer companions to bring along for the ride (although you can still find over 10 of those as you play). Dialogue is intended to propel your adventure, and the game is well-written, but SOZ is really about adventuring and seeking out fortune and glory instead of talking to an NPC for ten solid minutes. We've been pretty up front about that, in my opinion. You can find some player impressions on the official forums, in threads like this and this, or at GameSpot, and I hear there are a bunch over at RPG Codex. Relevant quote with respect to the comments above: As with any RPG, SOZ is not going to be all things to all players, but we're pretty excited about the way it turned out and it looks like most of the people who have posted impressions have been pretty positive about it.

Should be hitting newstands today, I think...

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55866 Talk about a weird marriage. Still, I hope SupCom2 is good. The first one was definitely a time-sucker for me; I think I spent almost 40 hours going through the six-mission expansion. It's a fun game to play if you like turtling and watching the enemies break on your defenses. Not many single-player RTS campaigns are built that allow for that (though CNC3 had some good moments).

Yes, our publishers are Atari. Feel free to send me a forum message if you need help getting your foot in the door.

Generally release dates are set by publishers, yes. It used to be the case that all the media would have street dates that fell on a Tuesday (this is still the case in bookstores and music, as far as I know), because it's easier to stock new titles on a Monday night/Tuesday morning, which is usually the slowest part of a week. (This also helps to drive sales during the slow part of the week, as well.) Over the last few years, though, it's been getting a bit more open; Nintendo regularly makes a case of releasing games on a Sunday, if I recall correctly. Most games will still come out on a Tuesday, but if a publisher wants to try and make their game have an EVENT RELEASE, they'll move it around in the week so that it comes out on a day where they're not fighting with a dozen other games. It might not affect sales at all, but it can sometimes result in more press in the gaming press, especially, if your big-name game is releasing on a Friday while everything else is releasing on the previous Tuesday. Also, it used to be the case that sales data for most media was released on a Monday (and it probably still is). Thus, if you released your media on Tuesday, you would have a full week of sales to try and get yourself to the top of the list. Weekly sales are more important in the case of DVDs, books, and music, all of which see sales figures published weekly in places like Entertainment Weekly and the NYT, whereas games are more often accounted for on a monthly basis, so it's less important to have a particular day of the week for their release.

Which is it, Obsidz? Both, really. You can tweak his appearance (add glasses, hats, a beard, camo facepaint), but there isn't an Oblivion-esque "I want to make a guy with a prognathous jaw and a unibrow" facial editor or anything.

Chris is an incredibly busy dude, so I think he's boring down on getting the game done. I'm sure a lot of the devs would love to comment on the boards, but at some point the thing has to get written. I can give you puppies, though.

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/927/927738p1.html I hope that's auto-linkified. If not, I will edit.

The Ring: The Game. Which will kill me, thus it would be the last game I ever played.

Now available in German. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41715.html

Mike doesn't actually talk in this - that's the voice of another character.

Currently, the system does not regenerate health. You have a set health (which can be modified upwards through the stat choices you make), which can be replenished through health kits found in the level or items that you can bring along into the mission. There's also armor, but that's another system.