Wrath of Dagon

The concept involves linear progression from level to level which are themselves somewhat non-linear, which allow multiple approaches to solving contained tasks. IW has several distinct approaches for each task, while in DS stealth is the optimum approach, although there's still quite a bit of variation possible. Both involve fairly similar first person gameplay, and a story well integrated with the gameplay. Execution utilizes the same engine, thus many similarities in controls, graphic quality and physics. The writing, level design etc are on par for each game.

There was nothing wrong with the concept of ME (except the linearity), it was the terrible execution where it completely fell flat. If Obs can do a better job executing, and add some great writing and dialog, AP can be a great game.

That seems to be the majority opinion, which is strange to me because DS and IW are very similar in concept and execution.

Wolfenstein coming out this summer. Woot!

The reason is that's always M rated, people spread myths about the AO rating. It has to be a lot more explicit to get an AO.

Has anyone played God of War? Did it get an AO rating? I don't even understand what people keep complaining about.

Oblivion has tons of blood, blood squirting on melee hits, decayed zombies, flayed and/or burning human bodies, body parts lying around, and depictions of torture in Dark Brothehood quests. Originally it was rated T, but the nudity issue forced them to take another look. Mass Effect has two explicit impalings, strippers which are nude for all practical purposes and which do a special performance, and the sex scene with partial nudity.

OK, I get what you guys are saying. I'm wasting my time.

The big mistake was Clinton, Bush, and now Obama hiring Goldman Sachs guys to run the economy. These are the same guys who made billions trading in the $50 trillion legal pyramid scheme called the Derivatives market. Bush should've hired Steve Forbes instead. But what most worries me is not the current crisis, but the excuse and the power it gives them to do real, permanent damage to the country, to the point that no one will have any reason to run their own business, unless it's some sort of a scam.

Ha, ha, you lecture me about American political process yet say Iran is democratic, what a joke. As far as Obama and the complete control of Dems in Congress we'll see, so far the signs aren't good.

I'd celebrate if I wasn't so depressed about the outcome of our own political process.

I never figured out what's so great about Portal. It's good, but all in all it's just another puzzle game. Edit: Btw, all the signs in episode 2 are in Russian.

Half Life 2 is a very boring game. The stupid combine do nothing but run straight at you and provide no challenge at all because they only take 2 shots to the foot to die. If I have to stand there and listen to someone talk for 15 minutes one more time, the whole series is going in the garbage where it rightfully belongs. The only entertaining part of Half Life 2 was baiting the CP guys in the train station by continually throwing garbage at them and laughing in their face as they try to run after you only to slink away in defeat because they don't know how to jump a two foot barrier. This is just me, but the reason Half Life 2 is so boring is because it's actually trying to convey a story. It was also pretty advanced when it came out in terms of enemy AI and some of the things you did. Only problem is everyone improved on the Half Life formula so much Half Life 2 seems to be boring (I'd probably put Call of Duty as the successor to Half Life in terms of story and gameplay) And Dagon, I hated Halo2. It pulled the Metal Gear Solid 2 twist by having you run around as the Arbiter, and it didn't really have an ending. Other than that I found it to be a very by the book shooter. Half Life wrote the book that halo went by btw. I hated Halo 2 also. Well, it was average, but I hated how it ruined the previously very cool Halo universe. HL2 is good because it constantly throws you into different situations, and you have to figure out how to deal with them. I haven't played COD4, but COD2 just keeps respawning enemies and throwing them at you, and is very annoying with the grenade spam. Also the way some of you are talking, you'd think HL2 was an RPG. The story is secondary for an FPS, and HL2 story isn't that great, but does the job. And human world being subjugated by aliens has tons of atmosphere, I don't understand that complaint at all. Also the best shooters I played are Halo, HL2 and Return to Wolfenstein, so I really don't know what these much better shooters are supposed to be.

HL2 is a very clever game, Halo 3 is really dumb, the stupid Brute apes just mill around in the background and politely take turns attacking one by one. Nevertheless, it was quite fun most of the time, except the last two levels which ruined the game for me, not to mention shamelessly ripping off Halo 1. Also I like Oblivion and dislike MotB, and prefer to play on the Xbox, how uncool is that!?

Aah, but it depends which Halo! And everyone loves HL2, whachu talkin' bout Willis?

At least they're not rushing the game. But Christmas would be a terrible time to release it, it'll completely get lost in the shuffle. Oh well, looks like another year with nothing to play.

Console ME almost certainly had a bug with texture loading, you could literally sit for seconds and wait for some objects to load, even the DVD can't be that slow. It seems like a similar problem to Oblivion, where if your HD cache gets messed up, you can wait for almost a minute every time you activate something. Also the Uncharted Worlds being big means nothing, since they were just repeating the same rock texture everywhere. Hopefully most of the early problems in UE3 have been fixed, and AP can do reasonably large areas with enough content. Every time they hype AP though I can't help feeling the final result can't live up to what they're promising. And when are they going to explain once and for all how the conversations will work?

Ah, no, none of them can be, except by contorting all taste and logic.

Seconded. But the whiners coming out of the woodworks are just part of the natural reaction any successful product has. It's the same reason people feel the need to complain about The Dark Knight. Coincidentally, it's also a natural reaction to a crap game, funny how that works.

Ha, ha, quadcore. I'm pretty sure they said DAO is single-threaded in not so many words.

I hear he's going to voice Atton in Kotor 3.

The funny thing is the only difference between what Blago did and what every other politician does every day is he explicitly stated he wanted payment for political favors, instead of it being understood.

Hmm, interesting, Japan is near the top, just the opposite of what I'd expect. Of course our debt has been going up dramatically last year and will almost certainly get much worse in the future.

Nothing. Most projections show the US dollar won't collapse, and those that do show other countries' currencies collapsing more, meaning the USD is still the dominant currency. The Euro isn't a bad one, though. It's like 20% of world reserves (the USD is like 70%). But is anyone else running as huge a debt as we are?

So what currency should I trade my soon to be worthless US dollars for?