Wrath of Dagon

You hate button mashing hack'n'slash because it's so boring, but you enjoyed JE despite the fact that it basically tries to emulate the basic combat style of of a pure action game. Bad action games are button mashing. Good action games are pretty tactical and require more quick thinking than quick button-pressing. Action games also vary a lot in their combo structures. The Ninja Gaiden series has pretty long and complex combos that use two buttons, character state, and stick input to determine what Ryu (or Rachel) does. God of War has a pretty shallow system overall. DMC3 and DMC4 actually had reasonably shallow systems, but the ability to switch styles on the fly gave them amazing depth for "pro players". But I think most people... EVEN RPG PLAYERS... could win DMC4 on Human difficulty. A character like Nero is surprisingly easy to play at that difficulty, and they introduce his mechanics quite gradually. Of course, any/all games of any genre that attempt to have fast-paced combat should have a high framerate. Bloodlines had a good framerate, Oblivion had a good framerate. JE and ME were usually sub-25. Bad news. So a pure action game is not button mashing, that was my point. Button mashing is when you hit the same button or several at random as fast as you possibly can to maximize the damage. In Jade you actually had to think about your tactics and when to attack or dodge, although I'll admit it wasn't terribly complex it was challenging for me because I had to react fast. As far as DMC, if you say so, it has a reputation for being brutally difficult, but I don't know enough to comment one way or the other. I'll give the example of Virtua Fighter. To really play the game properly someone like me would have to practice a ton. But for Shenmue the same system was simplified so that almost anyone could get through the critical path. If it wasn't, I'd never have finished the game.

You didn't read my post very closely. Most RPG players don't want to memorize combos and moves, let alone practice them, not to mention that most of us aren't very coordinated. To add a deep fighting system to an RPG would be a disaster. I didn't notice JE AI being particular stupid, some of them were quite brutal, like the horse demons. To me the combat wasn't repetitive at all, because the situation changed and many enemies required the use of different tactics. Jade Golem was powerful but slow, and used up your chi, so I didn't feel it was overpowered, but if it was, just don't use it.

Have you ever played proper games of that type such as Ninja Gaiden, DMC or somethng a lot less extreme like, well, heck nearly any good hack&slash game in the marker or fightin game such as Tekken or DoA? I said for an RPG. I'm not very good at real fighting games, and I hate button mashing hack'n'slash because it's so boring. Obviously if they made JE like Ninja Gaiden, 90% of RPG players would never get through it.

JE combat was really good for an RPG. It combined player skill, tactics, and character stats in a meaningful way, while still being accessible. You could almost play the game just for the combat, which you can't say about most RPG's.

DA combat is rules based, not action, that's well established.

Please don't sacrifice content for graphics.

I don't think so, they're more like a force of nature, probably hellspawn would be most accurate. Complex political and social structures seem to be reserved for the playable races. Also it's been said that the Darkspawn stay as the main event through the entire game, although there's a lot more to the story than that.

Here's hoping that it's better. MotB kinda bored me a little. Yeah, I got bored with all the pointless repetitive fights and assignments you have to run for everybody. I've never seen that before. Haven't got to the masterpiece part yet.

That's right, because according to Gamespy, Mass Effect is "Roleplaying perfected", so it's now the gold standard by which all RPG's will be measured.

$15 million.

You can run Kaspersky for free on-line, takes a while though.

Because I don't know much about that game, but I assume the clearing up conspiracies part is just a weak excuse to be able to shoot Kennedy. If they were really trying to clear up cospiracies, there're are plenty of ways to do it other than actually shooting him.

Of course people are responsible for their own actions, but a culture of violence contributes to real violence.

You're the one who's either ignorant or lying. If it's a sandbox game, you should be able to do anything while not on a mission, right?

Yes, it's an economy simulation, Alan Greenspan's favorite.

Yes, solving missions through theft and murder. I suppose you're going to tell me there's no mission to massacre construction workers with a remote controlled helicopter? Edit: Cops coming after you is not a penalty, it's a gameplay element. You're then supposed to murder the cops, or haven't you noticed?

Committing crimes and killing anyone and everyone is what GTA is all about, it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. What's important is the message the game sends, not what it depicts. A book can depict murder, but it's very different from a book advocating murder.

That's a very idealistic view of the game industry. It's pretty well known that target demographics for most M rated games start at 13 or so. There was also a story not too long ago about gang members playing GTA and going out trying to emulate it and kill cops. Somehow I have a hard time imagining gang members playing Deus Ex. Besides, killing civilians is not the goal of DX, it's just there because it's designed to provide moral choices to the player.

The target audience for GTA includes a lot of stupid immature kids whose parents don't care what they do with their time.

I find the fact that you played it deeply disturbing already.

There's a difference between setting something in a fantasy world and setting it in a real world. Also the target audience for Deus Ex is quite different from GTA.

Thinking that a game presenting murder as something fun and socially acceptable will not have an effect on anybody is extremely naive.

Yes, Pete Hines said the consequences will mostly be confined to each quest. Which is not a good thing, but pretty standard for RPG's these days. But hey, there's always AP. As far as the dog in Oblivion, some of the previews I read said it was obviously scripted, which I tend to believe since there's nothing like that in the game, or even in FO3 apparently. Now Bethesda does say they announced on the forums that AI was being downgraded, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to inform the general public mislead by their demo.

That's good to hear, I'm just going by what I saw on the forums, and the Wikipedia page.

Now that I'm bored with MotB, I think I'll try DX next I've been wanting to play this game for ages Apparently the PC version has some game breaking bugs, and there's no official patch, although I've heard there's a user created patch somewhere.