neckthrough

I've always found random encounters and respawning enemies to be extremely tedious. Yes, in theory, if it fits with the setting (e.g. wildlife in a forest) it makes RP sense. And in theory it's possible to implement it in a way that doesn't affect pacing. In practice, however, I've always found most implementations to be extremely annoying. They get in the way of enjoying the game.

From current information 2D backgrounds with 3D charachters. How *exactly* though we'll see with the first screenshots. This sounds great. I loved the 2D backgrounds in the IE games but the character sprites (paper dolls?) were eyesores. Judged by today's standards, the backgrounds still look great but the sprites look ludicrous. Some other minor graphics comments: I always felt the maps were a little cramped in the IE games. Outdoor areas felt like narrow interior walkways. The scale of the area that the story was trying to present was not adequately represented by the graphics on screen. The absence of perspective (parallel lines converging at the horizon) in the isometric geometry was always a little disconcerting to me. With today's systems I suppose it should be fairly straightforward to add a slight perspective effect to the isometric layout, shouldn't it?

PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY!!!!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/09/ubisoft-backtracks-on-pc-drm-citing-customer-feedback/

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/07/30/1214206/ubisoft-uplay-drm-found-to-include-a-rootkit

If your hosting server supports it, I would recommend using a Content-Management System (CMS) such as Drupal (drupal.org) or Wordpress (wordpress.org). Note that this Wordpress isn't exactly the same as the Wordpress.com blogging website - the former powers the latter. These CMS systems are free, have a gentle learning curve and come with a plethora of user-created themes and plugins - including gallery plugins for displaying images, plugins to automatically re-format your webpage for mobile/tablet browsing, etc. I was in a similar state of mind as you are now when I started down this path. I had created my personal webpage years ago using hand-written HTML, but was interested in trying out a more "packaged" solution as long as the look, feel and usability was simple and elegant and the whole thing didn't take too much of my time. Wordpress ended up working really well for me, but I'm sure any of the other popular CMS's would have worked just as well.

Oh well. The suckers that put up with this sort of DRM are finally paying for it. Hard to feel sorry for them. For the rest of us that simply avoided all this crapware, life goes on. Move along folks, nothing more to see here.

There are a number of Linux users on these boards, so I thought this would be interesting.

There's a continuous tradeoff space between a "safe" Orwellian big-brother society and a complete anarchy. The trouble is that everyone's comfortable sweet spot is at a different point in this range. Still, there can be some convergence on this issue. The bigger problem is that much of the common public isn't realizing how big a role modern corporations are playing in pushing our governments towards an Orwellian world.

Well they're trying to establish the notion that your ability to play a game is a limited service they're providing you instead of a product that you can use as you please. Also you can only use the service under their watchful eyes, and you have to agree to install their supervisory applications on your computer (temporarily turning over complete control of your computer to them). Oh, and they'll continue to charge the same $50-60 for the rental that they used to charge for the unrestricted product. Really, I'd have no complaints against this model if (a) these new rental games were to cost $15 instead of $50, and (b) they didn't install nefarious hidden software on my personal computer.

Until you run out of Lyrium potions. This is my first playthrough (Normal), and I barely survived the siege. Now I'm out of lyrium potions and dust (blacksmith doesn't seem to have any more), and wondering if I should continue through the remainder of Redcliffe in this state or try to go through the siege again and try to conserve a few more potions.

Folks, a gentle request to keep the spoilers down.

:lol:

Dunno yet. I got pretty p*ssed off but I'm probably going to give it another shot in a few days. The game does deserve a second chance, it's been really good fun thus far. Alright, it wasn't too bad. I still think the game would have been better off without the stuff, but thankfully it was mostly low-key and not too stretched out. The game didn't lose its overall charm. And thank heavens the endgame Next stop... Kathmandu!!!

Dunno yet. I got pretty p*ssed off but I'm probably going to give it another shot in a few days. The game does deserve a second chance, it's been really good fun thus far.

I've recently been playing Uncharted 1 on a buddy's PS3. It's been a total blast, until now --

IBTL

It was all downhill after Porsche (which in my opinion was the best NFS ever made, followed closely by High Stakes).

Steam doesn't run nefariously hidden spyware in the background with Admin privileges. I had to log on as Administrator once in my life to install Steam some 4 years back. Everything else -- including updates to the Steam Client itself -- works at the user level. No spyware, no behind-the-scenes mothership dialing. Yes, it does rob some of my freedoms, and I'm not happy about that. But in consolation, it does give me certain value additions -- the ability to backup my local state for quick retrieval, the ability to download and play my games on any machine where I install the client, and, if I so choose, the ability to play games in offline mode. In contrast, SecuROM games have given me nothing save for intruding on my privacy and freedom. In a world where all games are defective by design, Steam is probably the level of digital restriction I'm willing to put up with. Technically and philosophically, I find it far less harassing than SecuROM.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6226758.html Nothing surprising, but I haven't heard anyone explain it quite so bluntly before.

Hey... not bad at all.

Never really liked NWN. Don't really like MMOs. Could the two negatives possibly cancel each other out?

HC is a one way ticket to regret. Seriously, why would anyone want a one time only character? Some people are crazy. For the adrenaline rush while you're fighting Duriel? I don't know, I could never do it, but I can definitely see the charm for people that like to live on the edge. I hate boss farming. Actually I hate any form of farming altogether. Levels and loot are supposed to be the means to an end - to make your character more powerful so that they can have fun playing the endgame. Somewhere down the line this became twisted, and the looting and leveling became the primary goals. I think Guild Wars addressed this issue really well - characters hit the level cap very quickly, and 75% of the game is the "endgame". It's also easy to get hold of weapons and armor that are 90% as good as the theoretical peak. Except, GW had one problem - the addictiveness of leveling and magic-finding is more of a thrill/motivation for many people than playing the actual game. D2 and WoW are probably more addictive than GW due to this very reason. It's human nature. Except when you've farmed and grinded till your head hurts you feel kinda empty and drained and you realize the pointlessness of it all. Jay Wilson has an interesting take: Players will use the path of least resistance to achieve their goals (leveling, loot, whatever). It so happens that in D2 that path was Mephisto or Baal grinding. They're trying to make the path of least resistance also the most fun path to play the game. Awesome concept in theory, let's hope they can actually implement this.

I'm really loving the art style. What I've seen of the environments thus far looks very promising. Combat looks great too. The lightsaber impale animation was awesome! The characters look kinda funny while running sideways though (WoW had this look too). But what's really bothering me is the cheesy dialogue and bad dialogue delivery. To me it looks like it's been getting progressively worse with Bioware games. I thought KoTOR and Jade dialogues were quite good (though I know many disagree), Mass Effect was worse. TOR's dialogues seem to have degraded to Guild Wars levels of mediocrity. What's happening here? I'm pretty sure Bioware knows how to write good dialogue. Do they believe that cheesy lines appeal to a wider audience?