RPGmasterBoo

No, I'm not a gaming snob. One doesn't become a snob by pointing out the obvious. I tried playing those games, and from todays perspective they're simply a chore. With no payoff.

At which point you realized how unplayable they were.

I'm pissed off because my melee character cant close in on deathclaws, even with the thermic lance. I did slaughter all of them in Deadwind Cave, even the legendary one but that was in enclosed spaces. In Quarry Junction they're charging me and I cant move away or interrupt.

Its light in the sense there the story and exposition vs combat is heavily shifted to the latter. I would have liked more talk, less constant fighting. But that way the game would never have worked as a shooter, which is an issue when you have a character in an open world and you cant put in huge stretches of nothingness. This is why Fallout 1 and 2 worked. Because while you had the perception of a wasteland, essentially you were travelling between hot spots with the chance of a random encounter. In F1 nad 2 you actually spent very little time in the wasteland (non city areas ) but the mere knowledge that it was there made the game seem bigger than it is. F3 and FNV have to put in more action because of the silly streaming world concept, that has to be packed with content or it gets boring. This is why I don't like hybrid games.

All rise the King has entered

Not to intrude on what seems to be a private conversation, but I'll probably respond to this affirmation where I see it. New Vegas takes something I enjoyed (Fallout 3) and increases that enjoyment. You have given no compelling reason to prefer the DC wasteland other than your personal tastes. I don't know if that's arbitrary or not. Frankly, most things in life are arbitrary. Regardless, no matter how often you affirm it, there is no objective reason to prefer the DC wasteland. I respect that you prefer it. I just don't accept that it's because of some golden standard. The best you could affirm is that the majority of players agree with your assertion, which is probably hard to prove. You enjoy the DC wasteland. Fine. But your tastes are not inherently better in any quantifiable way. That's why I don't argue that the New Vegas wasteland is better. I argue that I like it more. no objective reasons why dc is better? perhaps not... but is pretty tough to maintain an argument that recreating largely unknown hills and mines and burgs is gonna create as compelling and an intriguing a setting as would the replication o' dc landmarks. is a matter o' taste? sure, but is still a tough sell. in fallout 3 they combines well known with lesser known... got iconic landmarks AND insider knowledge AND additional gameplay made possible by developer/player knowledge o' setting. in fallout:nv you gets loads o' geography, but little else... 1/3 the job o' fo3. sure, fo:nv is maybe kewl for locales, but w/o the insider knowledge it could be anywhere USA. heck, the most recognizable vegas landmarks is absent from the game. the tops, gomorrah and other actual vegas locations coulda' been set anywhere in the fo universe. the old mormon fort... is that it? am understanding cant's love o' fo:nv setting, but that is 'cause his opinion is colored by familiarity. otherwise, nv is disappointingly generic and stale. is fo:nv a return to the old wasteland settings o' fo1 and 2? perhaps... perhaps that is why the purists enjoy it, but that also contributes to its seeming generic staleness... 'cause you got a decades old setting being recycled. fo3 went original. fo:nv went reactionary. 'course again, lost in the setting debate is our observation that the game itself does not play much different than fo3. am guessing that maybe factions change gameplay for those people who slaughtered their way through previous fallout games, killing every targetable creature in sight, but it didn't change anything for Gromnir... save to make us wonder how we were instantly recognizable to legionaries and powder gangers at distances that defy imagination... did somebody tag us while we were sleeping, got a radio device pinned in our ear likes some capture-and-released endangered species? and the reset for reputation once entering vegas and beginning the house quests were cheeeeeeze. got a well-deserved audible groan when we were told that all past crimes were forgiven. *snort* HA! Good Fun! I don't really agree. For a game that's supposed to be set in a wasteland F3 didn't have any and what little it had made no sense whatsoever. Also, the theme in FNV is obviously shifted more towards a wild west thing and the actual wasteland makes perfect sense. I found FNV interesting to explore but that was because of a main plot to look forward to - something FO3 didn't have. In FO3 you explored because you had nothing better to do. I'm not saying FNV is the next best thing since pre slice bread. Such a story/dialogue and companion light RPG will not likely be anything beyond a moments entertainment for me (like the Mass Effect games) but there is a significant improvement over the (in that regard) bland FO3. Ultimately what were you expecting? The Fallout setting is a very limited one, and no matter how much its squeezed - you'll get the same crap each time: desert, vaults, ruined cities, pipboys, stimpacks, super mutants yadayadayada

Getting old on us Walsingham are you? How very boring of you. You should decide to age backwards

This makes me angry. http://www.imdb.com/chart/scifi I now share your anger. Dubious as IMDB might have seemed at times, I presume that each year more an more teens are joining the site and wreaking havoc on the established scores with each seasonal blockbuster. The longer I watch the lists the worse it gets. The formula that drives the lists can't balance out the swarms of 10's that are given out like candy, and the moderate crowd is getting completely drowned out.

@Gizmo Shadow of the Colossus is miles beyond anything else and falls squarely into the art category. As a PC gamer I find it hard to admit, but there has never been a game like it on the PC. Not by a long shot.

Gizmo has good taste in games, Boo approves. Planescape Torment BG Series the Witcher Homeworld Warhammer 40K Dawn of War Myth series Alpha Centauri Sacrifice Unreal Tournament STALKER CoP Max Payne Mafia Gabriel Knight series Grim Fandango Shadow of the Colossus Final Fantasy X IL2 Sturmovik

This makes me angry. http://www.imdb.com/chart/scifi

I watched this too, and I'm astonished that it was totally NOT intellectual or difficult to understand. I didn't even notice any pretense of it either. I actually liked it a lot, but it was just a heist movie with a gimmick. Watching this flick made me lose a lot of faith in humanity - I keep hearing from people that they didn't understand it, or that it was hard to follow. It wasn't. It was hella straightforward and everything was chewed up and fed to the audience. "You have to really pay attention", yeah, only because a lot of things happen. Not because these things are difficult to understand. If you didn't understand it, I'm sorry, but you must have ADD or something, or you're just stupid. Exactly. I'm particularly pissed at it because everyone is treating it like a philosophy textbook.

You have to be kidding me, I've never heard of this. And I love Myth! I don't have that one any more... There is also an urban warfare mod that is similar. Here is a Civil War conversion though (I've not played it, but found it just now while searching for the other one) http://projectmagma.net/downloads/BlueAndGrey/ Here is another... http://projectmagma.net/downloads/CarnageIslands/ Sweet, thanks. Now there is a series that needs a sequel.

You have to be kidding me, I've never heard of this. And I love Myth!

Like I said, stat based gunplay has never been done well. Turn based make it exploitable, reflex based makes it irritating (to a shooter player). As there is no easy way (or at least no plausible one) to fix injuries or resurrect in a modern themed RPG the player is practically forced to exploit, reload or die.

What you're describing is the sort of amusement one gets out of a system he/she has already played to the death and mastered to the point that you can do crazy things and still win. Its also quite unrealistic (not that realism is something to be implemented at the expense of fun). To be honest, JA2, as complex as it is, has issues. A lot of them. AI and long range weapons at the very least. Trying to break down something as quick and deadly as gun combat into turns is a hell of a job. On the other hand, FOT's real time mode was practically unmanageable...

Okay, but that's the point when you hit the reload button, and proceed to kill the guy who got lucky. Its amusing, but not a truly important gameplay element. The combat text, called shots and death animations were what kept the combat from becoming a chore. But they're really just spice on top of a dead simple mechanic. !!! (and neither game solved the issue with turned based guns, that JA2 has as well - the point where hi powered long range weapons come into play and make everything else obsolete) Of course, playing with a team in FOT was an another story entirely. Then it became obvious how sweet SPECIAL could be.

2 comments: 1. On the Pop/Gromnir dispute over area design. I'm not familiar with either US city, so from a bystanders perspective I can only say F3's DC was an oppresive, dull, maze. FNV was interesting for me because of the way the city is designed in rings Strip>Freeside>Ruins>Farms. It has a kind of logic I find pleasing. 2. On the topic of combat. Fallout 1 and 2 combat sucked. Whatever anyone says, there were no tactics there and there was a very limited selection of options to choose from, that boiled down to move, shoot or move and shoot. About halfway through the game, in both cases, combat became a pushover. FOT had true tactical combat, but nothing else. FNV has an okay combat system, but the viable combat options are also quite modest. Snipe, shoot, grenade, melee + VATS. Like any other shooter. Only less responsive and twitch based. It may be my Infinity engine bias, but its hard to argue that the Fallout series have ever had a great combat system, or indeed anything beyond passable.

DeathSpank. Its a good little action RPG parody. The tone makes the genre tolerable.

Trust me, at some point the world will click together. There was more thought put in areas, factions, etc. than is readily apparent. FO3 never breathed for me, at all. As for the role playing that's what happens from Mr.House/Yes Man/NCR/Legion onwards. Finally, yes, the cool **** syndrome is in full swing - and that's really impossible to dispute. There will probably never be a Fallout game where the silliness is kept to a minimum.

Cousin!

Do I need to, or?

Ever since I got my hands on a Super Sledge I've been walking through enemies. Its almost comical.

Which goes to show that Deux Ex was most likely a one shot thing.

I have a PS2 and I've had a few great experiences on it. However gameplay with such a limited controller on genres that I like RTS, FPS, RPG - is crap. To keep it on topic, Deus Ex iirc was a slightly more complex FPS interface and control wise. Nothing that can't be adapted completely to fit on a console (without less complexity). Of course then you get autoaim and all that crap, but the PC version will hopefully be fit to work on a PC and that will be fine. Personally I think (without any justification - its just a feeling) that the game will be lacking in Deus Ex spirit, because this seems like just another attempt to zombify and cash in on a dead series - too long after whatever vision its creators had for it.