RPGmasterBoo

They're a bit like mystical, hive mind locusts. If a regular person/creature/plant catches the blight they usually die, though a few people live as ghouls and then die. The dwarves are constantly fighting darkspawn, but when an archdemon leads them, they become a Blight and attack the surface in numbers. I believe it

I said it was as well. Its grades were unfairly low in major magazines/sites, since its not much worse than NWN2 and some things are even better.

Just finished Gothic II for the first time. The final chapter was probably the most infuriating moment in all my gaming. The game started experiencing horrible slowdowns on a PC 7 generations ahead of its recommended requirements and it drove me insane, trying to fight the last boss with 10-15fps. The fact that the last chapter was one of the stupidest and most boring dungeon crawls I've ever seen didn't help. What a way to ruin a great game. The first three chapters are very interesting and fun to play, the fourth and fifth a rehash of previous ones and the last one is worse than all of them. Unforgivable. 8/10 and that's a gift. *Still is the only game that can claim to have a living and breathing world

No there is a PC version. Both have been criticized a lot though, mostly for being uninspired.

Had too much Jet?

And why apologize anyway since I was the one to derail it all the way The problem with Dragon Age is that we all know what its going to be like. Sure we don't know the details, and what kind of overall impression it will leave but we know the experience through and through, since we sat through it 4 TIMES ALREADY ...

Why bother with any. Well, hypothetically, the PS3 has the license for many good exclusive titles, and the PS2 had some great titles in its time eg: Shadow of the Collosus, Ico, Okami, Final Fantasy X so I was thinking that the games for the PS3 are bound to pick up sometime... Probably... Hopefully...

I had two die on me and I ever regretted buying the console, so take that for what it is worth. When working, it is a fantastic machine. But hey, if you are a PC user, you should be used to hardware failures. Seriously, the 360 is only disappointing compared to other consoles. Compared to PC's it's the status quo. I've gone through 3 PC's and none of them ever had a piece of hardware fail in their 5 year lifespans. But I can get replacement parts easily for the PC where I live, and thats what turns me of from the xbox360. If I were to get it and it break down on me I would have a horrible time getting a replacement because it all goes through dodgy unofficial sellers. They'd jump through hoops to screw me over. So no 360 for me... I cant stomach the Wii thing... That leaves the PS3. The PS3 slim is coming soon and it will sell for 300 euros so that might be a better option.

Yeah, one forgets that there are more interesting things to argue with random strangers about than lukewarm, not yet published, videogames.

That's hilarious. Yeah, people lie and make up fairy tales! It's so bad you can't even trust your own signature!! Dumb doesn't even begin to describe it. He did get me there. I was at a loss for what to say.

To think I considered buying this console.

My only comment on this is - good riddance. The only DnD RPG I hated more than NWN was Pool of Radiance: Ruins of myth Dannor. Besides NWN (1991) was originally an MMORPG, which is probably why they want the name.

When the first expansion came out tanks and other armored vehicles took damage from normal bullets, which they didn't before. Never say I'd noticed it. It was minor to no damage probably?

That would have been a MUCH better 3rd expansion pack. Did they finally fix the bullets hurting tanks thing? That's when I stopped playing, I think. No idea what the issue you are talking about is. I stick to the vanilla + first expansion.

Yes.

Not counting Islamic regions or anywhere else (how's that for implicit Eurocentrism ), the failure to construct proper urban infrastructure in terms of public health was a concern for 'smaller' cities such as London and Paris from at least the 15th-16th century. Look, I don't even know how you can make such a claim when at the very least, the Black Death is staring right in front of you and picking your nose. Now, about their immune system, you could possibly make a case. I think the interesting thing is that most high fantasy settings don't consider the lifespan / health issue, and the demographic is pretty much what you'd expect from modern society. There're always decrepit old men thrown around, etc. Smaller, yes, less healthy - well that depends. They let diseases take their toll for the most part, but since they survived the toughest childhood period, they had a well developed immune system as you yourself note, and hence were equipped to deal with them to some extent. They couldnt treat the common, more disgusting conditions such as toothache or skin issues, but the body itself functioned dominantly through physical labor in an unpolluted countryside as is in fact natural to human beings. the result, while perhaps dirty, and disgusting on first sight is a very tough and adaptable individual, with a likelyhood of living a long life. The western european city life in the medieval ages went through the black death, yes - however there were other medieval civilizations which didn't. So that just shows that the european model was inferior in sanitary issues to the rest but it doesnt invalidate the entire era.

The smaller part lived in cities, and it couldnt be much different given middle ages agriculture dominated economy. people die because of diseases today as well. I'm not arguing that it was a mythical golden age of any sort, but the dark ages viewpoint was redundant a long time ago, and from the start it was enlightenment propaganda.

This is probably the most stupid thing I've read in this board... or any board. Which just shows that you don't know the first thing about history, anthropology, demographics, political history etc. In any statistics an abundance of zeroes will ruin the average, and the zeroes are infant deaths in average life span statistics. If 3 out of 6 children die at a young age that ruins the score significantly and the end result is that it seems everyone dies at 40-50 which is complete idiocy. Take out the infant deaths and you have the same statistic you have today.

The physics and deformable terrain are the best parts of it IMO. Nothing beats blowing a giant hole in a garrisoned building and having someone fly out with the force of the impact. Its practically a perfect game. If only they had skipped the D-Day bull and gave us some eastern front action.

You CAN'T be serious. The medieval people literally threw their crap out the windows onto the streets. They couldn't drink the water because it was full of that same crap so they had to drink very diluted wine. They believed that washing was bad(can't remember the reason). Not to mention the plague and other fun diseases. Fast food and pollution might be bad, but they have nothing on the medieval times. There was only one large city for hundreds of years and that was Constantinopole, (500000 people) all the rest were practically village size - hence pollution of the sort you describe is a small issue. Many civilizations had thought of solutions for these sort of things as well. Its the enlightenment age propaganda in their fight against theology that labeled the middle ages as "dark", contemporary scholars point out that this is bull. Going even further back I had the genuine pleasure of meeting "modern" stone age people (Kalahari Bushmen) in Africa and can without a doubt say that they are healthier and livelier than anyone who comes to these forums, or any average modern person. They have a large number of old people in their communities, without modern medicine etc etc so all the age talk is nonsense.

Oh I forgot Company of Heroes as well, if you can slog through US D-Day/Army mythomania

The life-span thing is not really true. The average life expectancy around the medieval age was heavily skewed by infant mortality. If you managed to survive to your 30s and 40s, you had a good chance of living to your 60s. Yes. Its a wonder how often the life span thing is abused without clarification. In fact a medieval person was probably several times healthier than a modern age person given the natural selection at birth, healthier surroundings and diet. Still we got progress

Actually there has, judging from my list. bear in mind it was never a large genre in the first place, but roughly its shrunk by at least 30%. That's speaking in terms of quantity of games released. In terms of quality it hasn't declined - its plummeted. (counting full games only) 1998 - 5 1999 - 7 2000 - 14 2001 - 7 2002 - 11 2003 - 5 2004 - 9 2005 - 11 2006 - 6 2007 - 8 2008 - 7 2009 - 2 so far Actually I take back what i said, in terms of quantity it has a rythm of sorts, a spike every few years, except for the last few. Edit: it is deceptive though, all 2005 games are complete rubbish except for the Gothic Ii expansion as are the 2002 games (NWN and Morrowind are the highlights of that year... yay)

Nice reviews, but not for RPG's, they arent his genre obviously.

On the other hand World Of Warcraft is halfway manga. Mirrors Edge was reminescent of manga designs, with its clear lines. The last Prince of Persia was very manga-like in its appearance. Its catching on, albeit slowly. Going back to the topic - Dragon Age so far looks passably good. I wish they could have tried a more mood setting graphical design like in the Witcher (gloomy, run down) rather than the standard fantasy fare, but we'll have to see more to pass judgment on that. I'm talking about crazy-big weapons here, not manga in general. And PoP had nothing manga about it, they just used a watercolor art style to make it look pretty. Its hard to discuss without pictorial comparisons. Get yourself several copies of Heavy Metal magazine (used to be the premier place for fantasy art and comics) from various periods in the last 30 years if you can, you'll see the design shift as in the various periods. If you cant get them PM me so I'll send you a link to all 30 years of them (if I can dig it up).