Lexx

I never played JA2 in english, so I can't say if it's the same actors. The text is *I think* mostly the same. I've taken over Cambria now, San Mona, one missle area, etc. and yea, they used all story elements from JA2, but it's made up different. As example, you don't find Miguel right at the start of the game, or San Mona-- King Pin wants you to free his town from the queens soldiers, Pater so-and-so in Drassen wants you to kill the rednecks near Cambria, etc. It's all a bit twisted and changed. Have to say, it's... dumbed down. All side-quests I had so far, are simple search&kill. Especially the rednecks annoyed me. In JA2 you could talk to them, even sell one of your female mercs to them... in JA:BiA you can only kill them, because they attack on sight. Also NPC dialog is even less than it was in JA2, heh. There you could chose between various moods, in JA:BiA you only have cancle or continue (well, it's written in real texts and stuff, but it's always only these two options). Gameplay-wise, I find it playable. Story-wise, it's a real JA2 rape. They should have made up their own stuff, imo. I also like how the locations are made up. They are pretty looking and stuff. Regarding sector zones, which don't exit anymore, I am fine with that. It doesn't feel much different gameplay-wise. Instead of 200 small sectors, there are less, but bigger ones now.

I don't mind if they make more money out of it, if the game is good. Let's call it additional reward for the devs, for making a fancy game. Plus, it makes their future brighter / more secure, which is good for everyone.

I'd pay for it.

Playing some Jagged Alliance - Back in Action. So far I find the game to be fun. It's better than the demo map (more tactical, really), but all negative points remain. The controls are bleh, the interface is bleh,... I try to see it as a game in it's own and not a Jagged Alliance game. Then it's fine... Also it's less buggy than 7.62 calibre and stuff was in the beginning, so it's a plus too. Right now, I'd say it's one of the better games in this genre (real time strategy whatever). They updated the laptop portraits, btw:

Yea, she looks very unnatural in that screen.

Until you got an arrow into your knee?

But there is nothing like that for HAWX 2, as far as I know (probably not enough interest from anyone). That's why I haven't played it a single time yet, since I bought it on Steam some month ago.

The length isn't much bothering me. I don't have that much time for playing anyway, so a 40 or 60 hours rpg is hardly something I would finish nowadays. But all this talk about choice&consequence... it's really starting to annoy me, because it's either not true or just minimal.

I was replaying ME2 at the end of last year (to get my character ME3-ready, because once I accidentallly deleted my saves) and I have to say that the game was pretty short. When I played it the very first time, I sat down approx 1 week. But on my replay, it was reduced to 2 days and I noticed how non-existant the choices ingame are (and what had been carried over from ME1). Really, all this "ME has so much choices and consequences!" is just bull**** and I have big doubts about ME3 doing it any different.

Played the Jagged Alliance - Back in Action demo. Finished the tutorial and started the demo mission (secret lab in Orta). The map is pretty big, but graphic looks good and sound is fine too, imo. What I noticed is that the controls annoy me. Especially that I can't zoom in / out as I wish, etc. makes me feel as if I can't see a lot. And then you'll have to move the view with WASD and not with the mouse... But maybe I am not yet used to it... Now seriously. Giving items from one character to the next is this: Click on the merc, move mouse to right side of the screen, click "share" button, then click on the other merc and now a window pops up where you move items from one merc to the other. Could have been done A LOT more simple and less click-heavy, imo... Combat seems hard. So far I had no battle yet in which I survived without getting wounded. The combat system itself doesn't help it much either... I just hate to press pause all the time and see where my men are, where the enemies are, that I have to click for every(?) shoot action, etc. But yea, graphic is good looking in the game. I even don't mind the character faces that much anymore. From all Jagged Alliance-like games which had been released in the past years (Brigade E5, 7.62, Hired Guns, etc) I find this one to be the closest one to a real JA game. Though, not yet sure if this is only due to the same mercs or because it feels much more polished than these other 3D real time with pause JA-inspired games.

I feel fat now.

Ah I see. A bit bad, because Chris posted something in his blog the day the forum went down. Something else: Is it somehow possible to totally disable the WYSIWYG editor? I'd like to punch in my posts in plain text, not with this button clickery. :> Didn't found anything about it in my profil settings right now. (Due to this, my Firefox plugins for "make marked text into link" etc. doesn't work anymore and I am so much used to it.)

I can shed some light on stuff like the RPG Maker, because as luck would want, today I finished my 7-days game. The last 7 days I have done nothing else than working on a game, watching some Buffy and Angel, did some sleeping and eating, etc... But I don't want to bore with that. So, in my humble opinion, I'd say that the RPG Maker is a good tool for people who haven't done any game cration yet but would want to try it. Especially if you are a realist and want to start small: With some small 2d game, as example. The tool is simple to use and doesn't need much additional scripting knowlede. In fact, you place triggers, click togther some events (if switch A is on, do Y etc.) and it works. From the perspective of someone who knows a bit more than nothing, the tool is too obstructive, though. Exactly because of all this clickery, doing larger stuff bloats up everything.... But if you are new to the party, I really highly suggest to play around with it, even if nothing serious get's out of it. At least you will learn some basics of game creation and get some feeling of how things went- you have an idea, finish up a concept, create a prototype, etc. You just can't do wrong with that.

This forum template currently overwhelmed me from design point of view and stuff. Will need some time for me to get used to it. Also I noticed that I don't have any access to the blogs anymore. "[#1062] You have no permission to view the Blogs" Not cool.

What I have seen about it so far doesn't look so bad and I probably will play it too at some point. Problem is just that it's no JA game... You could rename the NPCs and change the games title and nobody would realize it's meaned to be a JA game due to the changed mechanics.

I find this "take downs" highly silly. It has no purpose and is like fighting against windmills.

They are milking the thing till it is like Final Fantasy, heh. I stopped liking the Resident Evil franchise after RE3.

One of the best movies ever created.

Wonder how many people are buying a game only after downloading it. I mean, just because 10 people have downloaded a game, it doesn't mean that nobody of them ever will pay for it. Who knows how many of the 25% who downloaded the Humble Indie Bundle bought it later on.

I love Incubation. Played it a lot and finished it quite often. Just not the wilderness missions. It was just too hard for me at some point. I'd love to have a remake of Incubation. The same game with just more pretty graphics and some editing tools. Yeah. Blue Byte should do that instead of more Settler games. Never liked Settlers. :>

You didn't played Fallout 2 or Vampire: Bloodlines? :>

Heh, I totally forgot how this game looked like. I played it until my character was level 32, then I got all equipment I wanted to have and it started to get damn boring and I realized how repitative it all is. Really no surprise that it was gone offline a little while later.

I would even say that FNV had no influence yet at all, because there just wasn't a new big rpg release yet, which could have been influenced by FNV. Same applies to Skyrim. The game is way too young to be put in such a list, imo.

I wouldn't mind making a turn based 4th ed. game... Yea, but truth is, in the end it probably would be real time with pause. :>

Haven't bought anything on steam yet this christmas. Either I've got the games already or I find them ****ty or too expensive for their ****tyness.