Monte Carlo

On the one hand at least it's a SP PC role-playing game. And the people behind it are clearly putting some thought to it. On the other, it looks so cartoony and vanilla. If I see another over-sized anime-influenced sword I'm going to retch.

BFBC2 is very, very good fun for a shooter. It looks great too.

So I tried the King Arthur Role-Playing Wargame demo. The camera is horrible. The battles are a pale imitation of MTW2. Even cranked up to maximum settings on a machine that exceeds the specs the unit detail is mushy. The art is nice, like the campaign map but it didn't grab me, there's nothing there you can't really do with the (free) LotR Total War mod or the Grand Campaigns mod.

I suppose you think that's funny.

linkie. Thoughts?

Am in a bit of a fallow period games-wise... apart from my Alpha Protocol playthrough. Even Company of Heroes isn't doing it for me ::sigh:: I'm d/l the demo for King Arthur the RP Wargaming thingie to see if that wets my whistle, but I'm also liking the idea of being a sniper in Bad Company 2.

Actually, my son got into Lego via the Lego computer games on his DS - Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

The aricraft carrier and guns are full of win. I love lego.

Does she freeze if she's not continually connected to the internet?

ThatswhatI'mtalkingabout! As a big military history fan I had to post this one when I found it... Behold the Lego halftrack!

Sometimes I wonder if gaming journos actually play the games they're reviewing.

94/100. Wow grade inflation. That's a epic score...

Lego is awesome. always has been and always will be. This thread is all about posting links to awesome Lego kits and minifigs... for example I give you the Lego Strike Team from 'The Shield.'

No, DArK EpiC GNolLs.

Alpha Protocol. I'm playing a field agent with high Assault Rifle / Stealth / Sabotage. It's a great game, even if it is pretty fugly. Mike's boots look like something Zippo the Clown might wear. But I rather like the writing, the NPCs, missions and the general Tom Clancy feel of the game. The **** handler, Darcy, who seems to think he's in Team America World Police is very amusing.

Since the end of the Cold War a lot of UK defence planning has been predicated on expeditionary warfare, i.e. one air assault brigade and one commando brigade plus the rest of the army in it's conventional role with tanks, arty etc. The three tend to rotate around the scariest op commitments to train / rest / deploy in 6 month tours. Recent commitments have made the UK military adapt to fighting counter-insurgency and our piss-poor defence procurement has left us with a load of stuff that wasn't fit for purpose or will never arrive (FRES for example). Our Eurofighters were designed to fight MiGs, they won't have ground attack capability until 2018 FFS. Apache is in Afghanistan and was designed as a tank hunter, now they drop 100,000 grand of ordnance on three guys in a pickup. Our armour is being moth-balled in favour of vehicles suitable for COIN with greater IED survivability. So basically either our kit is designed for a war we are unlikely to ever fight or too focussed on the one we are in Afghanistan. There's no give. Our forces are very can-do. They'll do whatever is asked of them, whenever they're asked. The are quite literally awesome, they'd happily storm Tripoli running off of Ferries. But there's precious little capacity and resilience left. Our current government isn't covering itself in glory, rattling it's plastic sabre, but the real villains of the piece are the last lot.

LOL almost everything we've got is in the 'Stan. The defence review has FUBAR'd everything else.

but will it be epic suckage? HA! Good Fun! Or dark, epic suckage.

^ Interesting comments from the fans, even split between fanbois and folks complaining of nickel-and-dime tactics. Although top lulz for Bio claiming that a small piece of DLC is "epic." Epic has to be the most overused word at Bioware, I wonder if they have an epic coffee machine just outside Dave Gaider's epic office where an epic intern brings him epic Java as he sits in his epic Barcalounger

Grom, patronizing claptrap might satisfy your (increasingly dormant) inner-troll id... but the fact remains that designing a game via data-mining isn't likely to come up with something original or fun or absorbing. Lots of extremely complex things are satisfying, be it Mahler, a tricky piece of cooking, a glass of decent chateau-neuf de pape or a freaking Picasso. Yes, I'm turning into Niles from Frasier here but I want tactical, complicated, WTF gameplay not PRESS 'A' TO WIN. Thank you, a Moderately Educated Gamer.

^ It's about content. DLC = content. Mods = content. One is free, one ain't. That's where I'm coming from.

It's not a complaint, merely an observation. DA2 is the perfect storm of everything I hate in CRPGs: pre-determined characters, linear plots, actiony-combat with a fixed camera, freaking romances, fixed NPCs... As for the data feedback... what if the guys who quit the game after an hour just didn't like it? FFS, I don't like driving / racing games. If I quit Gran Turismo 120 after five minutes is that a reason for the developers to make all the gearboxes automatic and straighten out all those tricky 'S' bends? FFS.

:: shrugs :: Then it's all over for gamers who don't want to play lowest-common-denominator games I guess.

Top comment from NeoGaf:

No, I think a version of Das Boot where the crew are vampires (emo vampires who question the need to torpedo Allied shipping, naturally) might work better.