Monte Carlo

OTOH, Liam Neeson does VO in Dragon Age, which whichever way you split it is pretty impressive.

What was that politics game set in a former Eastern European country... Revolution or Republic or something. It isn't exactly what Maria was talking about, but it was fundamentally a roleplaying game where you set up a political party and took a certain route to achieve your political objectives, i.e. government. It didn't really work 100%, but outcomes were non-combat based, there were no stats, there was a story... Conversely, Maria should check out King of Dragon Pass which I suspect might be right up her street. A totally non-traditional, story-based quasi adventure / fantasy RPG set in a lovingly crafted and original setting (RuneQuest's Glorantha). Even a polyhedral dice-orientated wargaming gorgnard like me fell totally in love with it. Would it shift units in EB or Game? No. Guys, were in cultural territory here, and games like this are in Ingmar Bergman territory, which ain't showing next to Transformers 2 in any mulitplex I konw of Cheers MC

Obviously I don't care for romances in CRPGs. OTOH, I'm cool with people enjoying romances of any description (and if we are having romance options then it's definitely about time there was a gay romance in a CRPG). I'm also cool about more female gamers playing CRPGs but I don't buy that it it axiomatic that this must mean romances - that's just another stereotype. Lots of male gamers loved the BG2 romances - let's not polarise this issue. What does bug me is the squeakiest wheel getting the oil - the romance lobby is very loud over on the Bioboards, there is a cosy groupthink there on this issue. As long as romances are entirely optional and don't detract from the overall game I just get on with it, but for some yes, they would appear to want a romance game with some easy combat between cutscenes. There's nothing wrong with adding a counterbalance to that POV. Cheers MC

I will clarify the bit I don't get about this argument, taking on board what people mean by Hitler's brilliance. Generally major historical figures are considered in the round, as in are they more than the sum of parts? Whilst we are on WW2, Churchill is a good example. A deeply flawed man (Gallipoli springs to mind) he was nonetheless brilliant by any objective measure of the term. Why? His doggedness, ability to build alliances, courage (both political, moral and physical). One looks back over a life and sees something special - achievements that mean something. Ghengis Khan might be described as 'brilliant' by this argument. Undoubtedly a butcher and a tyrant, he nonethless showed nothing less than genius as a general and king with the world at his feet - there are achievements there in politics and logistics and even a legacy of sorts. This is the man who had clerics tied into sacks and trampled by horses. Who razed cities by the thousand. I'm sure you get the picture. Hitler? Nope. Misanthropic weirdo and failure joins bully-boy political party full of cranks. Uses it to take over country already on it's knees and ripe for revolution. Uses age-old turnip ghost of anti-semitism to provide scapegoat. Exploits exisiting corporatist economic framework but adds rallies, flags and Leni Reifenstahl movies to make it seem groovier. Equally odd friends develop almost comical Gothic death cult to pander to their depraved sensibilities (ironically, almost all of them are deviants who bear no resemblance to the aryan ubermensch they venerate). They then declare war on THE REST OF THE WORLD and suffer entirely predictable crushing defeat. There's nothing 'brilliant' here, my friends, just a bizarre tragedy. Hitler's legacy is to be a bogeyman, a Charlie Chaplin villain, a be-medalled lunatic ranting in his bunker and confiding in his dog. It's like saying that The Manson Family were brilliant because they evaded justice for as long as they did. Cheers MC

I was asking for the opinion of people who played it, duh. I didn't realise this was your thread. Don't bleed spats over from other parts of the forum, it's not done.

The VO ain't great, strange because Claudia Black has a nice voice. As for the romance stuff, phasers to obliterate (etc), the Mills & Boon crowd over on the Bio boards must be wetting themselves. Maybe my party will be the meat-shield with the Foreign Accent and two wardogs. Cheers MC

^ The theory is (and it's not mine, although I like it) that Hitler would have rolled across Turkey / The Crimea and into Persia. He'd have secured oil pipelines there, denying the Russians of the same resource and exposing the Soviets to the South. After all, Turkey was NATOs prized 'Southern Flank' against the WP in the Cold War.

It looks like an early version of Commandos.

:: sigh :: There is a fairly credible school of thought that argues that Weimar was going in the right direction. Listen, in the 1920's I'm sure you're aware that THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD was in the grip of the economic equivalent of bubonic plague. Interestingly, the two powers that fell to extreme totalitarianism were Russia and Germany... which is interesting because they are chalk and cheese. Your argument, unless I've misunderstood, is that a country on it's knees will immediately turn to the nearest wannabe dictator... and that the dictator's ability to get a country back on it's feet by planning imminent world war is some sort of brilliant move (whichever thesauras we are using today to define brilliant). I don't agree. And I detect a move away from the acceptance of the unique evil of Nazism in some of the language used here which for me feels like inadvertent revisionism. As for the democracy thing, I don't think it's in dispute that democracies were less likely in the first half of the twentieth century to kick off wars than the autocracies. We are discussing a big subject, we are going to argue. Cheers MC

^ Who p*ssed in your cornflakes?

Warriors of the Eternal Sun for the Sega Mega-Drive was Storm of Zehir in 1992. You had an overland map, obligatory old-skool first person dungeoneering view and extremely cool cod-medieval synthesizer muzak. Wikipedia link to gamebox art here. Mobygames link to art detail here. Loved this game, spent hours playing it. I didn't have a PC in 1992, I think I bought my Sega console in 1993/4 when I played this - by which time I hadn't played PnP D&D for about three or four years. This got me all hyped up about D&D again and the possibilities for the game on the computer.... then, for me, came Baldur's Gate...

@ Alanschu.... Good point, and completely counter-intuitive to German staff college doctrine. The Germans were quite radical in their tactical doctrine. Officers were seldom micro-managed, even at platoon level - they were given an objective and then trusted to carry it out their way (there's a fancy German word for this which escapes me right now). Other European armies, OTOH, espoused more proscriptive doctrine. Example, from an early 20th Century staff college: German orders: Take that Bridge. British orders: Take that bridge. Move 'A' Company to the plateau and give covering fire to 'B' Company who will flank left whilst 'C' Company assault the bridge. The point? Hitler, who had served as a working class NCO in the infantry was inherently suspicious of his officer corps. He consistently went against the grain of what his officers were trained to do. I give you, as an example, the magnificent defence of Normandy by the German army in 1944 - led by Rommel, who was the embodiment of the old-school fluidity of German military thinking. By 1945 Hitler was making decisions about the deployment of tank companies on the Eastern Front. That's just about a colonel's job. @ Oner - Weimar wasn't perfect but it was a democracy and was making all the right noises. Please read some history. Cheers MC

Hmmm. Hitler was brilliant in manipulating a nation's angst and economic failure into a self-destructive orgy of racist hatred. Corporatism, extensive public works, militarisation and the dismantling of a nascent democracy* isn't brilliant. His policies leading up to the war were nothing but a prelude to war. Hitler viewed war as desirable, essential even. Here's this man in his uniform with skulls on planning a thousand year empire based on racial supremacy and genocide.... it isn't brilliant in any way that I recognise. Yes, and also in the DNA of every other decision the Nazis made. You can't separate one from the other, it's the 'fruit of the poisoned tree' argument. Hitler was amazingly successful at rendering one of the most cultured and complex European countries into rubble within fifteen years. Maybe the education system ain't what it used to be, but some of you guys need to get your heads around the fact that there's nothing brilliant, remarkable or successful about anything associated with the racist, mechanised slaughter of millions. Cheers MC * By 1933 German democracy was still very young, in fact 'Germany' had never really known democracy until the 1920's.

Bubble Shooter's art direction is perfectly executed, some big-budget efforts of late would do well to be half as good.

Wargamers, staff colleges and historians have been playing Operation Sealion for donkey's years, hell I watched some bearded real-ale drinkers doing it on tabletop in the 80's at some gaming convention. Generally, it goes like this: 1. If the weather holds; 2. And the Luftwaffe are up to the job; 3. and a beachhead is established... Then it's game over for the British. The german paras invariably get slaughtered and the panzer divisions motoring up the A3 get chewed up with no heavy engineering assets to clear the way. Never saw the Nazis win a theoretical model of Sealion.

It's tough seeing, yet again, Bubble Shooter left out in the cold. There's a conspiracy against free flash games, and it's ugly.

The 'Axis' was a coalition built on shifting sands - the Japanese and Germans had different geopolitical priorities and Mussolini was, literally, a joke (I can't bring myself to say 'Italy' because Italy wasn't behind the Fascists in the same way Germans were). So, really, we are talking about Nazi Germany, and in 1939 they could have 'won.' After the invasion of Poland, Hitler's war aims were surprisingly realistic - create a greater Reich encompassing continental Europe (playing on the legacy of the 'Betrayal of 1918' theme that helped him win power) and, in the East, stopping at Poland. The non-aggression pact with the Soviets might have held long enough for Germany to buy time for the push against the Communists, or commonsense might have prevailed and the two autocracies come to an accommodation. I'm not an expert in this field, but was the dream of Lebensraum, so central to Nazi ideology, more of an aspiration in 1939/40? Anyway, back to 1939 / 1940. Hitler wanted an accommodation with the British. He was an admirer of Empire and thought that Britain's traditional indifference to the affairs of mainland Europe would enable him to broker a deal. And if it wasn't for Winston Churchill (who loathed Nazism and decided on a principled, almost Quixotic opposition to Germany) there might well have been one. Remember, the Americans had an epic lack of interest in European affairs during this period, were sniffy about the British Empire and saw the Pacific as their natural sphere of influence and expansion. So, in 1939, imagine a Chamberlain government with a policy of appeasement and an indifferent America listening to Joe Kennedy. The Nazis are free to roam the Balkans, Greece and North Africa, with Hitler eyeing up the oil routes across Persia... if he wins those then the Russians will never fuel their war machine. Elsewhere he offers Stalin concessions as he conquers the 'untermensch' and the Soviets, like a sleeping dragon, only belch the occasional sulphurous protestation but marvel at the strength and technology of the growing Wermacht and SS. By 1944, with no invasion of Normandy and no Eastern Front, the Nazis have utilized their heavy water plants and research technology to develop the world's first atomic weapons. In 1946 they launch V6 atomic rockets and nuke Moscow, Leningrad (etc). The Wermacht invades Russia from their southern flank in the Crimea and from Poland. A covert treaty with the Americans sees SS special forces infiltrate across the Bering Straight. So, the Axis lost it because Hitler was completely nuts and invaded Russia. Although, for me, the game was up as soon as Britain declared war, not because of the British army but because of cause and effect - Churchill's sole foreign policy objective was to embroil the USA into the conflict and Pearl Harbour or no Pearl Harbour he'd have done it. This is one of the hoariest counter-factuals amongst historians - my two favourites are Len Deighton's novel SS-GB and Robert Harris' thriller Fatherland (made into a good TV movie with Rutger Hauer). Cheers MC

I'm mucking about with NWN2 mods at the moment. I've been playing NWN2 a lot recently... if you invest a lot of time tuning the camera and AI it's very good (I wish I didn't have to spend a lot of time doing that but ho-hum). The strategy top-down view appeals a lot. Anyway, here's three I found that I like - Vordan's Hero Creator Roll up a character, give him a gazillion gold pieces and equip him with all the best loot from all the games, then fight in an arena or export him for use in another game. Yes, it's just a character generator mod, but it's well designed, stable, easy-to-use and fun. For what it sets out to do it gets 9/10 for me. You can download the latest version which includes all the SoZ classes and races too. The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun An adaptation of a 1982 Gary Gygax module (which I played PnP in about 1985 IIRC), you know that you're getting a classic hack'n'slash dungeon crawl. This one is for level 10-20 characters (my favourite power level) and it's a bit rough around the edges. But, it has well-designed combat and some interesting areas / level design and a load of ready to go cohorts (the 15th level Wizard raised my eyebrows a bit, but there are some tough battles). The lack of supporting documentation meant that I wasn't to know that evil NPCs can't get cohorts (I rolled up a comedy Grey Orc Rog 4 / Ftr 8 dual-wielding monkey-gripped falchions, had to change his alignment). The only Hak this requires is a random looting script. The Grimm Brigade A strange, witty little mod with lots of custom items. You make a character, join the brothers Grimm and fight little combat scenarios very loosely based on fiary tales. An enjoyable distraction. ---- If I find any more hidden gems on NWN2 vault I'll post 'em up.

Personally, I don't expect anything for free once I've bought a game, except patches. Even then, I'm realistic about how long a game should be actively supported and on that level Bioware are pretty good by industry standards. I think some people think that developers are charities, give them a break as if dealing with piracy wasn't bad enough (And I love the implied blackmail one occasionally hears - 'give us more DLC - or we will get stuff elsewhere...'). Even the new LFD controversy left me cold - personally I think the publisher is being greedy so I'll just avoid their games. That doesn't mean, however, that the whole thing should be free (as many have suggested). Compared to many other forms of entertainment and media, gaming is good value for money. My only reservation is the delivery model - I don't like Steam (etc) and lots of content isn't available in stores (for example, I'd really like Mysteries of Westgate... but from where?).

I've downloaded Dark Waters - it's pretty good but the prologue is bland - which is a shame because when you dip into it the setting is interesting. The first level contains, however, one of this puzzles moving mirrors around that invariably leaves me reaching for the off switch. Am going to try POR next - played the NWN1 version and that was fun.

I presume they mean Mass Effect (Personal Computer) as opposed to MEXBox or MEPS3 (etc).

Hmmm. Bug-free? Bio's post-release support is pretty good, so I'll expect the first beta patch by the end of the third week in November, maybe we should run a book on it? Cheers MC

When I first saw And Now For Something Completely Different I was about 12. I thought it was utterly hilarious. Now I'm older and the avant garde has morphed into vintage, some bits make me laugh and others don't (unarmed combat training with tropical fruit and the camp squaddies doing drill always gets me though). Sometimes absurdist comedy tries too hard (Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer spring to mind), but I did like Big Train (funniest sketch - imaginary Ming the Merciless style space tyrant trying to juggle with intergalactic management dilemmas while doing hoovering, shopping, mowing lawn in small suburban semi). Now I must admit I enjoy character-based comedy and standup more (Frasier is one of my all-time favourites). Cheers MC

Given that the console version was originally slated for an indefinite post-release date and the emphasis was on the PC, that delay will hardly cause the sky to fall in. Of all my doubts about this title, success in shifting units on all platforms ain't one of them.