Monte Carlo

^ That all makes sense, thanks for answering my question and good luck with your modding. Cheers MC

I like NWN2 as much as I disliked NWN. One of the thing that, for me, redeemed NWN a bit was of course the mods. Blessed are the modders as I am too technically inept and busy to make one myself (although I did successfully use the toolset to make a quick-and-dirty version of Monte Cookes famous "The Orc and the Pie"). So why, when NWN2 looks so nice and is all tidied-up, are there so few decent mods? I'm comparing this to NWN, remember. Has the novelty worn off? There are some pretty fun trainers / character editors, The Keep on The Borderlands (huzzah!) and the pretty cool PoR mod (only problem is that it is so dark, I'm having to turn the contrast up and it looks odd). I know nothing about D&D online, I'm assuming it's just another MMORPG, has this made an impact on the NWN modding community? Cheers, MC

^ In which case I take it back.

I can't understand why someone gets called a jerk for writing an analysis of role-playing games as a genre on a website that is so famously serious about, er, role-playing games? It's like bashing someone for trying to make friends on MySpace. Role-Player is a nice guy who cares about the subject. Play the ball, not the man. Personally I like character sheets and journals and micromanaging, but that's because I'm the Wargamer on the Wrong Forum . Cheers, MC

Will probably reinstall Fallout: Tactics this weekend. It's my favourite FO game. I know, I'm going to hell Only problem I'm finding with BGTuTu is that I've got a too hi-powered party. Am slashing my way through the game very easily (in Baldur's Gate, already 8th level). Might have to solo it instead.

I wrote a short D20 RPG using the popular Seattle-based situation comedy "Frasier" as a campaign setting. It was, even if I say so myself, rather good. The mores of the urban haute borgouisie are oft-neglected in computer gaming and I would happily hand over the material so that Obsidian could crack on and convert it to the PC. Without sounding too much like Niles, I suspect that console gamers might find the setting a tad dry for their twitchy, giant-fighting robots tastes. Toodle pip, MC

If TOEE actually worked, that would be a brilliant idea!

JA2 is just ingeniously designed. You have a not-too-taxing and fun resource / npc management overlay and a really good T/B tactical combat game. You can send your enemies wreaths in anticipation of their violent death. You have a bickering cast of amusing npcs. With the right add-on you can have a Barratt Light Fifty AM rifle and headshot bad guys with it. You can marry off an annoying female NPC to a tribe straight out of "deliverance." If you feel like it, you can check an option called "Sci Fi" which makes some really wacky things happen. And, yes, there is an ice cream van. Lastly, the whole game feels like a tongue-in-cheek homage to straight-to-video Dolph Lundgren action movies. It's all too cool. Which is why, despite it being eight years old, I'm still playing it. Cheers MC

No, is it any good?

Hello. Does anybody else remember a time when developers were always making the next "RTS with RPG elements" game? It was for some reason the holy grail for a bit, which was a shame because it always ended up with a below par Warcraft / Starcraft clone with lame "hero units" (yawn). Having cogitated on this matter for, um, years and being totally out of touch with the realities of cross-platform development I would like to see the following game (excuse my inchoate pitch): A tactical-level game with the elegance of the Total War series married with a RPG overlay / team management model a la Jagged Alliance (i.e. you use resources to build teams to achieve objectives, the RPG element coming from managing NPC groups who may or may not be antipathetic to one another). The tactical level outcomes informs the strategic / resource overlay on a number of levels (amount of money / access to units / storylines / objectives). This is all set in a low-magic, crunchy fantasy setting that manages not to take itself too seriously. So, one minute you are playing a fun Fallout Tactics style combat game with multiple teams taking on different missions then zooming in and out of the strategic map and managing the big picture too. This would be sheer gaming bliss for this grognard. Am still playing modded JA:2 for this very reason Cheers, MC

^ Hello mate, the boy looks well! Cheers, MC

* Medieval Total War 2 (with the Deus Lo Vult mod) * Jagged Alliance 2 * NWN2 (Keep on the Borderlands mod) * Close Combat: Cross of Iron (re-packaged, mod-friendly CC3, basically) Sadly, the NWN2 modding scene is far less prodigious than NWN. Why is this? I am no longer a busy forum-goer, R/W reduces me to lurking nowadays. Cheers, MC

Would just like to thank Taks for the V-Synch advice. I'm running a Radeon card, was getting some lag on the highest resolution with high quality textures. By switching off my V-Synch and lowering the shadow quality the game is now running beautifully on these highest settings, and I'm currently in a dungeon fighting hordes of baddies with loads of effects going off. Cheers!

I make your friend about right, Grom. NWN2 is a greedy sonofabitch with what I am assuming are some esoteric engine quirks. Even my machine doesn't really like the highest resloution with maxed settings, and it's a fairly new, well-maintained Dell XPS gaming rig with all the bells and whistles. Basically, NWN2 is one of those games you have to sit and tweak for a bit to see which bits your 'puter likes and which bits it doesn't. The graphics are better than NWN even on the sucky settings, it just isn't cartoony, the clothing on the character models aren't straight out of a pantomime, and the scenery is nice. And the D&D hardcore rules are quite a lot of fun in combat, it feels a little bit more tactical than NWN1. Have abandoned wife and child to play NWN2 today. This is a good sign, well perhaps not for my family but I don't play games as often as I'd like to anymore so well done Obsidian. Cheers MC

I got it today and am enjoying it. I think it helps that I run a cray-level supercomputer in my underground lair, though. I was expecting groovy art assets, especially item icons, from the Obsidian people and I wasn't disappointed. Furthermore, I have a flaming weapon-type thingie. Yay! Minor criticism? Using the old NWN2 muzak. Seeing how good the IWD/ Planescape etc music was it's a bit of a shame but not the end of the world. It's generic D&D, but hey it's the FR and (as we say in England) "you can't polish a turd." All in all I'm a happy camper, well done the developers by making me say that I've enjoyed a NWN title on a public internet forum. Why wasn't the single-player game as good with the first title? Eh? Cheers MC

Twenty hours isn't very good value for money for a CRPG. Period. However, I might be tempted to play smaller, more focussed multiplay sessions of it. PWs don't bother me. Especially ones that ask you to effectively join a cult to understand the story/ download the hakpaks/ obey the egomaniacal creator's Utter Vision of Gamer Perfection. Nope, a small but perfect adventure with three or four other folks for an hour-and-a-half and back to the character vault for another week. I won't be buying straight away. I'll wait on it. Games Developers hype their projects: it's their job, I don't blame them for it, it doesn't especially trouble me but it doesn't mean that I fall for it.

Barbarian Invasion is probably as good as the Viking XP was for Medieval, but instead of being a pre-cursor game it totally alters the existing game map. I enjoyed it, some of the units are fun and the "horde" system (you just abandon your settlement and wander off en masse) is interesting, if a bit easy (The Huns are just broken). I think it was worth the original price, so a definite bargain bin investment. I loved Rome so much I was just expecting genuinely stellar things from the XP which was probably my own stupid fault.

Played Total Realism to death before the XP was released. It was extremely cool, but a nightmare to uninstall.

I have the following games on the go: Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion (Playing Roman Eastern Empire). Actually, despite loving TW this XP is mediocre for me. I am awaiting Medieval 2 then I will be truly happy. BG2 ToB: This specific campaign is two years old, I just dip in and out of it. It's modded to hell and I play IWD-style with my own party. It's still good fun. Oblivion: About to give up. It's crap. Sacred: It's just an updated version of Diablo, but hey I liked Diablo.

Just read the Mass Effect site. Looks like every other sci-fi game on console. And why is every Bioware game "revolutionary?" OK, NWN was revolutionary in that it was one of the suckiest single player games ever made, more 1917 than 1789.

That is extremely cool. Seeing as about I get about two hours a week maximum to play games nowadays (kids, job etc) I rather like the idea of utterly ridiculous escapism like that. As compared with when I could waste more time to think about it. If my flying half-ogre Bbn/Ftr 'O Death also gets to kick the snot out of Elminster and gets to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel with Llolth then, hey, I'd buy that for a dollar. I want a parody game. Something that reaches out and hugs our inner-munchkin. Let's call it Flying Half-Ogre Barbarian dual-wielding Vorpal Greatswords. I'll get my coat.

Can't really be bothered to post it, but it's just a big picture of Scarlet Johansen wearing a red dress with a plunging neckline. It's a very morale-boosting image. It certainly beats playing Oblivion.

I can't wait to see what Bethseda does with Fallout 3. In a ghoulish, slowing-down-for-a-fatal-road-accident kind of way.

Why cut them any slack? Gromnir is right about the NPCs. FFS, there's a tiny little NPC in Icewind Dale 2 called Geoffrey who leads some mercenaries you can beat up in the prologue. See? I remember him and his name. They were nothing much, really, but they were more memorable than any one of the wiki-powered automata in Oblivion.