Monte Carlo

Hmmm. NWN OC and SoU had very similar beginnings, didn't they?

...and if we all abided by that sage dictum, grasshopper, this forum would immediately collapse.

Let me get this straight: are you saying that the player starts off JE as a student too? School for Martial Arts Adventurers? ROFL! The Bio "game intros ideas" book must be quite slim. Cheers MC

I soloed it with no henchmen with a human Ftr 4/ Rogue X who took the Assassin PrC. Not too much trouble, which is the inherent structural problem with NWN in my opinion; everything has to be tailored so any class can do it. Saying that, despite my general downer on NWN, HotU is a good, sound XP which does what the OC should have done in the first place. It also looks much nicer than vanilla NWN. Cheers MC

This is why I ask before I buy. Thanks for the feedback, and no I won't be splashing out on Xbox Doom3. Cheers MC

I can't get into FPS games on a PC. I'm the antithesis of the twitch gamer: I really need a joypad controller. I know you can get them for the PC but consoles seem ideal for the job. Besides, for some odd reason my wife loves watching us all play Doom on the widescreen TV. Cheers MC

Hello. The Doom 3 Collector's Edition is out for Xbox. It features the original Doom and Doom 2 amongst other goodies. It weighs in at a hefty

You made it to Chapter Three without uninstalling it out of sheer boredom? You are a stubborn one. Nope, it doesn't get any better. It's a screensaver, not a game. Cheers MC

If Bioware did a black-and-white 2D version of Pacman you'd give it an amazing review. This is like asking Don Rumsfeld for a non-partisan take on US foreign policy! Cheers MC

From rare fillet steak and a bottle of claret to Big Macs and milkshakes in, what, three titles? Go Bio, go!! Cheers MC

That's a shame, really. OK, with the olf-fashioned wheel mouse I can see it, but new optical mice can be used on anything. Like a nice flat pizza box, for example. Cheers MC

You know what? I've played so many beautiful-looking fantasy CRPGs and thought to myself, "wow, the engine's incredible, it looks great, it plays seamlessly but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY DON'T THEY MAKE A DECENT GAME WITH IT?" I'm thinking, yes, Morrowind. I'm thinking Sacred. I'm thinking, yes, Dungeon Siege (fantastic looking screensaver, er, game) and even tac sims that were good games like Silent Storm. So I'm actually tempted to try this out, my neighbour has uber-quick broadband but doesn't really use it so why not? :: goes hunting in cellar for Morrowind :: Cheers MC

^ Thanks for the info chaps. However, (this is slightly regurgitated from another thread) I remember playing Warcraft 2, Sim City, C&C2: Red Alert, X-Com: Enemy Unknown and Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat on PS1 with a PS mouse. All of them were perfectly enjoyable (especially X-Com) and the mouse functionality was as good as on the PC. So although I agree joypads are cumbersome I'm still not completely convinced; after all a bundled Age of Empires Xbox title bundled with a Xbox mouse would sell like hot cakes I'd imagine (geez, look how much you could spend on games with specific guns or Steel Battalions control gizmos). So, why not RTS/Strategy and no Xbox mouse? BTW, thanks for the heads up about those other games, I'll be sure to look them up. Cheers MC

A quick question for J.E. if he returns to the thread re. console games development. I finally bought an Xbox (they are very cheap in the UK at the moment) before Xmas. I enjoyed games like Full Spectrum Warrior (the graphics are incredible, BTW), the wife likes The Sims crossovers etc but why are there no decent strategy or RTS titles on the Xbox? Along with RPGs these are my favourite types of games, and the fact that there are none (not even a Command & Conquer title) means that I'm using the thing less and less. Is it an Xbox performance issue or do these games simply not shift enough units? Cheers MC

Bioware's job is to sell games. End of story. They are good at it, too so kudos to them. I'm not a big fan of the community and/ or culture they've developed ("love us or go away") but I simply make the choice not to involve myself in it. Easy, really. I also choose to be extremely discerning about what games I buy and take every online gaming site I read with a massive pinch of salt. I also tend to be healthily sceptical of the claims of developers... all of 'em. In fact, the only developer I'd trust if they said "this game'll knock your socks off" at the moment is the Creative Assembly. And even they're going console. In fact, I trust grognards like the RPGCodex crew and the people on forums like this one over any gaming site, especially the likes of Gamespy and IGN. Cheers MC

I've always enjoyed playing fighter/thief characters who can create havoc then just slip off into the shadows. That or straight-forward meatshield melee fighters; my favourite game of BG1 was with a single-classed half-elf fighter...totally vanilla longsword-and-shield kind of bloke. I also quite like the warrior-cleric (but not a paladin) kind of character concept. 3E D&D made fighter/clerics sick. Really powerful. I never play pure magic-using characters. Ever. I don't like standing at the back casting spells. Cheers MC

Hey, did Bio finally fix dual-wielding for thieves? Cheers MC

SPOILERS AHOY: Baldur's Gate: Your character is an orphan of mysterious provenance brought up by a man called Gorion. You live in a large castle-library complex called Candlekeep. One day Gorion tells you that you have to go on a journey, but won't tell you why. As you leave a large armoured man and his evil minions ambush you and murder Gorion. You are on your own, until your perky co-orphan and surrogate sister Imoen shows up. I usually take the opportunity to bury a melee weapon in her head at this point, but that's not important right now. Anyway, you are instructed to meet some friends of Gorion at an inn whereby you discover that all the local iron supplies are de-grading for some mysterious reason; the answer lies in the Nashkel Mines off to the south. After much wandering around the blissfully unbalanced wilderness areas you make it there and discover a conspiracy involving a trading coster from Baldur's Gate called The Iron Throne. Eventually, and after many adventures, you discover that the Iron Throne wants to de-stabilize the region to start a war (no doubt a parable about US oil hegemony in the Middle East). Why? Well, the war will enable your evil half-brother Sarevok (boss of The Iron Throne) to ascend as a scion of Bhaal, Lord of Murder!!! Mwuhahahahhaaa!!! And, yes, you too are one of his mortal progeny, destined to a similar fate? So you hand Sarevok his ass in an epic battle and win. Huzzah! The expansion pack Tales of the Sword Coast rather bafflingly ignores this and makes you do it all over again, but on the plus side it does add Durlag's Tower to the map, being a superlative Dungeon Crawler and one of the best labyrinth adventures in any IE game. Baldur's Gate 2: Evil elven mage Joneleth Irenicus captures you and tries to use your "Bhaal Essence" (yuck, is it me or does that sound a bit rude?) to restore his soul and elven-ness. You see, he was hitched to an Elven queen but his insatiable lust for power meant he was expelled from the tree-hugging heaven of the Elf City (etc). You escape because the Shadow Thieves attack his dungeon complex where you are being held. Imoen and Irenicus (yes, it's her again) have been taken by the neo-fascist Cowled Wizards who enforce the anti-magic laws of the city: Athkatla (imagine Byzantium crossed with late-era Rome with a dash of Shakespeare's Verona) only to discover that there is a war going on between two rival thieves guilds. Yadda yadda. You have many adventures which end up with you following Imoen's trail to Spellhold, where "deviants" (i.e. magic-users) are held by the regime (obviously a prescient, nay psychic comment on Camp X-Ray). Irenicus flees to the Underdark as your elite NPC munchkin strike team beats the snot out of everyone!!! Huzzah. You pursue him, kill everybody, forge +5 superweapons and have a mammoth battle in hell with Irenicus which, after several re-loads, you win! The game ends with mysterious hooded men muttering about how powerful you are becoming and Irenicus getting rugby tackled off of a cliff in hell by a demon that's a dead ringer for one of the aliens from Alien. BG2: The Throne of Bhaal: This expansion pack finishes off the trilogy. A war breaks out as the various Bhaalspawn start kicking off to decide who will ascend to godhood. You have a series of uber-battles with various Bhaal-spawn (a fire giant, a dragon, a drow etc) until you get to fight the last massive battle with Melissan (a pretender to the throne). You win and get the chance to decide whether to become a god or not. --- I'm sure I've missed something. Nonetheless, the BG series has lots of side-quests, humour, epic scale, massive monty haul battles and oodles of side quests and exploration. This is what people loved about it rather than the plot I've outlined above. Cheers MC

Best combat: Temple of Elemental Evil Best Old Skool Title: Eye of the Beholder (PC), Warriors of the Eternal Sun (console) Best epic adventure: BG/BG2/ToB Best dungeon crawler: IWD Best necrophiliac use of dead engine for one last SLAM DUNK!: IWD2 Cheers MC

Hmmm. I know not the veracity of this news (especially given that it was posted on April 1st) but it doesn't seem like a hoax to me. Wizards are notoriously capricious. Courtesy of D&D CRPG fansite Sorcerer's Place. Sounds familiar? Cheers MC

The Volourn Cycle: 1. Identify thread where a small, not-worth-dying-in-a-ditch for point has been made with which he disagrees. 2. Wade in with grossly opinionated, rude, semi-coherent and invariably misspelt rant. State that your opinion is fact. 3. Wait for reply (this, ladies and gentlemen, is apparently known as Trolling). 4. At some point insert the word "R00fles"!!! 5. Back to point 2, rinse and repeat. Ad nauseum. 6. Thread gets locked, back to general forum and repeat point 1. Seriously, Vol, you are the new Visceris. It's really, really, stale. Please report me to various moderators and link to this particular post of mine as Exhibit "A" Cheers MC

Volourn, as usual, is speaking out of his fundament.

LOL! That's like saying Gran Turismo has too much.... driving. Cheers MC

I would rather play a well-considered dungeon crawler with a deep backstory, interesting magic items and a plot rather than a CRPG with all-singing all-dancing graphics, features and loot but no soul. IWD definitely has soul. As Ellester said, all the areas were given a little bit of thought. Dragon's Eye and Dorn's Deep level 2 were my favourites, BTW. Cheers MC