HoonDing

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett

Beyond good & evil. The game everyone heard about, but nobody played. Age of Wonders. Best fantasy turn-based strategy game of all time, with a truly fantastic soundtrack to boot. Also, the original Bard's Tale trilogy is currently freeware. One might want to get it before GoG gets their hands on it.

Apparently the latest patch fixed the game, aside from abysmal voice acting & writing (as usual as with translated European games). So I'm willing to give it the benefit of doubt. It's not like Gothic 3 was playable before the community patch either. Some would even say, Oblivion before the deluge of mods.

Considering how some of the girls on that site look... paying them is doing them a favor.

They aren't using Aurora engine anymore...

At least that disrobing spell beats DA's sex in underwear. Also, Geralt now looks more like in the comic.

Oh look, 'tis that Witcher again.

If the game in question is European & reviewed by Gamespot/IGN, one might add 2 points to the review score. And subtract 2 points from all so-called AAA titles. And I actually ordered Two Worlds myself. R00fles!

I guess it'd look like a normal plane using a prototype engine like the ATREX that switches from normal turbofan/turbojet to ramjet/scramjet at high Mach numbers.

"Billions for defense, but not one penny for healthcare!" will be the new Republican slogan.

Drakensang: River of Time expansion "Phileasson's secret" has been officially announced. In English here. On another note, I recently came across the Italian/Spanish cover of the original Drakensang... wtf was Radon Labs thinking to NOT use this cover to sell the game overseas? Compare with the standard one.

Can't they just issue some fatwas and leave us alone?

I prefer a good CTD over 5 minute loading times & terrible performance drops every hour.

There was recently an interview with Brian Fargo on the Bethesda blog.

If the combat is as deep as Severance: blade of darkness, the game could be really good. If not, there's still the half-naked Elven chick to distract the player from any shallow gameplay.

It's awesome. No romances, no playing psychiatrist for party members, just plain old buttkickin' for goodness. Also downside is absolutely horrible pathfinding.

Morrowind did it alright. Until around level 10 when one suddenly became invincible (which made sense, considering the story). Still Oblivion has some areas with set leveled creatures & NPCs. You won't kill guards or Umbra at level 1 without meta-gaming knowledge.

*cough* Horse Armour *cough*

Does he even partake in the three/foursome?

Divinity 2?

In the new Drakensang game the PC is not a chosen one, but a random greenhorn that tags along with the group of real heroes, who even save the life of the greenhorn in the beginning of the game. I like that. Even in the first Drakensang game, one was not a chosen one, but again some random schmuck that happened to be a friend of a retired hero.

It is much harder to become Arena champion at level 1 than level 20. Agronak gro-Malog is a set level 10 character. Also note that people have finished Morrowind & Baldur's Gate at level 1.

The system I like best is from the Gothics, lacking level scaling but still possible to kill a high-level foe at early levels with the right tactics (which in a lot of scaled games would be impossible due to foes with too powerful spells or too powerful melee damage). But one needed to find trainers to increase skills & attributes. Unlike Daggerfall & Morrowind, the player wouldn't also become invincible around a certain level, but the game remained challenging until the end... even exaggeratingly so in Gothic 3 where one would go into Nordmar at level 30+ and still get raped by wilderness animals.

Any DA:O ending that doesn't include Alistair drinking himself into an early grave in obscurity is simply unacceptable. It's more satisfying to make him King by persuading him to marry Anora, keeping Loghain alive and make Loghain the hero after doing the dark ritual.