entrerix

i was using cone of cold plus stonefist and prison on the sylvans. big trees go shatter shatter. good stuff. my new game will be: me as an evilish arcane warrior/bloodmage with high magic will and con morrigan as spirit healer blood mage shale as tank and leliana as dual wield assassin/something (even after seeing how stupid locked chests are, I cannot play a game where i leave them unopened...)

ok i just finished the game last night, 83 hours of play. review: too much dungeon crawling, especially in the deep roads. rest of game was excellent. i could nitpick some stuff (like annoying archer enemies with scattershot), but i dont feel like it right now. only one bug/problem i encountered: i romanced leliana the whole game, only paying any attention to her. yet in the ending it was a really annoying way to end the game because it felt like a path i was pursuing the whole time was then abruptly pooped on in the otherwise pretty great ending epilogues. also: the youknowwho left my party on the eve of the big battle because i wouldnt do something evil. robbing me of my best party member right when they are needed most. that was a major buzzkill but i dont really fault the game, more the character for being an awful jerkface. needless to say, my next playthrough will be with a more evilish character who wont have that problem, but still, using a substitute in the big battle for a character I'd used the whole game was saddening to me. it actually felt like the youknowwho had died permanently. it reminded me of fallout 2 when my sulik was killed on the oil rig and i hadnt saved in a while and i decided to go on alone for the first time since meeting him. made the end very bittersweet.

left 4 dead 2 dragon age

in no order: fallout/2 final fantasy 6-9 (counts as one game deus ex planescape torment zelda ocarina of time tie fighter starcraft diablo/2 metal gear solids rock band a few honorouble mentions: half life series, left4dead, resident evil 4, silent hill 2, system shock 2,

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if dragon age had cost 5$ per hour it would have cost me at least 300$ makes it pretty hard to justify buying the new dlc...

irenicus was a cool villain

i like the idea of going after the maker and taking his throne

point lookout was pretty close to 1/5 of the experience, at least close enough that i didnt mind the price for that one

i'd buy the dlc if they were cheaper. If wardens keep AND this new dlc were sold together for ~6 dollars it would seem like a good enough deal to interest me provided i were starting from the beginning of the game. Maybe when there are three pieces they will release a "triple pack" that sells all 3 for 10 dollars. That would probably entice me. It's just a value for money thing for me really. i talked this to death already so i'll spare you all again I DO agree with monte though about where the dlc fits into your game. if i've beaten the game already i'd MUCH rather see content for after the game is over, or a whole new sidestory with substantial gameplay (i'd say tales of the sword coast or point lookout were significant enough to be a decent example) im certainly not going to load an old save to explore a battleground for 40 minutes, especially if it costs me money to do so.

lol, yeah thats essentially what i was getting at, you just said it much more succinctly

a show like the wire or mad men would not have existed on tv in the 90's. (correct me if i'm wrong) maybe things will just get better and better and all these doom-n-gloom "oh noes the only games that bioware will be allowed to make will have petz in the title" will be flat out wrong.

strange how that article is saying that we'll see less and less single player games, yet this year i've bought more single player games than probably any other year. seems like the companies havent all gotten the memo. that said, if we do see a huge drop in the number of single player games and everything becomes evony online then i guess I'll just play fewer games each year and get more exercise instead. remember comics in the 90's? sooner or later quality will make a comeback I've never heard of a single game playfish has made. I am not a consumer for that company, and unless they intend to make good new IP (or maybe a really awesome follow-up to Myth: The fallen lords) I probably never will be a consumer for them. I'm willing to bet that there will remain a few companies out there who still want my dollars. I spend currently almost 1k a year on video games and consoles and pc parts etc. if my only options are ****ty online games then my spending will drop to ~zero Here is a list of Playfish games: The company has created eight games: * Pet Society - virtual pet game * Who Has The Biggest Brain? - game show themed skill based challenge * Word Challenge - word construction from scrambled letters * Geo Challenge - time based geographic location challenge * Bowling Buddies - 3D bowling with intuitive controls * Minigolf Party- 3D golfing game * Restaurant City - resource management game * Crazy Planets - Strategy game to destroy robots * Country Story - farming game * Quiztastic! - game show edit: if you ask me, these are the types of games a company like EA puts out to create a buffer in case one of their big tentpole games flops. the big money is still in the tentpoles, they just want to go after it without taking risks with the entire company. just cause cheap romantic comedies are cheap and profitable doesnt mean those are the only movies that will ever come out. district 9 was cheap and made a ton of money

j/k roflmao, i think i came across as more snooty than i intended ...

dragon age is much better than mass effect in my opinion

whatever form future gaming takes place, it will be affordable to me. I make a hell of a lot more money than most people, and most gamers, and because companies need the masses to buy their products, the pricing will always be comfortably within my purchasing power. or the industry will spike up in price, shutting sales down to nothing, and it will collapse on itself and have to be rebuilt from the bottom with games that cost less money to develop but will recoup their costs with moderate sales.

i agree that game length alone is a fairly poor metric, a long awful game is just compounding its awfulness. but a great fantastic experience thats only 4 hours long, and has zero replayability.... thats not going to be worth 60$ to me. it would be worth maybe 10$, akin to a movie ticket some games: portal for example: fantastic value. its a 2-3 hour game, but i played it 3 times, thats about 8 hours, and i spent 12$ on it, great game for a great price. in retrospect i would probably have paid MAYBE 20$ for it, but happily 15$ another short game: metal gear solid. i spent 50$ on it, it takes about 7 hours to play, i've played it about 4 times. thats about 28 hours of awesome gameplay, for 50$ fantastic game and well worth the money - i would have paid 60$ for it a pretty decent one hour dlc that i play twice? thats 2 hours, so it should cost (for me to consider purchasing it) at MOST 5$. i cant think of a single game that i bought, played for less than half of its dollar value in hours, and felt was a good purchase. great games are replayed - it doesnt matter if they are short. long games on the other hand changes the value ratio a bit on the other end of the scale oblivion for example, i played for about 100 hours. i would NOT have paid 200$ for it though, it was a fun enough game for the time, but i would have paid, at MOST 80$ for it (using my own value scale which decreases after a certain amount of hours are reached - its far from exact science) the other problem with this scale is that i can't pay AFTER i've played. i have to guess about how much fun a game is going to provide me and purchase accordingly. to be honest, i would have paid a lot more than the 36$ i paid for dragon age. i would have probably paid 60 or even 70 for it. and i gladly would have if that was the only way i could play such a good game. however i know that pricing for games is bizarrely stuck at the same pricing. if bioware charged more than full price for the game they would have been burnt to a crisp by the consumermonster. its a wierd world we live in when super mario galaxy costs the same amount of money as petz: ponyz edit: also the scale is weird for dlc like shale, how many hours of fun does shale add to the game? its hard to quantify for me, so i guess i just throw out the scale and go purely on gut feeling. would i pay ten dollars for an item pack of kewl loot? **** no, buying items is butnut retarded in my opinion, items are to be earned in game, not purchased, merely HAVING items for purchase cheapens the whole affair. would i pay ten dollars for a 5 hour quest with lots of replayability (via choice and consequence or pure fun factor) hell yes i might even pay 20 (if it has enough replaybility)

i tend to buy games i want, and ignore those i dont. survival of the fittest and all that. some of fallout 3's dlc was good value for money, so i bought it. its the only dlc i've ever been interested in. (actually borderlands zombie dlc looks good too) as soon as bioware delivers a dragon age dlc that looks like a good buy, i'll pick it up. I ALMOST bought wardens keep, but decided against it because it was too expensive for what i appeared to be getting. if a dlc costs 1/6 of the full price of a game, i expect 1/6 the content of a full game. particularly because dlc is a tad cheaper to develop as the tools are already in place. now, on the other hand, if bioware came straight out and said, "we will only make a sequel to dragon age if we sell ___ amount of dlc because we'll go bankrupt without it", then I'd be more inclined to fork some cash over, because dragon age is an excellent game and i dont want to wait 7 or 8 more years before a follow up arrives...

i want a game set nearabouts the french revolution before the inevitable future game comes

fallout 3's endung sucked so bad it made me want to puke. i restarted the game immediately to wash the bad taste out of my brain (the first 10 hours of the game were the best) so i too am glad to hear DA has a decent ending

the countering fighting style of AC was my favorite part of the game, it made me feel like a real badass swordsman when i could kill 10-15 soldiers without taking a scratch (not to mention the myriad awesome kill animations). i also thought the fighting system in batman arkham asylum was brilliant for similar reasons. i dont think EVERY game should have that style of combat, but it makes sense sometimes.

im at 45 hours and i still have to do breciilian forest and orzammar, plus a bunch of sidequests and whatever comes after all that im on level 14

use the respec mod, it really is awesome

really? champion would appear to have the best powhaz. war cry, with knockback, is extreme useful... and if it it imposes penalties proportional to rally... the damned rules not being transparent makes comparisons difficult, but rally + motivate would appear to give a +10 bonus to both defense and attack to any party-mate in the zone... including the champion. am doubting that such stuff stacks if you got 2 champions, but am gonna look next time we see. honest, we don't see any warrior specialization that genuine compares to champion. HA! Good Fun! oh cool good to know, i hadnt tried any of them yet, they just didnt look very useful to me, but i agree the problem is with total lack of transparency in the mechanics...

my warrior is a champion reaver, which i chose because it was neato that i could unlock both with the same character. but im not really digging the champion skills. what are the better specializations for a sword and shield fighter? i like reaver for that level 1 self heal skill, but im not sure what else i see that i like. are there any "must have" warrior specialization skills?