entrerix

i remember grandia was pretty good too, almost forgot about that game. definitely wasn't on par with FF6-9, but it was pretty fun at the time

ME 2 ended with us about to go to war together, ME3 picked up with my whole team scattered across the galaxy. it was as if ME2 literally never happened. it would be like if return of the jedi had started out on coruscant with leia as the only character for the first half of the movie, and then we find out during a passing hologram conversation that a few months prior to the movie starting luke had already rescued han from jabba and then began training rebel pilots on tatooine, but they aren't going to show him anymore because george lucas decided that leia was the main character now.

ME 2 was one of my favorite games of the last 5 years, ME 1 was ok. ME3 was a HUGE departure from the second game, I spent that whole game (ME2) building a crew of characters from a rag tag bunch of psychos who half hated eachother into a cooperative team that began to trust eachother, in order to save the galaxy, ME 3 opens by saying "just kidding, pretend ME2 doesn't exist!" and taking away my whole team, then offering two of the most boring members back to me at some point (but not even in the beginning) what the hell was the point of making this a sequel if none of the relationships with the characters carry forward? also, the game feels way more linear than the second and has an atrocious color scheme and score. i don't care if im in the minority, ME3 is half the game that ME2 was. its the phantom menace to the empire strikes back. edit: sorry, if hurl cares then i can continue my tirade in the ME3 thread...

now i want to play suikoden 5... thanks calax!

why not, take the raw materials, craft something new from these superior materials?

Mass Effect 3 is such a bad game I still haven't even seen the ending. 10 hours in and i find the game to be complete uninteresting, to the point of being unplayable. do we judge a 30 hour game on the first 10 hours? yeah. ME 3 is a screw up. a worse sequel to ME2 than DA2 was to DA:O (imo of course)

pretty sure fallout 3 had GFWL too, im still not sure what GFWL does, it doesn't seem to be nearly as obtrusive as origin is

my idea would work so long as most armors were more or less junk to be sold, and only once in a while did you find a new piece of armor that was a real upgrade from what you were already wearing. baldurs gate had armor in barrels, but most characters only upgraded armor 2 or 3 times in the whole game

im so excited for dark souls pc edition. possibility of mods+ new bosses and slightly better graphics/smoother gameplay = omg im so excited!!! dark souls!

Final Fantasy: 6,7,8,9 chrono trigger that's basically the "black isle age" of jrpg's i would recommend playing them in the following order: FF6, Chrono Trigger, FF 7, FF8, FF9 after you play those, then go ahead and try other classics, play mother/earthbound, xenogears, chrono cross, persona 2, (vagrant story, its not a traditional jrpg but its soooo good) then try some more modern ones: persona 3 and 4, shadow hearts, dragon quest 8 as far as i know, there are no great jrpg's on ps3 or xbox 360, but Valkyria Chronicles shares some similarities to traditional jrpg's, and is really good

armor would make more sense if you, for example: 1) kill orc 2) take orc plate armor off corpse 3) give to character to wear 4) character must get armor fitted, either at forge using own skills, or at blacksmith 5) now character can actually wear the armor, AND it has a unique visual twist for said character, since it was custom fitted for them, so it could be said to have been given flair befitting the character at the request of said character voila, unique looks for every character, customizable armor, and an explanation for why orc plate can fit a 200lb male dwarf, and a 100 pound female elf.

i've been playing diablo 2 all week. that game has still got the goods. i think im going to play legend of grimrock though, it looks like a fun way to spend a week or two. also: anyone else interested in Fez? a quality platformer is SO rare these days, i feel obligated to check it out.

I like games from almost every genre, I like this board because the ratio of smarts to stupids is a gooder one than most of the internet. also, fallout new vegas. I loved jrpg's, back when great ones were coming out, but i think the last great jrpg was final fantasy 9, and that was a long time ago. since then there have been many serviceable ones, but no greats, unfortunately.

i wish more developers (bioware especially) placed importance on building exciting and intriguing environments. dark souls did it wonderfully, comparing the huge and soaring marble and gold cathedrals of anor londo and the oppressive poisonous wood and mud village of blighttown to ANY environs in the dragon age series is laughable. the dragon age team clearly cares more about writing bad dialogue than building a great world/environments. a more fair comparison would be between the various areas of planescape torment and dragon ages anemic environments, but thats just as depressing especially considering the age of torment now

from a design standpoint, i agree the most with levine. level design and world building are absolutely paramount to good game design. vastly more important than writing a neato story to be read aloud to you by voice acted animated cliches.

other than the new accents, i can't imagine the setting making a difference. every level and environment will feature the same flat, boring, wide open spaces, or flat, boring, narrow corridors. throwing a new color scheme over the whole game and giving everyone a fake french accent won't make it feel any different. difference between ferelden and the city of chains was what? city of chains had less dirt (ground textures) and more statues (wall textures)?

ME2 > DA:O > DA2 = ME1 > ME3 act 2 of DA2 was actually pretty good, act 1 was ok, and act 3 was bad. imo the biggest problems with DA2 were not really about the story, and were more in the actual design of the game itself. it was like they made a story and a combat system, and then realized they hadn't made the actual game world yet and then hastily threw together a couple of dungeon maps and had everything run through them over and over again. edit: the only one of the above names games that I think is legitimately "great" is ME2, the others are "good" at best

the marketing point was difficulty, but that's not what makes the game good. The only good thing about the difficulty is that it forces you to pay attention to what you are playing, which gives you the time to really notice all the great things about the game because you aren't rushing through it. Combat System: the game has possibly the best combat design of any action game i've ever played. You must be precise, methodical, and know when to strike and when to block or dodge. its not fast like devil may cry or ninja gaiden, its slow and all your moves have real weight behind them. animation and hit detection are excellent, but its the thoughtfulness and timing of the combat system that sets it above other action games. leveling up has a minimal effect on your ability to defeat enemies, it mostly comes down to how good you are at fighting. having better equipment means you can make a mistake (maybe just 1) and keep fighting, and having better weapons means the enemy will take a few less hits. but no matter what, almost any enemy can kill you, and every boss will take 2-5 tries to defeat before you learn its weaknesses and how to attack it. Art Direction: dark, moody, frightening, gothic. AAA art design in every sense of the word, from enemies to armor to the environments themselves, the game is among the best in the last decade. i wish the game had a god mode cheat just for players who don't like hard games to be able to wander around and enjoy how atmospheric the game is. Level Design: fantastic, on par with the best metroid and castlevania games, if not quite reaching the heights of Ocarina of Time. the more you play the more you will appreciate the care and attention that went into building the world. it makes corridor games and most modern games in general look like the work of lazy children. not everything about the game is good though: the difficulty level spikes dramatically when you get about 2/3 through the game. it was hard enough at the beginning, but i actually got to a point where i could get to 3 different bosses, but couldn't kill any of them even after several tries. I wish this game had an easy mode that unlocked after you die 100 times, just giving all the enemies half the life and changing nothing else - the game would still be very hard, but not frustratingly so. also, some people dont like the combat system because its too methodical, but thats a personal taste issue.

vasquez kills at least one alien with a pistol in aliens. she shoves its head against a wall inside an airshaft using her boot and fires 3-5 rounds into the side of its skull from point blank range.

i feel like an aliens game should be easy to make if they copied system shock 2 instead of call of duty

i don't even know how so many people made it to the end to complain about it. this game is pretty boring.

if it hasn't reached 2.1 soon, then im going to up my contribution, i think MCA will benefit the project greatly

a summary of my emotions in response to "beamdog exclusive"

is this going to be on steam or gog?

i miss the days when a new generation of hardware meant games of previously unthinkable heights. the jump from the nes to the snes, or from the snes to the n64! i miss those big jumps.