Nepenthe

... I hate to break this to you, but she's a total **** - I got TWO posts from her, really eager. Apparently the word for a woman of loose morals is considered to be bad. I'll go into the ****pit of my airplane to ponder on the reason for it.

This is my second time through the game, so I kind of know what to expect this time (even though in the case of falling into the skybox, again, my expectations have so far been happily let down). I find myself metagaming the **** out of this game, though - and I hate the fact that I can't pause during dialogue, somebody always calls me when I have a five minute interactive cutscene going on.

If you look at the context, it kind of makes sense for things to a) happen twice in the beginning b) there to be a lot of combat there. I'm more interested in what happens in the part of the demo/game I haven't gotten to play yet, the post-"fleeing the darkspawn army" part.

I'm playing Alpha Protocol. With only one lockup so far, this is probably the stablest on most reliable Obsid game published. I still think it didn't get anything close to a fair treatment from the press. Sure, it was probably overly ambitious (and fails in a lot of things it tries to do by trying to do too many things) and is a somewhat dreary-looking game to boot, but 6/10? Not fair... Glad I spotted it on the shelf, saved me the price of Uncharted 2 for now... and a trip to -20c outdoors to pick it up.

I own the series on DVD and the movies on blu-ray. I watched the poo out of it back in ~high school/early uni, haven't caught any episodes in while. Probably need to.

Yeah, well, glad you got your stuff sorted. Most of the "free" Cerberus stuff is pretty naff, but Zaeed's mostly ok. I don't think Kasumi's mission is any shorter than Zaeed's, so she's just like the other DLC character. I got my money's worth out of it, I'd rather take a shorter mission that one of those circle of magi type artificially long Bioware levels

Oh. It was another dig at a Bioware game. Should've known.

Her loyalty mission plays somewhat differently from any other in the game, and is pretty good. But apart from that, it's the same stuff, new semi-implemented character (semi, as in no dialogue tree on normandy, but a lot of interjections and other "talk" on the Normandy), new gun (except the one in Kasumi is really REALLY good, and IMO comes with a really cool little backstory) and new unlockable power for Shepard. It's probably not as good as LotSB, but it's the second best piece of DLC I have bought for any game. (Point Lookout is probably number 3)

Looks better than DA2 to me. It manages to be heavily stylised and realistic at the same time.

Dude, looking back at your posts on the subject, I wouldn't imagine that you like the thing. :D You should contact steam/EA about the rememption code, there's definitely something wrong there. You should be getting the Cerberus pack for free from Steam too and it's definitely worth THAT price (=nothing). Not as it should be. Of the other DLC, I heartily recommend the two I mentioned above. None of the other ones are really necessary by any stretch of imagination, Overlord is a decent sidemission but nothing else, some of the new guns are decent, but between Kasumi, Cerberus pack and what's in the default game, not needed. I'd definitely contact Steam support about the download code, though.

Don't think there actually is a dlc with just a single item. I consider Kasumi's Lost Memory and Lair of the Shadow Broker to be very worthwhile, but since you apparently don't particularly like the game, I'm surprised you are even looking at them? Or was it just to complain?

5 more pages and it may get interesting. Well, this'll be either playgirl or most people will have gone back to finding their way to Narnia.

Even completionists might end up doing things in the "wrong" order - and as the leaked info from Bioware's data mining program pretty much confirmed, most people aren't completionists, in fact the opposite. Or to clarify, when you are getting deluged by side quests in the way ME1 does, I for one space them out between the mission "steps". Because it starts feeling like work otherwise, and I have plenty of that available to me without starting up a game.

Well, with Wrex you didn't have a huge sign telling you to do his quest before going to Virmire - something that you CAN do at an early stage, and Wrex's mission can be a pain to locate without metagame knowledge. Also, doing the mission is not required to keep him alive, you can do it also by having either of the persuade skills really close to max. Just saying that it's not a binary choice like you make it out here. Certainly not without significant metagaming. I don't think there's a fundamental problem with the mechanic, just that (at least for now - without the benefit of knowing how the trilogy ends), it doesn't make for very compelling story-telling.

By that he means they were kicking him and screaming "ACK, GET IT AWAY." Maybe...

I think they only really start to flank you on hardcore.

Tried out the Killzone 3 demo today. It was kind of fun, in a Call of Duty kind of way, but without the stigma of supporting Kotick's insane plans. Would definitely pick it up next week, but not sure if I can, being completely broke and having to buy DA2 in two weeks, anyway. Hmpf. Could use a second controller, though, and they have a special edition with a limited green one... ggrrr. :D

Well, to be honest, the last time I was in Austria, the girls in Vienna did kind of look like that. I had to be dragged out kicking and screaming.

Agreed.

Now that Nightshape got all awkward, I'll have to post some too, I guess. Michael Vartan Sam Witwer Both manage to come off as genuinely nice guys with none of the arrogance some people on the verge of "really making it" tend to project. That's a lot of points in my book.

I do think that ME2 missed an opportunity to require some sacrifice by the player, making the ending more of a qualified success. But, really, are there any single-player games outside the various "strategy" genres where the player "failing" yeilds anything other than a death screen and a reload? So, apart from the no death screen reload bad ending to ME2? Also, I'll reserve my judgment on the ball being dropped or not until we get to see how saving/killing people on the way (wrex, rachni queen, your me2 teammates) affects ME3.

Well, the demo's out tuesday, then you can see for yourself.

My bad. I confused Veteran with Normal. I meant to say that the game is supposedly balanced around the level of difficulty where regular mooks don't have shields/barriers. That would be Normal, I think. And yeah, I don't think *anyone* liked the heavy-handed approach they took wrt biotics and protections, to me it's just lazy design. Among the many changes I've tried is removing the "shields block powers" rule and the game feels genuinely more fun to play as an Adept. Enemies still have a ton of health and hit pretty hard, but stuff like Pull Field is crazy OP, and YMIR/Prime minibosses become a joke. Agreed. I think that the rock/paper/scissor approach they took is fundamentally sound (probably mostly because I would play Sentinels even if it wasn't there), but somehow they failed to adapt the adept (no pun intended - well, maybe a little bit) to this system. Also, when you discover the pleasures of squad incendiary/inferno ammo, the game starts feeling like it was balanced for veteran/hardcore.

Random trivia of the day: The Finnish supreme court has held that operating a chainsaw while drunk is automatic gross negligence.

Statement on voice, accepted. Statement on performance, premature.