Nepenthe

Ahh, there was something very rewarding about raidint the Fort two-man with Boone. He agreed, too. Overall found myself using either him or Veronica to the end. Quite happy with my game, but planning on reverting to a "before the point of no return" save and doing some more stuff when I again have more time off from work - this is obviously not a game you can just play for a couple of hours an evening, at least I can't. (so, Well Done, Obsidian!)

Probably at least partly into "games are overpriced here, and it's not just one individual developer's fault" Yes, I really liked Leliana's song. Awakening's still rather buggy, and suffers partially from the "I have no idea if this is a bug, or there's just some hidden magic flag I'm cluelessly setting off somewhere" syndrome. Still, I'd say it's a lot better than the endless cave trundle hamstrung with the lack of a clear villain/opponent mess that is basic Origins. Regarding the other DLC, I think Shale (if you count it as such) and Warden's Keep were quite good, the rest not so (though I think that Witch Hunt post-patch was fair, at least).

Looks like BoS is actually working as it should be, I should have just carried on the NCR questline further to be able to do something with them. Some tipoff at the end of the questline might have been nice, so I'm not gonna go all "my bad" with this (since I was doing wild card).

Oh. Now I agree. Unless there's a second one when you stupidly inform him of your progress!

Why?

Art direction was different in ME2? How so? And the plot... as far as I'm concerned, the plot in both games is corny B quality crap that shouldn't be taken seriously i agree with you on both counts, I'm not seeing any great difference in the art direction between the two games. And I'm pretty sure we've gone over the "multitude of plot holes" with Oblarg before, even given time he could only think of one relatively ambiguous one. I'll be the first to agree with it clearly being a "middle" episode, that is either consummated or sunken by the third chapter of the story... So you could say that my stance with ME2's plot isn't "it roxors" or "it suxors", but that I haven't seen it all, yet. And yeah, it's supposed to collect space opera tropes. Well, there WAS some variety in headgear (I think Zaeed, Garrus and Grunt were all pretty good on that dept), but I'll give you that the see-through plastic breath-masks were pretty atrocious.

Companions occasionally lose their weapons when leaving a casino/equiv. Sounds like this happened to you. Yeah, I think I noticed that too. Got a couple of lockups in the final hours, managed to beat the game today. Was good fun, and apart from the BoS angle, none of the other (relatively few) bugs prevented me from getting the end result I wanted. Most issues seemed to be engine-related (I had stuttering end titles. I assume they are not supposed to stutter. I hope it was just me.). In the end, decided to rush to the ending and leave some quests for later (I definitely got my money's worth out of this game. But honestly, to revisit it for DLC, stability and BoS need to get looked at...)

I managed to get it with the skill defuse. Pretty sure I did too, but can't be certain as I had the codes, too.

Not sure about your train of thought here, I'd say that the difference is between it being worth buying immediately or just maybe getting it later for less... Unless you mean that are any of those DLCs worth revisiting the game a year later for a gamer who goes through more than 4-5 games a year, in which case I'd have to say, probably not... (this year Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas, i think)

YES! Due to FO3 I have a pathological hatred towards the DC metro.

Don't encourage them! Connecting dots was tolerable exactly once. The three piece puzzle game was tolerable twice, maybe three times. Planet scanning was hate at first sight. None of them were ever fun, just time sinks to space out story points and prolong the game a bit. Obviously I both did not include planet scanning as a "mini game" (it's neither mini, nor really a game), and it was in comparison to ME1, and any other comparable mini games I've seen Also agree with Oblarg on the score, ME1 was a lot better (as was Kasumi, where they seemed to be returning to the synth/orchestral fusion), but disagree vehemently on the unified cooldowns, and less so with the rest. The result of unified cooldowns was using an uneventful power every 3-6 seconds instead of using a few awesome powers once a minute. It robbed biotics of all viscerality made made them completely pedestrian and boring. Yeah, they were overpowered in ME1, but there were other ways to fix that without neutering them. Plus, the unified cooldowns makes power synergy utterly worthless unless you have two biotics in the group. I suppose this isn't as big a problem as it could be seeing as seemingly every other person in ME2 has biotics (simply another symptom of them becoming pedestrian and boring). Sounds like your issue is more with the changes in biotics (though I'm not really remembering this viscerality you keep bringing up, I'd call nostalgia, but I could just be forgetting) than with the universal cooldown itself.... as it looks like you'd be just ok with it, if you had stronger powers with a longer cooldown to balance? Because I defintely agree that they botched biotics in ME2, but personally think that it's only tangentially related to the universal cooldown... One of the reasons I think so highly of this game is that I wasn't a big fan of biotics in the first game (warp/lift was pretty much all I used), so this deficit is a lot smaller for me than a lot of people...

So downtuning a weapon's damage is now DUMBING IT DOWN? Overused expression is overused! (See what I did there?). In fact, I'd say that removing the insta-kill capability of a weapon is like the opposite of dumbing it down, if anything.

FWIW, I'm on the PS3 and rad-away is working just fine for me. I'm getting progressively more lock-ups, as well as some load screen hangs as the game progresses (passed 40 hours yesterday). Also moving outdoors is kind of jumpy, if I had to guess, I'd say it' some kind of streaming issue. Textures also failing to load occasionally, either had to move away or wait a while for them to "pop-in" :/ The only sure scripting issue I've run into is the work-aroundable Arcade not rejoining until I kick everybody else out issue, but I've had a few situations of not getting a dialogue option that I think I should be getting (key from doorwoman at gomorrah, lady killer option with lt. boyd etc.), but obviously those could be intentional.

Of course, we don't really have a comparison point, do we?

Shrug, I still think there is a difference between restricting access for minors and "censoring", actually touching the content. This is of course from the viewpoint where our constitution specifically mentions the possibility of limiting minors' access to violent/sexual etc. content, the market is too small make publishers care about maximising profit (see PG-13 violence vs. R violence) and there is 0 stigma in selling/buying k-18 movies and games (Fallout:NV is one, here)... So, yeah, here the system works just fine, but I admit that in the US it might affect the "creative direction" of the game.

Don't encourage them! Connecting dots was tolerable exactly once. The three piece puzzle game was tolerable twice, maybe three times. Planet scanning was hate at first sight. None of them were ever fun, just time sinks to space out story points and prolong the game a bit. Obviously I both did not include planet scanning as a "mini game" (it's neither mini, nor really a game), and it was in comparison to ME1, and any other comparable mini games I've seen Also agree with Oblarg on the score, ME1 was a lot better (as was Kasumi, where they seemed to be returning to the synth/orchestral fusion), but disagree vehemently on the unified cooldowns, and less so with the rest.

They've been holding on to the license for many years now, I just don't see them suddenly getting their **** together and managing to release a movie/tv-series/game using the license. There's a good reason Robert Jordan (r.i.p) was pissed off at Red Eagle... An educated guess would be that licenses generally revert to the licensors unless a product is released within a certain time frame. So they have to get their act together, or lose the money. Of course, these kinds of 'holding off the expiration' products are generally best described as ****.

Mmh, I'd say. My general take on sanbox games is that I spend enormous amounts of time doing nothing of value (which is why I intensely dislike them). With New Vegas, i feel like I'm actually doing a lot of useful things. Strange, but they definitely did something very right with this game!

Yes, if you wait a year you get a better deal. However, I have no interest in waiting a year. Yeah, and it's not like you couldn't get games for less if you waited before. Rolled in with expansions, when they had those. Or movies too. Or books.

No, but if there is no awareness of the illegal acts and abuses, then nothing will be done to prevent such things in the future, or, Heaven forbid, actually punish the people who have commited criminal acts.

- I'd tale a Mako with proper level design over both of those. And the failhead. -I assume you were playing the PC version of ME1? Seeing as the xpox version had just an unadorned QTE. I thought that the ME2 minigames were quite ok, but the ME1 one was the most awful thing I've had to repeatedly endure in a game.

You said it yourself, they are elected by us and as such the respond to us. For democracy to be effective there is a need for the public to have all available information to make an informed decision. Now we are not ignorant of what is happening over there. This. Also whistleblowing occasionally leads into the system working for a while, with criminal investigations starting into where laws were broken and not just into the people who revealed the breaking of the law documented in classified documents. Except, I disagree with "all AVAILABLE". I understand the need for classification. I'm sure you also understand it's potential for abuse (ie. protecting the guilty, not the innocent).

Yes. (Idolized).

I demand a picture of the scene or it didn't happen. In folded cardboard. EDIT: Despite drinking only lemonade last night I have a hangover today. I can only assume some sort of Pavlovian response to being in a pub. Looks like the Connection works both ways. Tee hee.