Nepenthe

This forum discriminates against Finns!

I'm not a huge mmo fan, but I'm looking forward to see what happens with The Old Republic.. What I find amusing is that the ToR boards have some serious arguments going back and forth over things such as whether the game should let the pc's have custom lightsaber colors so that jedi could have red and sith could be using blue/green/whatever.. Internet arguments can really start up over some bizarre things.. Well, when you collide star wars with mmorpgs, you're going to get a lot of obsessive people in one place. My list is basically now Deus Ex 3. I have New Vegas on preorder, but I'm not really sure what to expect - I'll be buying it, if for no other reason than to pay back a bit for the bandwidth etc. I'm using up on these forums. ToR is on the watch list, I don't think I'll buy into a MMORPG that requires me to boot into another OS, though. So I'll probably be waiting until the (IMHO inevitable) OS X client comes out.

I still think Mark Meer is a good voice actor, he just aims for something that more than a few people don't like. That still doesn't make him bad!

My favourites are Mordin and Legion

That's exciting. Where you looking to settle? Can't say. Literally, I have an NDA, which I take seriously. I had one like that. The kind of girl you just have to see smile and it's like the sun came out. Bastards. EDIT: note I'm not saying WHICH one. Just in case. :thumbsup:

Well, all other rules (including the don't **** where you eat, aka do not mess around at workplace) were broken, so I might as well ignore that one as well. The thing is, there is a not-insignificant probability that I'll be leaving the country for good in a few months. Probably distorts my view further.

Honestly, it doesn't hurt at the moment, at all. I really have a lot of fun with her, in some ways I can be more relaxed now than I ever could when we were together. Completely cutting her off is not an option due to the shared working environment etc. Besides, as long as I can't even imagine myself with another woman, it's just best to concentrate on work and getting what I can. When grad school is done, I'll have a lot more options in a lot of different ways.

More fun with Shadow Broker I'd assume than the glorified N7 mission that is Overlord. Overlord really is to ME2 what Bring Down the Sky was to ME1, an ultra-polished but utterly pointless side mission...

Not sure where the 'lite' comes in. ME2 has a lot more 'role' in it than quite a few games I've seen unanimously accepted as 'RPGs'. I can understand people preferring other approaches to gameplay, but does real time with pause/turn based equal RPG? Wasn't Deux Ex pretty universally accepted as an RPG?

No. I had an early night, and was just about to note what a superb night's sleep I had. Not even any nightmares. How is it now? Not good. Useless day work-wise, had lunch with the ex and walked her to the train station. God that woman looks so good I'm almost happy just looking at her.

Taking a third character through Shadow Broker. I think it's a testament to how good this DLC is that I can play it three times within 36 hours.

Have you been partying again, Wals? I have an epic headache.

More in-depth review. This will spoil levels and design stuff, but just a bare minimum of the story content in part A) and the 'end stuff' in B). A) B) If there's anything further you guys want to ask from me, I'll be happily to share my x360 and grad studentness induced joy of having gotten my paws on this release really early with you!

Party Elite? The Leader?

I posted my opinion in the other thread (I saw this more as a 'what IS an RPG?' kind of discussion than ME2 specific... I have a couple of meetings in the AM (which means starting now, and for some hours on), but I can post a gameplay-spoilerish review when I get away from those...

I'm THAT bad? Hardcore didn't seem to add any new drops or anything and at this point is probably more fun for me than near-godmode normal.

Of course it was. Same with Mass Effect 2 (I can't go with you Shepard.. unless you buy the DLC). More cliffhangers and loose ends the main game have, the more options there's to milk customers for few extra dollars. MMmmyeah. I agree in that both games seem to have 1-2 pretty obvious DLC loose ends (Morrigan in DAO, Kaidan/Ashley and Liara in ME2), but I think you're being a bit uncharitable in your estimate. All the three cases are outside the main focus of the game, classic extra content/expansion material. The two (well, three) ME1 characters are intentionally being kept out of the main ME2 game, so that they would be 'alive' for the sequel without needing to call for the 'obscure death rule'. I think that they've been pretty justified in the way they've handled the character based DLC so far. It's obvious that when DA2 was fast-tracked, their plans for DAO DLC came apart pretty quickly. I don't think the current version is what they had in mind, originally... In the case of the Lair, though, the content is awesomer than anything in the main game. So the extra time seems to have paid off. Now, when it comes to the weapon and armor packs, I agree with you, they're milking the customers for a few extra dollars. I can't bring myself to nerdrage over it, though.

*looks around* Yeah, looks like it's time for Godwin's law!

... Soldier gets incendiary (the best ammo type) and disruptor ammo already (and cryo, but that is, indeed, less useful on hardcore-insanity). Why on earth would you want to take a fourth ammo power? I can see boosting survivability through Geth Shield Boost or taking an activated offensive power like Reave (or mebbe Tali's shield jack, to hit the middle ground), but another ammo power? Nope, not computing! I've personally found that the power cooldown system (including the upgrades) works out pretty well, so I've never felt 'forced' into just gunning. Maybe I just enjoy it so much that picking off occasional stragglers or debuffing satisfies me. It's funny. No matter how 'dumbed down' and 'stripped of choice' people call this game, everybody still apparently finds a completely different way to play it.

Do you mean the stuff from the Redemption comic from Dark Horse? No. Thanks for setting off my gag reflex.

80% played as male Shepard? What is this i don't even. The majority of gamers are male, still that doesn't mean that they did all their playthroughs as male. I was more shocked that people played Soldier more than the other classes combined (less shocked that Engineer was the least played one.) I've had a lot more fun with sentinel and infiltrator, especially in Lair of the Shadow Broker (as I finally seem to have actually learned how to best use all of the Sentinel's abilities, and it's less of a 'tech armor + locust + tungsten ammo + warp when I need it' show than it used to be). I have the one soldier char that I don't rate pretty high, but the Revenant is fun (even if not that 'good').

So, the new DLC (Lair of the Shadow Broker) has been out for ~6 hours on the X360, and here's a spoiler free review of it: It rocks. There's quite a bit of dialogue and... other writing in the pack, and IMHO it's all top notch. Especially the 'other writing' you can access after you've beaten the mission itself. The boss fights are quite cool, and the grunts seem to use tactics from Kasumi (have flashbangs), which adds a bit of variety to gameplay. Not sure what else to say at this point. There's imho a pretty massive surprise at the end, and I don't mean storywise. Squadmates are mostly unvoiced, but Miranda at least had one line in the DLC - which was enough for suspension of disbelief. I can give this my unreserved recommendation. p.s. played on Normal, as I always do on my primary char. Will run through it on hardcore later today, will update impressions then, if anyone's interested.

This is bringing back high school memories.

Well, since I believe there are no known tiger populations there....no. Hence the "anything." Always wanted to go on a two month safari/camp/walkabout or something in those places, as well as Alaska. Armed with that video camera, of course. I'm a wildlife documentary filmmaker in my fantasy life. Heh. Phew. I was worried there, for a second.

That's just stupid-reckless, on everyone's part. Sure maybe if you raised it from a cub like in Born Free, but other than that...yeah. They're not tabby house cats where if you startle/annoy them you'll only get a minor scratch. If I ever get to Africa/Australia, I'm going armed with a huge expensive major-zoom video camera, because I'm not going anywhere near anything. You plan on seeing tigers in either of those places?