Nepenthe

There's really not much to it. The console environment pretty much locks you into the single character for most of the time, which kind of limits the tactical aspect of the game. With the controls I have, I wouldn't dream of even trying to play on anything harder than the console 'normal' difficulty (reduced friendly fire - no damage but effects like freeze and knockdown still hit). So far the only battle where I've used Baldur's Gatesque levels of combat micro-management is . Even there, it was more a question of blizzard+waking nightmare+ cone of cold on the mooks and everything else - Ali, archer Leliana and a 2h-offtank Warden - on the Boss. The warrior roling is painfully clear. We have tanks (blade and board), dps (dual wield - but inferior to the rogue version of the same) and the hybrid offtank (2h). Yet, probably due to the reeally slow hit rate of 2h tanks, apart from the all the big kills I did wound up going to the sword n' boarder... My - obviously unpatched - mage playthrough was sort of reduced to comboing cone of cold and stonefist along with snap fireballs (short casting time, ok damage, knockdown - excellent spell to give some thinking time and soften up a bit). If I do another one, I need to seriously rethink the way I build a mage - especially if I have two in the party. Sorry if there's a lot of typos in my posts at the moment - I'm confined to my laptop and it's throwing regular fits, moving the parser all around while I'm typing

Atari is apparently doing something wrong. This is the second time this year they are getting sued over something to do with D&D. If you read over the court docs that describe what Turbine sued them for, it sounds like they not only failed to help fund the release of DDO in North America, but then again in Europe. Turbine is apparently capable of surviving a release bomb... considering they spent their own money on the two major releases of DDO without help from Atari. http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf I think Hasbro/Wizards realised a long time ago that they basically gave away the DnD license - I'm sure their legal department has been waiting to pounce on Atari to reclaim the license the first chance they get... Not that I really care, I haven't finished any post 2e AD&D ruleset D&D crpg.

I got GTA 4. Then i got bored of GTA 4 real fast. Which was surprising given how long i spent playing Vice City and San Andreas. I'm a big fan of story-driven games, characterisation and all that, but not when it gets in the way of random acts of violence and general mayhem. GTA 4 was too much like hard work. Those were my exact sentiments as well. I think the game must appeal to people who don't have to juggle friends and girlfriends calling them constantly in real life at inopportune moments.

Some more tactical thoughts, now that I've joined the ranks (albeit in conscripted in the PS3 Alienage)... Third playthrough with a fairly unoptimised rogue dual wielder. Had to check I hadn't accidenttally knocked the difficulty to easiest. Momentum, Riposte and Coup de Grace is just painfully good. Tactical problem with the system is that all characters (except mages) are one trick ponies. Game design problem is that the pony has been picked for you in advance, and, in the case of Wynne, the character's been forced even further into a role than would have been necessary. Another possibility on my current, third playthrough is that I'm working along the lines they want, and not forcing characters into different roles from the ones Bio wanted (not making Morrigan a straight blaster from the decidedly crowd control role she has, not making leliana a dual wielder...) - and it's a lot easier. The non-warrior warrior Zevran and the complete overlap of Sten and Oghren still baffle me. It's too bad that I relly like to play offensive melee characters, as it means that basically half the team would need to be forced into another role than the one they have been designed to excel in (and looking at the specialisations on Sten and Oghren, I use the term excel loosely). Still, I've had tons of fun with the game - especially the console version - as I've been bedridden for a month.

So the multiplayer is being saved for the Beta Protocol?

I think it's pretty much tied to what they used to have. Jade Empire looks like the abovementioned junk on my gear, and that's the extent of my interest in testing (I have Dark Corners of the Earth that would work, and Deus Ex: Invisible War that I would like to work, but which won't) so I never got into those anyway. :/

I was just about to come here and comment on that aspect of the game. How many times can you experience dying as a part of the narrative? Hah! And here, gentlemen, we have a text-book example of how not to reply to a post with spoiler tags.

I totally though that the ending fight was like MGS4's but MW2 took itself way more seriously. With MGS you can always go back to "oh that crazy Kojima!", but MW is pretty much dead serious... It is? Am I the only one who found the less-obvious spoof

They probably got saved for MW3 as well. In fact, I can't remember seeing as obvious a sequel-tease since KOTOR 2. Which of course should mean that no MW3 will come for several years until a "modern warfare online" gets announced...

I don't think you heard of the last delay, unlike I did. Supposed to get mine today, wonder if I'm going to. *waves at EA Nordic*

Cool! Tell me, what new stuff did they include? You'll have to ask them that. All I know is what they tell me.

No, I don't. I don't give a toss about the confirmation or non-confirmation of an expansion pack as long as my copy of DAO is in limbo and unlikely to work as it should when it gets there. You know, being annoyed I decided to get it for the better platform that gets the worse games, ie. PS3 over x360. Stealth-edit: My whole point was that people make these wild assumptions based on "ZOMG THEY HAVEN'T DENIED AN EXPANSION PACK" when the fact is that nobody can say anything either way. Then you got all hung up on the two letters and it went to the toilet from there.

This is irrelevant of the EA PR department. Frankly the EA influence is overstated. There are some restrictions due to the fact that we're a part of a publicly traded company now, and all the rules and protocol that goes along with that, but even if BioWare was independent they'd still exercise prudence when it comes to discussing the possibility of future projects. Allright, let's just say that irrespective of the EA acquisition (but it IS the EA PR department, right?), the info channels have been locked down tighter than a duck's ass? I'm hardly the one to go point my finger at EA in every situation, but as somebody who preordered the game months ago and still has to receive it (due to an EA ****-up, albeit a local one), I think I have a pretty good reason to be displeased at the moment. And frankly, there's some seriously absurd stuff going on - like the Blood Dragon Armor apparently having different (=worse) stats on the PS3 version than on the other versions - and nobody is saying anything. I won't go into the amount of reported technical issues on the PS3 version (or should I say the ps3 port of the x360 version) since I have yet to experience them myself. I consider myself a fairly level-headed bloke, I generally understand the reasons behind company actions (to the point where I tend to get stamped with the fanboy mark by the usual haters), but at the moment, it's very hard.' Edit: I think you misunderstood my point - perhaps I could have phrased it better. English is my third language, it's hard to get nuances across sometimes.

The devs on the Bio forums are completely enslaved to the EA PR department and can't talk about having or not having taken a leak without prior approval. Absolutely no point in reading anything into it. As far as I know, there is no set limit on the size of the expansion you can release. The problem is that there are wildly differing HD sizes in the consoles (especially as PS3s use regular 2,5" HDs anybody - and I mean anybody, my mother could do it - can swap), so some people are going to have 20gb drives, most people 40-80gb drives and some 120-160gb ones just from having bought their consoles at different times and PS3 users can have drives up to 500gb at the moment.

I caved in and bought this one. I blame EA Scandinavia for misplacing the PS3 DAO Collector's Editions, my girlfriend for having one of those 'running cold' days and myself for rather buying this overpriced game over the half-as-expensive Killzone 2 which I didn't really want.

1. Baldur's Gate II SoA+ToB 2. Deus Ex 3. Kotor 3. Mass Effect 5. Kotor2 6. Max Payne 2 7. Baldur's Gate 8. Secret of the Silver Blades (mac os version with better graphics) 9. Red Alert II w. Yuri's Revenge 10. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin I'm starting to think the PS3 might not have been such a good purchase, after all Note: I don't have DAO yet!

TBH, it was rather late and I had been partying. But my point is that I can't remember the last time I haven't been aware of multiple projects Bioware's been working on. ME2 is coming out shortly (and very close to DAO), and after that the only confirmed project with an actual release coming in foreseeable future is TOR - something that I have to keep reminding myself of, as I have no interest in MMO(RPG)s. Yeah, I see your point, but it's a new situation, right? And unless Bio's going to go all Activision on us (having different teams working on a series to pump out sequels at 1-year intervals), the next release would be on some different franchise. I don't see a TOR/ME3/DAO2 cycle coming unless something's changing radically there, there are too many teams unaccounted for barring the Acti-approach... And I ain't forgetting AP or Deus Ex 3 - just not their place in this thread

Since we're now getting games ~3 months apart, I wonder how long a dry spell is going to follow ME2. AFAIK, nothing else apart from TOR has been announced. That leaves Edmonton and Montreal completely unaccounted for (apart from the comments on DAO2, but I kind of doubt it's going to be the next one out).

Ah, I see the old 'reload' tactic from Baldur's Gate I days is still viable. No, really, there were some insanely lethal random encounters in there, right?

I'm so glad I did the whole 90s text-based MUD thing. It got me completely fed-up of MMO action in high school so I've been able to waste my life on something else ever since.

You know what, I think they have a pretty healthy attitude towards the loonies there - as in they know who the loonies are. I just played quite a bit of mass effect over the weekend, wanted to get the final talent achievements done, as well as go back to an earlier save and take my favourite character through Pinnacle Station, which I had not played previously at all... (Curiously, it looks like I created a new end-save in the process, instead of overwriting the previous one. This character shows up twice in the 'new game+' options. I was under the impression that one character = one end save, no matter how many completions. Hm.) So I had some sort of ME2-relevant thoughts... NPCs: I think Wrex and Ashley are the best of the bunch. Wrex has gotten most of the hype he deserves, but I find Ashley to be quite well-written as well as a lot less vanilla than... some of the others. Garrus and Tali... they both have potential, so it's good they're (probably) coming back for a second round. They're still clearly second tier, though, being neither as memorable/brilliant as Wrex, nor getting as much air time as Ashley. Kaidan and Liara... I won't go into it, apart from the fact that they are as vanilla as it gets, as well as being in the spotlight pretty much the whole time. Sad to see my two favourite NPCs (probably) cut into a small(er) role, but if it gets rid of the two not-so-good ones and gives room to breathe to the two with the most potential, I guess I'm looking forward to the results. Pinnacle Station: It was ok. I think that the concept was flawed, and Demiurge actually delivered quite well based on what they had to work with. The environments are pretty much recycled and the are cinematics a bit wonky (but mostly ok - some definitely stand out from the ME par in a bad way). The gameplay itself is fun enough, at least when it's the first chunk of 'new' Mass Effect after grinding stasis and ai hacking (among others) for two days. I was running a pretty much maxed out Vanguard/Shock Trooper and was quite warmed up, so it wasn't exactly challenging. I think I had to retry 2 missions to make it to the first (out of 13). I thought the reward was really cool and quite well done. In the end, worth the M$ points, even if I wouldn't describe it as "substantial" in the way Bring Down the Sky was. For future (ME2/other bio) DLC, I think BDtS has set the bar to what the customers are going to be expecting - even if it was the result of recycling a lot of assets that had been cut from the main game. Had fun with ME1 after a 6-month break, am looking forward to the second one and am also now ready to pick up DAO when I get back next weekend.

(B)romance or no, I hope the ME1 NPCs don't just get the bridge dropped on them... We'll see how they turn out, but so far none of the new ones are blowing up my skirt, so to speak. Edit: Oh yeah, the cover animations look A LOT nicer. Charge is a bit O_O, though!

For the record, I'm getting mine next week and am appreciating all threads on the subject I can follow without the fear of massive story spoilers.

Just two?