mkreku

Why did they even add undead to the Thief games? They were almost as bad as the mega monkeys in Far Cry..

I think a spy would like to keep a little lower profile than competing in the UFC. But it would be neat if there was an underground fight club in the game.

I tried Hellgate: London on an old Athlon XP 3200 with a Geforce 7800 GS (AGP x8) and 1 GB or 400 MHz memory and it ran smooth at butter. I don't imagine it would run any worse on newer equipment than that, even if you had the disadvantage of running Vista. Pretty cool game, even though it became very repetitive after a while. Much more so than either Diablo or Diablo 2.

Went on a pub round tonite. Drank 8 beers before ending up in the last place we were supposed to stay at. I'm horribly drunk right now and I'll be horribly hung over tomorrow, if I know myself right. But I had a good time so it was worth it. Notice how few spelling errors I have despite my drunken-ness. Firefox spell checker FTW!

One of the most atmospheric games I've ever played. Graphically (and stylistically) awesome with some really cool Russian ingredients thrown into the mix (makes the game feel very exotic, in a good way). The feel of the weapons and the sounds are also top notch. The story is only so-so though and the game has a few flaws in how quests are presented (and accomplished) and the respawn rate in certain areas is annoying. If you can live with the feeling of never really being able to accomplish anything (outside the main quest), then you'll probably be OK with it. I absolutely loved STALKER when I first played it, but when I tried to replay it with the latest patches I just couldn't get into it again. It was a classic case of "seen it all, done it all" for me. No replay value whatsoever.. for me at least. There's an expansion coming along soon.. ish. I am hoping the expansion will open up the game world a little more. For some reason GSC talked about STALKER having a 25x25 miles huge free roaming area around Chernobyl initially, but the actual game was made up of a linear map divided into small zones, all contained within a pathetically low fence that you just couldn't jump over.. Maybe the expansion will go back to that promise of a more open world? They have hinted at such at least.

To find out what the monkeys are Eurogamer thinks of the new shots: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=130125 "Generic" seems to be the keyword. I don't quite get it myself.. Is the world we live in "generic"? Does a game have to have dragons and orcs for it not to be generic? The word I would choose to describe what I think Obsidian is going for is "realistic", but I guess that's not Xtreme enough for the Halo generation.

We use AKG at work (I work at a sound studio): http://www.akg.com/personal/cproducts/powe...anguage,EN.html These are kind of expensive though, but if you want the best non-pro headphones.. At home I use a pair of Philips and it's like night and day. AKG has less expensive ones too. These are surround and wireless: http://www.akg.com/personal/cproducts/powe...anguage,EN.html Not legal in the US though so you'd have to import, if that's where you live Anyhow, I can recommend AKG as a brand. I have yet to be disappointed with them.

Wow.. the Leafs went golfing early this year.. Hey, guys, two more games to play! Come back! I think it was the janitor and a couple of bums from the stands that lost 8-2 to Ottawa last night.

Too much focus on combat in these pictures (for PR purposes, obviously). But the fourth picture looks good. I assume it's a picture of one of the apartments the main character can acquire? I would love to see more of the world though. And vehicles, if there are any!

Has anyone here ever played a game where motorcycles handled well? NOT BLOODY LIKELY!! Skip the motorcycles, but bring me Citroen love.

There is actually a noticeable difference in speed between 5400 and 7200 on a laptop. Around 25% difference in fact (naturally depending on brand, application used, etc.) . Just that.. it doesn't really matter to most people since if a game takes 20 seconds to load on a 7200, it takes 25 seconds on a 5400 (worst case scenario).. Not a big deal for most people. The biggest difference between a 5400 and a 7200 is power consumption and heat dissipation. I have never heard that a laptop 7200 hard drive wear out quicker than a 5400 argument before so I'll not comment on that part.

I wonder if Obsidian is feeling the pressure from this other game? I mean, they are not in the same genre, but they are set in the same universe and will inevitably be compared on some level. Gearbox are known for creating high quality games and this title should be no exception. What if the Aliens: Colonial Marines gets a metacritic score of 90+ and Obsidian Aliens only gets like 70+..?

Microsoft doesn't allow developers to implement mouse/keyboard support into their games though (supposedly because it would make the Xbox 360 too much like a computer). So yeah, the Xbox 360 (as well as every other console) is limited by the controller.

The 8600M is a pretty decent GPU, but it's not especially future proof (not that any GPU's really are..). If she has a lot of money to spend, I could recommend the ROCK brand of laptops. The ROCK Xtreme 770 (ignore the cheesy name) with the 8800M GTX 512 MB is a safer bet for at least a few years to come. http://www.rockdirect.com/viewNotebook.php...me=XTREME%20770 That's like a $3000-$4000 laptop though..

Isn't that the same as a car manufacturer saying "We can only build ten good cars. Every car after that will be bad because our employees are sick of building the same car over and over again"? Don't forget that being a game developer is still a job. It may be menial sometimes, but that's the nature of jobs. Not every square inch of a world has to be filled with deep and meaningful dialogue. I was replaying Deus Ex last night and stumbled across Shannon flirting with a random guard. Not deep, not meaningful, but oh so important for building an atmosphere and that feeling of "you'll always find something around the corner if you bother to look". Besides, I know a few developers who can be wide in scope AND provide great content. To be top of the line, you need to put in top of the line effort. I'm pretty sure the Obsidian team themselves can decide what their style is or should be. My view of them is that they have world class writers. If they can manage to get themselves world class coders and world class world/content builders, they would be near unbeatable. I have high hopes for Alpha Protocol. I thought Bloodlines had excellent writing and character design, but they completely failed in making a believable world. No matter where I went in that game, I felt like I was playing in a doll house or a box. All games focus on smaller areas of interest placed in bigger, more generic areas. Even the greatest sand box games ever do this. The trick is providing the player with a balanced enough world where getting from one point of interest to another is as much fun as interacting with said points of interest. This can be done by comparatively small means, if you've built your game world interesting enough. Hide a hidden package/unique jump somewhere (GTA: Vice City), execute a random script that moves around the map (Boiling Point's faction firefights), make an obscure path that leads to a unique enemy or chest (the Gothic games), or just randomly add small signs of dedication and love all over the place (all really good games do this). It doesn't necessarily have to be as complex as well-written quests or intricate dialogues. Small things matter too. I agree whole-heartedly. But I disagree with your view on games. You took as an example of non-linearity Planescape: Torment. That made me realize we probably think the same, just on different scales. Torment to me is a completely linear and boxed-in game. No matter that you sometimes have a few side-quests luring you from one small, square map to another, it still doesn't feel open-ended to me. I see your point though, but I need much, much more freedom than that for it to fall under my definition of non-linearity/open-endedness.

Do you honestly think they follow rules? Are you one of the people who think Guantanamo isn't a concentration camp?

Everytime I tried to drive a vehicle in Halo, the stupid thing behaved like it was on ice.. and gravity was one tenth of earth gravity. I usually ended up upside down within 30 seconds. But it was acceptable since it's a science fiction game. It would have been horrible if the same physics had been in a GTA game though.

You need to get a hold of God of War & God of War 2 & Resident Evil 4 & Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King & Bully & ... There are LOTS of quality games available for you if this is your first PS2.

I wouldn't mind seeing more of Ovechkin either. I like his bulldozer style.

Haha :D Go Ferg!

I've gone back to replaying Deus Ex again. For the billionth time. But I discovered a very embarrassing thing today: . I can't believe I've missed that all this time! It's such a major event! I've apparently always escaped through the window before..

I had an exam today. Did not exactly ace it, but I suspect I managed to scrape by. I hate computer science exams where they demand that you write code on paper. This time it was assembly code.. 200 lines of code to write "Hello world!" on the screen.

Where can I find it? I'm opposed to the death penalty..

I replayed GTA: Vice City this Easter (only game my mom's new guy has that is playable.. worst taste in games EVER) and it reminded me how much more fun vehicles can make a game. And vehicles got even better in the semi-sequel, San Andreas! I have to re-install that one.. ANYHOW, please Obsidian, if you're going for big open areas, please include vehicles! They can be so much fun if done right! I wouldn't mind a motorcycle either..

You need to put your TV on a diet. It's fat.