mkreku

Finally some info! Well, except Volourn will still claim there's been lots of info on the public boards that are just as good as official press releases!!1 Doesn't sound too promising for my tastes, but it's good to hear that they didn't can their one, big PC project.

I hate finding magic items on every rat I kill! I want a low-magic world! Like the original Pool of Radiance. Ok, so maybe it wasn't low-magic, but I didn't find out about the "detect magic" spell until years later

Oops. I only saw a Gamerankings link when I scanned the thread.

$250 jeans, $200 shoes, $100 t-shirt. If someone wanted to rob me today, I'd be naked. Or maybe they'd leave me in my $5 boxer-briefs.

Toronto won! We're now at 7 wins, 7 losses! Yay, the Cup is ours!! ) And Malkin is amazing. Damn, he scores some Ovechkin-like goals. I envy the Penguins.

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=38314 Worthplaying scores it at 9.0/10.0. Not shabby at all.

Oohh, dangerous thread! My spoiler senses are tingling!

I found a review of Gothic 3 that I thought was funny: http://www.rewiredmind.com/review/gothiciii RewiredMind gives Gothic 3 the score 2/10! I particularly enjoyed reading the comments underneath the article )

Wow, I'm sorry but that screenshot is unbelievably bad. It really looks like the games did back when 3D accelerators were uncommon. Think Daggerfall! I do hope the game looks a tad bit better on my Radeon X1950XTX.. I'm not a graphics whore!

Then there must be something wrong with my version, because for me it's (I think) four or five enemies at once, max. It's like there's a limitation to the game engine or something. Sometimes there are seemingly more enemies, but only four visible at the same time. But at the exact moment you kick one into some spikes, a new one jumps out of the dark. And it continues that way until you've kicked like 12 enemies into spikes (you'll never know, because corpses disappear into thin air). Never more than four (or five, gaah, not sure!) at the same time though. Weird. But of course, every once in a while I swing my sword (or shoot a fireball) because my "kick energy" is diminished. It regenerates damn fast though so I'll usually end up kicking everyone anyhow. About the improvisation bit (that one of you mentioned earlier): I thought it was cool, in fact that was what I was having most of my high hopes based on when getting this game. But because of the excessive amounts of spike beds, barrels, cliffs, etc. available to you all the time, there's no need to improvise. Everything is laid out before you. It's just.. too much. If they instead had let me try to use the few and hidden aspects of the environment to my advantage (like in one of the preview videos to this game, where they cast ice on the ground and an orc slipped and fell down a cliff), it would have been great. Like, if there had not been obvious spike beds leaning against the walls everywhere, but instead the "spikes" had been built into the environments (for example, a broken window.. a twisted steel fence.. a thorny bush.. anything!) it would have felt like an accomplishment to actually kill someone that way. But when you have a trap/spike bed/camp fire in every direction, it's like you almost can't kick someone without them insta-dying. That just plain sucks and gets old very quickly.

It's really more of a football kick (or soccer kick, depending on where you're from)..

Well, I built my character around ordinary melee, and added the basic sneak, bow and magic abilities. With the first level of sneaking, I've so far never failed to sneak up on an enemy and kicking him off a cliff. Or into a spike bed. Or into the next trap. Not that it matters, because you can just run up to him and insta-kill him by kicking him even if he spots you! Sure, it is possible (and even fun) to experiment with the combat system for a while. But you are on the boat (which, by the way, was one of the dumbest moments in the game, when you were supposed to "defend" the plank leading up to the ship and the enemies came.. one by one.. waiting to be kicked off into the water), which is early in the game. Maybe you've just not gotten bored with it yet? How do you know that, by Chapter 9+, you won't feel the same way as me? No matter if I buy a game or have to review it, I still want to complete it before uninstalling it. Judging by the time it's taken me to get to Chapter 9+, I'll complete it tonight. Truth be told, I'm not really enjoying it, but I want to see the ending.

Screw it, I'm getting this: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=69380&page=1 10/10 from Eurogamer.net.

Well, I've finally gotten the chance to play this game for myself, and I happen to agree with the most of the reviewers. The game is stupid, plain and simple. The story is only there to.. actually, I don't even know why they have a story in the first place. It's so blatantly obvious what's going to happen from the moment you step into the game until the (I assume) end. I'm on Chapter 9 or 10 (I think, it was late), but I don't figure it'll change much after that. What's most annoying is that while the combat felt rewarding and interesting after the first few fights, it has now turned into such a ridiculous state of affairs it's actually painful to play. The game basically consists of "fight arenas" connected by really ugly corridors. These fight arenas can consist of a town square, an underground cavern, a courtyard, whatever, but what connects them all (except for the corridors..) is that they're all placed there for you to fight in and nothing else. I mean, you walk through the boring corridor (where nothing happens) until you see the arena. When you step onto the arena, you immediately see what looks like beds of spikes.. everywhere. There are swing traps.. everywhere. And last, but not least, there are rickety wooden ledges holding tons of barrels on their weak legs.. everywhere. No matter if you're underground, in a temple or on a courtyard, these elements are always present.. for no apparent reason. Absolutely ridiculous. It's like the designers didn't even try to make the decorations in the different arenas plausible. Apparently all orcs/goblins/undead just enjoy setting up death traps all around them, waiting for a happy adventurer to come and kill them in a showcase of Havok physics. It's impossible to believe in the game or the game world because of this. And the boot function.. Geez, I don't know where to start. I have a sword. A big fire-earth sword I built myself. I also have a bow. A nice bow that.. uh.. shoots fire or something. Then there's magic. Lots of cool spell effects.. and stuff. Do I use it? NO! Whenever there's a fight, all you have to do is boot everything around, and I mean everything! I can kick a stone sarcophagus 20 meters across the room to crush three orcs at once. I can kick a wooden barrel 50 meters across a chasm and crush a goblin. I can kick a skeleton halfway across the room to be impaled on spikes. And oh boy, are those enemies fond of standing near high ledges with their backs turned at you. I've lost count of how many enemies I've just booted off the map without even the slightest struggle. Because of this, the game is fast; there's simply no challenge you can't kick your way past. The "hidden" parts were fun to try to find at first (especially after you got the rope bow), but after a while you'll notice that the developers, in their eagerness to show off everything in the game at once, actually gives you all these hidden bonuses.. albeit at a somewhat later time. On to the boss fights. These too take place on really obvious arenas (you always know when something is up and have plenty of time to save beforehand), filled with all manners of deathtraps. Not that you'll ever need any of those. Meet a cyclops? Gee, what luck that there's a ballista here in this protected area. Another cyclops? Gee, I'm lucky that there's a protected area where I can shoot my bow in its eye without ever getting hit. It's either that or you just run. The game will clearly show you which option it wants you to take. No. Challenge. Another pet peeve of mine is the graphics. Some levels are brilliant, no doubt about that. But often they're extremely repetitive, with bland textures and not enough details. Some places actually look like they've use one or two textures for the entire level! The character models are the typical clich

Uhm.. anything is wicked fun in a room filled with shrieking college girls.

Anandtech has posted a really interesting, in-depth pseudo-review of the Killer NIC card which we laughed so hard about a few months back. Now that I understand the technology behind the card, I'm not laughing anymore. It's more like an embarrassed giggle. Anyhow, here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2865&p=1 Lengthy, but a good read.

Thanks for the review. It was actually quite good and thorough. Now go and play more until you reach the world map, lazy bum! I want to know if it's "open ended" enough for me to not hate it. I absolutely hated FFX (the only other Final Fantasy I own except some old one on Gameboy..) because of the extreme linearity and corridor-like maps. Please tell me Final Fantasy 12 is better in this regard!

I feel so left out. I can't get hold of Final Fantasy 12 and I cant get hold of Neverwinter Nights 2 and I am still waiting for Gothic 3 to be finalized even though it's been out a month or so already. At least I broke down and got Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. It's exactly as stupid as the reviews said it would be.. Going for the "Dumbest Game Ever" award.

Damn these ****ing import rules and all their **** to hell. Apparently I have to get a modchip for my Playstation 2 if I want to play Final Fantasy 12 this year. The US import version is released in two days, while the PAL version still doesn't even have a confirmed release date! I'm going nuts waiting for the third patch for Gothic 3 to be released.

Actually, it was so un-scary that I never even knew it was supposed to be scary until I read about it in some article like the above linked one. That's when it occurred to me that those bubblegum coloured demons actually were supposed to be demons and not some cuddly toy.. thingies. But no, the actual game never scared me.

I guess it's an eSATA cable I have absolutely no idea, but it looks exactly like a firewire cable. Apparently they're not compatible though.

Clean sha.. Oh, rhetorical. Nevermind.

When you have 12-15 games installed, it's very difficult knowing which registry entries you can remove and which you can't. But I'm sure it's possible.

Not necessarily. The eSATA interface allows the exact same amount of bandwidth as an internal SATA. I have one of those on my Abit AW9D-MAX motherboard. Best damn motherboard I've ever owned, by the way.

Hmm.. Not really. But I think we were too small to get the really early copies.