mkreku

From what I've read so far about the Xbox 2, it'll be close to identical to a normal PC. With a little luck, that means Obsidian's third title will be aimed for Xbox 2, but it'll also be very easily ported to PC. Another neat detail is that Xbox 2 will come with a version containing a mouse and keyboard.. that might mean that even though it's a console game (with all its inherent advantages) we won't have to endure dumbed down console controls. We just need a little luck!

A bit off-topic, but.. I once spent 100$ on a single game. Expensive? Not really. I used to play this mud (www.medievia.com) and if you "donated" money to them, you got these two great items that were strangely well-balanced (I played for two years without them, and four years with them). During that time I logged an amazing 5600 hours in the game! How's that for value? 100$ seemed expensive at the time, but thinking about it now, it was a bargain.

All the swedish newspapers have at least one April Fools joke. Every year. It doesn't hurt someone's credibility to publish a joke once a year, on a day everyone knows will be full of foolishness. By taking it too seriously, though, you're kind of making a fool of yourself. The city I grew up in has a rocket science center in the middle of it. They fire up satellites regularly, so when the biggest local newspaper published the news that new overhead photos would be taken of the city, and everyone who wanted to be on the photos should go out into the city streets around noon and wear something red, it wasn't really anything strange. Most people got the joke, but on that day there were an over-abundance of retired people casually strolling the streets of the city.. all wearing bright red colours. Best april fools joke evah!!1!!eleven. (Either that or when Sweden's biggest newspaper published the news that an ordinary light-butter brand, applied to one's face, would give you a perfect tan in minutes.. and that particular brand sold out in almost the entire country.)

My opinion is worth nothing! Sorry for wasting your time by writing this (and consequently making you read it). Please hurt me now.

Lara Croft.

I voted for Wizardry VII, because that's probably the most difficult game I've ever played. Also, I think it's the high point of D. W. Bradley's gaming career so far. We'll soon see if Dungeon Lords can top that one.

I feel so unoriginal, but I also have to vote for Ultima IV. It was so groundbreaking when it arrived, with its virtue system, its huge world and its text parser dialogues. I had never seen anything even remotely like it at the time, and it played like a dream. I still, to this day, have never completed that damn game. Of course, Ultima V was the better game, but it wasn't as awe-inspiring as it had already been done once before..

When I bought my Commodore 64 games I used to pay 99-149 SEK a piece. Nowadays I pay 339-449 SEK for a PC game. (I paid 449 SEK for NHL 2005 and then they go on a strike!! How annoying is that?!) Prizes on games have gone up, while prices on computer parts have gone down. A 20 Mb harddrive for the Commodore Amiga used to cost around 10000 SEK. Now you'll get a 200 Gb harddrive for 895 SEK. I don't know what all this means, but someone might be able to draw some conclusions from my numbers

The demo is actually a repacked version of the press demo that was released in the summer of 2004. The finished game will have a lot more functions and I am willing to bet my left ball that most of the bugs found in the demo are gone when the full game is released. After all, Dungeon Lords has been delayed a bundle of times already. They have to have spent that time on something, and the bugs seem most logical. Another thing that's in the demo but not in the full game are all the loot and spells/scrolls you get. They were put in so that players would have a chance to try out a lot of things in a limited playing space. Tip: If you still have the demo installed, try backflipping over the mountain that surrounds the playing area in the demo. In one of the lower spots it's possible to get over and it turns out they actually included a lot of land into the demo, but cut it off using that mountain. It's looking really good outside! There are lots of these tips on the Dungon Lords forum: http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/forums/...isplay.php?f=39

When I bought a console and had to choose between Xbox and PS2, I didn't care which machine was stronger. I only looked at the library of games and which games suited me the best. It turned out that most of the games for the Xbox are also availible for the PC, while games like Kingdom Hearts, GTA and a few more are either PS2 exclusive or premiered first on that machine. That made it an easy choice. But I do agree that the PS2 memory cards suck bigtime. Why doesn't Sony release bigger cards?! 128Mb or 256Mb wouldn't be expensive at all nowadays. Even 1 Gb is affordable. Greedy Sony bastards..

Make sure you explore the landscape around the town before entering the sewers. That way you'll enjoy the later parts of the demo more. I used the outside parts as a playing ground to get used to the weird controls and to gain a few agility points. The demo is surprisingly big and there are a few nice things to find and see.

No, it's not the same. At all. Even comparing the two is idiotic.

You forgot "download my pr0n" in that list..

Could I suggest you rename the setting "Lothayron" to " Lotharyon" instead? No? Damn, I thought it felt better saying Lotharyon..

This is not true. My main tactic in Gothic was to get up on some difficult to get to place and then fire away at unsuspecting enemies below. They will notice you when they get hit (duh!) but they do not need to detect you beforehand. I've used this tactic a billion times. You are doing something wrong.

That's your opinion. I think being able to watch my own character, the top of 4 houses, some enemies hiding behind a bush, and another group of enemies trying to ambush me behind my back for 5 minutes without anything happening unless I end the round is idiotic (also known as turn based, isometric viewed combat). That's my opinion. But what's the point of posting our opinions here?

Ok, I've played the demo now. And I like it! The combat is awkward, yes. Exactly as Gothic was in the beginning. It's slow, has a "floaty" feeling about it, and an auto-aim or lock-on would help immensely. But I spent a lot of experience points (I love the character development by the way!) in agility, and voila, the combat became much more fluent and much faster. Ranged weapons use some sort of auto-aim, based on your skill in the weapon of choice. It works well as you do more damage, shoot faster and hit more often as you spend more points in your ranged skills. I never figured out the magic, but I managed to "equip" a few spells (to kill a big and nasty troll) and the spell effects looked real nice. Also, dual wield looked real good. The camera is another thing that feels weird in the beginning. You're not in total control of your own view, as the camera floats around in the direction you turn. At first this makes the entire game feel slow and unresponsive, but after a while that feeling disappeared and I started enjoying the game instead. As a matter of fact, the game is not slow at all, it is pretty quick. Animations look a little awkward though, especially when climbing ladders or climbing ledges. Another thing I really liked was how the game handled lock picking (I created a rogue). It's a good mix of player skill and character skill, as you have to press certain symbols at the right time when a coloured progress bar moves across a row of different symbols. Sometimes you only need to press one symbol, sometimes up to three (as far as I got anyhow) and the speed of the bar is determined by your lockpick skill versus the difficulty of the lock. Much better system than the one used in Gothic! The story of a game is impossible to determine from a short demo, but I liked how the game handled dialogue with NPC's. You get a few highlighted keywords to choose from and when you've heard the response to them, they're greyed out, and sometimes new highlighted options appear. The dialogue in the game seems to be voiced (which is a great plus for me) and the little I heard sounded good. Another neat detail is that, yes, the game does contain a lot of hack'n'slash, BUT.. (big but) ..you can turn down random encounters if you wish! Why doesn't all games have that option? Anyhow, it does reduce the amount of stupified combat alot. For me, the combat wasn't a big deal (except with the troll) so I'll probably keep the random encounters at normal, but it's a great option to have nonetheless. I played through the entire demo (which was a lot longer than I had expected) all the way through to the theatre door, and when that sign about "Thank you for playing blah blah" popped up, I felt I wanted to see more. That's always a good sign for a game.

I wouldn't mind seeing Obsidian doing Baldur's Gate 3, actually. Perhaps they could make it interesting enough even for me to like it (I never liked Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2).

I'm downloading the demo right now. I'll post my impressions later. The reason I'm interested in this game is mainly because it reminds me of Gothic and I'm practically starved for a good 3D RPG. Simple (and stupid) as that Also, co-op is a great plus, as is the fact that I think D.W. Bradley has done some pretty good RPG's in the past. Several people have mentioned the combat being pretty awkward, but I'll wait till I've tried it out myself.

The thing is.. I bought my mouse for 49 SEK and my keyboard for 75 SEK (6.85$ and 10.49$ respectively). It wouldn't be impossible for a game company to include a mouse and keyboard for a PS2 game. Of course, the game box would be huuuge.

But for the sake of speculation: if it isn't Atari or Bioware publishing their next title, who will? Or who do you guys think would do Obsidian justice and let them take the time needed to finish the product? I guess EA is out of the question.. If Dreamcatcher was bigger, I'd like to see them handle the publishing of Obsidian products. They seem to be very patient with D.W. Bradley and his Dungeon Lords-project right now. It's slipped past several deadlines already, and every time Dreamcatcher sends out press releases saying "D.W. Bradley needed more time and he got it". I like that attitude, even though I want to play the game now. What about Take 2? At least they don't seem to be afraid of publishing mature rated titles, and they're as big as they come.

I wonder what this will become. Right now I'm not very interested (because of the Diablo references) but who knows.. It might still be something good. I like first person, but I hate Diablo-style gameplay. Also, if it's true about the randomly generated levels, than that sucks. That's one of the worst features of the original Diablo. A computer never seems to know when a level needs something extra (like a boss/npc/chest/secret).

Haha, I use that review as my "worst review ever"-example, everytime the subject pops up in a discussion. It's so apparent he never played the game. He almost sounded like Volourn did when he tried to claim he played Gothic 2 in another long forgotten thread