Raithe

Giving Space Rangers 2 Reboot a try. I feel I'd actually quite enjoy this game.. if I could actually do more then get blown up by pirates past the introduction. The fact that their weapons do about 4 times more damage then mine and fire about twice as rapidly seems to keep having me blow up before I can actually do anything to upgrade my ship....

It's not a movie about character or plot really... it's a fairly fun film that's about a bunch of actions stars enjoying themselves rather than taking anything too seriously. I mean, Jet Li doing the whole " I want more money, I'm small. I work harder then you guys do." argument with Stallone was fairly amusing.

Hm, I was just poking around on the DE3 website and the first time I'd actually read through the faq they've put up.. some interesting things that I'm not sure if there's been much commentary on before..

Uplink had the cyberpunk "feel" to it. A nice enough gui representation that made you feel as if you were actually involved in some form of hacking.. rather then feeling like it was just some..puzzle mini-game .

While the AP minigame was fairly fast.. there wasn't that much of an out-n-out "hacking" feel to it. From the sounds of it, the DX3 minigame for hacking is something that's going to push more buttons for the atmosphereic feel of hacking. That could be part of the whole "yes!" response...

Oh, it's also got a brief role for Charisma Carpenter (of Buffy and Angel fame) and she's still looking quite good.. The basketball court scene is both amusing and well choreographed for the brief violence there..

It's been about 10 years since i last played ID... this is bringing back some fuzzy memories...

The Expendables.. Fairly fun in that fairly mindless way. Ticks all the boxes for action pieces as an 80's action flick would. Plenty of explosions at the end. A rather loud fully automatic combat shotgun let loose in a small corridor.. Schwarzenegger and Willis were only brief cameos.. But you do get to see Lundgren and Jet Li fight it out which is entertaining.

You don't actually need names to figure out who an informant is. If you've got what information they provided, the area they provided it in.. you can just work the analysis back to figure it out..and the more information you have that they provided the easier it becomes.. Okay, it's more of a slog, but even the Taliban must have some form of counter-intelligence working to figure out moles, informants, and such-like. Even just knowing that "this" information was provided to the enemy makes you start looking around to see who might have given it up.. which makes it even harder for the informant to provide further data..

But even documents 6 month old can reveal things.. Like potential informants, how things are structured... things that keep going even a year or three down the road. That's what can lead to potential deaths and further troubles.

Kasumi was interesting but kind of short. Had some nice story elements but was nothing too great gameplay wise. Firewalker - introduced the new vehicle which felt like it worked a lot better then the mako..although you didn't have the casual free roam with it.. just certain planet missions had it open. The story arc for that was nada too brilliant. Overlord definitely rules the roost out of all of them though. The storyline works, the gameplay elements are blended in nicely..

I need to figure out a game to have idling in the background.. Just haven't been in the zone to properly game the last week or so..

Gamespot short interview with Jean-Francois Degas And he mentions that in the next month or so we should be seeing a lot more clips/gameplay shots/ and trailer type stuff..

Shadowrun is fairly coherent with both sides of the equation. It's not like anything gets dropped in as out-and-out-fantasy that jars with the cyberpunk. There's a fair bit of in-universe commentary about things like how so many parents used names from Lord of the Rings when their children turned out to be Elves when magic returned.. and how much grief those kids had growing up with names like that.. How people tried to "push" the old fantasy literature stereotypes for Elves/Orcs/whatever even when it made no sense in 'reality'. Shadowrun 1st edition was set in 2037 if I recall and the current edition has progressed the setting to 2072.. but it all hangs together, and has developed in a manner that can feel quite well-done. They throw in a lot of culture references in the background that can be quite amusing if you actually pick them up. Quite often little mentions of things, I'm trying to remember exactly which book it was, but they even had a throwaway mention of 'UNATCO' a few years back (before they did SR 4th Edition).

It's geared around the PC's basically being the non-registered citizens who live between the cracks of society, and act as the general deniable assets between the various Mega-Corporations. Typical cyberpunk conspiracies, extraction of corporate assets, r&d theft, destruction of assets to get a leg up.. all wrapped up in various betrayals, cat's paws, and other questions of trust. Then it's just loaded with the whole "mana cycle" and 'magic' having returned to the world in the early 21st century, which brought with it the awakening of slumbering dragons, re-activated genes that turned various members of humanity into elves, orcs, dwarves etc.. and added the whole social upheaval and "immortal conspiracies" to standard cyberpunk. I've seen it played uber-cheesy, and really gritty. It can go either way depending on the mood of the GM and the players in the campaign

Shadowrun is geared around a major cyberpunk, then has elements of fantasy thrown into the mix. But the attitude and general atmosphere is geared along the lines of deus ex (even with the fantasy). The dragons are more likely to be running corporations and being magnificent bastards of manipulation behind a dozen layers and secrets then actually on the ground and throwing spells..

Oy Vey... UNICO National calls for release of mobster simulator to be halted calling it "a pile of racist nonsense"; Italian-American group protests Mafia II stereotypes Sometimes you get the feeling groups protest purely for the sake of protest....

It's not aimed at Bioware fans per se.. but at the people who tend to hang out on the Bioware forums. While it might be a touch of stereotyping, there's a lot of certain types of..personality that post there.

I have to say, I'm half curious as to whether they used that footage for the recent trailer because it was leaked on the interweb.. or because they feel it shows off the game well..

de nada.

"more of the same" I'm a-guessing.

Isn't that the opposite? Just the way the dev wants me to like my skills? Hm, to me it sounds like each skill can develop in slightly different ways.. or at least have multiple options of how you apply the base skill. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but from previous interviews /information drips, it's sounded like different augmentations can shift the way skills work.. and that as you put points in them you can open up different talents within the skill... Which seems to have the potential for a lot of variability and developing different styles of character as you wish... Then again, I could be living in bizzarro world and need more meds.. it just appeals to the schizophrenic in me. Both of them.

Not bad , but i have to admit that "The first we see is probably what many gamers will instinctively do -- blast their way inside." isn't something I'd expect most gamers to go for in a Deus Ex game.. well, at least fans from the previous games Still looking interesting and on track.. and a little more about how augmentation points go into skills which all have seperate trees.. So it's sounding very much like you'll be able to develop your character in some quite specific ways...

Hm, I'm partially tempted by the reduced Borderlands on Steam at the moment.. but I just can't decide if it appeals enough to balance against the months budget .. monetary and time-wise...

Wals, have you ever read any of Modesitt Jnrs sci-fi where he tends to pose questions of the use of force and the ethics of it? He does tend to pose the same questions answered from several sides in different books. Altough he can tend to slam the economic questions in as well..