Raithe

Hm, standard space opera sci-fi.. The "Mass Effect" science to base technology around and to gimmick in a form of "The Force" Green skinned alien girls.. (well, blue mostly, but there was a nod to the green skinned alien girl..) Another universe where every alien species has a specific type of role.. and then humans come along and are the unpredictable jack-of-all-trades type to upset the applecart... Hey, it's no different to the standard fantasy setting being used to come up with lots of different things. It all comes down to whether there can be a decent story and interesting characters using the variations of the standard space opera sci-fi... Throw in a few nods and winks to the games... It could work.

Not a bad trailer... Although I'd have expected them to go with the "For Agent Mike Thorton... There are Always Choices" rather then "Unlimited Possibilities"...

Sorry, yup, I meant Steamworks. Running on about 2 hours sleep and not fully behind the eightball today. Well, to my mind, there's Steam which you run, you log into so they can identify your account and know which method of payment is yours.... and that provides the medium to download the product. Steamworks is the actual DRM that Steam tends to favor and is part and parcel of the needing to activate the game once you've run it. Now me, I'm just going by the fact that they've said "Alpha Protocol does not use Steamworks as a form of DRM". So to me personally, that's not requiring me to suffer through multiple forms of DRM. And Uniloc is basically a one-off thing the first time you install the game.. (well, until you get around to installing it on another computer...or have uninstalled it and later reinstall it) not having to check on it every time you try to run the game.... So you buy the game... you download the game... you have the game install.. you have the activation of that particlar game installation... then you play the game.... I'm just not getting what about that seems terribly difficult compared to so many games with annoying third party DRM's that require some other software running. GTAIV's combination of having to run the "RockStar Social Club" and the "Games for Windows" before you even get the game to start loading...

No.. You're confusing different aspects of Steam. Steam itself, on it's own, is a delivery system to download things. The Steamcraft DRM is a seperate matter. Yes, usually it's used when you download via Steam. But it isn't an automatic part of EVERYTHING that you get from steam. Steamcraft just usually runs in conjunction with Steam downloads, so most people tend to view them as a single thing when they're actually just two things that work together. However, with Alpha Protocol Steamcraft is not used. It doesn't check or require anything from the game to instal or activate. You only use the Steam side of it to download the game. The game solely uses the Uniloc drm as a method of activation.

As has been mentioned in the Sega forum.. and quoted a whole buncha times on various of the AP threads here.. Steam can be used to download the game. It's a medium to download the game. But Steam is not used as a DRM. Steam does not check anything beyond the fact that you have paid for the game. Once you download and install the game .. (which, again.. Steam does not use any DRM to check on) you only have the Uniloc DRM.. 5 activations at any one time across 5 pc's. And a seriously simple and easy way to deactivate them. Even if a computer crashes and you haven't uninstalled it.. you can log onto the website and deactivate it... Or when you next reinstall the game (if you happen to have used all 5 activations) you get a "you've already used 5 activations, do you want to de-activate an old use to activate this install?" option... Simple, clean. Not that invasive. And once again.. Not using Steam DRM

Hey, to throw in the odd idea... does a Mass Effect film have to be about Shephard and the Reapers? Or would it be based more on the idea of Mass Effect as the Universe, rather then that specific story? I seem to recall hearing some interview last year where Bioware talked about Mass Effect as a franchise and possibly doing other things set in the universe... Not just the action-shooter-rpg trilogy set around Shep... Of course, I might be confused and memory hazey......

Some new footage to watch.. but that voiceover.. Talk about reading a script woodenly. That and talking about active abilities as "perks"....

We've spent the last year talking about this game The moments of pause, then a brief amount of publicity in some form causing another major stir.. Repeat every month or so... Now there was the last couple of months, a fair bit of talk, but this week it's all anticipation and waiting to get the game in our hands to try it out and then have something to say about it..

There's something about that music video... I keep finding myself going back to watch it again... it's.... invading my mind..

It's not the heat that's getting to me... it's the damned humidity that's lingering around the coast. It just feels so damn heavy! and oppressive...

At some point I keep meaning to getting back to GTAIV and actually finishing it off... I'd opened up the last island..and then stopped for some reason.. Now it's like 9 months later and I can't quite stir myself to actually return.. Ah well.. Alpha Protocol soon to enjoy delving into in a couple more days..

"We are the Ninja-Pirates.. for we are the Shadows that go 'Aaaarr!' in the night..."

Personally, I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek when I mentioned the horror of their DRM as a reason for their losses. While I know a fair few people (and myself included) who didn't buy AC2 and the latest Splinter Cell purely because of that form of annoying DRM, I do doubt that there was a large majority of people boycotting the product. Especially since the pc game market isn't exactly as huge as the console versions these days... But I do think that the general fuss about the DRM has had an effect on Ubisofts reputation, which can have all sorts of knock-on effects...

I could always understand the deep roads grind fest from a story perspective.. you were headed into the area where hordes of the bad guys lurk, grow and constantly threaten.. it makes sense that as you get deeper you'd be constantly battling them... But from a game perspective..it did get quite annoying as grindfests go.. The swings and balance of story vs gameplay...

Because you can resist anything but temptation?

Nice concept.. adds more inspiration to the urges to spy and sneak and cause general chaos in the game when it arrives..

Having a little replay of Prototype... a little bit of gore and violence can go a long way in the right mood..

It's fairly simple. "Serious Gamers" aren't the customer base most companies use these days. The big market is in the "Casual Gamer" who usually tends more towards the consoles and the "quick n easy" format that's simple to get into. Until the latter half of this decade, the "serious gamer" tended to be a touch more of the traditional nerd/geek or general enthusiast in computer related areas.. And who would quite cheerfully spend hour after hour playing a game. Now it's starting to open up to a whole bunch of other people. The "casual gamer" is the majority of people who buy and play the games, but they don't put in the many hours to establish the sort of skill sets (and yes, there are exceptions of casual gamers having serious natural skill) that the "serious gamers" develop. So games get made with a lot more hand holding and general ease of use compared to ye olde games. Discuss.

Tsk.. a good western game sounds like a certain win. Dang it. I just have to wait for them to get around to that pc version... sigh I could almost pout. But that would be too dangerous on these forums...

All good things to hear... Now to just wait the week and anticipate more... Ah, the joys of Amazon "item will be sent on the 26-27th, Item will arrive on 27-28th.."

Me, I always remember some of his monologues as Gabriel in The Prophecy....

Well the delay from the Feb '09 launch date to Oct '09 was given over to making tweaks and improvements. They've been pretty much open about the delay from Oct to this year was Sega choosing to make a publishing decision rather then the game needing to be tweaked more. And that there hasn't really been any work done on the game since they wrapped it up for the October release...

Well.. that could actually work. A rundown school with two main "cliques" .. the lone transfer student who gets moved in and starts to manipulate the social events... A Fistful of Dollars was inspired by Yojimbo which was in turn inspired by a novel that was set in a prohibition era town in New Mexico... So technically the version that Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken did that was inspired by Fistful of Dollars..... was closer to the original concept..

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6262887.html Well, they shipped 9 million AC2... and still ended up with a major turnaround compared to last year. But it had nothing to do with that crappy DRM they've started using on their games.. No, its just the "lagging industry" alone that caused it...

I was looking forward to Tron Evolution... (yes, that geek inside has fond memories of both the film, and the Tron 2.0 game)... but Dang it all. It's only being released on xbox360 and the ps3. A Tron game.. and it's not going to be released on the PC.. oy vey...