Raithe

I have to admit, the look of the shooter/rpg mix with the secret agent aspects makes me want to hope that it'll follow in the footsteps of Deus Ex for that gaming experience.. And the whole push of choice and consequences.. That's something I really want to see and play with.

EA are working with 38 Studios (Previously known as Green Monster Games) to develop a new single-player RPG. R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane being the creator/idea guys behind the rpg.. So the men who gave us Drizzt and Spawn go forth into crpg... Games Developoer Conference...

Solomon Kane.. entertaining in its way, without being overly brilliant. Pete Postlethwaite and Alice Krige do a nice turn as the "friendly puritan family". Some average to good minor cgi effects for "minions of hell" And a fair few sword/axe fights and blood spillage.

If only I could get that flight over the atlantic.... tsk..

I'm half-tempted to dig out my old copy of Privateer 2 and see if I can get it to run on my current pc.. There aren't that many good space sims.. at least with a mix of gameplay and story. Still have fond memories of Tachyon Fringe.. but maybe that's because they had Bruce Campbell doing voice work for it..

Vampire Bloodlines? Although that's based on World of Darkness stuff.. (yes, I played various WoD pen n paper and actually enjoyed some of it) although when you step back, for all the "dark and angsty and gothic" elements, nearly every WoD game line was a metaphor for adolescence... "Oh look, something's changed you from the "innocent" you were, and now you've found out the world isn't the place you thought it was.. " Gamewise.. Dark doesn't automatically mean "bloody with some sex thrown in, and a bit of rough language" - but a lot of computer game designers seem to think that way..

Hey, Gilbert & Sullivan always rule. It's always fun to see some of those songs tweaked for such situations like Mordin singing..

If you take Zaeed on the recruit Archangel mission you do get some points of recognition and other dialogue from the mercenaries over his presence... Not a lot, but some.

I played the first one on pc.. and while it was crazy fun in it's way... but after a certain point it was just.. doing the same thing again..and again..and again. I can't quite remember where the tipping point was.. It makes me wonder how much this one will be like that.. "It's another mission where you use the grapple in a crazy way to break into a prison/army base/political house , rip off drug-dealers , kill some official/drugbaron/military officer.. cause several explosions, then ride a vehicle off a cliff while parachuting away to safely." Fun in doses.. but it was a bit hard to string an entire storyline to that..

Ah the joys of forum personality clashes. Still, with the whole Hammerhead dlc supposed to be out in a few weeks, it'll be interesting to see what exactly it adds to the gameplay. What thoughts are there? Something similar to the Mako from ME1 with better terrain? Or more a scrolling , explore/shoot em up mini-game type? Apart from the design concepts for the Hammerhead vehicle, I haven't really seen anything showing off what it might play like...

Having a yen for urban fantasy. Currently working through Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld series... Although it strikes me that an awful lot of urban fantasy is written by female authors and gets labelled as "romance". After reading so many, I have to say, the same sort of stories, with the same character interaction, written by a guy.. would never get classed as a "romance". It's kind of interesting how publishers decide to "fix" certain genres like that... Or is it just the "anti-fantasy" snobbery that goes on a lot?

Hm, the Dalish Elf origin had the taint come from the wounds caused by the mirror exploding.. the magical item had tainted mystical energies, and having shards of the mirror embed in your flesh and the mystical energies taint caused via that way.. Which is why the "proper" taint of becoming a Grey Warden "heals" or at least counters the taint caused by the exploding mirror..

According to that model, it turns a single-player game into something that you never actually purchase outright. And that's like saying "hey, this board game cluedo, you have to pay monthly fees to keep it in your house and play". MMO's, I can understand the monthly fees due to the services and costs involved. But for a single-player game? No way in hell.

I think the movie sequences in Privateer 2 were a strange mix of awesome and appalling. Quite often at the same time... Although again, a rather stellar cast of hollywood acting throughout...

And then of course, WC3 & 4.. and WC Prophecy.. had some interactive fmv sequences in them... Although finding some of the "blooper" reels for them can be amusing. - Maniac stood gazing out of the window.. Blair walks up.. Maniac glances over..double takes.. and stutters "Aren't you like.. that dude from Star Wars??!"

Ah..and I have such fond memories of some of those adventure games with fmv and all that... Who can forget Dennis Hopper in the Black Dahlia game?

Well one of the endings for Jade Empire is.. losing.. Sort of. You can be talked into sacrificing yourself for the "good of the empire" if you (as the player) belive it.. and then you get this nice ending where everybody is basically tinted by black magic being controlled by the main villain as Emperor... So I guess you could count that as "losing".

Stumbled on Clue going cheap from Amazon and got nostalgic and picked up a copy.. Sat down and watched it with all three possible endings A little silly, but still a classic comedy. Tim Curry does brilliantly as the Butler..

Hm, I really can't see how dlc would work well for this game. One of the key features is the choice and consequences and how choices from one hub can affect the others.. DLC won't work that well with it. Hm, I mean, sure they could have it so choices from the "normal" game hubs would affect the DLC stuff.. but nothing in the DLC would affect the rest of the game. So unless the DLC is designed purely to be stand alone stuff that runs outside of the games story.. (which I guess could be possible) there wouldn't be much point to it... But hey, that might just be me.

It's nice to see a new trailer.. but to my mind, it looks like a trailer for the next season of 24.. or the Bourne Generation Film X rather then a computer game trailer... I can understand why they went that way, but eh.. I'd like to see a new computer game trailer for it

Hm, I never did get into consoles.. I skipped from the old Amstrad 6128k with a tape deck to a low powered ibm compatible generic pc with a 40MB harddrive It's always seemed that most of the console games were overpriced compared to pc games.. and until the last decade didn't really have the wide variety of game genres.. (wow.. being able to casually talk about a decade like that makes me feel old..) Ah well. I guess I'm a pc gamer through-and-through.

It's that awkward balance isn't it.. I'm really interested to see how the c&c actually turns out.. and the whole concept of modern day spy rpg twitches my deus ex nostalgia... But after all these delays there's that feeling that all the excitement/longing for it is going to be seriously disapointed.. which is a little worrying. Ah well, Amazon are going to be shipping it to me on the day of release.. and the pre-order's been in existance a little over a year now...

"To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor." Now that's a fun opening line to a book. Silent in the Grave, regency era mystery/detective style. Entertaining read with some humerous twists. Makes me think what might have been produced if Jane Austen had been writing Sherlock Holmes..

I never could bring myself to finish the first Far Cry.. I think I got about 6 hours out of it.. then stopped playing for some reason and never got the ooomph to get back into it. Pretty graphics, but no real pazzow factor in the storyline or gameplay to keep me going..

Try the Liaden Universe books by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee.. space opera with some fun dialogue.. Described by certain criticts as "a cross between Star Wars and Pride and Prejudice". Michelle Sagara has a series, Cast in Shadow, Cast in Courtlight, Cast in Secret, which have an interesting mix of fantasy and detective/mystery thrown in together with mysterious powers in the background. Also, if you can still find them Deborah Doyle and James D Macdonalad did the Mageworlds series, which is a quite good space opera collection. A mixture of roguish adventure, hunting a parents assassin, high political shennanigans, conspiracy, set with the potential for a galactic wide war in the background..