Raithe

I haven't actually seen much that's said how the pc differs from the xbox... I mean going by how they handled ME, everything was tweaked up to take advantage of pc hardware more and the control system/HUD was shifted to work better with keyboard & mouse rather then gamepad.. I'd assume there'd be something similar this time around ... but it's just a guess.

I like it.. : Amazon.ca 1st of April Amazon.com 31st of May Amazon.co.uk 25th of June.. Yeah, I think we can safely say that the retailers are still guessing wildly

It did seem that from the cheap seats, that a lot of people thought the story/plot was confused... which has always made me wonder how many people picked up on what a manipulative bastard the big bad was.. But ah well, it wasn't overlong, you could run through it in a single day which isn't the norm for those dedicated rpg games but it did have a fun time. And the mythic asian china made a good change from the usual elves and orcs It was also the one where if the male protagonist didn't make a choice between the two female romance options.. they'd both turn up on the "night before everyone thinks they might die" compared to how bio normally makes romances an either/or choice.

Hey, I know I'm in the minority but I mostly enjoyed JE. There were flaws, but the storyline ran nicely, and the main bad turned out to be a magnificent bastard par excellence once all was revealed. Even if some of the game mechanics were a bit clunky. And it did handle the whole "post world saving quest" future histories of your character and the various companions depending on how you played the game quite nicely. Then there's always the bonus of John Cleese voicing a "he's so awful he's kind of amusing" npc for a short section.

It's mostly one of those areas that's all swings and roundabouts. I like detailed characters to work with, but I don't always like getting straightjacketed into the style of play that those backgrounds would suggest. That's where games that allow you some say to develop the background and then actually show some reference to it within the game are the ones I found I've enjoyed a lot. A game that lets you choose a heavily detailed character background.. but then has nada to show for it within the game (apart from maybe potential game mechanic bonuses) isn't particularly great to my mind. It's one of the things that disapointed me in DA, they harped on the wonders of their origins but then it didn't really feel that beyond a few set pieces, the rest of the world actually noted any of it. I mean, playing through the origins was nice, it provided a lot of background feeling to your character..but then once you were past it and in the Grey Wardens.. >shrugs< Sure, Mass Effect didn't really provide much emphasis on the whole Earthborn/Colonist/Spacer backgrounds, but it still actually felt like it was there. Maybe that's just because there wasn't all the pre-game hype on that aspect to judge it against. I'm more just verbalising my thoughts on it then arguing any point with you over it

Well I don't class Shepherd as "generic space marine". But I do agree with depth needed in the majority of professional soldier type characters. In a lot of ways you get presented with the basic "image" of a marine and how you play a game with them is what makes them non-generic. Unless you have a detailed "origin" system for them, it makes it very difficult to create a backstory that appeals to the majority of gamers while also being "neutral" enough to fit with whatever the personal gameplay style and choices of those gamers as well... With ME, you at least had the partial nod to crafting the general background to how you wanted to percieve the protagonist, and then play the protagonist in that style for the rest of the game.. And going with the military route in sci-fi can make a lot of sense storywise. I mean, how many people have access to large amounts of weaponry, advanced tech starships and such ? While it can be the "simple" way of setting up a storyline, being the marine ordered into a situation that explodes into something totally new and that you then have to deal with...

Now you're just showing your hate for those tough experienced professional soldier types over your joe-normal civilian who stumbles around blindly.... I mean, I know you can relate more to the everyman.. but realistically, the guy who happens to have had physical and mental training, and the experience of combat, is a whole heap more likely to survive and kick ass then joe schmuck who stumbles into it... Unless joe schmuck then turns out to be an ex-special forces turned chef/computer geek/librarian..

Hell, Amazon.Uk updated their site about a week ago that Alpha Protocol would be out 25th of June this year. I think a lot of the stores are still making general guestimates.

Technically , Shephard is meant to be a bit more then just a grunt.. Out of all the people who made up the Alliance forces, he was the person being considered for Spectre eligibility.. which (much as i know it was a nice in-game mechanic) is meant to highlight that he's an extremely capable Alliance officer.. Throw in whatever background you gave the character, he's had a lot more experience, he's supposd to be smart and flexible. Whether as the lone survivor of something that killed everyone else, or the hero of the skillian blitz.. All heroic character are supposed to have that something extra that makes them stand out beyond the norm, that's why they're heroes, and why they're central to the story. It might be a literary conceit, but it's also a kind of reasoning for why they end up being the only one who can save the day

When you get down to it.. Far Cry and Crysis could both impress on a technical level. The trouble being they had no damned soul to them. Which made them distinctly uncomfotable to play. At least to me, they came across as a touch too... mechanical? and fairly uninteresting beyond the technical aesthetics.

Well Ricardo Montalban did steal Wrath of Khan Actually went through Generations and First Contact now... I mean, Generations, okay, not a great movie, but it does have some nice moments in it. And bloody hell, its already 16 years old... yeesh, where does the time fly?

Realised there was a hole in the dvd library.. at a time when amazon was offering a 60% price cut.. so grabbed the Star Trek boxed set, all 10 "pre-reboot" films.. and it's arrived today. So pondering which of them to watch..

Well if you're talking about how fields of entertainment grow.. Home Gaming (pc / console) is really what, about 20 -30 years old now? Compare it to what cinema and tv were like in the first few decades.. hell, look at what they were still churning out 50 years on.. or even the "usual summer blockbusters" a century on.. A lot of it is the equivalent of "bright primary colors" to make people happy without much depth.. but it changes over time. It's only been in the relatively recent years (okay, rolling into 2000) that games were still thought to be just a thing for kids. If you were into video games, you were expected to grow out of it... So there's not that much of a surprise that a lot of game history storylines were running along the same style as saturday morning cartoons. Although there were various games that were outside of that "box" most of them fell into it. Now it's being more accepted that video games are not just for kids and they're starting to put more depth and more content in. But it's all part of the progress...

Well, it's all about the upper-case letters, and that key exclamation point...

Hey, it's sci-fi. It's not "save the world" it's "Save The Galaxy!"

Finished the Path to Ascendance on Alpha Centauri earlier this morning.. or late last night depending on when you feel it switches over.,. Every now and again I'm doing one mission from Assassin's Creed then having long periods of hours/days before trying the next one..seeing if that makes it a bit more palatable and feel less repetitive. Mostly just doing the wait for ME2 to come out at the moment.. Not really in a big mood to get involved in any games for some reason..

Saga rules are like a modified d20 set. It's sort of somewhere between 3.5 D&D, d20 modern, and spycraft 2.0.... You've got classes that enable you to pick "talents" at every odd level and a bonus feat at every even level, every class has handful of different talent tree's to pick from and it's own list of bonus feats available.. and you get the multi-class options from d20. It's very easy to customise your character growth to go with a concept.

Sat through 2012 last night.. usually I'm not big on disaster films.. but that was fairly decent. When everything starts going to crap.. it can look quite impressive, and its got some nice turns of acting going on..

Hm, strange, first time I played through I hit 50 and would have probably got higher if I hadn't had to finish the game to unlock past 50.

Caught Sherlock Holmes.. not a bad attempt. Downey Jr and Jude make a good Holmes and Watson. Guy Ritchie back to doing entertaining films. Hm, he did good films before he married.. he did crappy films during his marriage.. he's split from Madonna and now we have a decent movie.. do I sense a theory there...

I'm working my way through Assassin's Creed.. and I'm just being puzzled why so many people rave about it. If you at least got to have several methods on how to get close and kill the target it would be one thing.. but it's just so.. arcadey repetitive. So far I'm just punching through it to see what the "story" develops like rather then because of the actual game play...

If I pre-ordered through gamestop I'd then have to wait an extra two or so weeks for it to be shipped across the atlantic and then clear customs.. so Nah. I was going to pre-order via amazon as I usually do.. but I've decided to go with the CE (mostly because I want to flip through the "art of book" and such) and you can never get the CE's from amazon.. so I'm having to get it via Game.. so no extra goodness for pre-ordering for me..

Steam's there purely for the sales times.. when a few games that might catch your interest are being sold for less then the price of a cup of coffee.. Otherwise, you're better off doing a quick look on amazon and finding the classic games cheap.. and then having a physical item to go with your spent money

To me.. I'm a touch scared of the potential of any new D&D games.. to go with the license they'd need to be based around the new 4th Edition system.. and that's.. well. Bloody awful. To my eye, it's like they've made a pen and paper rpg using heavily simplified rules, adapted from the WoW game system... (if i was being purely cynical I'd say it's been done on purpose by WoTC in an effort to draw in the WoW gamers by making it "simple" and "easy" to get into.) So any computer game adapted from it will be a touch... off. At least to my mind..