Vaeliorin

So...DA:I is some kind of farce or something? I mean, I can't imagine what else would explain that dialogue or the voice acting.

The solution is obvious. Remove mages. Swords for everyone!

My boxed copy arrived today. It's pretty nice, though the manual isn't as extensive as I'd dreamed it to be (whenever I hear old-school manual, I always think of the BG/BG2 manuals, and that's obviously not a reasonable size expectation to have for most games.)

Longknife, I realize you probably don't care what I think, but you do realize your tone also drives away people (from the whole movement, not just the thread) who are on the fence or generally pro-GG, but aren't rabidly pro-GG? Anyway, I'm kind of curious what a galloping fighter/mage has to do with harassment.

You know, I have no problem if that's what she/other game journalists want. But I'd prefer they started their own site to do that, instead of hijacking the sites that used to be about games as, you know, games.

I have the box for The Summoning sitting not 10 feet from me right now. I recall that I didn't particularly like it, however. Not sure why anymore, though. I've been thinking about this, and the cover looks so familiar and I looked up the game and I seem to remember one with hand movements, but I'm like Karkarov, a little hazy on some of the stuff from that far back. I also agree that pong was dreadfully boring, but it was a step. There was a really old game that was so simple it's laughable now, but kind of addicting back then. You started with a set amount of grain and a set amount of people. You planted grain and stored some in granaries and had a certain amount you fed to the people. Your population would grow, and you had to figure out how much to feed the people and how much to plant, plus rats could get in and eat your grain out of the granaries, so you couldn't hold a huge amount and you were never sure how big a crop you'd get. I think it was called Kingdom or something. Nothing but text where you'd input the amounts at a blinking cursor. lol Sounds like work now. I believe it was called Empire. If it's the same game I'm thinking of, I spent many an hour playing it as a youth. Now, I agree, it seems like work. Can't even begin to imagine why I thought it was so great.

Hey, at least the Bucs have won a Super Bowl in your lifetime. My Browns haven't won anything since 20 years before I was born, and they just lost to freaking Jacksonville. Michigan has fallen off the deep end, the Red Wings are in a downward spiral, the Pistons have basically fallen apart, and the Tigers have wasted their opportunities and their window is quickly closing if not already closed. (Yes, I'm a Browns fan who hates every other team from Cleveland.)

Hey, don't be so hard on Kluwe. He's just living up to the image of the idiot kicker.

I think of lot of the different responses you'll get from Catholics has something to do with the church they grew up attending or currently attend. While no longer practicing, I was raised Catholic, and the church we primarily went to seemed primarily concerned with money and expanding/improving the already pretty nice facilities. We, admittedly, lived in one of the more affluent suburbs in the area, despite being solidly middle-class. The priests weren't particularly friendly, the congregation was huge, and the whole thing felt very sterile and impersonal. Other churches we occasionally attended (primarily to avoid our main church's yearly fund-raising festival, which caused havoc with parking and traffic) felt much more homey and caring. They tended to be smaller churches physically, as well as in terms of size of congregation, and the priests seemed much more caring. The few times I've attended non-Catholic churches have felt very similar, making me think it was possibly a peculiarity of the church we primarily attended. It's entirely possible that had I grown up in one of those smaller churches that I would still be a practicing Catholic, instead of occasionally wondering if I could get myself excommunicated because I think it would be kind of amusing.

Still Skyrim, finally had a battle that really bothered me. Random bandit at the end of a hallway was spamming fireballs. What bothered me was that he was freaking harder to kill than a dragon. That, and I finally had to use the abysmal potion mechanic. Drinking 7-8 potions while time is stopped is silly (I only had the lowest level potions on me, as I'd never needed to use them before). I've generally been in favor of level scaling (with minimum levels for enemies, so no low-level dragons or the like) but this kind of thing makes me really get why people hate it.

Learning to parry was one of the more fun experiences I had playing DS. Sure, I got killed a lot, but once I worked it out, it was so satisfying to parry and riposte enemies. Much more fun than circle-strafing and backstabbing them. Not going to be crazy enough to play the whole game with just broken sword hilts (or whatever those things that are basically identical to the equipment you start with are called) like I saw someone on Youtube do, but I got to be pretty good at it. Anyway, I'm still playing Skyrim. On my third character, a Breton using heavy armor and 2-handers (though I carry a bow and 1-hand/shield in case I need them/for when I get the block perks that require a shield). This one finally clicked for me. My first character was a Nord with heavy amor and 1-hand/shield, who probably would have been fine if I'd actually had some clue what I was doing. Second character was an Altmer light armor/stealth attempt, but he was way too squishy for me when I ended up having to go toe to toe. I know I could have eventually hit the armor cap with him, but starting out was all kinds of suck. Level 20 now, killed 3 or 4 dragons, killed a giant (possibly not a big deal, but the first one I ever accidentally aggroed 1-shotted me, so I was happy), still haven't hit up and of the major holds beyond Whiterun, though that's on the to-do list. I don't know how exactly it is Skyrim clicked with me, when I absolutely hated Morrowind and Oblivion, though I imagine the improved play from the third-person perspective helps. Maybe I won't end up waiting 2-3 years to get the next single-player Elder Scrolls game.

I've been playing Skyrim (I know, I know, I'm like 3 years late) and I'm finding it much better than Oblivion and Morrowind (it just never clicked with me...it didn't help that the leveling system seemed incredibly obtuse.) I can't help but think how much more I'd enjoy it if it had been designed to be played from third-person, as that's the view I play it in almost exclusively (only do first-person to line up shots, and occasionally when forced to in order to see into places because I find first-person disorienting, though I feel that way about all first-person games) If it had either Dark Souls or Kingdoms of Amalur style combat (I know they're drastically different, but they're the 2 action games I've found the most enjoyable, combat-wise) it could be really great. Would be nice to have some better writing and a real reason to care about the civil war, of course, but I can enjoy a game with minimal story if the gameplay is good. Don't know that I'll ever finish it, but at least I've sort of gotten my money's worth out of it, which I can't really claim about any other Bethesda game I've bought (not really sure why I keep buying them...I'm not paying anywhere close to full price for any of them, so it's not a huge deal. Mostly I'm just trying to understand what I'm missing, as I've never understood the love they get.) Tempted to download some sort of mod to get summonable, non-dying mounts, too. Horses are freaking annoying.

Yep, that's a pass for me, then. If it was MoO2 style combat, I'd be all over it, but the whole card thing just doesn't interest me at all. Definitely looking to pick up Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless whenever they're on a decent sale, though.

I have to admit, Amplitude's games intrigue me. I stumbled across Endless Legend watching videos on Youtube, and I love the art design. The gameplay looked ridiculously easy from what I've seen (as in, I saw a guy fight 3 battles against minor faction enemies, and then win a diplomatic victory without being challenged at all), but it's possible the videos I've seen were on an easy difficulty. Endless Space I recall being interested in, but isn't that the game where battles just let you play a couple cards and then watch what happens? I know there was one sci-fi 4X that I as interested in but that feature turned me off completely.

My interest depends how many places there are where I can throw (or biotic charge) people off of cliffs/ships. That was half the fun of ME2/3. I replayed ME2 a second time with an Adept just so I could throw people off the Shadow Broker's ship (or lift them into the lightning...that was fun too.)

If only it came with all the DLC...then I wouldn't have to go searching for discs whenever I want to play DA (I have them all except the one where you play the Darkspawn...I forget the name). Which, admittedly, I haven't since several months after release (but I did beat it 8 times in that span). Anyway, I find myself uninterested in DA:I. The combat just seems poor, ridiculously easy, and getting rid of healing annoys me, as does only 8 active abilities at a time. Can't say I care for many of the companions (Cassandra and Varric seem okay, the rest...meh.) The only thing it really has going for it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it looks really pretty. Probably something I'll pick up when it's on sale, though with the lack of other things I'm interested in releasing between now and the end of the year, maybe I'll pick it up sooner rather than later.

Does anyone actually use Dell products? From what I can tell the general consensus is that they are pieces of ****. Dell owns Alienware, actually. But I would imagine it just depends on what you buy from them. My monitor is a Dell, and it's very nice. I wouldn't buy an actual PC, but at the time I bought my monitor (which was about 5 years ago) they were generally thought to be one of the better brands of monitors. No idea if that still applies, but 5 years with no problems or dead pixels makes me pretty happy.

I don't even know how to respond to this. That has to be one of the stupidest articles ever. Console shooters are more popular because you pull a trigger to shoot? Seriously? I knew the standards in games media were bad, but just...wow. How can an editor read that kind of garbage and allow it to be posted to their website?

It's certainly possible. I always hear people talking about how awesome the combat in the Arkham games is, but in my experience (which is limited to the first), it literally was just mashing the attack button. Sure, there were other things you could do, but you never actually needed to do them, so they were kind of pointless. Honestly, it's one of the reasons, despite thinking Shadows of Mordor looks kind of interesting, I'm going to wait for the eventual "game plus all DLC" bundle to hit a Steam sale.

I dislike how blue the new Steam is. It's just less legible, as far as I'm concerned. That said...the queue is perhaps the dumbest thing I've encountered from a retailer. Why on earth link me games that are popular that are nothing like anything I own/play? I'm super interested in playing the new Borderlands based on the what...3 hours total in several years I've spent playing FPS games? All it does is waste my time and annoy me. If something's popular, chances are I've heard of it...no need to try and sell it to me. Link me things that appear to match my interests that are considered good but obscure, and then it would be useful.

Just out of curiosity, why do you assume the person didn't read the article when making that comment? Though I can't recall that I've ever bothered to type it out, that's been my response to a lot of the articles I've encountered. I'm all for equality, but honestly, ranting at people and demanding equality isn't the way to get it to happen. It turns off people like me who are for "the cause", but don't want to be associated with it because of the insane rantings of the hardcore (heck, sometimes, just for a moment, it makes me hope the whole thing fails, just because I get really sick of being told how horrible I am and how easy my life is because I'm a straight white guy, and I don't want the ranters to get the satisfaction of success.) Edit: Meant equality, said inclusiveness. Late night posting = bad.

You're assuming there aren't people who would find easy far too difficult. Some people are just terrible at action games (personally, I'm terrible at first person shooters...I find them incredibly disorienting for some reason, and even on the easiest settings can't get past the first hour of Half Life 2...I can actually beat the hard difficulties on Witcher 2 rather easily) Anyway, it's not directly related to leveling up. It was your argument that leveling up in a skill-based game breaks immersion (assuming such a thing actually exists.) My contention is that it no more breaks immersion than the disconnect between the supposed abilities of the character and the actual abilities of the player. When the game goes on and on about what a badass you are, and in reality you're struggling to beat even the most basic enemies, that, to me, is far more immersion breaking than any sort of leveling up.

Being a skill-based game is already a huge immersion breaker. Geralt the badass warrior can't fight for beans because I'm terrible at action games? How does that not break immersion more than anything to do with leveling up?

I haven't given up on the game yet, because I think that I just haven't gotten used to this type of a system. I don't know, I would have liked it if it was either RTwP or full blown TB. All this being said I played about an hour of the game so I probably haven't even scratched the surface of what the game offers. I've played about 5 hours, and I haven't even left the starting city. Admittedly, I'm talking to everyone. Personally, I love what I've seen of the combat system so far, but I prefer turn-based over anything else (RTwP I'll suffer through, but I think it's decidedly inferior to turn-based, particularly in terms of creating difficulty). I don't know how wild I am about the class/leveling system, but that's largely because I have no idea when I'll get points, what I'll get points for, or approximately how many levels I should end up with, and thus I have no idea how specialized/diverse I should make my characters.

Can I point how especially amusing I find this given that David Gaider did zero writing for Mass Effect? Is it wrong that I'm happy I pass?