pmp10

Tribes Ascend. Technical issues aside it seems pretty fun but the team-play was poorly designed. Available unlocks/upgrades heavily encourage specialization and as a result many team-roles go completely unfilled. Unlock pricing is also questionable - almost 200$ just for all classes/weapons is a bit much.

And that is the story of how Steam made itself immune to everything. Is it a bad thing, though? I don't think so. It makes me buy games I wouldn't have otherwise bought, at a price so cheap that it doesn't matter if it is **** or if there's a risk of Steam going bankrupt and me losing all these games I thought I 'owned' (honestly if that happened I'd just hop on Pirate Bay). You could argue that it is a problem as many games sold in bundles (and at sub-5$ price range) never get seriously played. This turns the entire industry on it's head - straight from entertainment to collectibles. The end result is that we reward good sale timing far more than any actual quality. And I don't buy it that Steam/Valve is somehow beyond criticism. Maybe I just have very poor luck with them but all the problems I ran into are in no way recompensed by the occasional sales.

Don't worry about their safety. If oil barons sent their corporate assassins after every energy-technology crackpot half of the physics community would be dead by now.

That's ridiculous. My history would show that I purchased the game, why can't I use a workaround to make it run? I guess I'll just have to throw the original exe into the steam folder everytime I open steam just in case. Thanks for the heads up. By cracking/hacking a game you break Steam EULA. Moreover steam cracks often enable any DLCs and preorder bonuses available regardless of your owning them. Pretty sure the same applies to Origin.

AFAIK beta and retail versions are kept separate so it would be odd to have starter-edition in beta. Besides isn't the beta ending in a week or so?

Wait - so kickstarter dose not lock pledged funds immediately? What's the point of it then? You're expected to keep making promises even when you can't know how much funds will get transfered in reality.

There was nothing adult or mature in Doom/Quake that would not be found in Doom3/Quake4. Games have always been aimed at youth as they are by far the largest audience.

Rushed through Kingdoms of Amalur. Started of nicely but never got anywhere fun. With setting that's MMO-level of dull and a combat system which never evolves past the tutorial I wouldn't recommend it.

He just described effect of a random spawn on narrative. I'd say Levine has a far better point. Games have become so predictable in their pandering to player egomania that reversing the trend makes for a great shock.

Epic Games working on a PC-exclusive title. At this point I can only imagine that it's Unreal Tournament remade into f2p browser game.

I'm all for discussing cultural exposure but take issue with the notion that we can 'experience' cultures and events from the past by the means of any form of entertainment. The experiences we are presented are tailored for mass-consumption and as such will never make a serious attempt to present reality - it's all good to have fun with them as long we don't confuse them with the real thing. And I think the way such thing are presented is very educational in and of itself. You can clearly see our own biases and prejudices when you look at all the topics that are 'no-go' in a computer game.

The whole anti-used games rumors suggest that both consoles will feature some kind of online checks. I just don't understand how MS hopes to implement it - they sell thousands of consoles in countries that are not supported via Live. Maybe those rumors are for dev-kits only?

Pre-order bonuses? There's nothing in the game (apart from the Missing Link mission) that you couldn't get for free with some version of the game day1. In fact, in most of Europe, all preorder versions included all bonuses. So that's fine for those that bought preorder versions in Europe. The rest has to pay extra to enjoy remotely detonated explosives and automatic unlock devices. Since the former should help with badly done boss-fights and the later with absurd over reliance on hacking mini-game I consider their lack a serious omission.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Surprisingly solid despite few obvious blunders. What is worrying however is that devs felt the need to remove useful in-game items and sell them as DLC. Hopefully that trend won't catch on as it clearly impacted overall quality and balance.

Now that's confusing. I thought Obsidian was thinking on kick-starting a project of their own.

Aneutronic fusion temperature reached. Pretty interesting but don't believe any of the garage generator nonsense.

New Vegas Complete Edition - could finally finish the remaining DLCs. I'd essentially agree with reviews - DM is repeatable, LR tedious, HH interesting but short. Only OWB is forgiven all it's faults due to writing and humor. And while on the subject of writing - what's going on with MCA character design lately? Some of his NPCs are starting to feel artificial - like some sort of proxies for a philosophical debate with a serious dose of pathos and fatalism. I've caught myself thinking repeatedly that the 'right' thing to do would be to mercifully put them down as they can't possibly survive in a world such as this.

Good to see that NIF is having some success with the laser. Too bad the whole "fusion" thing isn't working out for them.

Dose that even make sense given that payments supposedly stopped months ago? The project was being developed for not-yet-existent console. It was always bound to be a risk - no need to look for a conspiracy behind it.

Saints Row the Third. It's still fun as a sandbox and PC port is reasonable this time around. Sadly the whole storyline/mission aspect took a major turn for the worse.

Consider this: the Borderlands PC version sucked. People hated it (the port, not the game). This is just as much sending the message "We won't screw it up this time" to people that have played the first title. Also those kind of features are getting increasingly less common. If that was their intention it'd be much better to promise push-to-talk and FOV control instead. Vsync comes close to text chat in the list of features PC gamers took for granted.

There was Return to Krondor and Betrayal at Antara. And as much as I love BaK I doubt you can make a remake work as modern wrpg. It simply had no place for the choice and customization that (supposedly) are essential today.

For one thing they singlehandedly brought down FASA which was huge back in the day. Apparently it has something to do with Microsoft corporate culture - it was heavily criticized by former FASA director as hostile to development of any entertainment. The lessons of that debacle apparently resulted in Bungie running away rather than suffering similar fate. It's been considered for weeks now so I imagine Obsidian knows what would be their choice for such a project. The inxile kickstarter didn't even include a single piece of concept art so the only barrier I can see is in the realms of finance.

Quite surprising that it would be Microsoft - Obsidian should be aware what their track record with developers is. Stranger still - no kickstarter announced. You'd think this the perfect time to cash-in on internet sympathy as well as gamer nostalgia.

Any hints who the publisher was supposed to be? It'd be interesting if it's THQ considering the South Park situation.