pmp10

Thats because they change their numbers when real data shows up. Some of their initial guesses have been wrong by 2-3x or more. Unless the game becomes a massive hit or someone speaks on the subject we are unlikely to see a good estimation of sales until Square-Enix investor report shows up.

Yes, Russia did in 1998 and Argentina in 2001. As to what happens as I understand it - nothing good to those involved.

Game trailers review 6.3 surprises the hell out of me. I always figured GT goes easy on games.

It was a high budget high profile sequel to a successful FFXI so the audience was there. If publisher investment ruled critical reaction it wound never end up with the sub 50% average on metacritic as it's potential for expansions (and subsequently their previews) was no different than other MMO games. And I have never heard that the game was unplayable, that usually means serious technical issues rather than bad game design. And on the flip side - how do you explain the surprise hits? When games like Halo or God of War first debuted nobody considered them to be a major titles let alone a genre-defining ones. And then there are games like Vanquish, World in Conflict, Demon Souls that would earn very high scores despite unimpressive promotional campaigns and/or poor commercial showing.

I really don't see Square-Enix expecting DS3 to be a 80%+ title. They would need a bigger investment for that. That's true but we are talking psychological boundaries here. For instance it takes 75% for green color on metacritic score. And console versions are now at 72/71% so they may still fall below 70% boundary.

How are Daikatana and Doom 3 related? Other was published by Eidos and the other by Activision. Made by Ion Storm and by ID Software. I meant hypothetical doom 3 that would be just as big as the first one. That well could have been the case for all anyone knew when they decided to tell John Romero that Daikatana is not even a good game let alone a masterpiece.

If that is the case how can you explain FF XIV? Recognizable brand name and the usual publisher didn't save it from poor critical reception. And gaming industry has seen it's fair share of high budget - high profile screw ups. Even back when Daikatana was coming people were still willing to criticize it regardless of weather they will lose the rights to a doom 3 preview simply because upsetting your regular audience with such practices is not worth the short term boost a couple of previews may bring.

UK retail chains blacklisting Steam titles. Was bound to happen eventually. My problem is that if said companies are now free from price adjustments of brick&mortar stores their digital game pricing should reflect that. As it stands we may just be trading a retailer conspiracy for an outright steam monopoly.

So are Greeks themselves guilty of this due to inefficiency and corruption or have they been screwed over by conspiracy of bankers and politicians? Seems like an important distinction to make.

So how much time dose one need to spend on a game to fully appreciate it? Because this looks like a codexian "you haven't played it enough to judge it" argument. If someone has spent enough time to experience 70-90% content of a game I don't see why wouldn't their opinion matter. It's their description of objective facts that can be put into question.

There are certain industry standards for ARPGs and DS3 simply fails to adhere to them. Add to that the name that suggest continuation of an established series it's only natural that there will be disappointed expectations.

If you mean "released" = "released by OBSIDIAN", then that would be nice. Would be nice, when someone official could confirm this. The PC version is steam-only. There is no other patching than through steam.

Gamespot review PC version got Alpha protocol score. A shame but not exactly undeserved.

Source? Seems like a major thing to handle post-release.

Dawn of War 3 officially in development Supposedly a mixture of DoW1, DoW2, Supreme Commander and MMO.

That is a matter of opinion.

I disagree, it was referring to much more (their etnicity, culture) even when they were a part of the empire or even served it. There was no trouble singling them out when the need for scapegoats came. We don't need to inspect the dynamic only the end result. The point is that when I think of Bach, Mozart and Wagner I think 'German' not about their respective principalities of birth. With Russia I can come up with Tchaikovsky and then draw a blank. And I'm sure thats not because Russia lacked good composers but the western culture always treats them as semi-outsiders (orthodox faith, cyrillic alphabet, Julian calendar) and I haven't been exposed to them.

I was referring to the cultural impact on western civilization they had thorough history, not to the nation itself. Oh dear. First of all: German is not a modern term. It was originally an Roman term used to describe the land and it's people. Even back then Romans could clearly see the difference between Germanic and Slavic tribes that inhabited the same area. Whatever identity the tribes had at that point is subject to speculation but they clearly had roots in Scandinavia and similar religious believes (belief in Woden ect.). That they were spared romanization finally to bring down the empire only highlighted differences they had with other tribes of those areas. Secondly: history is not defined by any one nation. No matter how much the superpower of the century may wish it could the history is written by historians and not subject to political revision. That cultural view on past people and events differs from history is another matter. As is the fact that interested parties often refuse to acknowledge it for nationalistic reasons. Also note that HRE was badly fragmented not because it became a battlefield for various sides but mostly because papal interventions ensured a lack of effective centralized government. It was something papacy would bitterly regret come reformation. Thirdly: Lithuania was never an empire. Term Grand Duchy should clearly point out that in the mind of the papacy and monarchs of Europe it wasn't even fit to be called a kingdom let alone an empire. Nor was it as independent as you insist but the point is: Lithuania became part of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth by choice. It was "absorbed" into Russian Empire by force of arms. Finally: Mongols got as far into central Europe as polish capital. No "Muscowy trashing" halted their advance, they failed to make good on their victories due to fractional infighting and political instability.

Mongols hit Europe proper anyway. Lithuania is not synonymous with Russia. As for cultural impact - no. Relative to its size, wealth and historical power Russian impact is simply miniscule, especially compared to the level of modern US influence. And the contributions to the common culture that has emerged are most certainly not equal. Unless your willing to argue that impact of say Denmark is about the same as that of Germany?

They essentially held the source of western European cultural civilization since 1453. What crucial impact on western European civilization Russia had back then?

Don't you think that's a far reaching conclusion? EU can't get the likes on Norway to join and keeps the very willing Turkey at arms length. Somehow I don't see it jumping to unite with Russia in a hurry. Geographically perhaps. But then Turkey can make a similar claim. After all it's armies has also reached far and wide into Europe.

Actually no, you can't bank input ad infinitum. Inputting 2 clicks when one attack is already underway won't transition into 2 further attacks due to improper timing. And really - what else is there for a player to do? Dodging and attacking are two main actions that define interactivity of this game. You can't just automate one of those without offering the player something else.

Except then you can run into the problem of unwillingly triggering next uncancelable attack in the chain. A lot of controls could be improved but I fail to see how the game could be improved by enabling auto-attack. It's not like it has a deep tactical layer to compensate for the lost interactivity in combo building.

Because the game uses combo system. Your third and fourth attack is not the same as your first and second.

Have they fixed the upkeep/happiness systems? Because what really killed Civ5 for me is the city spam. That's exactly the problem. A decent invasion force will be around 10-20 embarked units. Since you cannot stack them you'll need at least half as many war ships to provide protection by forming a ring around them. And you'll need to do it even if your opponent has no navy as there is bound to be a barbarian village spawning ships somewhere in the arctic.