pmp10

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.

It certainly was. The combat was way to simple for a human and diplomacy simply broken. And I don't mean it in the "I play to win so it's backstab-time" broken but "Oh look a human player - time to annoy him till he declares war" broken. No. It can. Not sure if they fixed the "no two workers on the same hex" rule but the old stacks of doom have simply turned into carpets and now take eternity to move. With fleets it can be even worse as protecting a modern naval invasion against respawning barbarian triemes is incredibly frustrating.

Console games do get button mapping. It's simply that DS3 doesn't support it.

Same day Red Dead comes out on PC. Actually unlike RDR the game was already rated for PC by ESRB. Since that is exactly how news of gta4 and bully ports leaked the chances are somewhat better.

That's genuinely scary, obsidian boss fights tend to be cheap and badly balanced even when they don't have epicness quota to fulfill. That one character can defeat the witch boss with little trouble while the other one dies constantly is already a bad sign.

My first attempt was around 5 usually one-shotted or sniped while I was trying to readjust the camera. I don't think that fight was meant to be played with only Lucas. BTW:Dose anyone know if AI companions are forced upon you in single player?

it's better than in Witcher or DA2 I wouldn't know as I haven't played either but "horrid" in my original post refereed to mouse&keyboard controls. As for my problems with combat system - they may not be very common, the game simply insists on using mechanics I hate with a passion.

Well that demo left me unimpressed. It's not only the horrid controls but also the camera problems and the way combat system was designed. It's nice that good deal of attention was paid to the story and characters but in this type of game I hold those issues secondary to the gameplay.

I was unaware it had to. Between quite numerous gameplay elements, locations, missions and mostly open-ended nature of the terrain it seems to be quite obvious on what kind of game it is.

No but that may be because AC games attempts to maintain some lose hold on realism.

We do? While E3 certainly makes sense aren't game announcements usually the domain of the (hitherto undetermined) publisher?

That comparison isn't entirely valid as there is a huge difference between those two countries. US has options Germany can't dream of, for example it has access to almost 100k square km of desert.

It was probably Fallout New Vegas and after that he went to their new project ("Defiance" or something). Defiance was an idea that wasn't accepted by Squre-Enix - hence Dungeon Siege 3. Once this and New Vegas DLCs ship we only know of some kind of 2D game as far as Obsidian projects go.

Speaking of which: . And it gets a giant WTF from me. The last thing I want is for this game to go style over substance.

Can't say I agree on that. Existence of loot and similar camera position doesn't necessarily put those games in the same genre. And even if they were the comparison is pointless as they launched at completely different price points.

Or maybe they focus on other game aspects more in line with the expectation of their target audience? You just need to look at AP reviews to see that European gamers have somewhat different expectations.