Niten_Ryu

Deadwood Rome Freaks and Geeks Late Night with Conan O'Brien I can't think any other shows. Most deserve to be cancelled sooner rather then later All of those shows had great characters like - Artie Kendall Dirty mouth ghost from the golden age of radio.

Ballad of Gay Tony would be my game of the year 2010 - but unfortunately it was already released for Xbox360 in 2009. Well, actually Red Dead Redemption would have been my 2010 GotY.. no wait, it's not even released at all for the PC. Vice City, San Andreas and GTA4 are all about equally good. Lost and Damned is not as good as 'em and Ballad of Gay Tony is the greatest so far. My ideal GTA game would be - GTA4 physics and driving model, scale and stat mechanics of the San Andreas and world, era and humor of the Vice City.

I bought 'em (again, as I've probably lost few disks here and there) from Steam sale. Probably have not aged well graphically but for example Jedi Outcast combat mechanics and especially AI vs. AI combat are still state of the art. Those later Dark Forces games were popular in multiplayer too but probably there's not much of a scene anymore.

For some reason or other, space sims are dead genre. I find the situation bit odd as combat could be as arcady or realistic as developers want. Maybe casual players can't perform well in 3d space. Based on games like World of Warcraft raids and such, I think they get confused by left and right. Now add up and down in the mix and it gets really ugly. Something like Newtonian physics (basically meaning you can move to the different direction then your ship currently face) might as well be supernatural feature. Oh and EVE Online probably have most of the space sim fans and good luck getting 'em to leave their beloved game.

Could be, but still I don't understand how character could have a dilemma. You created this character, you know everything about this character. You know what choice character would choose before NPCs speak their lines. You can select "what should I do" or "I don't know what I should be doing" type of lines if game allow it (for roleplaying purposes) but in the end, you already know what you'll ultimately choose.

True. I wonder why don't all developers color code their answers. Then again, choices are usually so simple that even replicant failing their Voight-Kampff test would do just fine in CRPGs.

I've been playing Just Cause 2. That's one horrible GTA clone, with some utterly unplayable vehicles. Maybe those are meant to be played with analogue stick, because even the slighest tap on keyboard will stear vehicles out of control (if you have bit of speed). Actually it was great that I tried this game, made me appreciate Rockstar and GTA games even more.

For me choices in games are never difficult because I'm roleplaying a character. Unless I'm roleplaying a character who struggles with every choice or something bizarre like that. Extra credits made newbie error - Because it's all about the "game" these days, they forgot that some of us don't reflect our own moral and values to the main character.

Full Price: Mass Effect 3 KotOR Online Witcher 2 Maybe full price: RAGE DeusEx Human Revolution Shogun 2 Portal 2 With serious (50% or more) discount from Steam Dragon Age 2 Crysis 2 Only for 5

Kane & Lynch 2 is one of those games that it's probably not worth even for free. But if few hour shaky cam slaughter fest with bad game mechanics is your thing, maybe it's worth 10

That is a lot of crap. I've complited DeusEx 10+ times and Alpha Protocol 6 times. Guess what, CoD4 is more difficult (on highest difficulty) then either of 'em. Both in DeusEx and Alpha Protocol, you can start firefight and survive it easily. From my sig you'll find Alpha Procol run, no gear upgrades, veteran / hard difficulty settings. Reason for easiness is simple. Both DeusEx and Alpha Protocol assume that certain amount of shots fired will be missed. Thus enemies react slower, while in CoD4 enemies can drop you really fast if you missed flash granade or moved into room looking wrong direction. But quality of the combat / shooting mechanics is NOT the same as the overall difficulty of the game.

I was big fan of DeusEx shooting mechanics for a long time but I agree that it won't work anymore (or rather, we could argue that it never did for the majoirt of the players). Modern players just don't get the fact that if they accurately aim something and still miss. They quit playing, tell their friends that the game sucks and take another round in newest Call of Duty game. Speaking about CoD series, I know I've had to change my opinion about CoD4 Modern Warfare. While the constant scripting, endless enemy waves (unless you move to the certain trigger or wait for script to run out), Michael Bay-esque storyline are some of the negative aspects of that game, the shooting mechanics are probably best I've experienced in 20 years. Actually contrast between CoD4 and something like Alpha Protocol are so great, that you forget that both games (from shooting mechanics point of view) should be from same era. Alpha Protocol feel like circa 2000 game, while CoD4 feels... well, a modern game Let's not forget that while CoD series was popular, it only exploded with generation defining game CoD4. For example CoD3 sold 2 million copies in US and CoD4 sold even more in same time perioid... but it continued to sell because of good word of mouth. In the next 1,5 years it sold more then 13 million units worldwide. Developers like Obsidian, Bethedsa and Bioware should just rip off the latest and greatest shooting mechanics and focus their main resources elsewhere. I know at least Bethesda could use some extra in writing and Bioware could maybe open up maps and teach their characters to jump, crouch and prone. Obsidian could just fix the bugs *drools* Bug free Alpha Protocol, with Spinter Cell stealth mechanics and CoD4 shooting mechanics.

And today it'll begin again, 2010 holiday sales. Time to buy most of the games for the next six months. I managed to play all but 12 games from the midsummer sales I didn't have patience to wait for sales to begin and bought Just Cause 2 for 6,24

Again, it don't matter if the game is tactical or not. It could be on trails FPS, it could be submarine simulation, it could be The Sims (actually The Sims 3 did allow some amount of rule customization, ie how fast sims age and such). Fixed set of difficulties are always worse option then user selected. Some don't want challenge at all and just want to experience the story/setting and some do like the challenge. And going from 50% to 200% from several different categories might as well be fire and forget. As long as 100% if relatively in the middle of the average difficulty (meaning that developers manage to beat their own game).

Yeah, let's call the CRPG that saved the genre "not popular". Baldur's Gate was massive success back in the day. Over 2 million copes sold and that was when game budgets were 1/10th of modern game development budget.

Numbers don't have to be huge because profit margins are so great (means no retail cut, no DVD printing costs, small teams or perhaps even single person). Basically people who buy DLCs are those who'd buy 200-300 dollar games. Most of us wouldn't buy games (at all) if they'd be DLC byte sizes

You misunderstood. My example with the Silent Storm Sentinels wasn't about tactical depth of that game (it certainly have that) but the fact that Nivel took a leap of faith and put some trust into more experienced players. Actually Baldur's Gate series (or any AD&D infinity engine game) could have used the similar difficulty sliders rather then offering (only) fixed set of difficulty levels. ie like this. Friendly fire 0%----50%----100% Monster hitpoints 50%----100%----200% Monster damage 50%----100%----200% Player damage 50%----100%----200% Allow saves Never(aka ironman, saves once you exit the game)-only resting-outside combat-always Hitpoints per level Random-50% or higher-75% or higher-Max Baldur's Gate would still work the same way as it does now but players would have more options how the want to play the game.

With Blizzards glacier pace, it's impossile to say when, if ever, the movie is out. I wouldn't be suprised even if they'd cancel the whole project if some of the higher ups in Blizzard hierarchy don't like it. WoW makes currently stupid amounts of cash, so it'd only hurt 'em (and all the future projects) if they'd do absolutely horrible movie about the Warcraft universe. Blizzards lore might not be the top shelf stuff but it's extemely popular. I mean it's same kind of way popular as something like Spiderman origin story. East, accessable and familar. Avatar showed the movie biz that people will accept stupid looking aliens... and *shudder* even romance between 'em. I'm sure that nightelfs will not be the problem for the casual audience. Then again, fantasy movies have always potential to tank. If movie is out the same time when WoW finally starts to lose subscribers by the mass, then movie might suffer too.

It was offical patch. Warren Spector said that it was a huge mistake to develop multiplayer at all. Took a lot of resources and none played it. No wonder as 10 years ago multiplayer was still relatively small niche. Everyone just played Quakeworld, Quake 3, CS, TFC, Starcraft, Warcraft 2 or UT99 and didn't really jump from game to game like nowadays.

Just finished Call of Duty World at War. I think it's the worst of the series and since I played 'em chronological order, the contrast between fun and interesting Modern Warfare and boring WW2 was huge. Jack Bauer bearking orders in pacific campaign game was bizarre. I can usually ignore actors previous roles but this time no such luck

Hopefully it does. I think developers think too much about balance in general without never reaching it (outside some rare exceptions like Starcraft and such). Usually casual players are ok with easy difficulty, where they really can't die unless they go afk or something like that. More advanced players do know what's best difficulty (and settings) for 'em. So far the only game I've seen with GOOD difficulty sliders was Silent Storm Sentinels. In that game you could adjust sliders in several different categories. For example I found out that best setting for me was that both enemies and my characters do x2 damage. Just basic difficulty increase (like seen in Infinity engine D&D games) would just allow enemies to do more damage. Reason for this is simple, this made combat more dangerous for both sides. Enemies would still have the advantage because of the there's simple more of 'em but at the same time it meant that I wouldn't spend full clips of bullets to kill one mob.

I don't think it's that. Because they probably won't even touch the options and star game right away. Gaider is just full of crap and tries to find justification for extremely stupid design choice. So now it's send tank, taunt and/or stun/root and AoE away... for every multi mob encounter. Sure sounds like fun Friendly fire is essential part of any tactical game. I guess it's safe to say that Dragon Age 2 won't require tactics

Those leaked lists from Blizzard have been rather accurate over the years. Even before WoW was out of beta, it was already known what the next few expansions would be about and how high the level cap would be those expansions. Actually Catalysm is first expansion that wasn't in the list. "Maelstrom" was supposed to be 3rd expansion with the lvel cap of 90. Also all expasions have been delayed from original time table. It's only natural that there's going to be a changes in 6-7 plans, so why not use Deathwing storyline now and also do changes in the old world (for example becuase how certain building models or trees were made in original game, it wasn't possible to use lying mounts in mainland and Kalimdor before Catalysm changes).

Uh oh... I like difficulty in my games but not getting killed, even once to some bosses, traps or ambushes is bit too much for me. In Diablo 2 it wasn't that bad as you could always run away (no fighting in sealed small areas) and drink potions like they're going out of style but not sure if The Witcher 2 allow that.

That "action" mode looked like complite suicide tactics. Heh, maybe game is that easy that you can just charge in and forget about it. Then again, video cut out just before Mr. Hawke is killed in "tactical" mode To make it worse frieldly fire wasn't even (then again, I don't even know if it can be turned on in DA2 )