Niten_Ryu

GTA Vice City is one of my all time fav games and GTA San Andreas and GTA IV are great too. Houser brothers and Lazlow write some of the best stuff in the biz, including great characters like Rosenberg, OG Loc and Yusuf Amir. That said, I'm not interested in RDR. Wild west games are not my thing and tone of the game seem to be serious, rather then funny like in GTAs. I don't even know anything about the gameplay mechanics or the world setting. It didn't help that previes game was released for consoles only and this one seem to be same way too. Don't matter, Episodes from Liberty City will be released soon for PC and that's about to take all my free time for awhile.

Characters look weird. Original Witcher had great art direction and characters did look great for available polycount. Adam Badowski seem to be in Witcher 2 (not as art director but project lead? ) but couldn't find if original lead character artist Marian Chomiak is still in.

Ah yes. Good 'ol "no true scotsman" argument, but from divine source. No real muslim would get upset about these pictures! No real muslim would tolerate these pictures! All real muslims would try to do their best to harm anyone who had anything to do with these pictures! Who is right? Here's the best part. No human can know who is muslim, at least not untill the judgement day. Extremest might not be extreme enough or moderates not tolerant enough. Listening to Sunni argue with Shia is scary stuff. Then you start to think how could they integrate into western society and you'll notice that it's impossible by default. Two people might be from the same family, follow same traditions and code but once there's something they seriously disagree, one might say - you're not a true muslim. I don't know much about the early days of the first caliphate, but I'd guess "no true scotsman" was developed as counter to the rule where no muslim shall attack against another muslim. If one can argue that other is not a true muslim, then all bets are off. Or maybe it just naturally happend but it's major headache for us western nations as we don't have any solutions.

Why do you bother with addons and sequels if the game is already finished for you? I don't understand the question. Maybe because of my PnP background, characters death mean very little. World goes on and the choices you made with that character live on. You roll the dice and make new character in that same world.

I'd say scaling is even worse for strategy/tactical games. Total rookie can kill experienced mob in Jagged Alliance 2 or Xcom so there's absolutely no need for scaling. One of the worst things in Jagged Alliance 2 was the fact that there would be infinite spawn of gray mob (most experienced) troops that Queen could send all over the country. There should have been 1-3 elite groups (plus all the non moving ones at the fixed areas) at the most, who'd investigate latest location you successfully invaded.

I don't understand why Bioware likes to ignore choices that you've made if your character is killed in previous title. I just read that if your character made the ultimate sacrifice, you'll start with default canon option with new Orlesian Warden. It means anything your character did in DA are ignored if they differ from the canon. I don't mind if my character dies, I chose that path but if Bioware just ignores all the choices I've made, what the point to continue the story? They are doing same in ME3 too.

DeusEx 3 is prequel to original DeusEx. So far they've only let art director to speak up and that's a probably a good thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBifPsHprbs Transhumanism - That seem to be the key theme. That guy in the teaser trailer look bit like Paul Denton. Personally I'd like to DeusEx game mechanics but since this is going to be on both ps3 and xbox360, that ain't gonna happen.

Oh crap. I was plannin to buy this from Steam holiday sales but I also have boxed version of the DA. Have to skip it complitely then, based on anrgy posts on various boards and rather average (at least for Bioware) scores on metacritic, it's not a huge loss. I still think this would have been worth 5-10 euros from Steam but I'm certainly not going to buy another DA just for the expansion.

Gametrailers comments are not very positive and while it's often good to ignore 'em, they are close to your average gamer. If they say game look like crap, movement is odd, animation is stiff, AI is messed up, map is claustrophopic like ME maps, combat mechanics are sub par... well, actually I have to agree with 'em. And saying that makes me want to kick myself into face. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Why didn't they just copy original Spinter Cell combat and stealth mechanics, have large and open maps for multiple ways to complite 'em and focus on their strong aspect - the story and interesting characters. Now it seem like gamers are going to ignore this game, because they can't get past the graphics and gameplay mechanics. Really sucks because modern games often have it vice versa.

Aha. Another difference. In my scenario nihilist wouldn't give a damn about what he does nor what his followers think of him or his actions. In your scenario hero still belives something - He belives himself and his actions. This includes "right makes might" but of course are not limited to that. Hero doesn't embrace the nothingness and thus strangly enough have some hope left in him. I understand your view point much better now.

Ok, now I sorta see where we differ. Your cause and effect is complitely opposite of mine. If you'd design nihilistic setting, denizens in it would *shrug* few times and get on with their insignificant lives and still live just about the same as they used to. In my nihilistic setting it would end up in flames or at least in complite collapse of the society. Might be "fun" PnP project. Something like world full of characters like Kevin Nealon's excellent Doug Wilson (from the Weeds).

I use game quotes rather then real life quotes (those would just lead to endless counter quotes). In games (and in other creative media) you can deal with absolutes. You design world and setting to be something and thus by default they are what you designed 'em to be. In real world it'll be about what we BELIVE (or what we KNOW if we choose strong stance for or against something). Is Dragon Age nihilistic setting? Mr Gaider don't tell us but some lore might suggest that it is. Denizens of the Thedas certainly don't think it is as they have rules and hierarchies, faiths, working societies, moral codes and laws. But what if they knew it's nihilistic? You don't think it'd turn setting darker by default?

In the Witcher (I find that setting dark while others argue that there's nothing dark in it) your dwarf companion say something like this - "moral relativism has caused more misery then all the monsters and dragons combined". I liked that quote and if we accept that nihilism is the ultimate argument against any kind of morality ie. "nothing matters, not even my own actions", I can't see that as anything but a extremely dark view.

am always disappointed by folks who equate nihilism with dark; is a disturbingly myopic pov. HA! Good Fun! Are you saying that nihilism is not dark?

Good thing is that you don't really need those minerals. In my first run I collected every single resource untill planet was depleted (and few extra probes just to be sure) but after I had about 250k of each element, I stopped because no upgrade required more then fraction of it. On next run I only mined planets that had missions on 'em. Run after that I only mined when I really needed some upgrade and on this last run I ignore upgrades complitely.

Yes. I use armor piercing ammo and pistol. And warp (if biotic) and incinerate (if tech). I think time left was 1 min 30 secs.

Games are luxury items so it's no wonder that they take big hit on worldwide depression (or recession if you accept the virtual GPD growth tricks). This brings us back to original argument - Would people buy significantly more games if piracy wasn't possible? Based on PS3 info and consumer behaviour during this depression, I'd say no. Yes, there are rich bastards who pirate everything just because they can but based on the data they can't be the largest group.

Oh yeah, if you ever manage to kill Mongols, . Have fun!

Mongols are tough opponent for Byzantine and Russia. I think I lost 50% of the my area to Mongols last campaign as Russia. I don't have any real advice as it's just about impossible to get anyone else to attack 'em (they might declare war but don't seem to send troops) so basically you have to deal with 'em alone. Or play something like Sweden or England and ignore 'em complitely I haven't bought Napoleon Total War yet as it's sure to be cheap in next Steam holiday sales and by that time developers have fixed most of the bugs.

I'd be suprised if the Illusive Man didn't plan it. It's not only worth to test Shepard, it's also very effective way to remove everyone who knew about the Lazarus project (except Jacob and Miranda, who could easily get killed later as it's suicide mission).

Yup, I've bought every Splinter Cell PC game soon after release but I'll skip this one untill DRM is dropped.

Portal was one of those near perfect games. Hopefully sequel will be just as good.

I like small details like working toilets and beds for each NPC in games but I understand that development time and budget are limited. GTA 4 had budget of 100 million dollars and it did have nice amount of "fluff" but even that game had plenty of cardboard windows and doors what you can't interact in any way (and also have really bad texture resolution). Speaking of ME2 toilet. I did use it after each longer mission because of roleplaying purposes. Come back from mission, take shower, use toilet, normal cloths, feed hamster and fish, write report, check emails, talk to Liara via extranet, go to crewdeck, chat with crew, eat something, go to sleep / take nap. Now what if captains cabin would have been old skool 3x3 room with nothing in it. I'd probably go to sleep in it but most likely wouldn't think of other activites. In ye olde text game would describe the room and I'd probably do the activities as I did now. <use shower> Your cloths are now wet Damn it! <remove cloths> You're naked <use shower> You feel fresh! <use toilet> Don't forget to flush <flush toilet> unknown command 'flush' What the... <use toilet> You flush the toilet I think I prefer games today. At least actions are much faster if you just use your imagination even if you can't directly interact with all items.

Not sure. Shepard seem to die on same way if he's alone in the end. I'm not sure why Bioware felt that THIS was right way to get Shepard killed, in the middle of the trilogy. Actually getting Shepard killed ain't the real problem for ME3, but the fact that you lose all your choices from the 2 previous games if you let Shepard die (if it's still true that you always have to start ME3 with default Shepard, if you got death ending in ME2).

Infinity Ward made 2 games that defined this generation of consoles... but since those 2 games are like Michael Bay movies, I'm certainly not sad to se 'em go. Might be good for Jason West to do something other then shooters. Guy has really boring resume with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (haha EA) + four Call of Duty games.