Niten_Ryu

As someone who's stuck in the 80's, this hits close to home Let's see... hits are probably safe way to go because obscure bands and songs would be unknown to most players. *hit random selection* Herbie Han**** - Rock It Genesis - Land of Confusion Human League - Don't You Want Me Beastie Boys - You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party Man At Work - Down Under Twisted Sisters - I Wanna Rock The Housemartins - Happy Hour Mike Oldfield - Moonlight Shadow

Based on really good sales, probably not. Same with lack on non-verbal communication by wooden NPCs. I don't think there're many who refuse to buy game based on lack of player character voice or non-verbal communication but it's surely something that many notice nowadays if it's missing. I played Mass Effect a lot before Fallout 3 and it probably made above issues even more obvious, thus hurting my overall enjoyment of the game. Also it didn't help that outside of Malcolm McDowell's brilliant President Eden, most voice acting was monotonic and dry.

1. Jedi Knight Outcast 2. KotOR 3. Jedi Knight 4. Tie Fighter 5. KotOR 2

Or just Shepard or Geth Shepard... but that would be very lame

Splinter Cell is definately more puzzle oriented but that's part of the charm. There were several options to solve the situations but obviously not always several for all 3 methoids of execution (full combat, stun or complitely avoiding enemies). Sneaking as game mechanic was great because you could adjust your speed or to open doors slowly or fast. You also had option to hide from enemies by various ways, like getting above 'em via various acrobatic moves or hanging bellow 'em. Of of the feature I really liked was the fact that you could stun opponents after you asked something of 'em, rather then just to stun 'em right away with baton like in Thief. Just as there are differences, there's also many similarities. Just like in Thief, you could snuff out light sources or walking in different surfaces. Or to hide bodies to avoid detection. I really like Thief series but from game mechanic point of view Spinter Cell is better. This is of course natural as Splinter Cell more recent game. Thief had both Dark Project and Metal Age (my fav of the series) released before original Splinter Cell.

Thanks. It's funny how I forgot to test all available options on all items, when that was common strategy in old adventure games if ya got stuck. I blame the fact that there were 3 coats... or the fact that I'm older now and my memory ain't what it used to be

Damn, felt like trip back to 20 years into the past. I loved it ! Found 21 jokes and 1 half torn note that was same as used in one previous joke. Couldn't figure out that to do with that or to find another torn half.

As a hardcore fps fan, I've loved combat in DeusEx, Bloodlines and Mass Effect. Stats can make combat even more fun but if combat system is too much based on non-twitch like in Fallout 3, then system usually degenerate fast. Original Splinter Cell is work of art IMO. You could even use sticky cameras as stun projectiles, if you aimed your gren launcher like bow. Felt really good to drop enemies from distance with careful aim. Sneaking was better then in all Thief games, thanks to modified Unreal engine. Really good work from Ubisoft Montreal. Just like in Thief games, you had option to fight, stun or just sneak undetected. Combat and sneaking in AP is going to get compared to Splinter Cell and for good reason. Both are modern 3d person high tech spy games and Splinter Cell set the bar. AP is also RPG and that area of the game should only be compared to other recent cRPGs.

I don't think current net supports this kind of system. I have 8Mbit/s connection but I rarely get uninterupted HD streams from anywhere. For videos that don't matter much as you can let it buffer some data and then start to watch again but gaming is instant. Just imagine playing something and your connection get even tiny bit of packet loss. You lost control right there and unless it's turn based game, it's quickload time. And let's not forget resolutions. 1280x720 60 frames sec have been common for PC for good while now. Consoles are usually 30 frames (because developers want to add too much graphical bliss instead of higher framerates). Many PC gamers use 1920x1080 resolution (although rarely get smooth 60 fps). That's going to take huge amounts of bandwidth, no matter the compression methoid. Maybe in the near future as we race towards technological singularity

Jason Anderson interview - Gamasutra He's one of those developers who can't seem to find a steady company to work in. I wonder if he's just plagued with bad luck or has personality trait that leads him to all those unfortunate situations. From interview it's said that he moved to real estate for while after Troika fell. Talk about bad timing

Now there's pepsi all over my monitor, thanks to a brilliant ending

Game industry should be happy to have gamers like you

Obsidian has massive task to reach Splinter Cell (especially first and third one) quality in combat. Splinter Cell used Unreal engines too but only Ubisoft Montreal managed to make most of it. Part two and four were made by different Ubisoft team and it showed in lack of quality right away. I like the Mass Effect influences in skill selection and in dialogue options. Characters still need more non-verbal communication animations (Mass Effect was great in these and Fallout 3 was just about non-existant) and general polishing in animations. Actual graphics (in terms of polygon count, texture resolution or fancy shader effecst) havent mattered in long time and Alpha Protocal certainly look more then good enough. Animation and Art Direction are much more important. Jacques Bauer type of morally ambiguous character will be a lot of fun to play

I don't know why but if I DL anything from europen locations in steam, I might as well use ancent modem. I changed DL location to East Coast US and now I get about 400kb/s. Not optimal but much better.

I finally got some room to breath and my army recovered from heavy losses (multiple line fire at the same time helped a lot). I think I tried to use cavalry too much early on because that's how I used to play in past Total war games (actually pikemen and cavalry). Now both are marginalized as every musket unit is potentially sort of pikemen too. I still use few cavalry units to attack enemy cannon units (although I have to admit that cannons are not that big problem) and to kill routed enemies. Now I'm taking huge beating in Sea combat, probably because I did most of research on other areas. I'm stuck with ships that turn like trains while enemies run circles around me. Lost battle with 2 to 1 advantage in numbers

While list have been bit odd from PC gamer perpective, top 3 is good. There's many things I could rant about in the list but let's take one. Number 7 in the list - Shinji Mikami. I still don't get praise behind his work on Resident Evil saga. When I saw the original Resident Evil on PSX, I thought it was a Alone in the Dark sequel (there was only 4 years in between Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil). Then again, there have been plenty of RE sequels and that's just about what this guy has done in his carieer.

I was going to buy game from Steam but it's actually more pricey in there then in my local ya olde game shoppe. I bought it bit under 45

Most of players who complain about AI play on normal difficulty. While it's still unclear if the increased difficulty level improve the AI or just make enemies stats higher, it still manages to give good challenge at hard/hard or very hard/very hard settings. Just simple morale increase allows enemy units to complite their manouvers as they are much less likely to rout. Let's say on normal enemy tries to circle behind you - You turn few of your units and shoot 'em. They most likely rout as there's no friendly untis nearby and they are under attack from several different enemy units. But on higher difficulty they complite the move and now you have enemies attacking from both sides.

There are some fun scenarios even in this old clich

While I was sad to see Troika go out of business, in retrospective they probably wouldn't have lasted long anyway. They didn't make it in early 2000 so what chance they'd have now when development budgets have gone to even more absurd heights? Bethesda get a lot of heat for going mainstream but they are successful. Bioware balances carefully inbetween mainstream and late 90's type of CRPG. Many hate 'em but their games still sell really well. Troika.. well, I don't think they would have had enough will to change. If any Troika main developers are still in computer game business, they should start to create low budget CRPGs for Nintendo DS and iPhone. Actually **** Garriot, Brad McQuade, Gollop brothers and Currie couple should do the same. There's big money to be made by creating really old skool type of CRPGs (and strategy games). No need for fancy graphics or animations. It'll be just like in the 90's

I really loved humorous games in the 80's and 90's. Zak McKraken and Alien Mindbenders is perfect example of that era funny adventure games. There's no way game like that would get development budget these days. Well, actually game like that wouldn't have got green light in past 15 years To make people laugh via games is probably really difficult and always risky. I'm not even sure if it's possible to make mainstream game that everyone would find funny. Ricky Gervais, Jerry Sendfield or Richard Pryor all have different style of stand up comedy, but not everyone find 'em all funny and some don't like stand up at all. Monty Python type of comedy is similar to old adventure games but some don't get it at all. My fav humorous games in these days have been GTA series since the Vice City. Radio channels are riot thanks to brilliant writing by Lazlow Jones.

Sounds good. I don't mind the spoilers but dont read the article if ya don't wanna know the details of one origin story.

Great demo. 2 Tutorials - One for land battle and one for sea. Fun and easy to learn. 2 Scenarios - Land battle is Battle of Brandywine September 11 1777. You play as British against American. For my few year old rig the battle was smooth. There's plenty of options to get performance just right. I managed to keep most options high quality and still get good framerate. Battle is set on normal difficulty so depending on your Total war experience, it might be bit too easy. My total losses were 312 men on first try and it inclused me not knowing about enemy locations of abilities. Still won the battle but got only ranked "close vicory". I didn't think it was that close but I guess Empire ranks battles differently then previous games. overall fun little fight and I'm not a fan of that perioid combat, uniforms, strategies or tactics. Game is still fun enough for me to ignore all those negatives 2nd scenatio is probably just random sea battle. Your 6 ships (iirc) against 2 french fleets of 4 ships. None of my ship sank but lost about 120 men. 1 enemy ship surrendered and rest were buring or sinking. I think I got "victory" for that. Sea battle was bit more sluggish (dunno if it's water shader or just too many ships with full crews) but still playable. I wasn't sure if I'd get full game right away but after demo I'll buy it as soon as it's released.

Person who wrote the article is stuck in the 90's. Game design has changed a lot from those days. To make even single good NPC these days require a ton of work from the developers. Animations, dialogue and voice acting, reacting some way to various events, NPC reations towards PC or other NPCs ect ect. MotB had only few NPCs but that allowed developers to make each one of 'em relatively interesting and responsive. Of course there's no limit how much work could be put on some NPC, so in some ways they are always lacking. Game first, everything else after that. If because of that it's not always 100% clear why some NPC want to join your adventure, I'm ok with it. As long as it's not forced to have 'em in your party. Or in optimal situations not even in your game... In ME you were forced to deal with all kinds of annoying NPCs but only few of 'em followed you thru the whole game. I'm talking about "The Joker" who had this wonderful line "whatever"when I tried to get some new info of him and then walking away. Not funny and if game would have given the chance to throw Joker into Mass Effect Core, he'd would have had the encounter with element zero before the ship left the citadel. Now we can't always get what we want because that would have required developers to write several events differently, use different dialogue and voice actor and maybe even have game flow different way in general because new pilot might not be as talented as Joker. Not worth it from the developers point of view - Too much work for too small audience. It could be argued that none of the NPC should be mission / storyline critical and all could be killed but that also limits the depth of NPCs. Or increase developers workload and game budget too much.

Ken Levine went Blizzard's route with Bioshock. Game elements come first and story adjusts around it. It worked great for him and the 2kgames. I think he's working with Bioshock 2 and it'll be just as casual game as original Bioshock. He has the ability to make game as hardcore as Thief or System Shock 2 but he knows that game like that wouldn't be profitable in the age of 20-40 million AAA game budgets. From game mechanics point of view everything was calculated and tested again and again in Bioshock. After game mechanics worked the way they wanted, Ken made story work the best he could. I think he did more then ok job with it.