Purkake

Except in the real world, I don't have to look at my back to see if I got my legs blown off. In the real world, somehow, my body just knows.... Yes, it seems a bit illogical to hide your injuries. Maybe in a few years you'll have to rotate the camera around and find the bullet holes to make sure that you are ok.

If you wanted to heal, all you had to do was press 'Q.' If you popped open the inventory during combat, no wonder you were frustrated. I find shooters difficult in general because they involve skills I suck at. VATS was a life saver in Fallout 3 because instead of wasting my ammo shooting at the air around the super mutant running at me with that super sledge, I could pause and have my character - who is actually a good shot - take aim and fire. The same is true for the pause function in Mass Effect. Why? Because things are easier to see when they don't move. In shooters, things constantly move, and you get l33t points because you can track them. Now, the convention is to have some things not constantly move, but there's no reason for that other than convention. Complaining that the health bar is now on the character's back - unlike other games - is like complaining that instead of being able to head shot everything - like other games - you have to dismember it. That's fine if you don't like it (I dislike it as well) but that doesn't make it poor design or implementation. Didn't know about the Q thing. I really like the pause function as well, it makes things more tactical. I don't have a problem with shooting people if my aim isn't crippled for effect ala Dead Space. I disagree that complaining about the health bar is the same as complaining about the dismemberment. The dismemberment is a new and interesting mechanic that totally changes the gameplay and makes you pay attention to what you aim at. The health on your back is a meaningless gimmick, implemented to put a big bullet point on the box saying "No HUD, total immersion!!". Heh, it's not supposed to add anything, it's subtracting the loot hunt element, and as you've just claimed you've never run out of health in any recent game it sounds like it shouldn't be an issue for you. I just don't understand the need to change it. It looks like a "me too" kind of a thing. It also seems like a departure from the RPG part of Deus Ex.

They are removing one key aspect of exploration: find enough health to stay alive. There's no reason to do that in an exploration game. You never had that to start with since medkits were more than plentiful in Deus Ex. Personally I think there are far worse decisions than the regenerating health question (which I'm against for other reasons), like the graphics and some other things I'm forgetting. What about the graphics? Do you mean the weird art style?

I agree completely. Far Cry 2 did the same. The HUD was invisible most of the time, so you never know how much health you had. I had to rpess the reload key which would bring up the hud. It was far more immersion breaking than simply having a health meter on screen at all times. In a game you don't have a real body to kbnow how much you've been injured; the health meter IS the representation of your real body. I agree, though I found Dead Spaces' approach to be much worse. It looked like a bug or an annoying feature in Farcry 2 when your HUD disappeared, but it was still nicely readable. In Dead Space I never knew whether I had full health or almost full and some monsters take away a whole bunch of your health while others don't take almost any.

Probably playing GTA4. Do you have a point in asking me this? My point is that you usually get more than enough medkits without having to look any further than the ground ahead of you. Saying that they have health regeneration because they don't want to have you hunting down medkits is not very convincing because I don't think I've ever run out in a recent game. I don't hate health regeneration, but I don't think that it adds anything either. I'd rather open my inventory and heal up than wait a minute till my health regenerates.

No one said that the regenerating health was for immersion. And while we're at it, every DX game has let you magically regain health. Yes, it would be easier if the health bar stood still. It would also be easier if the monsters held still. Dead Space simply takes the basic idea of a shooter - the player must track objects on the screen in real time - and applies it to health and ammo. The immersion comment was less about Deus Ex and more about games in general, I guess. I find that moving the HUD into the game added nothing to the gameplay and only made the game more annoying. Then again I don't like survival horror games and hate using game mechanics to increase the difficulty. "Oh my god will I be able to go through this clumsy and poorly designed menu to get to my medkit or will I have to try again, the horror is blood chilling."

That would be an issue if the games weren't easy enough to play through by a blindfolded drunk who had never seen a video game in his life. I'd rather watch a movie than play a game where all you do is go from room to room mowing down enemies without worry for ammo, health or tactics. When was the last time you had to actually hunt down a medkit in a game? There's usually so many of them that you could use them as ammunition.

That's true. But even worse, imo, is that there is an infinite supply of everything in the vending machines. Why even bother scattering stuff around a level when the player can go to a vending machine and buy whatever they want without limit? System Shock 2 had the same basic system, but the nanites you had were a precious resource that could not be wasted. The whatever-you-call-it in Bioshock (the Bioshock version of nanites) were easy to find and not the least bit precious. Especially since rezzing was free in Bioshock but cost nanites in SS2. It felt like they wanted to keep the stuff from SS2, but then forgot about the fact that they made the game so easy that you had no use for the extra stuff. Finding another clip of ammo just isn't exiting anymore when you already have more than enough for a small army. Why can't I find a better version of a weapon or something that looks cooler by exploring? It's always something that I already have or some stupid extra concept art or some audio log. All the cool stuff is placed at eye level and made to glow in bright purple so that even the blind can't miss it.

Yeah, I know. but I had never seen an official stance on the rationale behind it. I'm not oppposed to health regen per se, but I think the rationale of avoiding health pickups because they require exploring a level is really super super weak. Yeah that is stupid. When there are two paths/doors in a game I always figure out the way I'm supposed to go and then check out the other one first. The problem with exploring used to be the Mario style "go off the path and find some random stuff". The medkit shouldn't just lie around in a dark alleyway, it should be in a place that makes sense. Health in bathroom closets, hospitals, pharmacies... Weapons in weapon lockers(in places where it makes sense)... In Bioshock it looks like the health and eve fairies sprinkled the levels with medkits and eve hypos. Also no exploring in Deus Ex 3 = utter fail. Exploration was one of the cooler parts of Deus Ex, I remember being very happy to find the crate with biobattery and lockpick right under the dock where you start and all the cool stuff in the sunken shipwreck on the other side of the island.

I know what you mean but I think that GFW Radio proved that you can make an amazing podcast with little to no preparation. That is right on the money. It's all about the personalities and chemistry. I would rather listen to a bunch of awesome people talk about pain drying than some boring people who don't really want to be there talk about SuperAwesome stuff.

I tried it out some time ago, didn't like it very much. It is probably pretty hard to do a podcast about a pretty static game even if there are a bunch of mods for it. I remember there being a lot of long interviews that weren't very exiting. Sorry guys, hope you keep doing it, though.

I hardly knew ye. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

The geth appears to be in the armor. I read speculation that Shepard dies and his/her brain is uploaded into a geth so we can face the threat 'from the inside', or we end up with a geth companion. Geth dog anyone? Maybe a kitten? Aww, I would play with my Geth kitten, I would feed it and I would call it Gethy. Me and Gethy would fight evil Reapers side by side in cuddly cuteness.

Yes, it's all just an insurance scam to let you start the game with some extra credits and buy some of the new badass weapons. Now it all makes sense! Can anyone remind me where exactly Shepard was at the end of the game? I remember Behold the all encompassing power of the hivemind. This isn't NeoGAF, dude. Everyone hates something that most other people like, just look at all the Planescape: Torment haters a while ago.

Wata twiist! That would be just sad. Having each of the 3 games have different protagonists would give them room to be a bit more creative... Why would Bioware want to be more creative when they get all the sales and critical acclaim they need, without it? To push the envelope, to go into history, to show that the medium has more to offer than average space opera? You are probably right, though... Yeah, his/her death would have probably been shown with super slow motion and an orchestra.

Wata twiist! That would be just sad. Having each of the 3 games have different protagonists would give them room to be a bit more creative...

ZOMG ZPOILARZ!!1 I don't like teasers in general. It's just 45 seconds of a freaking geth, yay. And I don't particularly care whether Shepard died or not, I don't think I even have my saves... S/he wasn't that great of a character, the companions were way better. You were pretty much bland clean slate space marine.

Whaaat? Maybe they didn't care enough to look up the actual anatomy/social structure of the Asari to see that they are actually asexual. And even then it still LOOKS like a lesbian love story to the uninitiated. Maybe Dante's Inferno swooped in and lowered the bottom end so much that even Pacman is considered good writing now?

But I liked my 3.5e, now they will screw everything up.

I love it when a plan comes together!

In case you missed it the 15 year old mother was sleeping with 8 other boys: (from here) And a picture of the happy parents

I don't live in the US, but the only places where I have encountered Dante's stuff is high school literature class and in DnD where they lifted the 9 hells concept. When the stuff is mentioned, it's usually not associated with Dante Alighieri in any way.

Yeah, the question is are there people who go: "Hey a Dante's Inferno game, I liked the book so I'll get the game". If it is about the setting then it's even harder to use in marketing. Sure people will recognize stuff from the poem in the game, but how does that help make people buy the game? It could just as well be a Apocalypse: Hellspawn as someone said earlier and with the same marketing it would probably sell as well whether or not it included Dante's stuff like the 9 circles of hell etc.