Purkake

Which was? I dont know, I saw a screenshot once. I think its a XNA/XBL game Maybe you're thinking of Braid. I haven't played it, but it should come to the PC/Mac in early 09.

Yeah, it's not the game of the year, but it is an interesting and cheap indie game. It might have gotten a bit overhyped by some, but that was probably people fearing that otherwise it would get easily overlooked. In the end it is a solid puzzle game with unique charm, nothing more and nothing less. Which was?

So you would also want a film noir style 1930s detective story? The graphics could be Sin City style and you could be a detective solving mysteries and having gunfights with thugs. But not like Mafia, it was good, but this would need to be more detectiv-y.

Yeah you and me both, 4th edition is horrible IMO. And 3.5 has worked for NWN2 so far...

Mmm tactical turn-based racing. Reminds me of the time in BG2 when I had Korgan run around with a lich chasing after him while the rest of the party was pelting it with spells and arrows... good times!

20 €. But bucks sounds cooler. Yeah that is almost twice as much! How about Eurobucks?

Well the farting is still in, so I wouldn't worry

For 20 bucks, I'd probably try it. How are you buying stuff for dollars in Austria, anyway?

And once again I direct you to the Yahtzee review: here

Haven't played it, but do NOT put the headset on when you go online. You have been WARNED! You wouldn't believe the kinds of things that people say there. All hope for humanity will be lost.

Lies, nothing is "pretty" once you have seen/played Prince of Persia. j/k From what i've heard it is pretty good, but people are getting bored with the farting-makes-people-like-you-and-girls-wanna-marry-you thing. Check out Yahtzee's review for some fun here

So any new impressions? Also World of Goo is down to $/

That better be the 1930-s film noir style RPG that I have been waiting for. With all the femme fatales, mysteries and gunplay. If it is not, I WILL be dissapointed. (Please Obsidian?) Also why aren't there any good Shadowrun RPGS after the SNES one? Can't anyone make a good RPG out of it?

No, that is not the problem. I went into the RPG abyss at the time Wasteland was released. Guess which is my favourite RPG of all time? Wasteland. Since then I've been hoping for another RPG as great or greater than Wasteland, but I quickly realized that what I really wanted was to experience the same emotions that Wasteland gave me back then. Just like you don't want more games resembling Planescape: Torment; you actually want Planescape: Torment again. Or that experience. But it's impossible. I've learnt to appreciate the technological advancements made since Wasteland was made in 1988. Now I still think Wasteland was awesome but I would never want to go back to it. And the third dimension has me in a firm grip by now.. By the way, try asking a kid of today which is his favourite RPG. Most will answer Mass Effect or Fallout 3, games which we may think are more shallow than the ones we grew up with. But realize that these kids, in ten years time, will be defending Mass Effect and Fallout 3 the same way we are defending our ancient games now against the new even more 'shallow' titles.. It seems to be the way things work. Yeah that could be it. Can't wait to laugh at the Mass Effect kiddies in ten years. Maybe then BG2 and PST will have finally become retro games and people will talk about them again.

To be honest, I haven't played the DoW series, I prefer Company of Heroes. This is a good time to try everything that you have always wanted. Those packs look so big and juicy...

Steam has just launched their holiday sale. EVERYTHING has a discount and some stuff is 75% off. Get Bioshock for $/€ 5, Opposing Force and Blue Shift $/€ 1, Beyond Good And Evil and Portal $/€ 3.75. Read all about it Also Ubisoft games now available worldwide.

ROFL Hey, if you're going to say that, I'm going to have to argue that Carth was an interesting, well developed character. I find her interesting and unique. Do you have any reasons to think otherwise?

Well, BG2, Anachronox. The point is that they were trying to be original and different. Today it seems that no one takes any risks, because failure costs too much.

Explain how this is true without using specific titles (because that's when people just pointlessly list games they like). The stories are less original and more cliche "save the world" stuff. The writing suffers because less money is spent on writers and more on other things like graphic design and marketing, voice acting is severely limiting the dialog options and number of NPCs. Also, the choices are removed or simplified to make the game more accessible to the mass market with shorter attentions span. While FPSs are getting interesting and unique characters like Alyx in Half-Life 2, rpgs are suffering from uninteresting character stereotypes. They also lack backstories, motivation and sometimes interaction between characters is reduced to casting a spell on each other. This is a common complaint amongst gamers, and I suppose it's true to an extent, but it's important not to confuse a limitation with a choice. The difference is that story has never been limited, only the graphics. Now that graphics are really good, why isn't story catching up?

Speaking of movies, there is a place for both (crappy) Hollywood blockbusters and masterpieces that get critical acclaim, but don't make that much money.(I'm not even talking about niche indy movies). Both Transformers and There Will Be Blood were in theaters and made money. Also there are good movies like The Dark Knight that were popular with both the critics and made a lot of money. Is the video game market ever going to be like that?

And those RPGs of old you say are better, they are streamlined and easier to play than even older ones. So I guess you're right, things are getting worse, but it didn't start with modern games. Maybe the problem is that I stepped into the rpg scene at the time of BG and PST. I'm not saying that getting more streamlines and easier to play is bad. I'm saying that the writing, story and characters are getting worse. It would be awesome if someone made a game with PST-style story and good combat. But what you're missing is that RPGs of yesterday weren't like PST either. They focused more on the story and less on graphics.

But Deus Ex was good, really good. If they still made games that were as good as Deus Ex, I would not be complaining. But look at what happened to Deus Ex 2! This is from the first post: There have been a few really good rpgs since then, but there seem to be fewer and fewer with each coming year. It's like if less people are growing apples, and more are growing pears, and you eat those pears but insist they are bad apples. Actually the question was whether it was even viable to make rpgs like PST in today's market. I think that we can all agree that the rpgs today are not like PST. So following your analogy I would like more apples, I eat the pears because there aren't any apples left to eat.

Today's games aren't "bad", I just find that certain aspects were, on average, much better than they are now. Yes, rpgs are now much more streamlined and easier to play, the graphics have also improved by leaps and bounds, but the story, writing and characters have actually gotten worse over time. Those are the things I value most in rpgs and it is sad to see them become secondary to combat and visuals. I put up with the bad combat in PST, because the story was so good and I wanted to have a lengthy dialog about philosophy with the next random NPC. I am much more unwilling to put up with a bad story just to get to kill the next boring mob of default monsters. Of course I also like Diablo 2, but for completely different reasons. I don't see it as a classical rpg, it is an action rpg. With action rpgs I don't care if the dialog or the story sucks, I play them for the fun I have in killing monsters and getting awesome loot. EDIT: I agree that there were a lot of games with awful writing back then as well, but I expect things to get better over time, now worse. It's like they aren't even trying these days.(with a few exeptions)

If you want to so some gaming on the laptop, then the real bottleneck will almost always be the graphics card. Make sure that it is not some integrated crap, before looking at the processor and ram. These days most Core 2 Duo processors in laptops are good enough for gaming. Ram isn't really an issue either, you can get 2 or 4 GB with most laptops by default.

It might be nostalgia, but there are other people who see the writing in Planescape: Torment as the best there has been in a video game and things going downhill from there. The other thing was combat, the very best was in Baldur's Gate 2 and while I believe that stories can achieve PST goodness again, I don't believe that anyone has the guts to make a combat system like the one in BG2 with all the hundreds of spells, magic items and options. Dragon Age might try and succeed, but we will see. Sadly(or luckily) I wasn't playing games back then. If you still want to do some good old-fashioned dungeon crawling, look up Etrian Odyssey on the DS, it's pretty good.(also it has the map drawing that all you old-timers seem to miss)