Drowsy Emperor

Another game I'm going to play... the remake of.

And you shall have it! Along with Minsc's boot in your bum.

For all those big names the game looks pretty generic. You could have convinced me I was looking at a Dragon Age conversion or something.

You need Mighty Boo the Ranger in the party to do some butt kicking for GOODNESS

Sweet cover. We need more humor in games. I'm tired of macho crap and teen angst.

What he said. Btw, I thought the huge weapon syndrome was a Japanese only disease. Somebody take McFarlane's anime away from him.

DoW 2 games are good, polished games. They just aren't going to have the legendary status Relic's regular RTS games have. I didn't like them all that much but you gotta give them credit for trying to do something different.

That always looked interesting to me, let me know if you figure it out. Badically its made for the fans of the game - there's no way around studying the 60 page rulebook. Menus are horribly organized, the game is full of various iconography that isn't explained anywhere etc... But the most problematic issue is that I've only seen the AI use a single tactic in 15+ games, regardless of which race they pick. This leads to some strange turns like the AI advancing a player deep near the touchline for a pass with teams that are completely incapable of passing and catching. I'm under the impression that regular BB players would steamroll the AI in ten minutes regardless of difficulty. After that, the most annoying thing are inexplicable load times for a game with very simplistic graphics (bad optimization). If you can get past all those hurdles its a decent game, probably best played in hot seat mode with friends/family. I don't know about DRM... I've had one crash so far.

So that's why Relic hasn't announced anything in 6 months. Well looking at their selection I can't say that PC gaming is at a great loss there, apart from the 40K MMO there wasn't much to look forward to. Maybe Relic will get to make Homeworld now. After all THQ was the one pushing for endless DoW and CoH sequels/expansions.

Blood Bowl Legendary edition. The tutorials suck and I don't know the rules so I'm having a really tough time with the game.

Its not as though having him working on the game means anything concrete - little is going to be up to him and him alone. There is more than a fair chance they'll shoehorn the plot into standard videogame stuff and just stick his name on the box. I used to have 3 of the Drizzt books in my teens and I either threw them away or sold them off at some point. Today I'd say they were trash, but then I'd say that for the writing of most games I've played. I'd say the same about Todd McFarlane although to be honest, he's a bit better in his field than Salvatore is in his.

Well he does carry a sword called Twinkle. I guess that makes him memorable.

Is he talking about Drizzt? I hope he isn't.

Volourn hijack your profile?

Very nice. I assume the other sucky screen I posted earlier must be from an earlier stage of development, or just made in a very bad angle.

I like it.

I'm assuming you know at least partially what the game is about. Well, the name is certainly misleading. There is very little of what you get in the dungeon crawl type board game. Its a brain burning - deeply strategic game with many given possibilities in a turn: several active characters with different abilities, a bunch of branching pathways on the board, opponent actions to consider, the rotate ability of the dungeon tiles, the limited allowance of action points to do all those things. In the first few plays its very overwhelming. In fact, it still is because plotting out detailed plays is very hard and time consuming. Even the designer suggests the use of a timer. However I like the strategic aspect, dicefest type dungeon crawl is not my cup of tea - all of that has been done on the PC and done better. That said I appreciate the use of the theme and I think its still well conveyed regardless of the actual fairly abstract gameplay. I mean, its two teams in a deadly ever changing maze made for the amusement of some arch mage or other. Thats the theme and its conveyed well when your brain isn't burning so much that you can turn your attention to it.Its very easy to learn, but I imagine very hard to play well. I have the original Dungeon Twister, not DT: Prison and its generally accepted that the former is inferior in component quality to the latter. Its colorful but it won't turn any heads. However I read in a few places that the actual mazes and characters are better designed in the original, so that its overall a better game than DT:P. DT:P has more eye candy with the minis and a better designed insert, but if I had to choose again I'd still pick the original. Its a medium to heavy experience, depending on player dedication, really well balanced for two players. Its made for people that enjoy a more cerebral take on fantasy games, that like labyrinths and directly competitive games. Its a game of almost pure skill with practically no randomization. I suggest you pick up the original for around 25$ if you can. That way you won't regret the purchase even if you don't like it in the long run, which could happen with the almost twice as expensive sequel.

Anno 2070

I play Twilight Struggle, Race for the Galaxy and Dungeon Twister and RftG has a decent online implementation at en.boardgamearena.com . If you're interested in playing it sometime (I assume you know it since you're playing Eminent Domain) drop me a note sometime. @ Volourn: The only way NWN could be considered a good game is if you voluntarily forget that any other RPG ever existed. Its embarrassing in this day and age to even mention that blocky mess of an introductory DnD scenario they tried to pass off as a game.

Good effort and good luck to them once they get outside the dungeon. I really wonder how many of Bioware's recent offerings will get remakes a decade from now. Well I haven't even played DA2 (so I gave it the benefit of the doubt that it could be better than BG) but I can still play and enjoy BG1 and that makes it near the top of a very short list of games from that era. Which boardgames btw? @Volourn: BW worst game ever is without a shadow of a doubt Neverwinter Nights. Really, no contest there. You can hate on BG series as much as you want. Fact is, along with Fallout 1+2 and Planescape: Torment its the most talked about and admired RPG ever, and is popular even today. Observe, GOG's catalog of 300 games according to sales:

Are you really comparing the latest game of a developer to their decade old first try at RPG's? If the game wasn't better than BG1 that would be grounds for hara-kiri. For the sake of other forum members I won't bring BGII, ToB and the series as a whole into this discussion and see how their late offerings compare to it. That would be really pointless as everyone's position on the issue is well known. I hold that the only thing Bioware has released that's really fresh and original (up to a point) since the BG series are the Mass Effect games. Other games, like Jade Empire and Dragon Age are too flawed or derivative to consider. KOTOR sucks. It sucked then, it sucks now. But its SW so no one cares and they play it anyway.

They tried with DA2, although it seems that it's going back to what you posted considering the content of one of the DLCs. The basic plot outline is not the entirety of the "scheme": there are characters, dialogue, dramatic twists, relationships, quests etc. etc. that recur more or less in every game with slight or even no changes. I'm tired of the whole package. None of it feels fresh or new - more like well trodden ground whose only plus at this point is that it can be traversed on autopilot. And that's not much of an endorsement. Its amusing to hear complaints from my friends after playing ME2 or DA2 in the vein: "all their games are the same! they're just repackaging xyz!" when I've been telling them that very thing for the last 5 years.

People don't have the luxury of quitting just because Bioware is no longer dedicated to making real RPG games. Some of them probably don't even care and others might even like the new direction. It doesn't really matter that much anyway, their prime was done by ToB and no one is expecting them to resurrect as a niche game developer when "100+ million dollar franchises" are the order of the day. Like Bethesda, you know what you're getting 95% of the time prior to buying the game. So buy it, or don't. The only 2 things I'm interested in is knowing: a) what will be their next franchise (in a new RPG) b) will they break away from copy/pasting the basic KOTOR scheme (you're a good/evil - jedi/grey warden/spectre that has to destroy ancient evil yadayadayada) that every game is based on Although I won't hold my breath expecting much of the former or hoping for the latter.

I agree, they both equally suck.

*gasp*