Drowsy Emperor

Can't help but lol at Arcanum's and Vampire's high placement (half broken, half incomplete games in the top 10, really?), Fallout 2 being above BGII ... among other things. Many of the pre Fallout/BG ones are borderline unplayable and don't belong in any top list made in 2014 except as a historical footnote. Thanks for bringing it here though.

I agree, they're some of the most boring monsters ever devised. Bioware has managed to invent something new that ... hasn't got a single original thing in it. A contradiction there, but true in a way.

The scandal with the UN helicopter is hilarious (or would be if they didn't use it to kill people). It really speaks of the state of the Ukrainian army if they had to put a mission chopper into use, presumably because it was one of the few undergoing regular maintenance and thus, reliable.

Please don't start another sexism discussion, lest my hemorrhoids develop hemorrhoids of their own.

I wish it were but the real thing has 20+ tools. I dabbled a bit into lockpicking for fun but everything but the old design tumbler lock, handcuffs and cheap padlocks is very very difficult to pick. Basically there are 10 ways of getting around a lock and every one of them is better than lockpicking.

Pah. I want real reptile skin. From a lizard slain by a naked Dave Gaider atop a mountain. During a full moon. All you'd get out of DG climbing the mountain of bad prose he uses as inspiration is "Charizard Mountain", the first game to feature a gay lizard companion.

I'm enjoying Dragonfall more than South Park or even Witcher 2. Its vastly improved over the original Shadowrun campaign, the writing is tight, the characters are interesting and the missions are more challenging. The game will never blow you away - its far too obvious they were working on a tight budget, but the story will keep me going right to the end, even if it is a variation of "ancient evil returns". I actually gave up on ME3 a couple of hours into the game to play Shadowrun. As for ME3... Its boring. The same thing all over again. Massive ego stroking - captain this, captain that. Everything that walks and crawls is kissing your ass in that game. Pompous voice acting, cringe worthy melodramatic dialog and a massive tool of a protagonist. Bland corridor levels, with bad shooting mechanics and controls made up specifically to annoy PC users. Multiple commands bound to a single key? Really Bioware? Why don't you just let space bar do everything in the game, like making all enemies on the screen blow up as in a space shooter, cos gameplay wise - ME3's differs from it only in perspective. In my opinion, the cover shooting fad was always a bad gameplay design in any game, and when you get that out of the way ME3 is all standing and talking. A sequence of linear shooting broken up by dialog and a minigame, kept interesting only by the brevity of each individual component. It worked once, or twice, but now its time to retire it. As in permanently. The second game had some interesting locations, at least a bit of exploration to keep the tedium at bay. ME3... not so much. It has one designated experience and you can't even fall off a cliff to save yourself from it.

You may be joking but I'm pretty sure there are people out there buy it to store it on the shelf and never open it. disturbing as it may sound.

You know, I'm all for fancy collectors editions but in the last few years, ever since they (most large publishers) found out what the market would tolerate, its just a money grab. Most of the stuff you get is crap and the prices are sky high. In an RPG collectors edition I'd be perfectly satisfied with a nice cloth map. Everything else can't be made at a high enough quality without driving the price up.

I know its not, that's why I'm interested. The first game was though.

I played the first Divinity game and thought it was a really good Diablo clone, but the series didn't hold my interest as I'm not too big a fan of Diablo like games. But this one... it looks great, like they put a ton of effort into the game. And all that content I've seen in the videos leads me to believe that the editor is going to be really good If I had the money, it would be a day 1 purchase.

I played through most of Shadowrun Returns (the first story). Its mildly disappointing because its like NWN OC, basically a demonstration of what the tool box is capable of. The world is not very interactive, the areas are mostly small and story and characters are somewhat bland. Yet I can see the possibility of a nice game coming out of that toolbox. I've started Dragonfall and it looks like its the better of the two. The introduction is certainly more interesting.

Is it true the switch to integrated is to conserve power when the laptop is running on battery? I read a question/answer about the 8750M/4000 software switch and it said to plug in the laptop's AC power cord while playing games and the discreet card will work correctly. Yes, when it runs on battery power it uses the integrated card for most things. But when its plugged in (and mine is plugged in all the time) the software tells it which card each application should use. The problem is with the game itself, I've already specified that it should use the discrete card, and its using it - just detecting the other one. Most games do that and detect my card as Intel 4000 but what they don't do is remove settings from the menu just because they think the card isn't appropriate. They'll benchmark the machine and default to lower settings (if there is a benchmark application with the game) but then I just bump it all to maximum and the games work fine. Shogun 2 makes options it thinks don't work unavailable, which is nonsense really.

Its a laptop, but its way better than what is necessary to run Shogun 2. A lot of people have the same problem, the result of the graphics chip switching software crap that both NVIDIA and ATI use. Basically the game is using the Radeon 8750M card but detecting it as the Intel 4000, which doesn't have Dx11 so its blocking the Dx11 settings. There is no fix for it apparently.

Doesn't work, defaults back to whatever it thinks are the proper settings. I run the benchmark, it tells me that ultra settings aren't supported on my card, I run the game it tells me I have a Dx 11 graphics card. Ultra settings are solely Dx 11 dependent. But it actually runs at Dx 9 limitations, regardless of what the in game video options say. Incredibly stupid.

That is very philosophical.

Getting very frustrated with Shogun 2 because the game won't recognize my discrete graphics card and persists in using my integrated one. Only its not really using the integrated one since I can set everything to high and play well (and that should not be possible on integrated graphics). The problem is that because ti doesn't detect my discrete card (even though its using it) it removed all the ultra settings from the options menu. When I change it in the script in the shougun folder it still dumps me back to high settings claiming that ultra setting aren't supported, even though they are since its a Dx11 card. Bah

You can't really hold impartial elections in an atmosphere charged with nationalist fervor. The Kiev junta now seeks elections to legitimize its unconstitutional seizure of power, but any elections now are a sham. If they believed in their own political success they wouldn't have deposed of the legitimate president in the first place.

Because RPG are for nerd that like math and fantasy and have no hand-eye coordination or physical skills, just give them numbers to crunch and let them believe they're special. Jesus; now I made myself sad for liking RPGs, it's like I suddenly realized i'm on the back of the special bus. Yeah. Besides the only reason why combat is expressed in stats is because you can't do it any other way in PnP, unlike games which can offer a direct and more exciting experience (which is also abstracted, clicking your mouse isn't exactly representative of real world sword play). I don't care about either these days, all I want is for the combat to be quick, infrequent and present only when necessary.

Serious people don't talk smack on internet forums. Its just online bravado fueled by the comfort of anonymity and the encouraging presence of equally frustrated individuals. Its like my local gym, the members that are known to be criminals keep to themselves and are generally polite, and make an effort to appear like everyone else but at some point one develops a gut feeling that everything is not quite "alright" and that its best to stay away from them. The type that go around venting, dropping the weights, staring at people and in general behaving like apes turn out to be just that, mostly nobodies with no life outside the gym.

I can't recall what pop-in is Here's an example from Mass Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiKy4LrnymM Maybe the most glaring texture pop-in I've ever experienced was in GTA IV: And in Rage: Ah, I thought as much.

I can't recall what pop-in is but the texture resolution is terrible on most things. When the first one was released BW focused heavily on the characters, in particularly the alien ones, which was logical considering how much time is devoted in game to closeups during dialog. They looked really good at the time. The rest of the game was less sharp but the design made up for it. However it always felt a bit sparse because there were so few NPCs in populated areas. The combat levels aren't even worth discussing, they're basically a tunnel.

I really must drop by the codex some time to see what all the fuss is about. I've only been there once or twice to read reviews.

W3 is on all platforms, except on the corpse that is the WiiU. Doesn't make it any less of a risk considering the advertised size of the game and production values though. With its reflex based combat it would make no sense to skip the consoles.

Mass Effect 3. Its remarkable how badly the graphics have aged, the characters in particular. I remember being in awe when the first game was released. Now their facial animation and intimidating eye acrobatics could be used to inspire fear on the battlefield. I still don't like the gung-ho writing of the player characters dialog and can't really identify with either (male/female Shepard). I just got to the Citadel, so its too early to say much about the game.