Drowsy Emperor

X-2 was made for the female crowd. JRPG's are RPG as we knew them 20 years ago. The only thing that changed are the production values. The gameplay is still stuck in the most retarded RPG conventions one can think of (endless grind, separate screen for combat, real turn based gameplay). They shake things up a little from time to time, but, really, the genre is on its last legs. Its a pity that the gameplay is as a rule padded with 40 hours of terrible combat - because some of the games are spectacular to look at. And before someone accuses me of talking out of my ass, I played most of the PSX and PS2 era jRPG's. It was okay back then, now its not.

That doesn't explain why they charged as much for alpha/beta access in the first place. Apart from "because we can". Beta access is, you know, traditionally free because we're doing them a goddamn favor by playing their bug infested game in the first place.

Maybe, but if a woman calls her rose pissflaps there ain't going to be much sweet.

The real question is why? I found even Oblivion's character creator a chore. Whatever you do you're still about as ugly as the rest of them, and in Oblivion you can't see your character's face anyway during gameplay so it could be a cardboard smiley face for all I care. IMO its not worth the bother to go to that level of detail.

Oh, and - Mass Effect 2 was more fun to play than anything Dragon Age. Yes, DAO was like Baldur's Gate 2 and all, except it wasn't. It was boring and generic, and the combat sucked, I liked neither the characters, nor the story, nor the setting. I'd rather play the infamous ME2 minigame than DAO again

Internal coherence is more important to a fantasy world than realism, seeing as realism isn't exactly an attribute that the fantastical can brag about. Its like Frank Herbert's portrayal of Dune. It seems, realistic, or "authentic" which is probably a better word, because the world is described in great detail that is consistent throughout the story. Think of the very annoying Game of Thrones fans. They all cry "the show is so realistic" but what they actually mean is that the since almost everyone is an **** to the same degree, with a few sympathetic characters to act as an exception, that almost inevitably die gruesomely the internal rules of the universe are upheld "bad guys win, good guys die". Therefore the pedestrian logic of the novels is upheld, which just conforms to the expectations the viewers have in the first place (of what they think the middle ages were like) and so they blow the twitter trumpets: OMG SO REALISTIC! Besides that people are stupid and gullible this also tells us that the key ingredient of authenticity is neither sense nor realism but the appearance of it.

This looks nice: http://childoflight.ubi.com/col/en-us/home/index.aspx I'm not all that thrilled about the gameplay but the art direction is lovely

Dunno if it was mentioned here but the Warhammer 40K MMO third person shooter is still in production. Its called Eternal Crusade and its set for 2015. I have high hopes for this one. An IP I like coupled with a type of gameplay (reflex based) I can enjoy. Theoretically its single world structure should feature huge battles, and proceduraly generated dungeons to break up the monotony. The idea is that the all out war between players is brought to a sort of balance by Tyranids attacking the largest players (which are obviously going to be space marines along with the free to play ork boyz) I hope they include the Imperial Guard as well at some point, I'd love to play as a Stormtrooper.

That how I felt about Outcast too. Its possibly the most appealing game I never played because it was too clunky for me to enjoy, so many years after release.

Papers, please. Too morbid for my tastes.

Uh...sadly, no.

If we're going to discuss all the less-than-sensible parts of DnD and its clones we're going to be here a looong time.

In this hobby I've heard all sorts of BS promises, but the fact is that games at best offer incremental improvements over the competition, and even some of the "improvements" over the years lead to getting less in the long run. Just look at the size of Baldur's Gate II in comparison with latter 3D games. So to whatever CDP says, I'd just smile and nod and not believe a word of it.

I'd like to be the first to welcome back an underdog game designer to all you folks. He was part of the team (the brains in fact) that made Baldur's Gate so successful, playing a prominent role in that legendary series you all know and love. And now, after a thirteen year long hiatus he's back and ready to deliver a revolutionary gaming experience for all of you to enjoy. If I'm interpreting him correctly (he can be a bit stingy with words, the hallmark of a brilliant mind), this new Kickstarter project is to be a party based RPG affair featuring great companions, a large open world, real time combat (with pause) all powered by the Feed V.1 engine. However that technology is very expensive, being one of the new "finite" engine systems that are used up in clusters that need to be reacquired periodically. That's why we need your help guys! Now I couldn't get much information out of him - but when asked about the setting, he looked at me with a mysterious smile and said: "our adventure is set in Cedar, a realm of infinite possibility". "Cedar is a world in peril, enclosed in web of criss-crossing bindings made of a mysterious and unbreakable substance. The inhabitants of Cedar are forced into repetitive, spinning, physical labor for the pleasure of the titanic overlords that watch from beyond the impassable barrier. They live in squalor, makeshift housing, built from the scraps the titans occasionally abandon in Cedar." When I asked our friend, where this unconventional idea came from a dark shadow seemed to pass over his eyes, "...I live it." was all he said. Mr B., for that is our friends name was reluctant to share any further details with us. "There is much to be done, and my time with the machine is severely limited", he said, before turning back to the laptop to code furiously. We did manage to get a rare glimpse of the reclusive designer hard at work: Pledge now and support Mr. B! Glory to Cedar!

There is so much flowery critic bull in the Bloom promo video over a dozen pics and one very confused looking in game scene, it makes me want to puke. The whole thing looks about as erratic as the designer's gender. With the way the Kickstarter has been printing money for anyone and everyone I'm seriously considering a visit to the US to open up a phantom video game company, post a project and watch the spice flow.

The first time I saw the price for Planetary Annihilation early access I thought it was a mistake, didn't understand why half a game cost as much as two games. Later, it turned out to be an epidemic. I still don't understand who buys this.

Well thank you for the opinion guys. I'm not expecting much out of those games to be honest, but I no longer have the "must finish what you started" obsession from when I was 13 What I'm waiting for is the new Homeworld game, Star Citizen, Project Eternity etc. Has anyone thrown down the cash for Wasteland 2 early access? (dunno why anyone would do that in the first place)

The goat is awesome. The pentagram pic reminds me of a great spanish fim: "El dia de la bestia".

How intuitive is AoW 3? I can't invest time in a game that needs a 500 page manual and a correspondence course to get going. I do play Alpha Centauri regularly so I'm sorta used to the conventions of the genre.

I'm out of the loop where games are concerned. What's listed is based on recommendations from other people and reviews.

I'm getting a new laptop soon that will probably run most of the games I want to play. So far the list is: Shadowrun Returns + Dragonfall Bioshock Infinite The Wolf Among Us: EP 1+2 Broken Sword 5 Battle Worlds: Kronos Spec Ops The Line Max Payne 3 South Park TSoT CS: Global Offensive The Walking Dead Season 1

It was good to be a PC gamer 1998-2001. Every year had a ton of groundbreaking titles. Its been mostly downhill ever since.

If you were in the IT field, math, physics or the like, it wouldn't seem ridiculous based on the visibility of mathematical functions. Math is the method of understanding the universe. There's no pre-existing chaos in the non-reality of a game, because it was all crafted by human minds. It's real reality that is chaotic, and math is the ultimate means of quantifying it. If you play a brofist brass-balls spess muhreen shooter, there's math going on unseen for every action you make. Every shot made is a vector; the vector is defined by the numbers representing the player's location and direction in the 3D geometric space (also maths.) One of the differences between rpgs and other genres is some/more of the math is revealed to the player. Sure, games are all math, explicitly or implicitly. I believe the math, which is in older role playing games an explicit part of the gameplay experience, should be under the hood as they are in most games. Unless the combat tends to require as much thought (or approaching to) as other parts of the game, (which, for example, Baldur's Gate sometimes fulfills, a lot of the times does not...while a game like Mass Effect almost never does [which is probably why I found the "combat" in all of them so hideously boring and repetitive), I agree. @Drowsy Emperor: I can't help but disagree with you on how the genre has shifted being a step in the right direction. I wouldn't say it's the wrong direction, either, but just a different one. Maybe it's my love of numbers speaking, but I genuinely like how upfront and...in a way, clear, everything was with the Infinity Engine games. I didn't really want to use "clear", because in some ways, the IE games are extremely obtuse and unclear if you didn't already know the underlying mechanics, but if you did know them, then all the information that you'd ever want to determine exactly what your characters and their current capabilities are, and how those capabilities will affect the things you can do, and what these tiny incremental numbers will actually really mean when put into use, etc., were all served right up to you. With games like Mass Effect, I only have a vague idea of how everything is working - nothing is really "concrete", and I only have a basic grasp on how new changes will affect my capabilities, (more tends to be better, the formula goes, but how much better, I could never really say). For me, that's not a good thing - that perpetual "unknowledge" of the mechanics makes me not very interested or invested in them...which, when a very large portion of your stupid game is mired in, is not a good thing, in my opinion. e d I'm not going to deny that juggling the numbers used to be a huge part of the fun. In fact the fun was derived out of breaking the system as much as possible to get an advantage of some sort. But that sort of thinking has become a no-no now as the majority of players don't want that kind of investment in their game, where you have to learn the nuances of a system to play reasonably well - apart from the MMO crowd which is in a world of its own. I'm also not saying the execution is in any way perfect - I found Mass Effect combat repetitive and boring, but most of all superfluous on account of the depressingly easy difficulty level. Its a question of how the game communicates its functions to you, and if the feedback is good and the difficulty optimal but fair no player is going to mind a little trial and error. The problem with games like Mass Effect and even the Witcher is that they're schizophrenic in nature. They're trying to be action adventures or shooters but they're not letting you play them as such. Mass Effect was a shooter in which shooting skills were next to irrelevant. The Witcher had all the features of a melee fighting system without requiring any actual melee combat skills (as in combo memorization and reflexes). It turns out you're playing with RPG mechanics that you cant quantify or fully grasp but the game says: "never mind, you don't have to understand them anyway to win". Of course you're going to feel stupid in the end because there's no thrill in it - you're just auto-piloting through it all to the next cut-scene. I was weaned on Unreal Tournament and Baldur's Gate II. The first made me break out in cold sweat with split second frags, dodges and frantic aiming - the second forced me to think and learn its system (my first DnD encounter). So ME was bullsh!t to me, I felt the game was playing itself and I was just a passive observer part of a pre-packaged deal with no room to get better, no learning curve to climb and no way to gimp system. Nothing interesting or memorable ever happened in an ME battle because the first one was just like the last one. Many battles in BGII could be barged through by a fireball or a haste spell, but there were plenty that made up for that, and in the end, there were more than a few stories to tell. So, the point is - the problem is not so much that they chased the numbers from the RPG - its that they put nothing in their place. What I'm saying is that they didn't go far enough - the combat system must be appropriate to the genre you're making - if its action, it should be action and the old RPG tropes should be kept only insofar as they don't get in the way of making the game work. As long as its got a good story, choices to make, an interactive world that you can affect in crazy ways (very important) no one will mind. And the action, swordsplay better be good, otherwise what's the point of a great graphics and a third/first person camera - if the game can be played as if its on auto-attack.

Torment, even though it preceded the new action adventure RPG's, was in fact the most direct RPG experience possible. It achieved this by ditching its own mechanics, ditching a good part of unnecessary combat but since it was limited by the technology of the time it was too verbose to be a truly smooth way partake in an interactive story. Its now my belief that a good RPG should be as minimalist in the typical gamer elements as possible (like Shadow of the Colosuss) in order to achieve maximum immersion and elegance (in design). Something like, say, Vampire: Bloodlines - but without all the terrible grind heavy segments that game had.

When I started thinking about cRPG's from an outsider's perspective I realized how ridiculous the genre is. Filled with mathematical and abstract nonsense to artificially separate a chaotic reality into a micro manageable segments. That sort of thing is (maybe) necessary in pen and paper games, but in computer games, where things can be represented as they are - its completely redundant. RPG's are not deep per se, they just force you into playing ten roles at once, like a clock that makes you spin its gears all day long just to show the time. The transformation of the genre into a generic action adventure with some of the old elements, a la Witcher and Mass Effect was not only logical, but inevitable and necessary. That does not mean however, that these games were better as individual titles than ones that came before them, but they were a step in the right direction. It finally meant that the story, world exploration and character interaction came to the forefront. Unfortunately for me, post Witcher, these stories, worlds and characters sucked and offered nothing new.