Drowsy Emperor

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.

The game is more interesting as a caster, as a fighter there is absolutely nothing to do other than click on enemies. DnD fighters don't have much to do at low levels, and since its a system designed for a party so it was naturally broken in NWN. Because everything hinged on one character (they had to take into account that a player might go solo) the combat system couldn't be utilized leading to shallow and easy gameplay. NWN is kept together by the sole virtue of being playable by anyone who can hold a mouse. Even Diablo is more sophisticated and requires more moment to moment decision making along with some rudimentary strategy in building a character.

Shipbreakers is a real Homeworld game now. This is old news, but its one of the few things that keeps me going in this hobby. I thought gamers who enjoy role playing had it bad, but once I rekindled my interest in RTS games I realized just how bad things are in PC gaming. Yeah, there are more than a few low budget strategy games around and the turn based genre is still shuffling along in its typical manner but the big budget strategy is down to the very few franchises that are sure to sell (Total War, Starcraft).

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Dannor was such a horrible game that I still can't erase it from my memory. Give me a few years and I might even start to remember it fondly, as a sort of inside joke on just how terrible an RPG can be.

I didn't know you could change it, and I couldn't be bothered to do it either. Its only a nuisance when I'm trying to order something online and the country selection form only has Yugoslavia in it. Then I have to ask them to update their shop software, which usually happens a few days later.

You'll have to convince Valve that

Yeah, Bioware was a great influence on me. I'm not so lonely anymore because I have my inflatable Liara for company. Isn't that right sweetie?

I think all of us want to play a game as good as PST again. That's really why people gave their money to InXile. But when you stop tugging the nostalgia strings, it seems obvious that this project was a case of brand (ab)use from the very beginning. This game shares only the title and vague thematic similarities with PST. That's like saying my Abibas sneakers are your Adidas because they share most of the name and have 3 stripes on them. They may be just as good but you'd be a fool to take that for granted. Therefore nothing is really obligatory, and nothing has to be included for the game to be "true" to PSTorment, because this game is already as far removed from PST as possible. All the positive associations used to sell this product were from day one, only in the minds of the players and in Fargo the salesman's mouth. And I still hate turn based. And it may still end up being a good game. 3.5% chance according to my latest estimates YEEAAAHHH!