Drowsy Emperor

I think the game should work well with a mouse and keyboard and I see no reason why that would be hard to achieve. The Witcher 1 worked smoothly that way and its not rocket science to implement. That doesn't mean I'm against playing with gamepads but I don't like PC games being built around controllers when there's a perfectly functional input device on the machine itself. I would never trade looking around with a mouse for a slow and finicky analog stick, and this is coming from someone who spent years playing on PS2's extremely well made gamepads (that still work after 7 years of abuse).

That actually doesn't mean anything. Just because they're focusing on the PC doesn't mean typical console features won't be an integral part of the game. But for the life of me, I can't understand why they couldn't make a PC friendly interface for Witcher 2. Is it really that much work in what's already a multi million dollar project? And why they had to include QTE's.

I watched most of the stuff you did. Our ratings are very similar too. A pity one of the first things I watched was Vision of Escaflowne. Nothing comes close afterwards.

Watched 5 episodes of Death Note. Teenage crap.

That's practically the new C&C Generals game. Which is 95% likely to suck on account of EA being behind it.

Well they need to monetize their games somehow. There's a reason there are only a handful companies left doing big budget RTS games (are there even half a dozen left? Relic, Blizz, Creative Assembly, Eugen, EA's C&C...?), and only one of them is really making good money out of it - and that's the only one that's also an esport.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/ags/ (no homo)

I've been playing the Blackwell games with my girlfriend. We finished all four of them, and they're quite good. It was almost like playing Gabriel Knight all over again, and that's quite an endorsement. In general I've stopped playing P&C adventures, as they've become a tad too "family friendly" for my tastes, but I'm eagerly anticipating the fifth game in the series. I wonder how hard it is to program a 2D sprite based adventure game. Apparently these are the work of one man, so it can't be too hard.

Truth be told the first CoH had to appear so I could play a WW2 strategy game. I avoided playing WW2 games up to that point. While that is a compliment of sorts to the game, I agree that that historical period has been done to death. I'm not against a modern warfare CoH title, or anything Relic wants to make for that matter. I even had fun with Impossible Creatures, so Relic has a lot of credit with me. I'd prefer a new Homeworld, Dawn of War (in the style of the old DoW) or a new IP though. And I'd love it if they plan the new game as an e-sport from the beginning so I can get into the whole competitive thing while its fresh. That means toning down system requirements, implementing spectating, ladders, matchmaking - the whole deal. I mean, Blizzard has already done the blueprint, they just have to copy it. The reason I'm saying this is that getting good at a strategy game is a serious time investment, and its only worthwhile IMO if the game is going to stick around competitively for a number of years.

Not much trust between supposed allies eh. Vassals might be more appropriate than allies methinks.

Generally modern warfare is boring. More people twiddling joysticks than fighting on the ground.

And what's the added value except being slightly more effective with SSDs and memory? I'd like to hear the answer to this question as well. Upgrading carries a lot of potential driver and compatibility related issues that haven't yet been exposed through regular use. Certain costs are incurred as well. A new above average configuration today runs programs and games at top speeds (my 6 year old machine is pretty fast, I can only imagine what a newer PC with a better CPU and SSD is like) on the generally stable Windows 7. Why would anyone need/want Windows 8 in the foreseeable future?

Its ridiculous to spy on the whole nation as a form of defense against the statistically insignificant phenomenon of terrorism. More people die from car crashes daily than in a year from terrorist activity. A wise and benevolent leader would just keep the status quo and reassure the public. They would also keep the fear mongering media in check. Alas, there are no such leaders. Today's politicians are just corporate lackeys shoving money into the pockets of whatever private companies are recruited to build the infrastructure of these systems while they play golf with their CEO's and laugh at the stupidity of the tax payers and their propensity to throw away their hard won freedom for vague promises of protection against a random occurrence.

And this applies to the German army as well. Turning the Nazis into pop villains is a disservice to those who weren't members of the Nazi party but were just swept into the war, fought because they had to and didn't participate in the crimes. (I'm thinking Wolfenstein level of nonsense here). But I'm drifting off topic and I'm sure you understand what I'm trying to say.

Are the wartime policies of Nazi germany in the east really common knowledge in the west? The holocaust is a topic brought up on a daily basis, but its not often that you can hear that soviet citizens effectively suffered a holocaust of their own, and its rarely openly called a policy of extermination (which is what it was). Towards the end of the war there probably wasn't a single family in the USSR that didn't have one or more of its members killed or otherwise affected by that war. I didn't say it was revisionism, it would be pointless to claim that a force as large as the red army didn't commit war crimes while fighting so many years of war. But war crimes were an exception in that fight. Even the Soviet treatment of Germany was comparatively mild when you take into consideration that no one could or would oppose anything they did there in 1945. If they really did commit war crimes on a quid pro quo basis (in real proportion, for every Soviet citizen killed), there probably wouldn't have been a single German left alive in the occupied territories. Now I don't really mind war crimes as a topic. Its wrong to turn a blind eye to it. But the way its done in films and games shows a disregard for context for the sake of bombastic moments, much like tabloid journalism. There's nothing wrong with recreating the operational history of the war in a strategy game. However I think its too serious a topic to gloss over and casually pass judgment on the nature of the conflict.

Maybe because that's not the usual subject of a strategy game.At least not without making it much more "hollywood". Sure, but in every game I've played that was more cinematic in its content, Russian war crimes featured very prominently. I recall similar nonsense in CoD World at War, but then there's more likelihood of intelligent life on Mars than seeing a self conscious, historically grounded CoD game.

The game is in dire need of a better name.

No one said Relic had done its historical work either. In fact, the trailers suggest that its portrayal of the eastern front is straight out of western pop history, with the whole army commander "from the gulag" getting all weepy over the things he "had to do" to the germans. Instead we get the usual exaggerations and hollywood treatment and the ultimate irony is that reviewers think its not realistic enough, which in their minds means :"hollywood enough". I've yet to see a western made historical strategy that shows accurately the mind boggling scale of german crimes and disregard for civilian life on the eastern front, that provoked in fact - everything that followed.

60c under full load with Shogun II on ultra settings. There's a definite performance increase, but at times its obvious that the CPU is a bottleneck. I'm getting faint screen flickering in games that's particularly visible on dark backgrounds. It mostly goes away when VSYNC is turned on, but not fully. Faint horizontal lines on the lower half of the screen that fade in and out quickly (flicker). Its very annoying. I googled it and apparently the whole 7850 line has that "problem". Its something about 2D and 3D clocks. Apparently you have to manually adjust the clocks and then it goes away. I'll look into it when I have more time.

Hehe

Remember another SEGA game, Alpha Protocol? I've yet to play AP but at the time the complaints about the game seemed to cover quantifiable flaws. The stuff I'm reading about CoH2 is just nonsense. Didn't see critics giving Starcraft II 7/10 because its too much like the original Starcraft. Not that it matters though, I don't think anyone trusts professional reviews today except (perhaps) in aggregate, and even then they're dubious.

The game is getting terrible reviews. I haven't read so much garbage in years. Let me list some of the claims: Complaints that the game isn't brutal enough? Where are the human wave tactics of the Red Army (!?) Why are there no commissars shooting conscripts in the back (??) The game has a weak story (and CoH, or for that matter any Relic game post HW had a good story???) Where the **** did these people learn history, from WH40K? SEGA apparently didn't cough up the dough this time around.

I just installed it, the whole process went fine. I don't have time to play with it now. MSI Afterburner says its running at 31-33c idle which is a couple of degrees above room temperature.

And by editing your post like this, I can pretend you are talking about Saints Row and proceed to disagree with your assessment that the parody doesn't work. Furthermore, I can question your sanity for suggesting it could be anything but an over-the-top parody. *beams happily* I have to admit I didn't think that the MGS series was meant to be a parody ever, it falls in line with managa and many other japanese game series so I assume it was just a culturual style. It's become a barrier for me because as series like MGS and |Final Fantasy become more cinematic and manga-like, especially with the dialogue which rarely seems to translate well, I find it harder and harder to get into them. Which is just a personal gripe but.. anyway, MGS seems more in-line with other big games from Japan so I question whether it actually is a parody or not, even though the series has always had plenty of in-jokes scattered about. @Serrano What made me think the game is a sort of self-parody is the occasional moment of truly intelligent self reflection it has. Like the level that you're wading through the river (Styx) attacked by the spirit of every in game enemy you've ever killed. It actually represents each and every enemy you've killed in the game on a 1:1 basis and the more there are the harder it is to pass - in other words the harder it is for Snake to overcome his guilt and return to the world of the living. Its a way to make the thinking player feel the impact of his actions and is in stark contrast to the usual game philosophy of "kill them all, let god sort them out". Another contrast is the cartoon villain way the game represents Russians, in line with the typical US good guy-bad guy plot but then sneaks in moments where you see the Russian soldiers saving each other from the blast when Snake is destroying the Shagohod towards the end, showing them essentially as victims of the player's actions. The game also lets you complete it with tranquilizer weapons, an unrealistic idea but in itself a statement about video game violence. Then the whole discussions about the relativity of the concept of "enemy", the way soldiers are manipulated and used etc. etc. To me it seems obvious that Kojima is fully aware how ridiculous (and in a way, irresponsible) the stories/films he's imitating are and that he can't resist commenting on their shallowness and stupidity from time to time. But he never goes all the way to making the whole game a serious statement, letting them remain a silly uber spy power fantasy the other 95% of the time. I don't know if that's a good choice but it does obfuscate the designer's intent. Of course, the more practical issue with MGS games as you've noticed is the terrible disjointed manga/anime way of telling a story that's typically japanese.

And by editing your post like this, I can pretend you are talking about Saints Row and proceed to disagree with your assessment that the parody doesn't work. Furthermore, I can question your sanity for suggesting it could be anything but an over-the-top parody. *beams happily* I have yet to try the Saints Row series. I dismissed them before as another GTA knock off...