Drowsy Emperor

Other issues regarding design come about, because of how enemies appear and the cover system, every shootout is similar. 99% of the time, they take cover in a location thats hard to flank or too far to even be flanked without risk. Tactics are all about minimising risk, that's the whole point of the game. Charging forward from cover to cover to flank the aliens is generally stupid because they shoot very well and every approach increases their chances. The imperative is to drop enemies quickly so they don't get opportunities to shoot. Manouvering around is often too inefficient because its a waste of time and its risky. It pays much more to use high aim soldiers like snipers and to scout with expendable troops and then rape the enemies from afar. Sine its impossible to surprise enemies lower range troops can never be as good since they're on a level playing field with the aliens. Heavies are the worst culprit because their aim is crap and their special abilities are either useless or situational.

I'm on the last mission in Xcom and the game has revealed several flaws that can be quite annoying. Firstly, the game is still quite buggy. The worst bug of all is the loading screen. Its an oversized console type affair that would be passable if it were not for the fact that the sorting system doesnt work. The saves are automatically named and are thrown together in a jumbled mess instead of being sorted properly by date. This is worsened by the fact that the screen displays only 4 saves at a time and that mouse wheel scrolling is broken. It goes properly in one direction and skips four saves in the other. I dont know if its intentional but its hugely irritating having to spend a few minutes gingerly scrolling so a not to skip the save the game tucked away god knows where. Secondly, interface issues. The interface itself is a cumbersome console turd that could be overlooked if it didn't glitch so much. I experienced issues from the whole interface disappearing, to displaying different hit probabilities on the alien head notification and on the actual attack command. Grenades and rockets are a pain to use because the cursor skips so much due to getting stuck on terrain features. Furthermore, whether or not a unit sees an enemy from a certain position is pure guesswork. Sometimes its impossible to tell until you move it. This is a burden in certain situations where its crucial to move a unit in a certain place to fire an important shot. Another dubious design decision is ghost armor. Its fun to use but it allows you to rape enemies from halfway across the map with a sniper without any frear of retaliation. Last are the story issues. The final mission is an uninspired cliche, and altogether too easy with the advanced gear. I haven't finished it yet but its been a pushover so far. The game has a lengthy single player campaign but no effort wa made to supply it with a fleshed out story or characters. Its way too long to be played in a sitting like civ or another turn based affair, way to linear to let you make your own story, and too shallow to be replayed for its story alone. Its a sort of worst of both worlds affair, the blandness of a strategy campaign without the open ended nature of other turn based strategy.

I wonder about the price ticket of these Hollywood celebrities. I think Kiefer Sutherland works for peanuts now.

Rule no 1: People who are offended by boobs in as trivial a medium as a videogame have issues. Doesn't matter which - deep seated, or superficial ones they're still as broken as the Mass Effect companions. If anyone is so abysmally insecure that they need Female Shepard to reflect their personal gender politics, then I suggest voluntary comittal to an institution or signing up for the French foreign legion. Its as if I expected Shepard to be a Serb nationalist, then start bitching on forums with ten like minded individuals and all of a sudden I'm an important demographic with an opinon worth considering.

You're proving my point. It will take a woman to disprove it. You're not one, even if you act like it.

So much for CoH 2. My graphics card couldn't take even the performance test. It overheated in under 20 seconds. Time to buy a new one and save up for a new CPU. Now while this card isn't in the best state ever, it can still run XCOM, Civ V and the original CoH without overheating (though I havent tried the last one in ages). Although trying, say, Painkiller (yes the old one) overheats it in 15 minutes like clockwork. Funny thing is, with the settings on minimum CoH 2 looks substantially worse than the original game - which I could run at a respectable 30fps. Here I could only get 15fps before the crash. Optimisation it seems, is a thing of the past.

In these topics its only the men debating the respectfulness of clevage revealing outfits. Women on the other hand see their **** every day in front of the mirror. They couldn't care less.

Are you seriously asking that question since Tomb Raider's nude patch? If I had a dime for every download of that I'd be a rich man now.

I fail to see what's so special. The graphics are pretty average.

If the game even works on my sad sad pc.

Give me your steam name here or via PM so I can prove my tactical genius unto you, Tovarich. Lol I haven't played CoH for years, it'll be a slaughter. Its: /\/\ÿth I suggest you copy paste it. The M is made of slashes.

The inner beauty hidden between their large boobs.

Damn, didn't see that CoH 2 has entered open beta in Steam! УРААА!

Its probably that everyone is using similar software to generate terrain. Graphics were never the problem in Total War games anyway. I tried a bit of Shogun 2 and was pretty disappointed that anti aliasing is broken in the game. You can toggle it on but it doesn't work. Everything looks jagged as hell. Incredible how they havent fixed such a basic problem.

I'm close to the end of XCOM, everything researched, all soldiers bumped up to the max in gear and experience. I tried a bit of Civ V. Not enough to form an opinion apart from that I like the art design a lot. The UI, not so much. Art deco isn't my thing. And the 2D pics aren't very good art deco either.

Vladivostok FM was easily the best station.

So that's where my cookie jar went. Bokishi, put it down and step away from the cookies

I had to use console commands to get halfway through Fallout 3, because of a permanently locked door that had to open for the story to progress. And I recall how much flak Sacred got on account of a broken quest you had to correct with a console command in the main storyline. But Fallout 3 got rave reviews. Bethesda quality standards indeed. Of course the modders always give them a reliable cushion - "why make the game work when the public will do that for us". I despise Bethesda. Their games are the epitome of sensationalism (with graphics) and cutting corners (in everything else). They have more money than anyone else yet everything they made since Morrowind is recycled, cheap ****. I watched my friend play Skyrim for a while. The user interface for the PC version is a disgrace. The couldn't work a little extra to make a PC friendly interface? I won't even mention the animations, the combat etc. /rant I'm sad to see Prey 2 go. Its one of the few games that looked really fresh and exciting.

The next attempt at streamlining will have them all use clubs. If it was good for the stone ages, its good for the future as well

increased complexity doesn't necessarily lead to increased quality. Of course, it depends on the nature of the changes. Still I think this game is in dire need of a sequel to take it to the next level - like what BGII did for the original Baldur's Gate.

Thanks to Bester I tried DOTA2 out but it really wasn't for me. There's very little to do, which is what happens when you cut Warcraft III down to a single hero unit, and the game relies on a lot of memorisation of effective combinations. I imagine its very time consuming to be good at the game, but its just not all that much fun to play.

And TOEE always seemed to me to be the next logical step. 2D backgrounds and nice 3D models for characters. But it never stuck

Yeah, its sad how TOEE ended up prettier than the much newer NWN2. I always found the art direction in all NWN games hideous. It was all about pushing 3D at all costs, in a time when 3D still looked like ****.

I'll bet you'll enjoy it. I also came to the game without any history with the XCOM series.

The only thing I liked about DS was the mule. I liked the mule better than I liked the game. I would have kept it but that would have meant keeping DS too. And that wouldn't do.