Pidesco

I don't believe simply describing Tolkien as a fine writer is lauding him, but rather just appreciating his qualities. I'm not of the opinion that he is a stylistically amazing writer, but I still think he's much better than the fantasy writers that have emerged from his wake. His interest was in creating a mythology, and it shows, as often times his writing was mostly functional. On the other hand some parts of Game of Thrones, for instance, struck me as less than functional, instead actively hindering my enjoyment.

I don't negate the possibility of something truly great coming out of a genre, in the same sense that I don't think it's impossible for a brilliant novel to appear in the Harlequin book lineup. Additionally, I don't purport to have read every fantasy book ever written, but I think if the fantasy equivalent of Proust had been published, the noise raised by it would reach my ears.

I think the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are fine books. I'd argue that's the only fantasy worth reading, with a marginal exception for Terry Pratchett. I haven't regretted buying R.R.Martin's books, but they are still fairly badly written. I can enjoy the characters I empathized with in the show, and I can appreciate the sense of amoral political intrigue the plot creates, but it's still clumsy, mechanical and poorly suited for prose, really. He's part of a type of writer that, as far as I know, first appeared in the US and who seem to be writing movie plots instead of books. Clancy, Grisham are famous examples, but this class of writer has spread across the world. There's a Portuguese news anchor who writes books in the same style, for example. To me, if you're going to compare his works to Eddings or Goodkind, in order to somehow elevate his standing, you might as well put his books side by side with slash fan fiction.

The freak out was because of the prequels, actually.

The Da Vinci Code. Around the time it came out I had female friends of mine who praised its themes.

Damn, that sounds horrible.

Seems like the only argument in favour of Martin's work is that you should lower your expectations immensely before reading his books. Damning with faint praise, I'd say.

It's a British film set in a European city with two Irish actors. Do you actually contend that Britain isn't a part of Europe?

Have you never played a top down game? The camera is angled towards the floor because that's the angle that enables the combat and controls. The ability to look ahead would be nothing other than cosmetic, and would only serve to make the game artificially harder. The game is played on a 2d surface and anything that needlessly limits your ability to view that plane is a waste of resources. This is akin to complaining about a first person shooter due to it not allowing the player to play in third person view. The camera has a few issues, most notably the maximum distance to the ground and the tendency to be zoomed in by scenery in certain maps (the Glitterdelve caves are the biggest culprit here, I think). The lack of an ability to look ahead is not an issue.

Yeah, the first book at least, is a masterwork in bad literary style. It's really just worth it for backstabbing politicking. The TV show is much better.

Just as an example my partner, a lady who hasn't read the books nor has ever seen any fantasy beyond the Lord of the Rings movies was mesmerized by this show.

Risen is one of the best RPGs of the last few years. Get it if you haven't already.

It isn't particularly twitchy. Combat is a fairly mellow rhythm based game.

I'd been looking at the game for a while. Kind of tired of strategy RPGs. The genre seems to be bigger than actual RPGs at this point, though not as popular. Anyway, I had a moment of weakness... $4.50? How can it go wrong? The open ended DLCs are kinda fantasy Total War, I guess. The original campaign is a linear game with some C&C built around paganism vs Christianity, and TW style battles. It suffers from some gameplay imbalance but it's quite unique and awesome. Its morality chart: http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.ph...ralityChart.jpg Edit: You might not enjoy it if you don't appreciate the idea of crushing medieval armies with magical lightning and mythical beast like dragons. In that case, I'm very sorry for you.

I wonder if anyone will ever pick up the open ended RPG banner one day. Daggerfall's basic design was a great basic structure to build upon.

Got the extra downloadable bits for King Arthur.

I got the DLC from this sale. Hooray!

So good gameplay is worth less than having a New Game+ mode? laff

I bought the New Vegas DLC.

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, so it might be more of an Italian thing. wasn't Amerigo Vespucci actually a portuguese? He was an Italian working for the Portuguese.

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, so it might be more of an Italian thing. Naming a land after a person isn't the same thing as naming a guy his own nationality.

You don't like Jimbob?

Is there an Hungarian fellow named Magyarorsz?g Kocsis, somewhere?

I've been finding empowered attacks fairly underwhelming. They negate my ability to turn on healing for a while, and they aren't really that more powerful than regular abilities.