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Everything posted by Slowtrain
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I agree, but Deus Ex has a rep for being a game where decisions matter, when they don't. Unless one considers being chewed out by Manderly for choosing to go into the women's bathroom a choice and consequence. lol. In a lot of ways Deus Ex is a somewhat deceitful game: it presents situtations that on the surface appear to be meaningful, such as saving Paul, or killing Manderely, or saving Lebedev by killing Anna, but renders the results of your actions meaningless. It is the one thing that I dislike about the game; I dislike fake choices even more than no choices. The choices that matter in Deus Ex are around your methodology in solving and achieving your objectives, but nothing you can do ever changes those objectives or the outcome of achieving them.
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Actually, I think that is one of the more over-rated aspects of Deus Ex. Very few of the story-related choices have any real effect on the unfolding narrative; most of them are just window-dressing. IW at least gave you opposing sides, in theory anyway. In Deus Ex, you really have no option of being on a side; you simply follow the extremely linear narrative, until finally near the end you make a single choice that actually matters. Deus Ex has a pretty decent story as far as computer games goes, but there isn't much choice and consequence in the game.
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TO be fair though, IWD2 is the ony game that JE has ever really had full control of from the start, and that was a short-term stopgap project. I think the alien crpg is great chance to finally see what Josh can do when given freedom and a real budget. Josh has always had great ideas and thoughts about games; I am looking forward to see him getting a real chance to put them into action. I do share your concern that Josh sometimes seems to have a tendency to want to over-simplify, but that's looking it from my perspective of somebody who had been playing compter games for 20 years or something. What I find over-simplfied is not neccessarily what a less experienced gameplayer would find over-simplified. I DO believe that Josh will work very hard to make the alien crpg accessible to new comers but not insulting or boring to people who have been gaming for a while.
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Removing the skill system in Deus Ex may have seemed like a sound choice. And Harvery SMith certainly PR'd the crap out of the idea for IW. But during development of Invisible War, Smith made it sound like the replacement BIoMod system in IW would be much more complex than the aug system in DX. Which, according to SMith, meant that gamers would not miss the skill system. Unfortunately, what ended up in IW was no skill system and a biomod system that was FAR less complex and interesting than the aug system in DX. COnsequence: a huge loss in gameplay fun. IW was such a colossal failure in game design, the mind boggles.
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AND a (supposedly, can't actually remember) very important augmentation slot. IIRC, it took a torso slot and was paired with energy shield. Since energy shield was the only real defense against the plasma rifle, I almost always took energy shield over the health regen and just developed my medical skill to make those twenty medkits last as long as possible. One of the fun aspects of Deus Ex was balancing your skill set with your aug set with your gear set with your weapon mod set. No one set could do everything, but you could balance them against each other and makem up defencies in one area with another area. FOr example: for swimming you could either a) take the aqualung augmentation or b) develop your swimming skill or c) use inventory space to carry a couple rebreather units. Or you could overcome a poor weapon skill by modding the crap out of a weapon. I know that DX received some criticism for this apparent "redundancy", but I always thought it made developing your character much more interesting.
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Deus Ex will probably feel pretty dated at this point if you haven't played it before. Also, at this point, its bound to disappoint anyone who goes into the game with expectations built up from hearing so much praise for the game over the years. Still, at the time, It was a pretty amazing game experience. @Tigranes: I'm not saying that the medkit system is bad. I've played plenty fo great games (including DX!) that used medkits and pickups. I just think either a medkit or regen system can work just fine if the game is designed for it. edit: didn't Deus Ex have a health regen aug anyway?
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I've never been fully clear as to why medkits or health packs are better than a gradual autoheal or health regen. Autoheal time can be influnced by a player characters stats or equipment as can max healthpoints, giving a nice level of tactical gameplay considerations. Unless you are going for a semi-realistic health/damage system, in which case neither autoheal or medkits is going to suffice, autoheal seems preferable to me than medkits in inventory or health pickups. ANyway, if they can make the augs a lot more interesting than the last game and add some degree of skill development, I think it at least holds promise. Of course, it won't come close to the original Deus Ex in terms of game content, but that's par for the course these days. Still, a Deus Ex 3 shouldn't have much problem being a better game than DX:IW
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A lot of that stuff is just fodder if you want to raise your XP level. I'm in chapter 4 and I've been trying to do everything in the game this time, just for the heck of it. But I am finding that if you get too caught up in the side stuff it does take away from the narrative thrust of the game. Although some of the side stuff does relate a bit to the main quest (the Werewolf sidequest in Chap 3, for example, it could be a lot more tightly interwoven)
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NEW and REAL: Duke Nukem 4 Ever: Screen-Shots
Slowtrain replied to Marcus's topic in Computer and Console
FO3 has 3,654 possible endings. Or something. -
Good luck! Its a fun game, but completely unpredictable crashes can make even fun games a bit of a chore. AT lest in Oblivion I learned there were certain areas would have a tendency to cause a crash and could pretty much restirct my saving to just before I entered that area. In The WItcher, the crashes can just happen anywhere for no obvious reason. I find it somewhat amusing that some people get all wound up over DRM, but don't seem to mind buggy games and hideous customer service. I know which bothers me more.
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For me, the game still crashes. Often enough that I save every two or three minutes since I hate replaying stuff. Having to save that often is a little distracting and somewhat irritating, but I've already been burned several times by forgetting to save and then getting a crash. Its just funny how I can play a game like Wizardry 8 which never crashes. Or a game like Oblivion or the WItcher which just can't seem to get out of their own way. I'm pretty much through with paying full retail price for games at this point.
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Does Gametap work pretty well? Is it up consistently? IS it pretty transparent once you are actually in a game? Can you see any difference between XCOM on your pc and XCOM on gametap? Do the old games (like XCOM) run well? Is there some kind of client that installs to your pc? Sorry for the barrage of questions, but it seems pretty cool if ti works well.
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This means I will be buying Fallout 3. Yeah, I might pick up a copy as well - if only to show that games with lesser amounts of DRM will sell. Wait. So you would rather pay for and purchase a terrible game with less annoying DRM than a really good game with super annoying DRM? Isn't that a bit like choosing what TV shows to watch based on the content of the ads rather than the quality of the show? Actually, I would not purchase a terrible game at all even with FDRM. Nor would I purchase a game with DDRM regardless of how good it was in other aspects. I would only purchase a good game without DDRM. Well, that eliminates FO3 then.
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This means I will be buying Fallout 3. Yeah, I might pick up a copy as well - if only to show that games with lesser amounts of DRM will sell. Wait. So you would rather pay for and purchase a terrible game with less annoying DRM than a really good game with super annoying DRM? Isn't that a bit like choosing what TV shows to watch based on the content of the ads rather than the quality of the show?
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I totally love the all fightfight animations. SOme of them are so goofy, but they are absolutely awesome.
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I pretty much agree with you there. But I have to give The Witcher its due: In a world filled with Oblivions and Fallouts, the combat is pretty OK for a crpg. I mean, compare it to the huge-selling, highly praised Oblivion. Not only is the Witcher a far more story and dialogue driven crpg; its combat is like 10 jillion times better as well.
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I play on medium and I find the combat varies. Some encounters are quite difficult and some are quite easy. I've been totally wiped out several times.
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Its an interesting combination of reflex/twitch combat and character development. Yes, there is some twitch gaming involved, but a lot of what your character does it combat has to do with how you've spent your talents and what options are open to you. It is far more a skill-based crpg than a twitch crpg. If you simply look at it as a twitch fighter, a) you probably won't enjoy it since it's twitch aspects aren't terribly complex b) you'll miss out on a lot of what the game has to offer. I think.
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Not really. The styles have their pros and cons. I often use the fast styles against strong slow enemies. It can bve very effective if you understand what you are doing.
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Develop your aard and igni signs. They are pretty important and make combat more interesting as well. Also take herbalism and oil making. Its not a fighting game; its a crpg.
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There's also special attacks in each style (4th level) that are quite powerful but drain stamina. Its not great, but I've played lots crpgs with far far worse combat. However, if The Witcher was a fighting game and not a crpg, then no, combat would not be good enough.
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Overall, though not the greatest combat ever, the combination of fighting styles, special attacks, movement options, plus sign usage and bombs, gives enough variety to keep me interested. I mean it is certainly better than combat in Oblivion or even the IE games or Fallout.
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Combat plays best in OTS mode. Give it a shot if you are not doing so.
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I'm sure publishers are somewhat frsutrated as well. From their point of view, they are trying to protect their investment in a product. There is nothing wroing with that. They probably don't like having to antagonize and upset their potential customers in the process though. My guess is that within a short period of time a middle ground approach to drm will be found that makes publishers feel safe and that gamers can live with.
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I dunno. I didn't really read that as intimidation. More just like a statement of truth. No customers = no games. I think we've all been through this enough know to realize that if gamers do not buy pc games because of the DRM, rightly or wrongly the message that publishers will get is pc games don't sell.