Slowtrain

Amen, Brother Eldar. ALthough for me Arcanum will remain Troika's greatest work, despite its bugs and balancing issues. However, Bloodlines is definitely an overall better product though less ambitious and ultimately less interesting than Arcanum. However, Bloodlines is right there with SS2 and DX as the best first person crpgs ever.

Too bad. The payola envelope must have gotten lost in the mail. On a happy sidenote, Gauntlet is one of the greatest game ever. I spent hours playing the wizard in the arcade version. I once got about 3 hours of gameplay off a single quarter.

Because they live underground which would shield them from airbursts, so you have to get the nukes underground which is a lot harder. Plus they are bugs so are resistant to radiation so only the actual explosion will kill them. If the humans had a Death Star though it wouldn't have been a problelm.

This thread has had aboout 17 different topics. Mark me up in the Drizzt-Despiser category, plz! Well, not really, I actually don't care very much, and it is dreadfully humorous to see entire threads on various crpg forums dedicated making the best Drizzt character that one can make. lololo And how upset the posters can get over the entire topic. Let's be honest, Drizzt makes the internet a more interesting place.

I have no moral objection to slaughtering polygons, Hell Kitty! Sometimes I even enjoy it tremdenously. However, usually I take the approach of the player character I am roleplaying and since that is usually a "good" pc, I avoid killing polygons that don't deserve it. Sometimes I run amok though and things get ugly! Hormones or something, I guess. However, I must say I don't think I've ever felt bad about killing a polygon. Sometimes I feel cheap if I've done something that my player character wouldn't do, and in those cases I often reload.

Archetypes are the cornerstone of fantasy storytelling. Doesn't make them a class.

I would consider System SHock 2, Fallout, Morrowind to all be classless games since you define a player character based on the skills you develop not the class you choose. In a classful game, your class defines the skills you are permitted to develop.

Depends how the developers build problem resolution into the game. In FO problems were solved by: 1) Combat 2) Talking 3) Sneaking (but not as often) SO technically, to finish the game you had to build a character that was in some way either a fighter, diplomat, or thief. But, you could achieve any of those classes with a wide blend of primary and ancillary skills, so it was in fact a classless game within the parameters set forth by the devs.

WIz8 is probably a worst-case example since I do think Linda Currie and her teams made a bad decision in trying to bring classic Wizardry gameplay into a full 3d environment without considering the ramifications of how fighting multiple large groups of monsters would play out when everything was now being moved and animated in full 3d. A style that worked OK in Wiz2 was suddenly problematic in the new world of 3d realtime movement and animations. But back to the concept of waiting, I think the bigger question is are you waiting on inconsequential trivial stuff or stuff that matters. Suspense is built on waiting for something unknown that makes a difference. Mostly that's pretty interesting stuff.

hmmm....but if you follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion that removes anything that is not player-controlled from the game, and really even unneccessary things like movement and animations since those take time and are not really actually neccessary to playing a game. That seems a rather static and uninteresting canvas in which to interact with a game world.

I watch movies! But also while I understand your point re: Wiz8, since it is by far the most commonly heard complaint about the game, it doesn't bother me since I don't really have any desire to rush through a game to get to the end. I mean, if you're not enjoying the experience of actually playing the game, then you are probably wasting your free time in the first place.

Yes, well, the point remains, that it was wholly original after the deal with Steve Jackson fell through. SPECIAL remains the most inspired bit of rule system and character development ever developed for a CRPG. Extradorniarily simple yet capable of creating an almost endless variety of player charcters and a fairly immersive turn-based combat system to boot. I've never seen anything that has bettered or even equalled it. And while I wasn't totally adverse to relacing small guns/big guns/energy weapons with simply Ranged, I think it was something of an exercise in trying to make a better wheel. But whatever...

mmmmm...spam train....

The fact that there are so many hideous pc games made on a regular basis would seem to refute the concept that PC inherently = better in any way.

It didn't annoy me so much, but it was definitely "gamey". Spector spent years developing Deus Ex with an eye toward making it as "realistic" as possible, but as he began testing the builds of the game, he found that the feedback on some aspects of the realism was that it wasn't very fun or interesting. So, he invented the kinda mini-game of lockpicks and multitools as they ended up in the final version. If this had happened nowadays, there would have been widespread outrage of Spector "dumbing down" the lockpicks and multitools to appease neanderthal console players. But of course, back then, there was only the PC version, so I guess he must have been dumbing it down for those iditoic pC gamers. lololo

heh. I agree Deus Ex was a quality game, mostly it had a gravitas that Invisible War lacked. But DX1 was mostly SPector's game and Invisible War was Smith's game. SPector has said that he never told Harvey SMith what to do or how to do it when devloping and implementing the concepts behind Invisible War. SO you can say that SMith "dumbed it down"; but I would say it was just a different vision of what makes a fun game. Spector comes from a different background. He once related a story of how early in development of DX1, lockpick and multitool use was simply a function of skill; you had one lockpick and one multitool and you could either do it or you couldn't, based on your skill. But in early tests nodoby has a lot of fun with it, though it was certainly realistic, so he went back and redisgned the lockpick and mutlitool use into the undenibly more "gamey" lockpick and multitool that made it into the final game. My point? Its mostly the devs vision of the game that makes it what it is, not the platform.

@Battlewookie: Harvey Smith was primarily responsible for the deisgn and vision of DX2. It was his vision of a "numberless" game that was primarily responsible for the unified ammo, the loss of skills, the removal of hit pioints and damage numbers etc. He has stated that he didn't want people to think about the "metagame" aspect of Invisible War; he wanted people immersed in a world not in the numbers that constitute the world. Did it work? For me, no. Mostly becase A) he failed to realize the immeriveness of the world well-enough for example "important moral choices" that had no effect at all to the the course of the game and b) he failed to provide for an interesting character development system in the absence of a skill set. Also did I mention the AI was less than stunning, the engine ran like crap, the art was pretty spotty, and the sound effects were mostly poor. ALthough I did enjoy the game well enough, despite that. edit: my poopie spelling.

How much can one make by offering their used underwear for sale in a vending machine? I have lots! But I'm quite a ways past thirteen, sadly. Or happily! Depending on your point of view.

I don't really care about the pc console debate, but thought I would just add that Invisible War suffered from questionable design choices, bad art, and poor sound effects. I don't think any of those are an inherent flaw of multi-platform development. Or well maybe they are. Anyway, I've seen a lot of bad pc games in my life. I prefer to blame developers and publishers not the platforms.

I watched the trailer anyway. The bald guy has REALLY big hands! I would buy it if it made it to the US. Instead, I'll get force-fed Deer Hunter Volume XXVII. <_<

I could tell you, but then I would be banned. :cool:

But, while I agree that Arcanum was bug-heavy and quite unbalanced still even after the final patch, there are so so so many awesome things in the game that I don't even notice the bugs really. SO while a reviewer may be doing the job by bringing up notice that a game is buggy that still doesn't mean that I won't enjoy the game. Again, in today's gaming market, you simply assume that a game is going to be buggy upon initial release, so unless thay are system-destroying apocalyptic bugs, its not terribly useful info that a game is buggy. edit: spelling. bah!

oh poo. Its just a sign o the times that most of the best computer games are getting developed outside NA these days. *terminates demo download* Not much point, is there? bleah.

Reviews are all opinion anyway, aren't they? I mean does anybody seriously buy or not buy a game based on what a couple random people, whom one doesn't know and will never meet, write about it? That's like me not buying Arcanum cause SP thinks it is a giant piece of poop! And that aIn't gonna happen.

Sure there are degrees of bugginess, Descent to Undermountain and Battlecruiser 3000 spring to mind, and yes, Arcanum especially was pretty wasted out of the box. But, IIRC, BIS released a host of buggy games, many of which were never fixed. And of course, they didn't last either. Anyway, I wasn't compaing Troika to MP or Origin in terms of career accomplishments, merely saying that the passing of another development house that made quality computer games is a sad thing. To me at least. And to simply blame the developers as being at fault for an industry-wide problem seems a rather simple solution to a much more complex problem, don't you think.