Slowtrain

Both Bioware and Bethesda appear grotesquely enraptured about what the fans think. Probably explains their success. And the tediousness of their games.

Why not? Everything about the game looks good, and its still pretty similar to an already known and successful game. The new stuff has been met reasonably favorably, and most of the cirticism is graphics related, which is what the same people said about FO3 2 years ago. SO nothing new there. This is pretty much a slamdunk for Obsidian. WHich is great. About time they were involved in a game that really blew the doors off in terms of sales. Also about time for Josh as well. Lots of hard work finally pays off. I'll wait for the reviews before singing praises for Obsidian's success though. The press has generally been less excited about New Vegas than Fallout 3 (understandable, no novelty factor) but who knows how less excited they are? I've seen people that are seriously convinced that anything less than 90 on metacritic for this game will mean that the game is a dud, and after Alpha Protocol reviewers and gamers alike are really wary about anything that comes out from Obsidian (I've seen like a hundred posts on the Bethsoft boards that were defending the game.. not because Obsidian was doing great in their opinion, but because Bethesda was helping them so it couldn't be bad.. really..), so... yeah. Christ, I surely sounded like a doomsayer, but hey, maybe between two extremes it'll help keep things in perspective. EDIT : I can't wait for you to get a look at Menze's new perk icons. They're awesome. Assuming there's no truth to the All-Game-Reviewers-Hate-Obsidian rumors that surrounded AP, I can't see NV getting worse reviews than FO3, and FO3 got pretty good reviews. I'm sure there will be some criticism of the graphics and animations, and there may be some FO3 backlash criticism, but overall I can't see anything but high scores. I'm not sure how much it matters anyway. FO3 and Bethesda have created a large built-in audience for NV that almost guarantees good sales. If we had been hearing bad things about the development of NV, I would be concerned, perhaps, but there's really been nothing but good word the whole time.

Why not? Everything about the game looks good, and its still pretty similar to an already known and successful game. The new stuff has been met reasonably favorably, and most of the cirticism is graphics related, which is what the same people said about FO3 2 years ago. SO nothing new there. This is pretty much a slamdunk for Obsidian. WHich is great. About time they were involved in a game that really blew the doors off in terms of sales. Also about time for Josh as well. Lots of hard work finally pays off.

Wouldnt' really surprise me. The franchise has been heading in the ludicrous direction, content-wise, for a while. FO4: Moonbase Alpha. Can't wait.

Last I checked developers and publishers aren't giving these games away for free. Whenever money changes hands, a certain degree of entitlement on the part of the purchaser is to be expected. Doesn't matter whether it's games, vacuum cleaners, or a Hawaii vacation. True, some people, regardless of the product purchased often go beyond the bounds of decorum on the internet. *shrug* the fans come with the territory.

Yeah, that's promising for sure.

I bought the Witcher twice. Regular and EE.

In this case there is really no way to support the developer without supporting the publisher. But, in all fairness, Bethesda seems to have done a nice job giving Obs some freedom to make changes. Which I wasn't really expecting a year ago. Anyway, as long as you buy the game in some way, you're supporting Obs. Buy it twice.

I think Tactics was a pretty good game. Probably more so than most. Only the last few missions against the robots really felt draggy and tedious. Despite playing it through quite a few times, I never actually finished it because I always got a bit bored in the last few missions. I think once I actually made it about halfway through the last mission, but still never actually finished. Many of the maps were too much like a maze for my liking: one way through and that was all, especially toward the end, but some of the maps were pretty open and fun, especially in the middle and early parts of the game. Some of the map levels had much better design than anything in Fo2, for example.

That counterattack is winnable if you have decent gear, otherwise yeah, it's pretty difficult without exploting the AI. In 1.13, I never took Drassen first because it was so difficult to hold. Just made it town number 3 instead and then had no real problem.

Realtime movement when not actively engaged in combat, that then shifts to TB movement when combat begins is a perfectly workable way to make tb combat doable on larger maps.

They've tweaked it. Whether they fixed it or not in your opinion, I don't know. What was wrong with it, except that the animations don't really look that current up close. The angle was completely wrong, meaning that there was a disconnect between where your character was aiming and where the cross hair was. In general, I found it a bit messy. IIRC that happened in first person, too. If you looked up or down, the cross hair wouldn't move with you the way it should. You had to do a "dry aim" to bring the crosshair in line with where you were looking.

Why do you use all the extra punction and other assorted marks in your posts? Just curious.

Everything's collectible. If somethign exists, someone collects it.

Ah, well that makes more sense then. If they were a staple 50's item, then using them in the game is pretty smart. We had a couple snowglobes around the house when I was growing up; moitsly holiday-themed ones, but I don't really know anythingn about the history. Otoh, hula hoops were popular in the 50's, too. Naybe simply being popular during the relevant time period isn't enough.

Snowglobes is kind of a strange choice though. Unless there is some conection between snowglobes and Las Vegas of which I am unaware. Maybe poker chips would have made more sense. Or even somethign a bit more umm ppop cultural like pez dispensers. I'd rather see bobblehead type stuff bounced out of the game completely personally, so it doesn't bother me either way really. Otoh, snowglobes vs bobbleheads seems a tad odd to get worked up about. Not that critical.

In the case of Fallout 3, I found side quest consistently more rewarding than the main narrative, so I can understand people being pissed off, especially since the ending was really really unsatisfying. But I'm fine with Fallout having an ending, even after the Bethesda change, it still is a different franchise from the Elder Scrolls, and one of the appeal for me has always been seeing the ending slides... I can understand why Sawyer doesn't want to jeopardize them. But one can do all the wandering and exploring that one could ever possibly want prior to the endgame. Nothing wrong with exploring and side-questing and piddling about with assorted diversions, but why wait until the game is esentially over. Do it all as part of the game. I have nothing against peopel who want to piddle about after the end, but if the devs feel that such compromises their product and don't want to provide post-game freeplay, that seems quite a reasonable position for them to take. Note that I am ressponding to the complaint in the posted article, not the complaints of anybody here.

I've never really understood the appeal of wandering aimlessly around a gameworld after the primary narrative arc has concluded. Do your wandering as part of and in response to the primary narrative arc, which is, after all, the reason for the entire game. I can only assume its part of the LARP culture. Or something.

You enjoy games that play themselves? May I ask why? Doesn't that defeat the point of a game?

I would position myself as cranky grognard.

It's just greed, but if the greed works in my favor, then I'm all for it. An online-only process for even single player games for which I can use my pc is preferable to me over any current console solution.

Spy Drone is the best aug in the game for a stealth player. Agressive Defense System in one of the best for a combat player. Its a well balanced aug. Spy Drone actually works well for any player

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have used my DS cd for a coaster all those years. Still, it served much better as a coaster than it ever did as a game. So no complaints.

France spend a lot of time, effort, amd money building the impressive Maginot Line. The Nazi's drove around it.

It wasn't really my intent though to say much about Wiz 8, other than making a reference to it in passing. I agree with many of your points about it And I would agree that FO3, as a entire game experience, has more options than Wiz 8. But I'm not talking about FO3 as a whole though. I am specifically referring to VATS as used in FO3 vs other TB systems. I think FO3 overall is pretty good and New Veags is looking even better.