Slowtrain

Since 1989? Yes, but the bar wasn't very high. lol. Sad but true.

I happen to be one of those poor misguided fools who bought the dlc for pc, all of it except mothership zeta. I know, I failed my willpower roll and suffered a critical failure. I know this because in the little text box in the lower left part of the screen it said: Critical failure, player has purchased Operation Anchorage. DLC will need to be separated from games for windows live and manually installed like a mod in order to play. This will not be fixed by a patch. Furthermore, the required patch increases CTD's, Borks VATS, and makes grenades/rockets untargetable. Critical failure, player has purchased The Pitt. Dlc works reasonably well, but introduces animation bugs through the silly circular saw thingy. This will not be fixed by a patch. Critical failure, player has purchased Point Lookout. Dlc must be installed in a manner similar to Anchorage in order to run. Surprisely, it's not bad. The brain in a jar guy is both hilarious and well voiced. Just as you are begginning to enjoy yourself you are critically shot in the face by an extremely over powered double barrel shotgun weilding extra from Deliverance. Critical failure, player has purchased Broken Steel. Game introduces an awesome weapon called the Heavy Incenerator that produces reliable CTD's whenever used. Bethesda were unable to bipass their own source code, so the new ending is clumsily tacked on. Many new missions don't work. Giant mobile fortress is spiffy, but difficult to reconsile with logic. Save games become rapidly corrupted, massive collection of mods become unplayable. Broken Steel, has broken Fallout. Player takes critical irony damage for 39.99 US, from patch 1.5 Wallow in shame, nub. I have all the DLC except for the alien one as well, and I don't think any of it is the same quality as the base game. Much of it just feels like throwaway bonus content that they tossed together to make a few bucks. The high number of bugs and broken animations and whatnot in the DLC just shows to me that not much effort was really put into it but whatever was neccessary to get it to more or less run. However, I don't think that impacts negatively on the reasonable quality of the base game.

The fundamentals of graphic art and writing haven't changed much with the advent of computer gaming, but the ability of artists to actually display their work as intended in a computer gaming medium has improved drastically. That is, technology has limited the ability to display graphic art much more than it has limited the ability to display writing. Do you think that game writing has improved (or not) over the last 20 years?

No, it clearly doesn't. In the 20 years I've been gaming while the quality of graphics has improved dramatically, both technical and artistic capabilities, the quality of writing hasn't changed much at all. Hmmm. I think you're right. Writing has never really been a strong point for gaming, other than the odd exception here and there.

Perhaps not directly but maybe it forces developers to work harder on other aspects of the game if they can't rely on flashy graphics to carry the day? Given that every game has a limited amount of resources available to it during development, if a lot of those respources are spent making great graphics then it follows that other aspects of the game are probably going to have to get limited attention. But I'll certainly agree that there is no direct and automatic correlation between low-res 2d graphics and good writing.

While boycotting may have some effect on some businessess on some scale, many of the large companies are beyond the effects of boycott, Oil companies, energy companies, trading companies. etc. Many of these companies don't even deal directly with the consumer but provide wholesale services to pther companies Could be right. I'm not a proponent of government as the cure all. At the moment, I see it as the lesser of two evils in most cases. That could always change depending on personal experiences.

hmmm. That's true, isn't it. "Teenager's pimple" isn't much if an insult.

I'm scared.

Right. It's completely inconceivable that in a thread asking if people would prefer ES5 or D3 that the subject of the previous entries in both series would come up and be discussed and be derided if neccessary.

XCOM got it almost totally right, except psi powers were unbalanced and made the game ridicolusly easy once you got them and ridiculously hard until you did.

LICE! Evryone knows aliens only play XBOX.

No. Yes FO 3 sucked *defends Fallout 3 in a desultory fashion*

Speaking of blind, I just noticed your avatar. Now I can't see.

I remember playing Morrowind and more or less enjoying it but thinking how many problems it had. Now I look back and it seems epic brilliance in comparison.

Without being in that situation its impossible to say for sure, but the commitment of 14 years of massive effort is pretty ridiculously huge. It would seem to me that if you are willing to put forth that immense amount of effort and time there must be ways to make it payoff better. Like I said earlier, the effort is worth applauding, but simply applying huge effort without considering where to spend that effort for the best result isn't always the smartest thing.

If nobody can afford it, does it matter? Edit: I would also add that while there have certainly been many medical advances, especially in terms of surgical procedures, the overall cancer rate has remained relaitively unchanged and there is still no cure for HIV and antibiotics on on their last legs with little on deck to replace them. And places like the Amazon rainforest which hold a lot of potential but as yet undiscovered treatments are being strip-cleared in the name of progfress and industrializatio. But, its true that we a lot of spend money on erectile dysfunction treatments for rich old men.

No. lol. You make me look like a Beth fanboy.

Because peace games tend to be dull? And actually participating in war is dangerous? SO you're saying that somehow playing a compouter game somehow simulates the actual dangers of real war? Is that with the health pickups? Or the regen? Yeah, pretty much. Most video games attempt to offer people a glimpse into a life other than their own, whether or not it's a good simulation. Also, if you have a problem with glorifying war, chasing video games specifically is barking up the wrong tree. Movies and books on war have sold like hotcakes long before CoD 4. Yeah, I'm not sitting in judgement or anything. I was just curious. I watch some of these contemporary war FPS things and I just wonder if maybe they don't make war maybe too palatable. Don't know. Just something I think about when I see these game vids.

Because peace games tend to be dull? And actually participating in war is dangerous? SO you're saying that somehow playing a compouter game somehow simulates the actual dangers of real war? Is that with the health pickups? Or the regen?

Yeah, I would class warganes differently from some of these wacky FPS things.

Apart from people complaining on their forums, Beth might not even realize something was wrong with Oblivion. The game certainly sold enough and is highly ranked on Metacritic. True. But they seem to be pretty senstive to fan criticism. A lot of the changes that were made between MW and Ob were the result of fan criticisms, especially things like players outstripping the difficulty curve and the difficulty of locating obectives. I think Beth took some of it a little too far and maybe they think they did too. In some ways Fallout 3 is more like MW than Ob. But the question to me is: are the changes Fallout specific or a result of progress in overall game design for the dev team.

He shoudl hace called Mythbusters. They would have flown around the world to see if they could dig the tunnel with Coke and Mentos or something.

Sometimes it all just feels a little too real. I guess I just prefer my fantasy violence to be a little more explicitly fantastical.

I'm sure every time period has had its horrible dooms lurking on the horizon, whether its the Cossacks or an asteroid or the 12 plagues. As far as people acting in a generally humane manner, I would guess its more so now than its ever been. But I don't think it would take much to tip it back the other way; the more dependent on technology and specialization we become the more precarious our perch on the roost.

That's a pretty difficult question to answer in the sense that good/bad is generally subjective, and often 180 degrees different between people. I was reading an article sometime ago that said the world is on average safer now than it has ever been. If you are into safety and don't live in one of the below average places, I guess that's good. But if you do live a below average place, then the world probably doesn't feel very safe. ASo, again, subjective. On a bad note it appears that antibiotics will be useless soon. So that's not good.