Noceur

I don't own a 360, but I played Vegas splitscreen coop with a buddy and we had a great time. It's a shame that the story elements are removed in coop, but in coop we didn't have to deal with guarding some NPC while he hacks a computer (which is a plus, I suppose). I've just played the first two levels or so in SP. The only guard-duty sequences I've enjoyed in games that I can remember are in Alien Swarm (mod for UT2003/2004, soon for HL2), also in coop. One player hacks a computer while the rest defend him against hordes of bugs... then again, the place where the computers are placed are often designed for defense in that mod. Anyway, you should give Rainbow Six: Vegas a try in Coop, if you liked the gameplay. Coop FTW!

Rainbow Six: Vegas is an on and off effort right now... but mostly I've been occupied with Silent Storm again. Finally got my hands on Sentinels. I'm noticing new details in this game every time I play it. Playing with Grenade Range mod and No-PKs mod makes it real fun, although I don't usually play that long in the original campaign... usually I play until Unknow Factory then start up a new game.

Real-time and turn-based is just one aspect of gameplay. Then again, there isn't much more to Oblivions gameplay than that, which perhaps only makes my standpoint on the matter more valid. While I do like walking around in a real-time fantasy world, I'd also prefer if I could influence it (other than killing monsters in it, which noone in the world cares about unless they're a part of a mission, in which case one NPC might know about it).

How would... I just... what... the... I mean... huh? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Meaning I'd rather they (Bethesda) went about upping the quality of gameplay from their previous game(s), than changing from what they're used to (i.e first person, real-time) and keeping the same kind of gameplay they had in Oblivion. Of course, it's not like they have an either/or choice in the matter. Metadigital said: "That was his point." Well, sort of. But I wasn't disagreeing with him (if you mean Sawyer).

I think it's more likely that Bethesda will change those things than move to a top-down third person camera with turn-based combat. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I'd rather have a 1st person or 3rd person game with action and consequences etc than a top-down turn-based game with the gameplay of oblivion... so yeah, hopefully.

Well thanks a lot for that one!

Huh? Was there ever any doubt wether it'd be released for the Xbox/Xbox360? o_o Frankly, I'll be more surprised if it doesn't get released for the 'Box.

Apparently Jeanette doesn't. I thought my female warlock was going to look special throughout the game. Then I replaced her default armor with something more useful and now she looks like everyone else. So much for originality. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, the starting kit for the Warlock (female) is the coolest looking armor... I really hated to replace it.

Man, I still haven't finished it. I'm on my third character though (monkey grip half-orc now, hehe). I keep making new characters when I reach mid/end chapter 3 for some reason.

I was using Free Camera for the first few hours and found it much harder to use than any other game I've played with free camera. This was where I complained that it needed an invert axis option. Eventually I got fed up with how hard it was to control the camera in that mode that I switched back to the top down camera. Which is pretty much identical to the NWN1 camera. No problems since. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But... isn't there an invert axis for camera in the game settings? O.o Also, I just found the Target Closest Enemy, Target next/previous enemy buttons... targetting is easier now. Might be cool with a Target highest CR rating enemy or something though, I suppose. Anyway, targeting is rendered much faster by these buttons, although less selective. I still pause a lot, but that's because I like to sit back and sip my coffee before watching my Warlock lass Eldritch blast whomever back to the future, then back in time again, then back to Faer

Gameplay-wise there's a lot that's like NWN 1... I can't put my finger on it, but it feels the same. Mind you, I'm not talking about the narrative or story of the OCs. Perhaps it's just the left-overs from aurora I feel. Still, I think there may be some truth to what you say. UT99 and UT2003 were VERY different... while UT2003 looked better, it also changed the atmosphere, as you say. Most importantly it changed the gameplay. I don't think the gameplay (OC specific gameplay aside) has changed that much between NWN 1 and 2. PS. Well, we don't have the Inventory Tetris minigame any more, for good or bad.

This review is much better than the first one. At least this time the game doesn't get a mediocre score because the reviewer doesn't like D&D. It's weird though... I don't have bad performance in the game. (7800GS (AGP) 256mb, Pentium HT 3.2Ghz, 1GB ram, playing at 1k resolution with all Bling-bling on except for normal mapped terrain, Water reflection and refraction (still looks good, btw) and shadows on Medium. EDIT: I have not disabled Vsync) I also don't have any problems with the camera. I'm using top-down, controlling the camera with my middle mouse button. Just as I did with NWN 1. Just like in NWN 1 I adjust the camera a lot*... almost like a manual version of the driving cam. So I guess I haven't thought about it that much, but houses faded in NWN 1... that's a feature obsidian might consider implementing in NWN 2. I played through the OC in NWN 1, and it was much better in the later stages. Chapter one sucked, then the OC was OK to FUN. The NWN2 OC ranges from pretty fun to very fun, in my opinion. Many of the new songs are much better than the NWN 1 songs, I think. Perhaps I'm just fed up with the old ones. I agree with Volourn on sound, btw... keeping the ones from NWN 1 is a smart move. I mean seriously, why throw away a sound library assembled over several years? Imagine the state of NWN 2, had they decided to go out and sample cows and chickens AGAIN. Foolery on the highest degree, and anyone suggesting it should be tarred and feathered BY LAW. (Complaints about misplaced use of the old library are valid however) For MP: I pause a lot in SP, and I fear I might feel the need to do so in MP as well... I'd like it if the quickbar could be increased to show more than one quickbar, then make the extra quickbars accessible by "alt/ctrl/ctrl+alt + #". Then it'd work like CoH. I'm also unsure how good the targeting is. Is there a button to cycle foes btw? That'd be great, and/or a closest enemy button. All in all, I'd give the OC a high score. My score on the game as a whole has to wait for me trying the game in MP though. *= I mostly use click+move, with some driving when I feel like it. I adjust the camera on avarage every 3 seconds (about once every spell cast in combat). I also zoom in and out with the mouse. This is exactly how I handled the camera in NWN 1 with the exception that I moved the camera a bit more in NWN 1 because I used WSAD movement a bit more in that game.

I don't really have any problems with the UI either... for SP, at least. There are some things that needs to be fixed for MP, I think, like some stuff needs to be bind-able that isn't right now. Also, I almost always (have to) pause before targeting an enemy... this won't work in MP. It'd be nice if you could press or toggle a button to make the mouse snap to enemies, for easier attack and spell targeting. Of course, if there was an attack button, you could target the enemy (right click) THEN attack/cast spells. I'm using this method more now that I'm playing a warlock and I don't think I pause as much as when I played a melee character. Anyway, these are potential problems for MP, as they aren't issues in SP where you can pause.

It's called evasive maneuvers (Sp?)... If you have played Icewind Dale II, you'll never trust a barrel not to have a hidden agenda. Better to stay clear of them and try do dodge whatever they may do to you <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Haha, yeah. Anyway, read through that guys post and well... I dunno, there are some stuff he's right about but I disagree with most of it and some is just plain dumb. Archetype NPCs? Uh, what is a class really? Elanee and Neeshka are probably the only true clich

The pathfinding is a bit weird. I mean, the character will pick real weird paths when there's an obstacle like a barrel and you just want to walk a few meters, but I can click anywhere on an area and the character(s) will immediately and unerringly move to that point (no matter how complex that path is) At least in outdoor areas... not sure with indoors, as I usually watch for traps and stuff so I never click that far. So, in one way the pathfinding is great, but in another way (as in combat) it's making things too complicated for itself.

Yeah, I agree. This is the first game in a long time that I can say I really got what I paid for. The SP campaign is really long (haven't finished it yet, even though most of my spare time goes to playing it), and then you have to take the MP/PW aspects into consideration too. Size aside, I'm really enjoying the campaign. (Recently started a new campaign with a Warlock and I'm having a blast playing her... an eldritch blast )

My next character is definately gonna be True neutral. And I'll just go from there and see where I end up, hehe. I'm thinking about using bluff as often as I can, just to lie. Haven't figured out what class I'm gonna play yet though. Leaning towards some caster.

Thou must speak ye Magicke Worde.

I'm not going to go into spoilers, but you can also get one free companion/npc (that doesn't count as the 3 you can choose for your party). I'm not sure how long you get to keep the NPC though. This is Act I.

I agree (on both)... while I get good performance, it feels like it could go a bit speedier when compared to other games/engines of similar technical quality. It's not an issue for me, but since it is for a lot of people (and as Josh mentioned, two almost identical systems get different performance), it should at least get looked into. I've had two crashes so far. One was the area transition . It crashed, but after loading and trying again it worked fine. The other was a bit worse... . She'd say a few words then it'd crash... happened several times, until I turned off AVG. Not sure if this is what fixed the problem. It almost seems related to when the dialogue starts. Anyway, the second issue there is the only time I felt as I'd actually be screwed. Well... not very screwed, I usually keep a few saves before going into a new area and such. I also like the fact that there's been some challenging fights so far.

I had the same problem... it's due to diskspace. I uninstalled some crap and tried again, and it worked for me. The reason I'm so sure it's diskspace is because Windows XP said I was running out of disk space while installing the patch, then the patch broke. All you gotta do is free some diskspace and update again. (I'm posting this for the benefit of anyone reading this thread, since you (Darque) already stated that you'd try to clear up some space).

Here in Europe (sweden at least) we got it printed on toiletpaper. It also shipped with a dwarf that punched you in the face before stealing all your stuff and running away, laughing "Bwahaha, I'm off to DA MOON!!!" ;P

So far I'm lovin' it. My character is an Asimaar paladin (original, eh? ) and I find it fancy that the face and stuff I chose make him look sorta like a kind lion. I'm hoping my background (Natural Leader) will continue to affect dialogue. Dark_Raven: I just found Neeshka as well... she was surprised to be treated so well by someone "so... good-looking". Anyway, the game runs really well... got a lot of bling-bling turned on, but: * Character shadows downed to 512 (since I'm zoomed out a lot, 1024 is overkill anyway). * Terrain normalmapping OFF. (You can clearly see the difference, but the performance gain is larger than the quality loss). * Due to above, I've got shadows on high (err, the one with only character shadows) and it still runs like water. For some reason, the outdoor areas like the swamps run half-decent (when fully zoomed out and camera tilted towards horizon), but the area runs as smooth as the indoors areas. I'm real happy... this was definately a good purchase. It feels like ages ago since I last bought a quality product. Hopefully it'll last until the end. Sawyer-boy, Obsidian (and Ferret!)... good job, lads. At least from what I've seen so far. ps. I haven't had any problems with the camera... it might be clunkier than NWN 1 (don't remember), but I got used to it about half-way through the Tutorial. (I'm using top-down camera) EDIT: Yeah, the manual for the European version is tiny. I was hoping for a meatier version, since I'm not familiar with the 3.5 rules (other than playing ToEE). EDIT2: Also, according to the description of Blessed of Waukeen some merchants will recognise it and sell special lewt. So I guess us european LE people will get special merchants as well. Or summin'.

Once the patch is down... NWN 2 EDIT: Make that "Once the patch is down AGAIN"... how can a 87mb patch require several GB of diskspace to patch the game? Stinkin' badgers, that's why!.. I'm downloading the badger free patch now. No hardware enhanced dire badgers for me.

Got bored with WoW real fast. I've got CoH/CoV now, but I haven't played in a while (since I got bored with it). EDIT: I agree with Kaftan. I think this is why I get bored. The fun part is hack'n'slashin' with buddies, but you can only take a certain amount of that. I'll prolly come back to CoH eventually though, but I do get fed up with the grinding real fast.