PrimeJunta

I can answer that for my part. I have two reasons I actively dislike FO2, despite having completed it a number of times. Short version: trash combat with crazy balance issues, and way too much carp for its own good. Edit: and @Malekith by the way, I played FO2 first. I was startled by how good FO was in comparison when I played it later, after I had finished FO2 once or twice. The combat system in the Fallouts isn't very good. It's very heavy on thresholds, which means that you either do zero damage, or a megaton of damage. Plus, the enemy AI is just plain bad. The upshot is that the difficulty is either "fall asleep on the keyboard" or "insta-death." These threshold effects get worse as you go up in level. The original Fallout was relatively short, which meant that things only got kinda wonky near the endgame, so most of the game you were experiencing something like decent combat. With Fallout 2, this system breaks down pretty quickly. The early game is both tedious and punishingly tough (especially if you're not powergaming), after which it switches to a state where areas are either fall-asleep easy or insta-death hard, right up to the endgame -- it's insta-death hard if you haven't done most of the optional content, and fall-asleep easy if you have. So my experience with FO2 is that in the early game I'm playing kite + creep'n'save against trash mobs, which is tedious, whereas in the late to middle games I'm figuring out by trial and error which order I'm supposed to play the areas (and quickly getting bored because it gets so easy). Second: there's too much stuff in the game. On the one hand they've made caps and loot matter by making ammo for the most high-powered weapons scarce and expensive, so there's a strong incentive to packrat; in addition, you get the car with the trunk where you can dump things. But merchants have limited caps & other lightweight loot. The upshot is that I spend way more time than is fun on inventory management -- just trucking stuff to merchants and sorting through the junk I have in the car, on me, and my mules. More tedium. The same applies to the larger scale of the game as well. There's really no reason for me to visit many of the areas, other than metagame ones ("I need the XP"). When I last replayed it -- after an interval long enough that I didn't remember much about it -- I was just following the clues of the main thread and got my Advanced Power Armor before even having visited some of the main areas. There goes the challenge, and the incentive to visi them. Too much stuff, and it's not connected up properly. Bottom line? FO2 could have been good. It has its moments, but it fails in the execution. The areas don't hang together, the level cap is high enough that the character development and combat systems collapse, and it's way, way too exploitable. It's not as much fun as FO in the narrative/story sense, it's much, much less fun in the combat/character development sense, there's much more tedious busywork, and to have any fun at all you need to "metagame" continuously -- by creep-and-save, by a priori knowledge about which areas to visit in which order, or with exploits that make you way overpowered for any point in the game. If the resulting gameplay was really good this would be tolerable, but it isn't: it merely switches from bad and frustratingly hard to bad and mind-numbingly easy.

Only? You, son, do not know the meaning of loving a game.

Sure, whatevs. Poke away, I don't mind -- I was asking for it really. Again, I just don't see the point of cluttering up the public thread with it. It's a leetle off-topic, don't ya think?

Never said you did. This was fun for the first few rounds, but if you have a problem with me, please send me a PM so we can sort it out there; I don't see any reason to burden this thread further with demonstrations of our respective wit.

Dagnabbit, Arcanum again. I really, really, really, REALLY want to like it. WTF am I doing wrong? I just play it up to about level 15, and then lose interest. In theory it has everything I should like about a game, and I've enjoyed games with worse combat than this... er, I think... but just... no. I can't get into it. I think I'm having the same problem as with BG -- I just can't bring myself to care about anything or anyone in the game, so it just feels like do-this-do-that busywork for no compelling reason. I thought maybe it was the frustrating combat, so I did some reading up on how to make it the least painful possible, and rolled up Arsène Lutin, the gnomish charlatan's protégé with a minor knack for magic, proceeded to Harm my way through the early game, then watched my faithful band of minions mow down everything in their path. And that got boring. WHYYYY? I'm SUPPOSED to like this for cryin' out loud! Wacky world, steampunk, magic and gunslingers and a victorian vibe and great music and out-their characters and... I just don't. If someone has ANY ideas on how I can get my imagination in gear with this one, all suggestions are welcome. Please? PS. I bought that Book One of the Malazan series. No comment yet, but that may follow. Thanks for the recce everyone.

Re IWD, it's a game I enjoy purely for the "gamey" aspects. The story is the bare minimum to keep you going from place to place; it's not that much better written than the dialog in BG, but then you're not really asked to give a spit about it. You do what you gotta do. I'm playing just for the next levelup, the next bit of cool loot, the next bit of way-cool scenery, and the next combat challenge the game is going to throw at me. I'm really digging the way the combat is balanced. Really. Best IE game experience so far in this respect. It's tough enough that yeah, I do need to reload a fair bit when things go pear-shaped, but not so tough that I'm replaying every encounter -- even every "boss" encounter -- and I get a real feeling of danger and adventure, and a real feeling of satisfaction either when I guessed right about what I was going to encounter and prepared accordingly, or managed to adjust my tactics to win anyway. And it's diverse, with a changing mix of enemy types and maps. It's good, clean action-RPG fun.

Yup. Couple aeons in a hell realm for me for sure. Now, was there anything else?

Since we're talking scores, I loathe numerical scores given to games with a passion. Games aren't toasters. They're products of creativity. I wish scored reviews of anything that involves more subjective assessment than rating a home appliance were staked through the heart and buried at a crossroads. And yeah, I have had to assign those numbers. I still hate 'em.

Oh, and about that epic thing -- the word's usage has shifted a quite a bit, but when someone says it, at least I think of something grand and sweeping, where the fates of nations are decided, heroes rise to triumph over impossible odds and all that commotion. In that sense PS:T wasn't epic. It was more of a tragedy really.

I know! It's terribly un-Buddhist of me. Buddhists are supposed to be calm, serene, compassionate, self-effacing, humble, and all that commotion, and also terribly understanding of other religions, even silly ones. I'm a terrible Buddhist![1] I don't know how deep MCA is into Buddhism -- as in, if he's ever practiced it. But whoever wrote it grokked that stuff. Also it isn't necessarily Buddhism, could be Advaita Vedanta as well, on the level they appear in PS:T the concepts are similar enough. The Dusties are a bit like an uncharitable Hindu caricature of Buddhists actually. So maybe he's really a closet Hare Krishna. Anyone have a photo of him in robes banging a drum at an airport? (Bad PrimeJunta! Bad! There I go making fun of other people's religions again.) [1]Or I would be, if I identified as Buddhist, which I don't. I may be too old to take on an identity like that.

Dafuq? Where did that come from? I don't think any of my favorite artists are Buddhists, and I'm pretty sure none of them are New Agers. They do rather tend to be full of themselves, that's for sure. But then in my experience that applies to converts of every stripe, whether it's to Christianity, Communism or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

You have a deal, @Razsius. However I'm still in the middle of Icewind Dale, so it'll have to wait until I finish that. I'm liking it more all the time by the way -- it's completely straightforward and unpretentious, the atmosphere is great, and the combat challenges are just the right mix of easy hacking mixed with tricky situations. It's challenging without being frustrating, which is a tricky balance to hit. Right now I'm playing at a bit of a handicap as I just dualed my thief to mage so I have nobody in the party able to disable traps, but a couple more levels ought to sort that out. If you need any tips on playing PS:T, please let me know.

The dicussion about Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment in that Good, Bad, and Ugly thread (which describes the thread too pretty well IMO) got me thinking. I can easily list, say, five or ten games that I really, really, like. I think I can see a pattern there, even though they're, on the face of it, a pretty eclectic bunch. My question to you is: what's your list, and is there a common thread there? What is it about them that makes you like them? Here's my top 10 -- not in order of preference; I couldn't sort them from number 2 down: * Planescape: Torment * Deus Ex * Mask of the Betrayer - Rome: Total War with the Total Realism mod - NetHack - Dwarf Fortress * Vampire: Bloodlines * Fallout * The Witcher 1 * The Witcher 2 For a surprising number of these (I've starred them), if asked to describe them, I'd say something like "well, the gameplay is kind of meh [or insert some other significant but more specific criticism of the gameplay], but man, it really grabbed my imagination. Put another way, it's clear that as much as I like to gripe about deficiencies in gameplay -- and as much as I'm hoping that Project: Eternity will have the cRPG game system to end all cRPG game systems -- ultimately, for me, it's really not that important. If gameplay isn't so badly broken that it's still able to carry the content, and the content is worth carrying, I'm pretty happy. And, conversely, the best game system in the world isn't enough to get me hot and bothered if the content in it is unimaginative, generic, badly written, or just not worth the trouble. How about you?

That was a very sweet post, Razsius. I think my problem with BG may be... a mirror image of your problem with PS:T. With PS:T, you're unable to switch off the critical part of your brain when it comes to game aspects, and so the "gamey" flaws are constantly jolting you out of the experience and frustrating you, so you're never able to get to the parts of the game that make it worthwhile. With BG, OTOH, I'm unable to switch off the critical part of my brain when it comes to the writing aspects, which means I can't make myself care about any of the characters. They just don't come alive for me.

Colin McComb on what they were thinking when writing PS:T.

I quite liked DX, actually. Thought it was pretty good for what it was. Played it through several times. Great gameplay variety. Loved sticking LAMs to walls and making things go splat. But it didn't even come close to giving me the 'art' kick. It was entertaining and had some rather cool social and political satire and commentary, but that's about it. Also the stereotypes were incredibly grating and it had some of the worst voice-acting in any game, ever. Hated DX:HR. Better gameplay and production values, but the story was rubbish and the game totally missed what DX1 was about. Even DX:IW wasn't as bad.

I'd rather they spent those resources on just about anything else. The only voice acting I like in this type of game is combat barks and random banter. I always read dialogs and lore text. If there's narration, I just click through to read. In fact one of the (many) things I didn't like about BG is that there was no way to click through to read the texts between chapters; if you didn't want to miss it you had to wait patiently as that guy was reading from the paper while the text scrolled s-l-o-w-l-y up.

Edit: frackit, I really should develop more self-control. Bad PrimeJunta! :END:

Edit: aw, frackit. Never mind. :end:

lolwut indeed. I asked: "Why is it that PS:T has such a dedicated fanbase, since we all seem to agree about its failings in its gamey features?" You went on a tangent about how you like shyte movies. What I was asking you to do is to attempt to see PS:T through the eyes of one of its rabid fans, and imagine what merit it could possibly have to create such dedication. I know, I know, it needs a certain amount of WIS, but you can always try. But until you make an honest attempt at that, I'm assuming that you're here just to waste everybody's time, rather than to, say, exchange experiences and thoughts.

Edit: Oh, FFS. You didn't even answer the question. So (snipped).

Funny, that. Because earlier in this thread I explicitly said that I do not want all video games to follow its example. I do not want even P:E to follow its example. Are you even paying attention? To make this perfectly clear -- and to clear up your misrepresentations, intentional or not: - Planescape: Torment has huge gameplay problems, in particular shyte combat and massively unbalanced character development - Planescape: Torment breaks the AD&D ruleset egregiously and materially deviates from the Planescape canon in many places - IN MY PERSONAL FRACKING OPINION Planescape: Torment more than makes up for thse shortcomings with its thematic and philosophical complexity, unique story, and deeply insightful exploration of the human condition - IN MY PERSONAL FRACKING OPINION Planescape: Torment is the only game I have played that can be seriously regarded as a work of art comparable to, say, Wagner's operas. I do not understand what's so hard about these positions for you to understand or even accept, that you have to (a) misrepresent them and (b) go NO! YOU'RE WRONG! about them. Repeatedly. So, let me ask you a question -- and I won't continue this discussion unless you're able to answer it, honestly and without that occasional sarcastic attitude of yours: Why is it that PS:T has such a dedicated fanbase, since we all seem to agree about its failings in its gamey features?

Jeez, Sacred_Path, now we're going around in circles. Also you're distorting what I said, either intentionally or out of laziness, and I don't feel like setting you straight. And I already gave you my answer to your last question -- you just didn't like it much. (I.e., it's because you made WIS your dump stat. If that's the case, it doesn't matter how high your INT is.)

Whoa, cool! Can I see? I couldn't. I've tried, and I'm useless at fiction. I can write a mean sestina though! Uhm 1) it has walls 2) there are lots of seats. Did they, I wonder? I've understood that PS:T was made under extremely tight time and budgetary constraints, and they had TSR looking over their shoulders too. That, I think, explains most of its flaws -- there just wasn't enough time to wring them out. (And even so, given limited additional resources, I would've preferred that they spent them on fleshing out Curst and the rest of the endgame while keeping the shyte combat. Getting the gamey parts right would have been a much lower priority.) Sure, nothing wrong with that. I like good historical fiction as much as the next guy -- the Rome TV series kicked arse for example, and that was very good in terms of authenticity. Or is it unacceptable for your high standards because Cicero was really whacked on the road somewhere rather than in his villa, the guy who whacked him wasn't named Pullo, and there were actually two assassins? If so, you have no hope. Might be, if the same thing didn't happen in every art form. Look at a bestseller list from the 1930's. How many of those books are still in print? That would rather depend on the strength of that artistic vision, wouldn't it now? Never said you did. So?

That's possible, but I find it unlikely. PS:T really is deeply insightful, unlike almost all pop culture that deals with these themes. I can't see how that could've emerged by accident. More so because I'm clearly not the only one who got the same kick out of the game. No, Sacred_Path, there has to be something inherent in PS:T that speaks to us; it's not only us projecting our own thing on it. My point all along is that to treat PS:T as if it was "a video game with lots of hostiles" is exactly the mistake you're making. That's what's preventing you from enjoying it. That's not what it is. That's just the theater in which it plays. And yeah, I agree that it is a bit of a drafty theater and the seats are hard and you can hear the kitchen guys washing the dishes sometimes. But it's not central to what it is. In my opinion. Incidentally, the biggest criticism I have about PS:T is most of the third act -- from Curst to the Fortress of Regrets it's mostly just... not very good. That is a genuine flaw in what it was trying to accomplish. You're thinking of the wrong Edda -- the one that starts with Kringla heimsins and then chronicles the history of the Viking kings up to St. Olaf and beyond. Wagner drew from the other one: the one with Odin and Thor and Balder and Freya and Fafner and the Jötunn and the dwarves and what have you. Unless you're arguing that Sigurd's slaying of Fafner the dragon was an actuall historical occurrence? Next you'll be telling me there wasn't any Holy Grail either! :hmmm: It would certainly have been a completely different opera. It would certainly not have been possible for Wagner to pursue the themes he was actually pursuing in that format, because they're not what the real Song of the Nibelungs is about. I certainly think The Hobbit was a better film for taking the liberties with the source materials that it did -- and The Lord or the Rings trilogy suffered for trying to cleave so closely to the books. So on balance, no, I don't think it's very likely it would have been better, and it's extremely likely that it would have been far worse. There were lots of historical operas written at the time, you know, and most of them are justly forgotten! Basically, if you're creating a work of art, I believe it's always better to attempt to do so on its own merits, rather than, say, trying to stay true to the franchise -- whether the franchise is an epic poem by Wolfram Eschenbach, a trilogy by some limey philologist, or a fantasy role-playing game setting. So drawing inspiration from and adapting -> good. Slavishly striving for 'authenticity' or 'staying true' -> almost always a disaster. (Case study: Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep vs. Dune/Dune. In both cases we had a great book. In one case we got a great film, in the other case, a shyte film. The shyte film was shyte because it slavishly adhered to the book. The great film was great because it threw out the book and used an original screenplay with some characters and themes from it.) In my own D&D campaigns I certainly throw out the rulebook the instant it stops me from doing something that I think would be fun. You'd probably hate them. I'm not talking about generalities here. Quite specific things. And not "beliefs" again: observations. For example: that what we call "I" is nothing more or less than an arbitrary label we've slapped on a bunch of habitual patterns of acting, that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory, that the cause of that dissatisfaction is grasping, aversion, and clinging, that there is a way to end that dissatisfaction, and that the way to do it is to actively cultivate and practice insight, morality, and mental strength. From where I'm at that's way more useful and universally applicable than Freud's mostly sex-based ideas, which grow from the really twisted bourgeois world he lived in.