Keyrock

Most of the challenges (one for each deity) are "Kill X Enemies within a certain amount of time under condition Z". Condition Z being stuff like No Encounter Powers, No Daily Powers, etc. It's quite possibly the lamest event they've done so far in Neverwinter Online.

Woot! Score one for the mother land! Kamil Stoch of Poland straight up demolished the field on the normal hill in Ski Jumping. Hopefully he can repeat that on the large hill and maybe even help Poland scoop up a medal in the team competition.

To me, Binfinite makes a great first impression, and I suspect that is enough for some to proclaim it as brilliant. The setting is really cool looking and the story seems great, until you play the game for a while and the luster wears off, revealing how underutilized and constricted the setting actually is and just how much of the story simply makes no sense whatsoever.

Hmmm, I can't be like that, because then what's the point. To be quite honest, while PS:T had a great story for a game, it was maybe average for a story on it's own. If I want a great story I will read a book and no game or movie will match what my imagination can conjure from it. A game should have good game play, that is it's purpose, if it fails at that then it fails at being a good game no matter how good the story is, which is not to say that story doesn't matter. Bioshock Infinite, for an example, had above average game play and a great story and it made for a fantastic game. It wasn't the most revolutionary game play but it was fun and it had a great story to pull you along. Games are a media that require interaction from a player and just having a good story can't accomplish that. Binfinite's story is overrated, in my opinion. It's by no means bad, but I feel it's far from "great". To suggest PS: T's writing is "average" then turn around and say that Binfinite's writing is "great" is mind boggling and bass ackwards for me, but to each his own. I would certainly prefer a game to have great gameplay and great story, and I agree that there needs to be actualy gameplay for it to really be a game, as opposed to what David Cage keeps making (made all the worse by the fact that his games' writing is on average rather mediocre). Gameplay does not have to necessarily mean combat. In fact, combat can sometimes be a cheap cop out to creating different and creative ways for the player to get through situations. For me, interesting writing and a good setting can keep me playing even if I'm having to fight the controls. That's me, though. I get not everyone is wired the same way. Edit: Just so I'm not misunderstood, I thought Binfinite was a good game with maybe above average writing (all things considered) and above average gameplay. And I didn't think PS:T's combat was horrible, just pretty mediocre and by far the weakest aspect of the game.

As far as I'm concerned, there could have been zero combat in PS:T and it would still be the best RPG I've ever played. In fact, it would have been an even better game had there not been any combat at all. Of course, I'm a story first gamer. Great writing can keep me playing in the face of even horrible mechanics, hence why I am still able to play and enjoy The Secret World.

I can't compare to Bladedancer, or any dual wielding class (having not played any), for that matter, but Hunter is flat out awesome. Probably can't dish out the sheer volume of damage a Bladedancer can, especially taking into account the Bladedancer, once promoted, damaging multiple targets at once, but the Hunter can still do beefy amounts of damage and is arguably an even better character defensively than offensively. The only thing they really lack defensively is heavy armor. Spear sort of makes up for lack of shield in the blocking department, they're physically tough, and they can evade and resist spells with the best of them. My Marauder is becoming nearly untouchable by enemies. They just flat out can't hit her, not with physical attacks and not with spells (not for very much, anyway). I just did the Crystal Spider fight, That was fun, probably my favorite boss fight so far. With the fire shard in hand I'm off to cure Crag Hack (Edit: or not ) and then to the forge for the second to last blessing (still need the dark shard).

Interestingly, I'm the only one so far that has any jRPGs on their list.

Denied by the NDA.

Strictly RPG: 1) Planescape: Torment 2) Baldur's Gate 2 3) The Witcher 2 4) Final Fantasy 6 5) Fallout: New Vegas 6) Chrono Trigger 7) Ultima VII (I'm lumping them together into one giant game, if I have to choose a favorite then it's The Serpent Isle) 8] TES3: Morrowind 9) Deus Ex 10) Fallout 2

Mamushi is very difficult to melee because he blocks a lot and retaliates on all melee strikes (blocked or otherwise). He's one boss that's significantly easier with a magic-heavy party. At this point in the game my melee characters (Marauder and Shield Dwarf) are by far my main damage dealers, but a lot of that is enhanced by my spellcasters. My casters are mostly there to heal, buff, and protect my party, and to debuff and purge the enemies, though the cumulative damage from poisoning the enemies with Poison Cloud is significant. Edit: I was thinking of an all-hybrid party also, but I still think that will become relatively easy once I get past act 1. Maybe I'll go all might? I dunno, I got a some time left to think about it as I won't do that until I finish this playthrough.

LOL, that's almost as much fun as when newscaster have to say "grape drank" or "sizzurp".

That was pretty fantastic... for everyone not named Darren Monahan. One of my favorite D&D holy **** moments was luckily of the positive variety. It was at the yearly shindig our high school Latin class went to and there was a Roman themed game of D&D that I participated in. I played a Priest of Bacchus (clearly the most awesome of the gods) and my character got st00pid drunk when camping for the night, as one does when worshipping the god of wine, madness, and ecstasy. As you can imagine, my character had a ruthless hangover the next morning (complete with significant stat penalties) so I prayed to Bacchus and rolled a natural 20 (I still fondly remember everyone's eyes going wide as the die stopped on 20). The DM granted me a daily "Remove Hangover" power. If only such things existed in real life. The closest I've found is ginger ale.

Man, that course for slopestyle is beefy. They put some monster jumps in there.

I have a hard time going back to KotOR 1/2 at all. While there is a lot to like about those games, the combat system is so atrocious that I almost have to physically force myself to keep playing, at which point the thought comes up "why do this to myself?" and I stop. While I was going through the games the first time and discovering things, that was enough to keep me going. Now that I've finished them before, going back is just not worth it.

On the plus side, if they do go with the same ending with 36 different color explosions, they'll likely get a bunch of cupcakes mailed to them with different color frosting. It will also be a challenge to the both the developers and the cupcake bakers to find that many different hues of explosions/frosting that you could still tell apart easily.

I agree. I first took out the dangerous cave Cyclops with a level 15 party, and it was pretty hard (for my party, at least). Then one or two levels later I met two in a certain warfare challenge, and they seemed much harder. I meant the named (I forget his name, starts with a "D") cyclops for the shield guard promotion in the cave near the broken down caravan in the mountain range. I found him to be easier to kill than the regular cyclopses (cyclopi) simply called "Cyclops". I'm certainly not changing any values on my first playthrough, with the exception of things that are obviously broken (spear not getting crit bonus from two-handed master). I want my first playthrough to be "vanilla". Not even my mages tend to stay stunned 5 turns, they usually break out of it within 2 or 3 turns. My Shield Guard is virtually unstunnable. When he gets stunned he breaks out of it immediately 95% of the time so that by the time my turn rolls around he's already back to normal. Edit: Oh yeah, and I found the spear relic. It's in a dangerous cave on the Menthil Coast with a shaman dude inside it (his name starts with "M") In a future playthrough I'll definitely have to play a much more unorthodox and "suboptimal" party, because Warrior difficulty has gotten too easy. I mean, it's not exactly a cakewalk, but it's not that challenging either. I think I assembled my party too well (/pats self on back) and I wasn't particularly trying to min-max. If with an unorthodox/unbalanced party I still get to a point where it's not that challenging, then I'll think about messing around with the config files to create a "Nightmare Difficulty".

Woot! Promoted my Shaman to Bloodcaller. He's almost never going to need to drink a mana potion again.

I've actually played the vast majority of those titles.

The boss cyclops was such a chump. I think he only managed to hit any of my characters once and Celestial Armor just laughed at that. I hit him up with poison cloud, acid splash, shatter, and agony, then just ripped him to shreds. At one point late in the fight he stone skinned himself. I must laughed at him as I purged the effect off him. Purge is such a great spell.

Supposedly The Witcher 3 will have 36 different endings, though just how different each of those endings is remains to be seen. It would be pretty hilarious if it was just essentially the same ending with 36 different color explosions.

I got my Shield Guard promotion. Cyclopses (Cyclopi?) are laughably easy at level 24. I pretty much crushed them beneath my boot. Is it just me, or is the boss Cyclops actually easier than the regular ones? He barely put a scratch on me.

Man, that Heat/Clips game last night was freakin' awesome. That was really entertaining.

Ubisoft's utterly gorgeous metroidvania-ish, JRPG-ish Child of Light has a release date (April 30th) and a price ($15), and a release trailer: It's coming to a smorgasbord of platforms too.

Here is an update on that dystopian steampunk golf game in the sky you've always wanted: This one is definitely on my radar.

That's been the biggest kick to the crotch I've gotten in a long time. Bigger than the kick to the crotch I got from Torture Porn Raider. (Torture Porn Raider is actually a pretty good game, it's just absolutely not the game I wanted to play or it to be. X: Rebirth is just a really really really bad game.) On a positive note, I'm really itching to play Shadowrun Dragonfall.