Keyrock

So Saint's Row IV released earlier today at midnight (in The States, anyway) and I decided to stay up late last night to get my grubby little digital hands on it. I'm definitely paying the price for it a bit today (lack of sleep and all), but it was worth it, oh it was so worth it. I didn't play nearly enough to give anything approaching a review, but for now here are some early impressions for those wondering what all the buzz is about. As the vast majority of professional reviews have stated, it's fun, it's really fun, even before you get super powers, it's fun. There is a particular 50s America sequence early on that had me doubled over laughing then grinning from ear to ear. While the graphics are definitely showing their age, they're not bad, it's the same graphics as SR3. The voice acting work is fantastic as usual. While I miss my Russian lady boss, having a female president with a thick French accent and saying things like "merde" is great. Zynyak, in particular, has been an absolute delight to listen to. I like the little touches. Most games have 2 different movement speeds when using a controller, depending on how far you push the analog stick, basically walk and run. In SR4 the walking speed has a lot of increments depending on how far you push the analog stick, right down to hilariously super slo-mo. Right off the bat the game starts poking fun at other games and pop culture. Mass Effect, in particular seems to be a big target. It's never done in a mean or condescending way, though, more of a fun loving, wink wink way. Super powers are a game changer. Holy smokes are they fun! tl;dr version of my initial feelings on SR4: I'll post further thoughts as I get deeper and a thorough review once I finish the game.

LOL, I remember the real-time M&M games had mountain loads of exploits you could use, not that the turn-based games didn't have exploits. A lot of games have a certain range enemies will travel in and a point they would not go beyond no matter what, you could get them to that invisible "border" and pelt them with arrows as they would run toward you then turn around to walk back to their regular location over and over again. I haven't found anything I'd go so far as label an exploit in M&M X yet, mostly I use clever manipulation of the grid-based movement system and terrain to get melee enemies in a position where i can pelt them with arrows from afar and to get to within melee range on range attack using enemies without them getting free shots on me, or as few free shots as possible. I don't really think of that as an exploit, that's just being smart on how you use the grid.

Nice win for the Sawx last night. More importantly, it was great to see Lester pitch well again. That was one of his best outings of the entire season. After getting off to a good start, Lester had been decidedly mediocre over the last couple of months. He looked like an ace on the mound last night. That's the Lester the team is going to need in October.

Might & Magic X - I'm only a short bit into the game, but it feels decidedly old school Might & Magic. That's a good thing.

Yeah, I pulled the trigger myself also. The Uplay thing is a bummer, but pirates/hackers will take care of it for me. They'll be a cracked exe out in the wild within days, if there isn't one already. At least you can play it in offline mode for the time being. The game itself is pretty cool. Here are some of my thoughs: 1) It's old school Might & Magic, it feels like old school Might & Magic, it looks like old school Might & Magic, except much prettier, it plays like old school Might & Magic. 2) As Hurlshot mentioned, the graphics are not amazing, but they are quite pleasant to look at. The interface is decidedly old school, but quite user friendly and makes navigation quite speedy. 3) Day/night cycle is crazy exaggerated right now. I know it needs to be exaggerated to make resting abilities/supplies valuable, but it's straight up ridiculous as it stands right now. It's alpha so they have plenty of time to tune it. 4) I love the old school style changing portraits to reflect status effects. 5) Occasionally the enemies will freeze and the game will break when you use the air blast to push enemies back. Again, bugs are to be expected in an alpha. 6) Even with the limited number of abilities I have at this low level, there is a surprising amount of tactical decisions to be made in combat between drawing aggro on a certain character, pushing enemies back, manipulating the environment to force ranged enemies to enter melee, putting up shields, entangling enemies, etc. 7) Make sure you get every character some kind of ranged weapon skill early on (either at creation or level 2), it will help you immensely. That one is pretty much common sense. Anyway, I'm liking the game so far. I wanted old school Might & Magic and so far I've gotten old school Might & Magic, so I can't really complain.

For 320 BioWare points you can buy a friendship token. For 800 BioWare points you can buy a flirt token. Friendship token can be traded in for a 1% chance at romance, flirt tokens for a 3% chance at romance.

Once you have it, can you confirm that the UPlay requirement is indeed only a one time activation after which you never need UPlay again (hopefully without even needing the client, just going through a browser)? If so I can live with that, if I need UPlay running in addition to Steam then no sale.

So, umm, yeah. I'm going to be one of those few people that thinks they should just go the full Shepard for combat. Obviously isometric, IE-style full party control combat ain't gonna happen, as much as most of us would like that. If they go all the way third-person actiony combat and have your companions act like squad-mates in ME, I think that would actually work.

But if you'd called a white guy a "cracker," a few eyebrows would have definitely raised. In my experiences, no. My point is this, the derogatory term I used, which was all asterisks, by the way, was leveled at a character who is obviously a villain and a murderer. If I had called Mother Teresa a derogatory term then I would understand people finding it distasteful being accusatory. Would anyone by up in arms if I had called Charles Manson a derogatory term?

I guarantee that if I had referred to a heterosexual male character with an obscentiy (such as a-hole or <word referring to genitalia>) then no one would have so much as raised an eyebrow. It's all good if straight men are spat upon, but heaven forbid if one should use a derogatory term toward a female, one well deserving of said derogatory term, I might add, or worse yet, someone falling into the LGBTI group. Obviously then said person must be a monster. Now, who exactly is being discriminatory?

I'm one of the few people out there that didn't particularly like Dark Messiah, though I will admit that the Unstoppable Boot of Fear and Destruction was pretty cool.

Yeah, because my dislike of Philippa and saying her being blinded was deserved was obviously purely based on her being a woman. It couldn't possibly have anything do do with her being manipulative and murdering people to gain power then leaving innocents to take the fall.

Again, Huell is the greatest.

I don't have to be misogynistic to hate someone who used my trust to commit treason then left me to clean up the mess. I'll give Philippa this, she's one of the most interesting and resourceful characters in the game, that doesn't change the fact that she got what was coming to her, I just wish I had the chance to kill her, because I imagine she'll be making some serious trouble for me in TW3. Back on topic, I didn't like Anders in any of the games. Honestly, the only character in DA that I truly liked was Wynne. Obviously there is no chance of her appearing in DA:I.

If we're talking about Ignus, I can't say I felt bad for him. I went through his backstory for the XP and spells, and found it interesting. I'd struggle to think of BioWare or Obsidian characters I 'felt bad' for though. Viconia and Leliana? I felt bad when that one sorceress from the Witcher 2 got her eyes gouged out. The PC in BioShock 2. You felt bad for Philippa Eilhart? ***** got what was coming to her.

Yennefer was always characterized as rather attractive, although it is alluded to that she was once a hunchback. It's fairly common practice for sorceresses to augment their looks with magic, since it often helps to be sexy looking when trying to influence important dignitaries. Think of it as magical boob jobs, nose jobs, etc.

Breaking Bad, episode 2 of the final stretch. I was really proud of Skyler for not breaking (no pun intended). Now it looks like Jesse is Hank's way to get Walt. I don't think there is any chance Hank is surviving until the finale. I give him 2 episodes to live. I wonder if Jesse survives? I have a hard time seeing them kill him off, but that would be the ultimate holy **** moment the show could possibly pull short of killing Walt before the finale. Also, Huell is the greatest.

Agreed. If you're getting attacked by assassins it makes sense that a bunch more will appear out of thin air. When literally every enemy in the game does that, it's cheap, repetitive, and sucks the fun out of combat. It's akin to the monster jumps out of the closet trick in many games, most glaringly, Doom 3. It's cool a couple of times, when it happens for the 200th time it makes me want to put my fist through the monitor.

Ah, focus testing, the murderer of creativity.

Nice, both of them.

Can I be a lab rat instead? I like all rodents, but I like rats best.

Tell that to Dark Souls and Darksiders (both of them). On the other hand, Sleeping Dogs was also a good PC port. Maybe it's just games with "dark" in the title that do garbage PC ports? well, its not fair to include dark souls in that. the game was ported by a team who had never done work porting a title or developing for pc, and only because a petition by fans encouraged them to do it so calling them out for doing a bad job of it is just kinda mean/unfair A garbage port is a garbage port, whether it's done by a team of monkeys or industry veterans. I ain't about to coddle anybody. If it's a crappy port I'm going to call it a crappy port.

The game will be available to play Monday via early access. Here is a blog about it. It looks like the differences between the deluxe digital (Steam) and deluxe "box" (UPlay) edition are all superfluous (soundtrack, "cloth" map, lithographs).

Meh, I found DA2 combat to be very MMO-like. That's not a compliment, by the way.

They need to go completely one way or the other. They need to either go the full Shepard or full-on tactical. If they try to blend aRPG and tactical RPG once more, we're likely going to get garbage combat like DA2 again.