Keyrock

I'm not sure jokes count as news. It might confuse people. If someone gets confused by that poor attempt at a joke then they deserve to get confused.

I certainly don't advocate piracy, but in the case of a game I legally bought being unplayable because of DRM, I would feel absolutely zero guilt about swiping a cracked executable off the interwebz. That's what I had to do with Jade Empire. It wouldn't play because of some ridiculous Steam check. I searched the web for answers (a plethora of people had the same or similar problem), tried a bunch of proposed solutions, none of them worked, then said "**** it" and downloaded a cracked executable. Now the game works flawlessly and I don't even have to turn on Steam to play it. In defense of Steam, or just to put it into context, that's the only issue I've had with Steam in the last 3 years+.

I'm convinced HL3 will release with the launch of the SteamBox, whenever that is. Nothing but GabeN himself saying otherwise will convince me of anything else.

You're likely right.

Please use spoiler tag if you answer this question. I have gotten that far and I have a theory, but I don't know for sure yet. The theory:

Please use spoiler tag if you answer this question. I have gotten that far and I have a theory, but I don't know for sure yet. The theory:

A shaman gotta eat.

I didn't even know about the event. I haven't as much been playing the game lately as playing Neverwinter Gateway. I'll have to pop into the game proper when I can tear myself away from Shadowrun Returns. When did this event start and how long does it last? It sort of doesn't matter though. Without purple tools there's practically no chance to make a slotted item and purple tools are ridiculously hard/expensive to acquire. Even with max purple tools, the chance to make the tier 3 item is, what, maybe 25%, if that?

They just released some obscure title called Doda or Tota or something. Apparently it's some niche type of game that very few people play.

I quite like the art style in Shadowrun Returns. Up close, the character models are kind of ugly, but in the standard isometric view I think they work well with the environments. I like the colorful, yet drab look of the environments. Cartoonish, but not so much that it clobbers you in the face with how cartoonish it is.

You get an on screen message at the top every time it saves. The game is far from perfect, but considering the limited budget and quick turn around time, I think they did really well with the title. For sure some things could be more intuitive and/or user friendly, but the overall experience has been really good for me so far.

That's actually more reason to go wireless, a lot of crap with a lot of wires in close proximity is a recipe for trouble and indestructible knots. I don't know what kind of messy computer setup you have, but practically all the wires have always come out the back of all my tower setups (not to mention they're neatly zip-tied to avoid a mess) and the only wires coming out the front are whatever is plugged into USB ports, which 90% of the time is just my controller. The only wires that come anywhere near my controller wire are the keyboard and trackball wires, but those are neatly funneled through the sliding drawer so there's no chance of tangling with the controller wire.

To each their own. I have no issues with wires, plus wired controllers tend to be significantly cheaper, and I'm a cheapskate frugal like that.

About 2 hours in and loving it. This is one of those games where I'm eagerly anticipating every piece of narration, flavor text, and dialogue. It's got that dark but sarcastic tone with a hint of film noir that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Doesn't BioWare have that name copyrighted? I wouldn't want to infringe on anyone's intellectual property.

Snag the DRM-free version from their site.

I've played for about an hour. I'm playing an Ork Shaman named Restless Wolf. I'm definitely liking the game so far. I love reading all the flavor text and dialogue, they absolutely nailed the Shadowrun vibe, which they damn well should have since Jordan Weisman created the game in the first place. I basically have just the bare minimum ranged skill to wield a rifle right now and try to keep back and let my summons do the dirty work.

More than anything, I'm curious what "publication" named Imperium Galactic War Game of the Year 2013.

Any idea how long? Thought I heard something like 10 to 15 hours. That's the word out on the street I'm hearing too. Edit: Woot! It's downloading.

Sweet. You got a head start then.

I'm excited to get my hands on the tools. After I finish the main campaign I plan to give it a looksie and hopefully get crackin' on some shadowrunning goodness. Hopefully this will grow into something like the NWN modding community, so many awesome community made modules for that game.

Yeah, I used to meta-game dialogue options. These days I stick with an outcome, even if it's not what I expected. To each their own.

As long as the checkpoints it saves at aren't too far apart, I won't be bothered by it much. Sure, I would prefer save any time, but as long as it's not more than maybe 15 or 20 minutes playing time apart, I'll live with it. 2 more hours before I can start downloading...

Seems to me like Obsidian are taking many of the familiar elements of IE games Isometric view Party-based Tactical Combat Real-time & pause Story driven And addressing one of the biggest shortcomings of the old IE games by designing a new system from the ground up specifically meant for a video game to replace the D&D system which put significant handicaps of game design in the past. If that's "setting the bar low", then by all means, Obsidian, set the bar low.