Keyrock

The thing about consoles, is that they ironically tend to offer the best value for the money, from a strictly hardware perspective, when they are first released, which is also when they are the most expensive. At launch a console often sells at very little profit, no profit, or even a loss. As production costs go down and parts become cheaper they start to turn a profit. A couple of years down the line when the console drops a hundred bucks in price, the components it is made of have dropped 150 buck in price. The down side is that what is presented at launch is what you're stuck with for the console cycle. Even if a hardware revision is made with somewhat better components, games are still made with the lowest common denominator in mind (i.e. the launch specs). So while the PS4, or even the XBone, may offer great value at launch, they're locked into that setup for the next 5 or 6 years. Meanwhile, a year and a half from now you could buy a somewhat better PC for the same price. Four years from now you could buy a PC that blows either console out of the water for the same price. And that's not counting that, even with PS4's and XBone's expanded multimedia capabilities, a PC is still a FAR more versatile piece of equipment.

I hope they bring back the President Skroob greeting: Edit: Also, I hope they have better tattoos, like in SR2. The selection and quality of tattoos really dropped off between SR2 and SR3.

I know, I'm bummed that it seems the Russian female voice isn't coming back, unless they're getting someone other than Tara Platt to do it. The prospect of a female American President with a thick Russian accent had me feeling all sorts of tingly inside. The "Southern Belle" voice better be a super over the top southern drawl to make up for it.

I'm hoping for a possible Oleg love scene. Tastefully done, of course.

Keith Mutha ****ing David delivers the goods yet again.

They're running an event starting now and through the weekend: http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=929631 Personally, I don't much care for fireworks or the stupid looking star mask, but I'm down for some free dye packs and double AD. In other news, I finally got around to making another character, a dwarven control wizard (because ironic or whatever). He's there simply as a laborer to run jobs through the gateway and get me more AD. I got him up to lev 10 so he can do jobs, now I just need to get him 1 more level so he can invoke his deity and get free AD.

While it has already happened with several, much smaller scale and lower publicity, Kickstarter projects, the "oh ****, we wound up with a lot less money than we anticipated" drama inevitably has to play out a few times with bigger projects in the limelight for companies doing these projects to become a lot more cautious and calculating with their rewards and budgets.

The budgeting problems for Broken Age are definitely a concern for a backer, like myself. In the end, if Tim & Co. deliver something on the level of Grim Fandango, or even Full Throttle, then all will be forgiven, as far as I'm concerned.

Ulukai, I sure have.

They had some great hotspots for Insurance Fraud in SR2, particularly ones that included a freeway overpass. You'd get steady high speed traffic and the potential of getting launched hundreds of feet into the air and off the overpass for more hang time. I've gotten a good 8 or 9 seconds of hang time off of getting plowed by a bus at like 70 mph off the overpass. Good times.

Agreed. There's nothing really challenging in the entire game. That doesn't prevent the game from being a blast to play, but I wouldn't have minded some challenge, at least in some of the optional stuff like the activities/distractions.

Not sure. The only activity I had any real problem with was Hard Mayhem, and only until I got unlimited ammo for the rocket launcher, at which point it became a piece of cake. The Sad Panda Skydiving gave me a bit of trouble the first couple of tries until I figured it out. Insurance Fraud is the greatest. Getting ragdolled into oblivion will never be not fun.

Yeah, it's pretty sad when I have to go through these measures just to play a game I bought. But hey, on the bright side, at least this stonewalled the pirates dead in their tracks. Oh wait, no it didn't, it didn't have any effect whatsoever. I guess the silver lining of being forced to use a crack is that I don't even have to turn on Steam to play the game now. Anyway, Playing Jade Empire and loving the **** out of it. I even enjoy the little shmup mini-games. I want a sequel to JE so bad. I'm still in the very early stages, just started chapter 2. I'm looking forward to getting my axes so I can start cleaving chumps up with style. For now I just slice them up with my claws, Enter the Dragon style. I'm pretty much going full on closed fist so I get to be a massive a-hole to everyone. Good times. One thing really jarring about the game is how much crappier the movies look than the rest of the game. I know it's a product of the game getting HD-ified from the original XBox version, while the movies stayed the same, but it's so insanely noticeable that it basically slaps me across the face every time another movie comes up.

Sounds like someone wanting me to burn AD. Anyway, I could always try to get the rank result on a lower level blue item since those burn cheaper, more common assets.

I was thinking mostly of car racing games, and I can't think of a single one off the top of my head where you use the mouse to steer (or accelerate and brake). But even if you have the option of steering with a mouse it will still be awkward because you can't just automatically return to neutral by letting go of the thumbstick (or conversely it could automatically return to neutral if you stopped moving it, but then you'd have to keep moving the mouse to go through a long sweeping turn and you'd likely run out of mousepad or even table unless you had a trackball). You'd have to manually aim back to center, which would be a hassle (it's also likely why they don't implement that in car racing games). Fun fact: I used a combination of gamepad and m&kb for playing space sims (X2 and X3 namely) before I got my flightstick. Gamepad most of the time when I was just cruising around in space. When I'd get into a battle I'd switch to m&b for the superior precision of mouse aiming. Then I got my flightsick, and, well, obviously that became my control method. We agree on the basic point, m&kb is an inferior tool for certain types of games. It's a superior tool for certain other types of games.

I can't say for sure, but I doubt you can open up that slot using leadership. I plan to do it and make a spiffy slotted purple pair of pants (or a shirt) in one foul swoop.

We already know how things will turn out Original: Enhanced:

Not going to look up the specifics, but a single minded human fighter/weapon master is an insane killing machine. Two ways to go, in my opinion. Either scimitar or rapier for insane critical chance, or scythe for insane critical damage. Either way, you'll easily be able to get every feat you could ever possibly want and your chance to hit, number of attacks per round, and damage per attack are going to be so ridiculous that you'll be practically insta-killing even super tough beasties. You'll brute force through even tough damage reduction/absorption spells with childish ease. Plus, great armor and good hit points for survivability. Augment with items giving various immunities (e.g. freedom of movement, immunity to mind control, etc.) and you become nearly unstoppable. It's not pretty or fancy, it's the straight up brute force approach, but it's very effective because the steady damage output is just so staggering.

Is it just me, or are uncommon, rare, and epic leadership assets completely useless? Well not USELESS, but they don't have any advantage over their mundane counterparts. I mean, is there any advantage to using a green or blue or purple sword over the mundane rusty sword, or green/blue/purple armor over basic rusty armor? Can you even get a "better result"? In other news, I got my greedy paws on a dragon egg, but I'm reluctant to use it until I get at least blue tools. I'm also closing in on getting a rank 7 dark enchantment and rank 7 azure enchantment. At the moment I have 3 rank 6 dark and 2 rank 5 dark, just 2 more rank 5 dark and I'll have enough to fuse a rank 7. I have 1 rank 6 azure, and 3 rank 5 azure, so a bit further to go with that. I'm not even going to attempt to fuse a rank 8, that will just take forever.

Here's a decent chunk of my afternoon/evening yesterday: Step 1: Decide to fire up Jade Empire Step 2: Open up Steam and select game Step 3: Error message Step 4: Google Step 5: Come to find out a metric ****ton of people have this problem Step 6: Find proposed solution Step 7: Implement proposed solution Step 8: Error message Step 9: Find another proposed solution Step 10: Implement proposed solution Step 11: Error message Step 12: Find another, more drastic proposed solution Step 13: Implement proposed solution Step 14: Reboot Step 15: Error message Step 16: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Step 17: **** the dumb ****, I'm downloading a ****ing crack Step 18: Implement downloaded crack Step 19: Play game Step 20: Try to enjoy myself as I wonder why I had to implement an illegal crack to play a game I ****ing legally bought

Not really, no. Depends entirely on your preference, as you point. It's not a fact that a controller is better. A controller has clear advantages that translate directly to a racer: 1) Analog steering, allowing you to steer more or less depending on how far you move the thumbstick. With a keyboard it's all or nothing. 2) Analog triggers, allowing you to feather the throttle. Again, with a keyboard it's all or nothing. Even if we're comparing with a controller that doesn't have analog triggers, as some don't, the analog steering itself is a massive advantage. Obviously at this point you're only arguing for the sake of arguing, because stating that m&kb is just as good for racers as a controller is just plain ridiculous. Same goes for platformers. That would be like me arguing that a controller is just as good for a RTS as m&kb.

No, it works better with a steering wheel, gear box, and pedals. The long, long, long history of platformers on the PC shows that a mouseyboard has no problems with platformers. 1) Yes steering wheel it the best tool for the job, but that doesn't change the fact that a gamepad is still WAY better for a racing game than m&kb. Ever played a racer, or even a game that has driving like GTA with m&kb? Sucks, doesn't it? 2) Take a platformer, either 2D or 3D, and put it in front of 100 people. Now offer them either m&kb or a controller. I guarantee that at least 95 of them pick the controller. You can make a platformer work with m&kb, but you will never convince me that that either WASD or the arrow keys are more comfortable for platforming than an analog stick, or even a D-Pad. Point is, as it concerns TW3, that the extra precision and extra buttons of m&kb don't really help because of enemy lock on and limited number of skills/spells. If you're more comfortable with m&kb and the keyboard layout is better suited to you that's your prerogative, but it doesn't make m&kb better for the job, it just makes it better for you. I find it easier and more natural to switch between enemies with the analog stick and I find myself pushing the wrong button a lot less on a controller because the buttons aren't as crammed together as on a keyboard. With the advantages of m&kb rendered meaningless, it basically boils down to what control method any given person is more comfortable with.

Yeah, I overstated myself when I said a controller was a better tool for the job for The Witcher, it would have been more appropriate for me to say that it's just as good a job. All of the advantages of m&kb don't really apply to The Witcher games: 1) Faster, more precise aiming - Doesn't really apply since Geralt isn't an archer. In TW1 you only kind of sort of had to have the enemy somewhere in the neighborhood of directly in front of you to hit them, and in the case of groups you just used group stance with which it didn't matter at all where the enemies were as long as you were in melee range. They could be directly behnd you and you'd still hit them. 2) Far larger number of buttons/keys - Geralt doesn't have a large enough array of special abilities/signs to make more than 12 keys necessary. If you're more comfortable with m&kb then it may feel better for you to use that than a controller. I know when I first started playing my second playthrough of TW2 it felt a bit awkward using the controller because I had been used to the m&kb control from my previous playthrough. It took me a little while to adjust, but once I did it felt better than m&kb. I guess it comes down to preference. I just don't think designing the game around a controller takes away from the m&kb experience. Geralt isn't going to have enough skills and spells to warrant 20 hotkeys anyway and he doesn't really use ranged attacks that require precision aiming. I mean, I suppose they could make Igni and thrown daggers into precision aiming attacks ala third person shooters rather than lock on attacks, I just don't see that adding to the game exoerience.

Sadly, that rule applies for a staggeringly large array of games.

As if you needed to precisely "hit" the opponent in TW1. You could always up the sensitivity of the controller's axes, you know, if the game actually had controller support, so you could turn just as fast with the thumbstick as with the mouse. It would be less precise, but it wouldn't matter one bit because in TW1 just just had to be kind of in the neighborhood to "hit" your opponent. The game didn't have much in the way of hit detection, you hit the mouse button, Geralt swung the sword like a mad acrobat and did a bunch of spin moves or whatever and you "hit" your opponent. Maybe "better" is the wrong word. To me it's much more comfortable to hit buttons with my thumb or shoulder buttons or triggers with my fingers on a 360 controller than push keys on a keyboard, partly because I can lean back in my chair, partly because I can move the controller around with me during those frantic fights where I mimic movements with my body because I'm like that, and partly because I find the likelihood of me hitting the wrong button/key is far lower on a controller than on the keyboard because of how the buttons are spaced out. If you're more comfortable with m&kb then more power to you, I'm sure they'll have perfectly fine m&kb controls, they did for the previous game (except the menus, but that sucked wih ANY control scheme).