Keyrock

Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic (how's that for an obscure title ) was likely my first cRPG. Either that or Dragon Warrior on NES.

You can't really do camera rotation or changing the camera angle with 2D backgrounds, so that's just not an option for Project: Eternity. Personally I love being able to rotate the camera, so I'm happy they added this for Wasteland 2. I also love the monochrome monitor weapon pictures in the UI. There's something strangely appealing about monochrome in a modern game.

The combat if TW1 isn't much better at 30fps or 60 fps. Gothic and Risen are a couple more series with really bad combat. TW1 was fantastic for its moral ambiguity, choices with far reaching consequences, and storytelling, not for the gameplay. I thought TW2 improved the gameplay vastly, kept all the good aspects of TW1, and took production value and cinematics to levels only equaled by BioWare in RPGs. I thought TW2 was very replayable for several reasons: 1) There's an entire act that's completely different depending on a choice you make, and when I say completely different, I mean different NPCs, different quests, different area (overlaps a bit, but the base of operations and much of the accessible area is completely different), etc. 2) You can specialize in a different branch of the skill tree for a somewhat different gameplay experience.

I'm surprised that some people liked combat better in The Witcher than in The Witcher 2. While I thought the combat in The Witcher 2 was far from perfect, I thought it was a VAST improvement over the combat in The Witcher, which I thought was downright terrible. To each their own, I guess.

I fully expect Half-Life 3 to be SteamBox exclusive, at least for a period of time (3 months? 6 months? 1 year?). If you're going to launch a new console... like... thingy, then you need a heavy hitter exclusive to give people an incentive to purchase it. It doesn't get much more heavy hitter than Half-Life 3.

The more I read and see of ROAM the more I get impressed and excited for it. As soon as they confirm a Linux version (they're leaning toward it and they're using Unity) I'm going to jump on board.

I'll be scooping this up really soon myself. I freakin' love Fire Emblem games, and everything I've heard points to this being the best entry in the series yet.

Yeah, had the same problem and had to Google it. Anyway, in the absence of anything better to do, I played it anyway despite the regular graphics corruption up to level 4-5, and while it was passable, I don't think there's quite enough there to convince me to buy it just yet. It has, however, made me aware of the upcoming sequel which I would otherwise have ignored. Technical issues aside, I guess what didn't work for me in the game was how much of it boiled down to waiting for things to happen: waiting for bandits to spawn, then waiting for you to catch bandits slooooowly, waiting for the RNG to allow that noble to give you a quest instead of fobbing you off - in the end I felt I spent more time doing nothing than time spent doing something, and that's not a great thing to be happening in a game. Maybe that changes later when you have enough power to do things on your own initiative, like waging war against other nations, but I imagine that's out of scope for the demo. There's a lot of stuff that feels like busywork. I don't see why you have to walk slowly around a primitive interior representation of a castle to talk to the resident ruler, or wandering around a deserted village looking for the one NPC with meaningful interaction (the village elder) instead of just interfacing directly from the town menu. In the end I guess I'll say this: The good part is that it's sort of a mashup of Pirates! and Darklands. The bad part is that it's an inferior to Pirates! and Darklands. Once I got the hang of it and figured out all the controls and what to do, I started to really like the game. It's maybe not quite as good as Sid Meier's Pirates!, but that's setting the bar really really high. Anyway, I'll likely scoop it up when it's on sale.

Some screenies here. Not much of a step up graphically from The Witcher 2, but that game was already straight up gorgeous. These are work in progress screenies and they are boasting of "significant improvements" to come. I think they look pretty amazing as they are.

Trying out the Mount & Blade: Warband demo. I can't even really begin to play the game. I'm all for games not holding your hand but this game explains exactly nothing to you. For example: How the **** do you dismount? I've been trying different keys, looking through the control options and... nothing. I'm thinking of just trying the original Mount & Blade demo because that (hopefully) doesn't have horses... Wait, it's called Mount & Blade, so it almost certainly has horses. *sigh* Edit: Okay, figured it out. I wish it had been a bit more intuitive than "look at your feet and press 'F'", but at least I know what to do now. Other than giving you no direction whatsoever (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but they should explain some of the basics at least) the game seems pretty cool.

I wonder if the barbers in Witcher 3 can change your beard as well as your hair. Snidely Whiplash, anyone? Hmm, what about Fu Manchu Geralt?

I have 100% confidence in CD Projekt RED, they've yet to do me wrong. If anyone can pull off great personal storytelling in an open world, they can. This game is going to be awesome. Plus, I'm really digging bearded Geralt.

I have to honest, I have an issue with the marketing of this type of game on KS. If someone says the game will be bare-bones when it reaches its target then why should I support it . Set the right target to make the game playable and enjoyable. I see this almost as a type of blackmail because most fans of this game will feel obligated to commit more money On the other hand, there's the whole "how much can you reasonably expect to garner" factor. Small, relatively unknown studios like this don't have the recognition of Obsidian Entertainment, or Tim Schafer, or Brian Fargo, thus they can't reasonably expect to be able to raise something like half a million. Due to the nature of Kickstarter, if they don't reach the funding goal then they get nothing. With that in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to set the funding goal at the bare minimum to release the game at all, while adding stretch goals/hoping for more funding to make the game bigger/better/more fleshed out. I'm keeping an eye on this particular KS since a Zelda-like with a more robust RPG system sounds pretty freakin' awesome to me. If they confirm a Linux version (they've said they are looking into it but can't commit 100% as of yet) then I'll jump on board. I'm fairly confident it will make it, though not by much.

That is really cool and well deserved. Well done, A. Backer. Well done, indeed.

I think it's "wi-di-kay"?

When I look at it I think "Woo-dissa".

The Orlan is so... furry, so very furry. Me likey. Leaning toward Priest of Berath for my first character right now. Obviously very subject to change.

While in some ways I do think that some stretch goals are tantamount to dangling a carrot in front of prospective investors, many, if not most, of the goals I've seen seem like reasonable additions/expansions that could be achieved with a higher level of funding. Putting something tangible at a certain stretch goal level is, in my opinion, a more persuasive way to entice potential investors rather than just saying "extra funding will go toward game development". You need to add some window dressing to make things look more attractive to people, that's just a fact of business. For me, the bottom line is: Does all the money raised go toward making the best game possible? If the answer is "yes" then I consider the team making the project to be faithfully delivering on their promises to the best of their ability, and my trust has not been broken. The fact of the matter is that more funding means the ability to hire more talent and/or for longer periods of time, and the ability to license and use more tools/technology/IP.

Companions should comprise a full spectrum of personalities from stubborn and unyielding to naive and pliable to everything in between (well, not everything, there is a limited number of companions). As such, some companions should be easier to influence than others, while others still may be completely impossible to corrupt (or redeem). By that same token, certain companions, depending on their personality and motives, should actively be trying to manipulate the player character.

I'm well into Phantasy Star II now, though likely not even 20% of the way through the game. It sports the archaic interface that's pretty much the polar opposite of user friendly that I remember from those olden times, and has all the hallmarks of games from those days like grinding and dizzying labyrinth dungeons. Despite this, I'm enjoying my journey so far.

Spells make a huge difference in combat, remember that certain combat spells are not area of effect so there won't be a risk to harming party members. Finally if I am not mistaken you can disable the option where area of effect spells hurt your party. I believe one of the (lower) difficulty settings disables friendly fire. I always play on "Hardcore D&D" so I always have to watch out for friendly fire. Wise use of spells during and before combat make all the difference in the game. The difference between a "vanilla" party and one heavily buffed when entering combat is staggering. For me "Haste" seems to be the most important spell in the game. Obviously, each encounter can play out very differently, but having a hastened party can be the difference between being thoroughly debilitated by enemy casters and ripping those casters to shreds before they have a chance to do much of anything. If you can get your melee characters to the casters quick enough, they don't stand a chance.

The developer (Troika) apparently had plans for a follow on based upon Against the Giants modules, but that fell through. The initial release of ToEE was rushed out and was horribly buggy, which led to poor sales. It was also released incomplete (especially the ending), although I understand the Co8 team has addressed most of that now. Personally I enjoyed the game system; I just didn't find the game itself all that rewarding. Same here. I found ToEE to be rather... well, boring. There just wasn't anything exciting in that game. It's for the most part just one long slog through a dungeon.

I find some of the towns and areas are kind of barebones and really lacking in content and quests, suggesting the Piranha Bytes planned to put more the game but couldn't because of time constraints. I find the content mod and quest packet fill those in nicely. But to each his own.

DoW II is an absolute blast. I like Retribution even better. The story isn't as tight, a necessary evil as it needs to be vague enough to fit with any faction, but you can use whatever faction/race you want, and let's face it, playing as Orks >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> playing as Space Marines. WAAAAAAGH!

Elanee is always the first companion I kick out of my crew as soon as I have more companions than spots available. She's absolutely insufferable. I hate her so much that I don't ever even bother doing her personal quest because I can't stand her aggressively annoying personality. She's useful to have around from a purely tactical standpoint because she can heal and she has AoE spells that don't friendly fire, by it's just not worth it to have to put up with her.