Keyrock

Scooped up the Megadrive Classics 5 bundle yesterday for a cool buck and a half. There's like 10 games in there but I got it primarily for Phantasy Star 2, 3, & 4. I love the entire series dearly with 4 being my favorite, but I want to play them in order, despite the fact that 3 kind of, sort of doesn't chronologically fit, but whatever. So I'm currently playing Phantasy Star 2. **** yeah, old school!

How DARE you, sir. I am an aumaua, thank you very much. I'm REALLY liking the unified attack system and how it will be used for both physical attacks and magic. I do have one question, though: Will there be fumbles/critical spell failures? Maybe possibly in Expert Mode or as a separate selectable option?

Serious Sam 3: BFE - Really fun, but brutally difficult. Still, fighting a gazillion enemies all at once while heavy metal music is playing and **** is blowing up left and right is pretty freakin' rad.

I'm liking the sound of that. Just a few different types for specific damage types I think would be plenty. For example: Slashing - cut off limbs Bludgeoning - crush head down to neck Piercing - Impale completely through torso Firearm - Blow a visible hole completely through target Fire - Incinerate to ashes (FO: NV laser style) Cold - Freeze solid and shatter Electricity - Convulse wildly while coursing with electricity Acid - Melt down to puddle (FO: NV plasma style) Poison - Choke and gag, convulsing, and collapse obviously, I'm just spitballing of the top of my head here.

Looks like this should make the 45k mod tools stretch goal.

Check out Eschalon: Book I & Book II, if you haven't already. As for me, I'm continuing to frag the **** out of massive swarms of baddies in Serious Sam 3: BFE. You know, his one liners may be cheesy, but I find them strangely endearing.

Fixed.

Oh, hello. Spear and shield (plus)? Yes! Yes! Yes! Rejoice, no more monkey grip shaped hoops to jump through to be able to use one of the staples of ancient warfare (spear+shield)!

Started playing Serious Sam 3: BFE today. Started off a bit slow, with me going through an urban setting with tight corridor-like spaces and an enemy popping up here and there. I got worried, thinking that they Gears of Duty: Medal of Battlefielded my Sam. Then the area opened up, a massive wave of enemies charged at me, heavy metal music kicked in, I started scrambling like a mad man, squeezing off rounds while bullets whizzed by my head and rampaging baddies tried to rip me apart, and everything was right with the world. Good times!

The Witcher is the game that comes to mind as handling intoxication the best. Obviously, that's a single player action RPG so not exactly applicable to Project: Eternity without modifications.

My thoughts on accents and dialects: Doing a specific dialect for a game is a very risky venture. While it can add flavor and atmosphere to a game, it will only do so if it is done consistently really well. 90% of the games I've played that have tried to do a dialect have not done it well consistently and thus it wound up coming off sounding ridiculous and immersion breaking. The short version: Only use dialects if you are absolutely sure you can do it really well consistently.

I'm really sick of the ancient evil that rises up to destroy the world. Give me complex political intrigue, espionage, and ambitions run amok, or at the very least a brand new evil rising up to destroy the world. Also, I could do without the all powerful artifact which is the only thing that can defeat said ancient evil. (Spoiler: It's almost always a sword)

You give me too much credit. I'm way doofier looking than that.

Meh, the woman in the bottom picture is still quite attractive, she just looks like she eats food once in a while and doesn't throw it up into the toilet. 7/10 Would Bang

Yup; cheaper, about the same length of time, and more enjoyable than most movies. I'm certainly not regretting the purchase, just know that it's over rather quickly.

Just finished The Journey Down: Chapter One. It's enjoyable but short. It's a standard point & click. Some of the puzzles are kind of interesting but not particularly challenging. The graphics are dated but decent enough. Good voice acting and a fantastic soundtrack make for a great atmosphere and are the highlights of the game. I got a couple of good laughs out of it. Finished it in about 2 hours. For 5 1/2 bucks that's not bad, but I would have definitely liked something a bit meatier for my money. Hopefully Chapter 2 will be longer. All in all, it's a good way to waste a couple of hours at a somewhat reasonable price.

I'm enjoying The Journey Down: Chapter 1 so far, granted I'm only an hour into the game. Very standard point & click, nothing at all to set it apart from the crowd thus far. Dated but pleasant enough graphics. Good quality voice acting. It's fairly humorous and it's quite obvious that Bwana, the protagonist, is following in the footsteps of a long line of bungling, half-witted adventure game heroes (see: Wilco, Roger. Laffer, Larry. Threepwood, Guybrush). The highlight of the game for me so far has been the positively awesome soundtrack. If you like Reggae and Jazz, and I sure do, then you'll love the game's soundtrack. It's fantastic.

You have a strange definition of the word "fact". I reject your statement as fact and accept it as opinion. I then respectfully disagree with your opinion. I personally see nothing at all wrong with how Fargo and InXile have handled Numenera: Torment up to this point. Obviously, very little is known about the project at this stage, which will hopefully be cleared up when they launch the Kickstarter campaign.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on this one. Partially because it's only 5 bucks, partially because I love adventure games, and partially because it's one of the few games available on Steam Linux right now and I want something else to play while I beta test. I'll give some impressions once I put a few hours in or finish it (it's part one of an episodic series so i don't expect it to be particularly long). For now I will say this, the characters are very Grim Fandango looking, the game has a weird, but cool looking aesthetic of crisp, bright, sharp 3D characters against a somewhat faded, roughly drawn 2D background. Also, it's got some sweet jazz and reggae music.

If you haven't tried them yet, look into the time trials. They've got some excellent stuff there that's more demanding of your execution than the main game is. Since you've just gone through the game, do you remember how many times you actually have to take someone down? I can't remember how many enemies you have to interact with. I remember two required fights and three or four more that I think you can do without fighting, but become much easier if you take down a guard. I can think of 4 fights off the top of my head that require you to take down the blues. Two of them are where you need to climb a pipe to get up to a higher rooftop and one is where you need to turn a wheel to open a door. In those 3 cases it just takes too long to climb up the pipe of crank open the door to avoid the fight, you'll always get gunned down before you can get to cover. Then there's going through the sever room where you need to take out at least 1 blue to get his gun so you can destroy the servers. At that point, you might as well gun down the rest of them too. And, as you wrote, there are several other scenarios made much easier by taking down a guard or two.

I hate DA2 because it's a poor game that clearly shows lack of effort and corner cutting. While I wasn't a fan of them taking a more action RPG oriented approach to the game, I disliked it because they tried to make both an action RPG AND a tactical RPG and partially failed on both accounts. I didn't dislike the change simply because it was a change. What really bothered me about DA2 was the cookie cutter lather, rinse, repeat combat (heck, even the boss fights followed the exact same worn out formula of bunch of mobs spawn all around you, kill them, bunch more spawn out of thin air all around you, kill them ,bunch more...) and the blatant recycling of dungeons. To me this made it clear that Bioware was in a rush to get this out the door and they cut corners. If they had made a game that changed a bunch of stuff, but showed that clearly effort and care had been put into it, I would have been fine with that. I'm all for change. You have to constantly try to improve. If you keep things the same just for the sake of keeping things the same, then you wind up with stagnant games. It seems the issue most people are having with this is that Fargo is leveraging the Torment name so he can get more funding. I'm not disputing that at all. I also don't have a problem with it whatsoever. More funding means a bigger and better game. Don't we all want a bigger and better game? If you don't believe in the project, it's pretty simple, don't support it. I believe in the project and I intend to support it. Simple as.

My thoughts exactly. I look at this as a spiritual sequel in the vein of what Bioshock is to System Shock 2. Many of the same creative talents that worked on Planescape: Torment will be working on this, so it's not like Brian Fargo just randomly threw together a team and used the Torment name to garner interest. On that matter, I have no problem with him using the Torment name. Sure he could just call this Game X and apply the same theme's he's going for, but that's not likely to get the same level of interest, and thus the same level of funding, as if he incites the Torment name. And, let's face it, the more funding this draws the better, for everyone involved. I'm not one of these people that's worried that this could "soil" the Planescape: Torment name if it winds up being not as good, which there is a definite likelihood of considering how high PS: T set the bar. Did Deus Ex: Invisible War soil Deus Ex for me? Nope, I still think it's one of the greatest games ever made. Did Master of Orion 3 soil Master of Orion 2 for me? Nope, I still consider MoO2 to be a fantastic game. Did the new Syndicate reimagining, remake, bastardization ruin the original Syndicate for me? Nope, sure didn't. If Numenera: Torment winds up being a dud I will still regard Planescape: Torment to be the best RPG ever made. But if it winds up being even 75% as good as PS: T, it will be a great game and one definitely worth playing. Plus, you never know, they could actually surpass the original, however unlikely that is. As great as PS: T was, there was definitely room for improvement.

Yeah, and tell me too while you're at it. Meanwhile I just romped through the goblin fortress in ch1 of Icewind Dale 2. My party: Female Half-Orc Barbarian Lev 7 Male Human Fighter Lev 7 Female Aasimar Morninglord of Lathander Lev 6 Female Half-Orc Druid Lev 5 Fighter Lev 1 Male Halfling Rogue Lev 7 Male Half-Elf Enchanter Lev 7 My mage, being an Enchanter excels at buffing the party but lacks many of the traditional zorchy spells like lightning bolt and fireball. The barbarian and fighter are melee, all other characters use missile weapons (crossbows for the priest and mage, sling for the rogue, longbow for the fighter/druid). I basically buff my party out hardcore, haste both melee characters, bless, barkskin, bull's strength, barbarian rage, cast a bunch of summons, then just hack through enemies at lightning pace. Having 4 missile using characters helps disrupt enemy casters until my melees can get there to finish the job, though a hastened barbarian with the dash feat gets there pretty quick on her own.

I know nothing about Numenera so I need to do some research, but everything sounds really promising and I will surely be backing this.

Just finished Mirror's Edge. My thoughts, the short version: Ewww, someone spilled some crappy fighting in my awesome parkour game. The long version: The game is very good when it doesn't pretend to be something else. The parkour stuff is really well done with controls that are easy to master yet comprehensive enough to allow you to get really sweet free runs going. Much of the game revolves around dying a bunch of times as you experiment and figure out the proper route, then putting together a good clean run. The game falls apart when it forces you to fight. Many of the fights can be completely avoided by simply running past your enemies and getting the heck out of dodge, which is exactly what the game should allow you to do. Unfortunately there are several battles that are unavoidable and force you to use the game's mediocre at best combat system. What's worse is that it breaks up the cool running action. Still, there are moments of brilliance where I am able to calculate the optimal route on the fly on my first try and there are bullets spraying all around me, people chasing me, and I'm running like the wind, jumping over obstacles, wallrunning, triangle jumping, and other manner of pure badassery. Those moments are adrenaline pumping and pure joy and it's worth slogging through a bit of crappy combat to experience those thrills. On the down side, the game is really short. I beat it in about 7 hours and I'm sure people can do it in much less time. Even with speedruns to extend gameplay, that pathetic an amount of content is simply unacceptable. If and when Dice make a sequel they need to address 2 issues: 1) The game needs to be MUCH longer. 2) The game should NEVER force you into combat. All combat should be optional. There should ALWAYS be the option to simply hightail it out of there. Now I'm getting going on Icewind Dale 2.