Keyrock

With a bit over 3 days to go they need about 90k to get to the goal. I'm starting to get a tiny bit optimistic, I think they're going to just make it. I'm guessing they end up with 425k. Here's hoping.

Oh, the story is great, no doubt, but the combat is so unbelievably awful that I just can't bring myself to play it any more. Somehow they managed to make the combat even worse than in the previous games, if that's even possible. I think it's because they added sticky cover. In theory that should have been an improvement, however it's implemented extremely poorly and the game relies on it a lot. Plus, the controls in combat are even less responsive than in previous GTAs, which, again, is an incredible feat. Also, as with every successive GTA game, they focus more and more on combat and this only increases as you get later in the game. I like driving around, I love the story, but I just can't deal with the combat any more, it actually hurts (both physically and emotionally) to play the game it's so bad. I'm just going to watch the final few missions and cutscenes, and the ending, on Youtube and save my sanity.

Man, this one is going to be a really close call. I really hope it makes it.

I attempted to get back into GTA IV yesterday. I knew I'd regret it but I'm so close to finishing. I'm at the part where I have to choose between revenge and money, that's gotta be at least 90% of the way finished, right? Anyway, not a half hour into playing and I was ready to throw my controller through my monitor. Then I had an epiphany: Why am I putting myself through this abysmal combat when all I want is to see the cutscenes and ending? I can just do that by watching Youtube clips. So it's screw you GTA IV and hello Icewind Dale II for me.

For the record, it's almost impossible for a RPG story to be too political for me. I much prefer power struggles, conflicts, and betrayals both within kingdoms and between them, than "save the noble world from the awakened ancient evil".

I don't expect to see the survey until at least a few days after they close the PayPal donations.

Thanks for the correction, it's been many years.

World of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen were my favorite games in the series, I think those were IV and V. They were 2 separate games that sort of formed one giant game. I really enjoyed M&M VII because of the aforementioned bombing enemies from the sky, which was indeed insanely fun, and the weird sci-fi elements. I do agree that it was tedious and the writing was boring, though.

I second the recommendation of King's Bounty as a good game similar to HoMM.

I like this idea, so long as the extra animation work necessary to implement different status animations for each different race and monster wouldn't consume too much of Obsidian's time and resources.

It's a pretty good game. Pretty boring selection of races, though. I'm pretty sure 99% of players chose sexually sexual gray elves over blue elves (man those guys were dumb looking,) multiracial generic humans and aryan nordic master race humans. Gameplay was its strongest aspect, the story and lore were uninteresting (thanks Oblivion guy!) Visually it was like a modern WoW (you know, better than DX7,) whether that's good or bad is up to you. Shallow fun, more like a straight action game than an action RPG for the most part. I personally went with sexually sexual aryan nordic master race, dual braid style for extra sexual sexuality. I concur the thoughts about the game; dull story and lore, good gameplay.

It's weird, but despite the fact that I'm a fan of the series I'm not the least bit enthusiastic about GTA V. I guess my reasons are: a) GTA IV left a bad taste in my mouth. For a game that has so many good things going for it, it frustrated and angered me to no end, to the point that I can't bring myself to finish it because it's just such a pain to play. b) Will they finally have a halfway decent combat system that doesn't make me want to put my fist through my monitor? (this is one of the causes of reason "a") c) Rockstar missed an opportunity to take the series to a new and interesting location. Sleeping Dogs showed how much of an impact location can have on a game, with Hong Kong being a fantastic setting. While GTA San Andreas is my favorite entry in the series, Los Santos was EASILY the most boring of the 3 cities in the game, and on top of that it's getting reused just like Liberty City got reused in GTA IV. d) The 2 trailers shown so far left me completely uninspired. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's the 3 protagonists. They all seem so dull and uninteresting. I do hope the game proves me wrong and winds up being great, though.

I thoroughly enjoy missions where SIE is my handler. Only Heck even comes close to providing the same level of entertainment value over communications.

Despite the fact that they got a well known fantasy author to create the world, I found the lore and the world of KoA to be utterly dull and boring. That didn't stop the game from being fun, though. I definitely enjoyed the game... all of it except the ward dispelling mini-game. The ward dispelling mini-game in KoA may well be the worst thing ever programmed. Luckily, it can be pretty much ignored.

While Dark Souls was made in Japan so I guess by definition it is a jRPG, I've never thought of it as such. It feels so much more like a western RPG.

Don't you DARE burn the Tex Murphy games or I will find you. You hear me? I WILL FIND YOU! I loved Tex Murphy's weird mix or professional actors, Chris Jones' surprisingly decent delivery as Tex himself, and all the over the top cheesetastic "acting" done by programmers and staff. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

There is no preparing for it. Nothing can make you ready for horror of that magnitude. It would be like preparing to get run over by a train. Still doesn't hold a candle to Phantasmagora in terms of horrific acting. I get chills just thinking about it.

For me there are some classics I love like Final Fantasy VI (still the best jRPG ever made IMHO), Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star (all of them, but particularly IV), and Seiken Densetsu III (aka Secret of Mana 2). More recently though, I fell in love with Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor and SMT: Devil Survivor 2. Both are brilliant games combining elements on sRPGs, old school style menu driven jRPGs, Dragon Quest style monster collecting and training, and fusing of monsters. They're truly fun games that both gave me over a hundred hours of good times each.

I just think Bethesda took a chance with Morrowind and abandoned the standard prototypical setting for something really different. With Oblivion they took the safe route and went with a paint by numbers setting and since Oblivion made them a bajillion dollars they stuck with a paint by numbers setting for Skyrim except they added dragons, because dragons sell.

I'm well into Alpha Protocol now. I did a couple missions in Moscow then went off to Rome and have done every mission except the final one there. Before I finish up in Rome I'll be off to Taipei to mess with Brayko's nose candy. I'll do that whole hub all at once, then back to Moscow, then back to Rome. Other than the one mission in the ruins in Rome where I had to defend the spot until Mina finished working her magic (it took me 3 tries to get past that part), everything else has been a breeze. It's also been really fun. The game is still just as enjoyable as I remember. Once I finish this up maybe I'll have the stomach to go back to GTA 4 and finish that up. While I'll still be downgrading in terms of combat mechanics, at least it won't be as shocking a step down as trying to go directly from Sleeping Dogs to GTA 4. Either that or I may try to finally finish NWN 2. I can never seem to finish that game. I play it for a while, love it, then like it, then... then I just kind of run out of desire to finish it. It just drags so much in the middle parts. I can use wanting to go on to MotB as motivation though.

It was also the expansion filled with wacky characters, unusual quests, conspiracy theories, shopkeepers that got awfully jealous when you patronized their competitor, and the opportunity to control the traps in a dungeon luring foolish adventurers to their doom.