marelooke

Tbh, I got it free as a gift from a friend on Steam last year but your point still stands as I have bought other games based on appealing graphics/art styles. How do they go backwards? I don't understand how devs cause their games/franchises to devolve! Why try to change what the fans love so much??? Kinda weird nobody brought up that they were forced to change engines. As far as I can tell facial animations and the latter have been relatively bad on all BioWare's Frostbite (I think?) games. Forcing all your developers to use a single engine might seem like a nice cost saving for management, but it clearly doesn't work properly. Not to say that it couldn't be made to work, but clearly nobody considered it worth freeing up the budget for it. It also, likely, means that BioWare has much less control over the engine and can't fix issues they see on their own terms without having to jump through a bunch of corporate hoops to get things approved so the engine team can work on it,... I thought that most of the ME3 plot arc wrapups felt rushed and often shallow (the Asari one was especially bad, so much so that I only remember the obnoxious Kay Leng "fight") and were thrown at you in way too rapid succession. Tuchanka was clearly a high-point (and the best part of ME3, by far, imho). And while I can't say I "hated" the Quarian/Geth thing too much it felt too way predictable and after all the hubub about that sun in ME2 I'm pretty sure they scrapped their initial idea and went for something more vanilla. (come on: zealots attack machines, machines get desperate and call upon bad powers to save them. Things predictably go haywire and you get to fix it. Does it get any more cliché than that?). Given the buildup in the previous games it was a minor disappointment. The Turian arc was decent, though nothing particularly special, I'd hoped for some family solving problems with Garrus as him having issues with his father is often hinted at in the previous games (isn't solving personal issues the thing Shepard does best? I mean, ME2 was a fix-personal-issues simulator), but alas. Basically ME3 should have been split into multiple games imho (and ME2 scrapped if they really didn't want to go over their 3 game "limit", since most companions from 2 only make cameo's in 3 anyway and Cerberus was already set-up as villain in ME1, so there...)

*sings* In the circle of life. It's the wheel of fortune... So, plant dragons. Did we already agree those are boss? Sexy locations galore I like the combination of painted backgrounds with in-game models, like this: Meet the twins Epic bossfights? Check! Ever wanted to buzz around a dragon's head like a little insect? Well, that's one I can scrap from the bucket list...

This is what always frustrates me with MMOs or even ARPGs that there's always a OP way to do a class or race and all I want to do is play games and have fun. I don't have the time nor want to spend the time to be the king of the leaderboards, I just want to enjoy myself. Heh, most of the people hung up on this aren't "top" players anyway, they're just aping what they hear elsewhere without understanding (and understanding that for the content most people care about it doesn't matter one bit). Personally been mostly playing Guild Wars 2, though I've also started in Guild Wars 1. There's a load of references from 2 to 1 so yeah, couldn't help myself It's really surprising how different the games are from each other though, I'd have expected the class system of GW2 to be an evolution of GW1's but it's a total overhaul: the games have absolutely nothing in common (combat)mechanics wise. Still the GW1 intro was fun, hiking through pre-Searing Ascalon and getting to see the "other" side of the conflict (in GW2 you mostly get to hear the Charr, aka the GW1 "bad guys", side). Actually needing corpses for a Necromancer was also kinda nice (until you get to fight elementals and undead. Ugh )

Just save some for the drought that will undoubtedly come (or the disappointment when a bunch of them turn out to suck) Yeah, my interest in ME: Andromeda started at around 0 due to ME3 (and no, not because of the ending) and DA:I (I like my MMOs with other people in it) but it's dipping into the negatives now... Will be interesting to see what people (= you folks) have to say about it after release...might be more entertaining than the game itself to boot

F2P is misleading though since unless you don't want to craft you basically *need* a subscription for the crafting bag, otherwise your inventory will *always* be full. There' s so many crafting mats that *not* having it is just not an option imho and unlike in many other MMOs crafting is actually viable so ignoring it would be kinda suboptimal... And when I last played at least there was nothing short of a subscription that could get you access to this thing. Speaking of MMOs, still playing Guild Wars 2, stalled on the second big dragon battle (Mordremoth) due to the just plain frustrating mechanics (boss specific gimmick that is a 1 hit KO mechanic which makes you restart the whole, long, bossfight over from the start each time you get hit). Guess the devs played too much Dark Souls (and I don't consider that a good thing, at all). So I just went alt hopping, got my Guardian to lvl80, nearly done with the main "Personal Story" on that one (which is killing big dragon no1: Zhaitan). The nice thing is that due to the mastery system my older Thief still benefits when I'm playing a max-level alt since mastery experience is account wide so I don't feel "guilty" about letting my altaholic side loose

Yeah, I had Ghost on every mission after the prologue. I recently started over trying to remedy that but the playthrough kinda fizzled after taking out the first "boss" as I know I can do the rest of the game (since I did it before...)

My problem with FO4 is the horrible performance. I'm not going to buy an SSD just because Bethesda can't optimize their game to have even somewhat acceptable loading times. It just made me give up on the game. On that note, does the "enhanced" Skyrim suffer the same issues, having been ported(?) to the FO4 engine?

TToN, but aren't we all at this point? About the intro:

There hasn't been much variation in my gaming lately (this and Forza Horizon 3, basically) Little kid telling her golem it's gonna be ok, I almost teared up. Aww. (but seriously, that bit was well done, in general quest design in GW2 is rather...meh. Though the overall lore is pretty cool) Mom and Caithe Some pretty neat area design So what's better than plant-people? Plant-dragons of course! Obligatory undead dragon (that's gonna get a beating)

Well guessed! (and here I was trying to be myserious by not including anything with UI/NPCs on it) It's Rata Sum and the Pale Tree, respectively. I guess Rata Sum is rather recognizable to anyone who's ever played the game. Personally I like the Sylvari most of all the races. Plant people, yay! So here's a screenshot of my Thief

RE predates Tomb Raider by a few months, not quite enough time to steal major systems I'd think (RE is from March 1996, Tomb Raider was released in October of that year) So how does RE7 stack up against the Revelations games? I was never into the "modern" RE games, but I quite liked Revelations and your description seems quite appropriate (though afaik there were never multiple endings in the Revelations games). I played it at launch and liked it. Now that the gold edition is out I might give it another try. The visuals looked neat and the world looks vibrant and alive. I just hate those 20 GB patch updates. I oddly enough couldn' t really get into it, too much filler inbetween the story content I guess. The mechanics somehow also didn't click for me. Since we're on the topic of MMOs, I've dusted off my Guild Wars 2 thief after what appears to have been two years (juding by how long some things are already on the Auction House, kinda funny to see they just stay there if not sold). Some things I noticed: Lion's Arch has changed *again*, seems every time I quite & come back something happens to that poor city, they better hope I don' t take another long break anytime soon, because my breaks murder NPCs by the thousands apparently But more importantly, the fixed my major gripe with the game: the last step in the personal story was a dungeon and I didn' t have anyone to do it with. Now it scales and can be done solo. Though it was still a major PITA, Thieves being squishy as hell combined with ArenaNet's love of spamming movement impairing effects all over (explosions, knockbacks, stuns, you name it) and especially the tendency to chain them (Think you just got up from that knockback? Hers' s a stun, and here, another knockback, and here a stun. Oh, you died. How sad.) I think what I like about the game is, despite how cliche some factions are is how alive the world is and how much stuff there is to do. It' s something I always like about EverQuest 2, just find something obscure (less of that in GW2 though, in EQ2 there were literally quests 98% of the community had forgotten about) to do and chasing that goal all over the world is just fun. And if you get tired of that you can just tag along with a group massacring (or getting massacred by) world bosses, running world evens or w/e. Or you can just go around mining ore, whatever. The inclusion of "Mastery" seems like a step in the good direction, away from the typical leveling threadmill, though I don't have that much experience with it yet (just unlocked it yesterday). I reminds me a bit of EverQuest 2's AA (Alternate Advancement) system, which was just genius and something I'd love to see more often. Basically there are two types of XP in EQ2: "normal" leveling XP, that will gain you levels (duh), which unlocks new abilities etc. and then there is AA XP which will gain you AA points (basically skill points). And there was a slider to specify how much XP should go each way (once you hit max level any new XP is converted to AA XP). The idea here is that this gave you a few options, you could either go mental and level lika a rocket (100% of XP going to levelling), but end up being useless as hell at max level because you'd have almost no talent points to spend or level slow as hell but be a walking powerhouse. Sane try to find a balance between these extremes, of course. There's other reasons why leveling slower was often preferable (eg. while you could lock your level to be lower than your actual level you always got less XP, relatively than when you'd do something at the appropriate level iirc)

the way I see it, the primary goal is to stop people from buying games cheaper. Steam has very positive experiences with setting up region-specific stores on their platform. namely, Steam managed to become huge in Russia by dropping prices significantly for Russian users (my friends in Russia on average pay only one third of the game's price compared to me). so, naturally, Steam doesn't want people from the US or Germany to be able to spoof their IPs and buy games at Russian prices. therefore, games bought in the Russian Steam store are blocked if you try to launch them while having your IP address originate somewhere other than Russia. since the EU has significant disparity in income across its many member-states, I'm sure Valve separates its prices for different regions, implementing the same kind of blocking. Exactly, the EU is rather schizophrenic in that way. One the one hand they want to entirely open up the internal market which would eventually undo this income disparity. But on the other hand there are the powers that be that benefit from the current situation and try to maintain it. Kinda makes me want to look up the economic history of the German states now.

Looked interesting, even though I never understood the rules of American Football (or why it's even called football, but meh), then I noticed a controller is required. So much for that Project Creator comment on that in the comment section was: "Guys, you can play Sneak Peek Preview with gamepads only. Keyboard is not supported right now (but will be in nearest future)" Hmm, they should really be more clear on that on the KS page, chances that that cost them some backers is pretty high... Anyway, tossed them some moolah. Can't wait to see how this turns out. (I'll probably be bad, but that can be fun too ) (not that I don't own a controller, I'm just beyond hopeless when I try to use it for anything other that racing games. Trying to improve my controller skills it while playing "Remember Me" just made me hurt my wrists, so I just gave up on it )

Kind of surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, so here it is: The EU is investigating (among others, not really relevant to our little forum) Valve for breaking antitrust regulations, in Valve's case the commission wants to find out if the company has abused its position to try to divide the European single market with the use of geo-blocking in its dealing with select publishers. The specifics are in the EC press release, which is quite readable (and short).

Picked up my old Saints Row: Gat out of Hell playthrough and finished it (as in: 100% takeover of "New Hades" and completed main storyline). If it didn't freeze my PC every time I tried to exit the game I might even have gone back to it occasionally just to cause some mayhem, but alas, it does freeze my PC every time I try to exit the game... (and on occasion while playing too) Here's to hoping they go back to less of the supernatural stuff for a Saints Row V though. The entire "simulation" and "hell" shtick got old kinda fast (probably why my Gat out of Hell playthrough languished for so long)

Looked interesting, even though I never understood the rules of American Football (or why it's even called football, but meh), then I noticed a controller is required. So much for that

Sooo, finished SOMA. And damn, the PC is dense...

Trying to slog through PoE, what with the PoE2 announcement. Really hope they do something about the combat as it's just not fun. Considering dropping it down to easy or story mode to just get it over with.

I would guess that it is because of fees that PayPal asks It's not like other payment providers are free... Now Paypal's tendency to not ask too many questions before allowing chargebacks hasn't exactly made it popular with sellers. I know quite a few people that got burnt that way and now avoid it like the plague when trying to sell anything. Wouldn't be surprised if that factors into it... That said, I'd have preferred if I didn't have to use a credit card.

NWN2 seriously turned me off of multiclassing. Multiclass builds there were usually stupid powerful and they just made character creation (and evolution) complexity go through the roof. Not my idea of a good time.

Why did you have to bring Imoen into this? ;-)

Since the game is explicitly promoted as RTwP in the Fig video I'm afraid you're out of luck...

Development of Mordheim shall cease but in its place shall rise Necromunda Many screenshots shall be posted by Melkathi So sayeth the wise Alaundo No more Mordheim? Aww But I still have 5 campaigns to go through, so there's that I guess As for PoE2, hope they fix the combat (there was too much of it and given that it didn't give any XP it just made things tedious and unrewarding, at least for me) and make it more transparent, the entire combat system was way too opaque for me. At least I have a reason to finish PoE1 now, I guess...

"Kill the monster attacking the citadel.", sounded like it might have been the last one if I didn't know there were 4 missions in each act, so there's gotta be one after this one.