Still playing Guild Wars 2, found out I'll need to do a Dungeon to be able to complete the personal storyline, which kinda sucks as it ruins my idea of playing this as a semi single-layer game. Meh Also rediscovering a lot of the other annoyances that made me quit the game at launch now that I'm back in areas that pose somewhat of a challenge.

 

So figured I'd go back to Bioshock, which didn't last long. The hacking minigame seriously gets on my nerves, I mean it's bloody everywhere! The level I'm in (the theatre place) also just screams "filler content!", I mean, I really don't see the point of it storywise, so adding those up my motivation to continue was pretty much nihil. Still gonna try to finish it at some point, I mean, everybody's raving about the game so I guess I must be missing something...right?

 

Oh, and I made it to the final boss in WH40K: Dawn of War: Chaos Rising, which is so horrendously overpowered compared to *everything* that came before that I'm just not going to bother (the way I built my squad doesn't allow for some of the cheap tactics people found to deal with him, unfortunately). Too bad because I really really enjoyed that game too, but they just had to ruin it with the final boss. I just hope Dawn of War II doesn't have the same issue, that would suck.

 

I'm afraid I have to agree with the other sceptics here, while I never played any of the Underworlds (or any other Ultima, for that matter) having a much improved TES-style game certainly appeals to me (so sue me for comparing Underworld to TES), but as a developer I can't help but feel that the scope they've set for themselves is pretty much impossible with the funding they are aiming for.

 

I suspect you're probably right. Has anybody successfully completed and released a Kickstarted FPS game?

 

Consortium was a first person RPG, but the scope was rather different when compared to UA, the graphics style was also rather stylized.

 

Judging by the "slow" backing (compared to say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong) I suspect quite a few people have their concerns about how they'll be able to pull off what they're trying to sell, at least I doubt there's that many who doubt there are cool ideas here. I'm hoping they go into the *how* in one of the next updates, if they can convince people that what they're proposing is actually feasible with the budget they have then I'm convinced the speed at which contributions roll in will go up rather a lot.

 

 

I finally decided to revisit The Old Republic and check out the housing.  Holy moly, they did a good job with that!  I bought a place in Coruscant and unlocked all the rooms with my stash of credits, and then spent awhile decorating it with my stable of characters.  I've got a lot of cool stuff, but it still feels pretty empty.  Definitely a welcome little diversion from all the story stuff.

 

I visited a public house in Tatooine just to see what other people are doing.  They give you a lot of real estate to work with!

How does it compare to the player housing in EverQuest 2 (still my measuring stick when it comes to player housing in MMOs...how I wish that game wasn't left to wither like it was by SOE, *sobs quietly*)

 

Anyway, still playing through Guildwars 2, made it to level 65 or so with my Sylvari Thief, currently I'm just exploring and completing areas to make it to level 70 (though I have a bunch of level up scrolls from rewards chests and such) to get access to the next bit of Personal Story content. Looks like my Bioshock playthrough might have stranded in the theatre level once more...

 

 

I'd say it is better.  While it doesn't have the absolute freedom that Everquest 2 had, it has a ton of hooks for items and you can change the templates to mix up small, medium, and large objects.  The houses themselves are brilliant, they are big and scenic with a lot of rooms.  It's also very easy to have all your characters access your houses, so I have an Imperial room with all my NPC's from that side, and a Republic room with the others.

 

Glad to see that at least some MMO developers are still considering player housing as more than a checklist item (though, actually your ship was supposed to be your house iirc from SWTOR launch, and it was rather a failure in that regard).

 

Guildwars 2's player housing sort of feels like one (a checklist item I mean), while it has some nice features (it evolves based on your personal quest) it ultimately isn't a place where I *want* to be with my character (at least not my Sylvari, maybe other races' are better, though I sort of doubt it) whereas in EQ2 I *always* logged out in my house if I had the chance.

 

I loved in EQ2 how your house was really *your* house and that you could display your conquests there (including some rare weaponry you acquired through sometimes very long and arduous quests even though the weapon itself was of no use to you, it was still a status symbol), it also made for a rather convenient way to keep players doing "stuff" without it feeling like a real grind (not to mention, that combined with a form of level scaling it managed to keep quite a bit of the "old" content interesting and avoided that certain areas ended up being entirely dead, a problem that WoW suffered from to a major degree before the Cataclysm revamp)

 

Anyway, looks like I'll have a deeper look into SWTOR's player housing, if that stuff is done right I might even install the game again.

I finally decided to revisit The Old Republic and check out the housing.  Holy moly, they did a good job with that!  I bought a place in Coruscant and unlocked all the rooms with my stash of credits, and then spent awhile decorating it with my stable of characters.  I've got a lot of cool stuff, but it still feels pretty empty.  Definitely a welcome little diversion from all the story stuff.

 

I visited a public house in Tatooine just to see what other people are doing.  They give you a lot of real estate to work with!

How does it compare to the player housing in EverQuest 2 (still my measuring stick when it comes to player housing in MMOs...how I wish that game wasn't left to wither like it was by SOE, *sobs quietly*)

 

Anyway, still playing through Guildwars 2, made it to level 65 or so with my Sylvari Thief, currently I'm just exploring and completing areas to make it to level 70 (though I have a bunch of level up scrolls from rewards chests and such) to get access to the next bit of Personal Story content. Looks like my Bioshock playthrough might have stranded in the theatre level once more...

I'm afraid I have to agree with the other sceptics here, while I never played any of the Underworlds (or any other Ultima, for that matter) having a much improved TES-style game certainly appeals to me (so sue me for comparing Underworld to TES), but as a developer I can't help but feel that the scope they've set for themselves is pretty much impossible with the funding they are aiming for.

 

If they would have the budget of a modern Elder Scrolls game, then maybe I'd be more willing to accept that it can be done, but as it stands: nope.

 

There are also some other things that I have my reservations about (aside from the ones already voiced by other people): linking a single player/co-op game to what seems to basically be a MMO (which is why I didn't back it back then), how the hell is this going to work? Practically as well as technically (I mean, how are they going to manage the complexities involved with the small budget they have?). And how will this impact modding, or does this just mean no modding (which would be bad imho and is in my mind also one of the huge shortcomings of DA:I when compared to TESV: Skyrim)?

ME is a game with a fixed character that eventually fell into the trapping of its own system by having to resolve every situation through a binary choice.

 

Generally speaking I haven't found games that do moral system well, the consequences never reflect the player choice and end up diluting the main storyline. I much prefer games like ME where you're playing a character that has a small variation of choice but with depth rather than a bland character with plenty of choices. Plus I do hate it when games enforce their interpretations on you rather than giving you free choice, Chaotic Stupid can still be roleplayed in a tabletop setting for as long as the DM will put up with it. Games tend to be less forgiving of it, so there really is no point to having a choice that will end in a reload.

The problem with ME isn't necessarily the binary choice, but the fact that, at least in ME2, there isn't really much of a choice. You either play the shining knight or the douche, the game mechanics actively punish you for not sticking to one or the other (there is a mechanism in the "alignment" system in ME2 that decides based on a weighted percentage of paragon/renegade choices you've made whether you will be allowed to use persuasion/bluff so if you don't stick to your chosen "alignment" you at some point will no longer be able to persuade/bluff your way out of any situation). I must say that I was quite disappointed when I found out about this...

 

Also note that the above only applies to ME2, it wasn't the case in ME1 (because persuasion etc. were actual skills iirc) and I have no idea whether they did something about this for ME3.

 

And really, this is the general problem with "moral choices" in games. There are usually mechanisms in place that "force" you in one direction.

Blizzard simplified the classes and got rid of a lot of the redundant skills in this last expansion, so it is actually easier to jump back into the game than it used to be.  

 

Yes, but skills were only redundant due to their ineptitude, different builds used to be possible but Blizzard pretty much killed that option with Wrath of the Lich King (Arcane Power/PoM/Pyro anyone?). And a lot of the "redundant skills" would more accurately be described as "situational skills", cutting those killed the flavour of a lot of classes (but that's another discussion entirely).

 

Quite a few other games actually manage to do skill "trees" (they don't have to be trees at all) perfectly fine without the need to entirely revamp the skills and their associated tree with every expansion, Everquest 2 for example, were skills (or entire skill trees) are added with expansions and the tuning of abilities was generally fairly minor. Their splitting of "skill XP" ("AA" for Alternate Advancement) and "leveling XP" was also pretty neat imho.

Judging by how my class still plays the same (though I wasn't exactly that high level when I quit GW2) it seems ArenaNet also got things right, at least to a fairly decent degree.

 

Blizzard just did a bad job imho, and instead of fixing it they scrapped it, because apparently they assume their players are too dumb to handle anything but a cookie-cutter promoting skill system.

 

 

Ken Levine’s New Game Is Open Worldish Sci-Fiish RPG

 

What he’s got planned is an open worldish (“but not necessarily outdoors”) RPG, sci-fi, PC, probably first-person, chapter-like structure, brand new setting, add “ins” rather than add-ons, and a Passion System.

 

It definitely sounds interesting!

 

What is this fascination with open worlds lately? I miss the days of tighter and narrower sprawly environments, like say the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil, or even more recently, the Asylum in Arkham Asylum. It carries the good parts about backtracking, where familiarity with the environment felt nice and intuitive.. the place environment became home. Most open world settings as of late feel very unforgettable and unnecessarily padded.. to keep it on topic in regards to Levine, I'd say BioShock 1 had it right with Rapture. I hope this open world thing is just another phase the industry is going through before the next big thing arrives.

 

 

You know, Skyrim happened, and now everyone wants slice of this pie. Same like it was with MMOs few years ago. Every single open world game I played was so boring after a while, and as you say, the setting of them and story is completely forgettable.

 

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/01/the-jimquisition-we-need-more-spencer-mansions/

 

He might be controversial sometimes, but this episode is exactly taken from my mind... I sometimes wish, that we could again get new Final Fantasy with HD prerendered backgrounds and static cameras. FF IX-2 made this way in collaboration with Sakaguchi-san would satisfy most of my wet dreams... Unfortunately this will never happen

 

 

There's a new Resident Evil: Revelations coming up, these games stick to the old formula a lot more (eg. Revelations 1 is set for 90% on a single big ship). I hope Revelations 2 will do the same (and maybe tone down the obnoxious bossfights, or at least give us filthy casuals a way to get past them without too much frustration without making *everything* a walk in the park.

I saved one of Keyrock's friends!

 

Trying to finish Bioshock (never made it through and I'm back in the area where I usually quit, so we'll see if I make it to the end this time...). The story isn't really grabbing me, but I gotta finish this, then move on to 2 and Infinity, my gamer cred is at stake

 

I also hit Mastery Rank 17 in  Warframe, they changed the test in one of the previous patched so my preparation was wrong, which means I needed two tries instead of acing it the first time around.

 

Aaand, I also picked up Guild Wars two again, my lvl23 Veggie Thief was still patiently waiting for me after two years (I got two "anniversary gifts" on login). One thing I noticed is that my build still played like it used to (in as far as I still remembered anyway), in World of Warcraft I probably wouldn't even have recognised the skill trees anymore after that much time... (*adding* to a character is imho *much* preferable over redoing entire classes with each bloody expansions. Did ya hear me Blizzard?). Edging closer and closer to lvl30 though I feel rather purposeless, I finished the last story mission I had at lvl23 and now I feel like I'm just grinding (by completing map objectives) to lvl30 so I can get more story...

I enjoyed DI1 co-op with a friend, not sure if I'd ever have finished it solo though. The game also suffers from a pretty boring (and pretty long) first area, the game only really got fun in the city and it became even better later in the jungle. Never got around to playing the DLC or Riptide though.

 

Can't say I'm very impressed with the graphical direction of the sequel. Curious to see how it turns out (same for Dying Light, which, at first sight appears more interesting than DI2)

Tried to get through Scourge: Outbreak, a third person cover shooter. Pretty awful imho, characters too similar and horribly bullet spongy enemies. Meh, uninstalled.

 

Still trudging through Wasteland 2, made it to Canyon of the Titan. Can't seem to really get invested in the game for some reason. Having fun when I fire it up but can't say I feel any urge to make it to the finish. Shame.

 

So after a bit of lugging through Canyon of the Titan I went back to my WH40K: Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising, game is still good fun, apparently now has steam achievements too (though it appears I lost all the GFWL achievements I had).

 

 

 

 

Maybe if it goes way overboard and they run out of goals they will do something else.

2.5 million stretch goal - Scrap the game and make a linear first person shooter with massive setpieces and an overabundance of QTEs instead. 

 

Nah. Action FPS-RPG with TWO branches.

 

Dating simulator with qte sex scenes and plenty of SJ issues.

 

 

so new game from David Cage

 

I think you got your Davids mixed up Trololol

 

They're only asking for 100k?  If there is any goodness left in the world they will meet that goal in a matter of hours.  Then they can open up PayPal support and I can toss them some moneyz.

 

I don't think they use Amazon anymore if that is why you are waiting for PayPal.. still need a CC though

 

 

Ah, that's why it's asking me for my credit card info instead of allowing me to click through to PayPal. Kind of annoying.

 

As Bartimaeus intimated you should turn on file extensions as well, instructions here. That should make virus.png.exe attempts more obvious since the double extension should then become visible.

 

(stupid Microsoft with their moronic default options)

It's crazy, to me, how many people have them disabled. I don't understand how people get along without them - desktop, at the very least, would be unusable for normal file downloading and such - would have to view everything in Windows Explorer where it actually displays it.

 

You can enable file extensions in Windows 7 by opening any folder, clicking "Organize" in the top left, "Folder and search options", "View" tab, then unchecking "Hide extensions for known file types" in about the middle of the list. Vista is probably the same - don't know for 8.

 

It's even more crazy that Microsoft after all these years still thinks it's a good idea to turn them off *by default*.

 

Btw, do note that bugs in image libraries have been found a few times already meaning that malicious content could be installed into images without having to mess with the extension (see here for example).

 

Also, if you're not already use NoScript (in Firefox) I'd highly recommend it (though it makes certain websites tedious to visit, whether they are worth the effort if they're this badly built is imho, debatable), especially after the news of hacked (Flash) advertisements being served from Yahoo, resulting in infection of every single computer that ran those (see this comment).

 

Also do not open anything you consider suspicious without confirming with the person that seemingly sent it that they actually did send it to you.

 

I spent like 15 minutes wandering around in the library's vents, I'm absolutely certain there is no filter left in the vicinity, also the big mutants are very tough and I've run out of ammo. I dumped almost all my ammo into them only killing one and the knife really doesn't do anything. So I'm completely lost, choking, with no ammo while big beasts eventually hunt and kill me.

 

I actually think this would make a fitting canon ending for my play through.

Last Light I had to switch to easy difficulty eventually. 2033 I don't remember needing a gas mask in the library, I think I mostly ran from the Librarians. May be restart that level with a guide? Also I don't remember any Librarians in Last Light, or is that in an expansion?

 

Yes, it's one of the DLC, the exploration one named Kshatriya in the Factions Pack (which was really fun, wish they made a game around the concept though). I'd say getting the Factions Pack just for Kshatriya is worth it.

Two that I backed that were released and generally well received (to my shame, I haven't gotten to playing them yet, I know, I know ), both are RPGs

 

Consortium

 

Unrest

So Beamdog has access to a D&D license, I mean, to make *new* stuff?

 

Now I'd lie if I said the prospect of a BG(2)-style game weren't exciting, but I'd appreciate it if they left the actual Baldur's Gate name alone, the saga was pretty much finished (there were some interesting concepts in other threads/forums for post ascendance gameplay, but I don't have much faith in anyone but inXile/Bioware pulling those off properly), time for them to prove on their own they can create an experience that is as memorable as the BG-series was for many of us.

I spent like 15 minutes wandering around in the library's vents, I'm absolutely certain there is no filter left in the vicinity, also the big mutants are very tough and I've run out of ammo. I dumped almost all my ammo into them only killing one and the knife really doesn't do anything. So I'm completely lost, choking, with no ammo while big beasts eventually hunt and kill me.

 

I actually think this would make a fitting canon ending for my play through.

I just killed them in 2033 but afaik you don't have to kill the Librarians at all (and, as a matter of fact, they are nigh unkillable in Lats Light, on purpose, where they also respawn rather quickly to boot...). Pretty sure it's mentioned somewhere that you have to stare them in the face and they will bugger off (at least for a little while), though I seem to remember people saying that this was slightly dodge in 2033.

 

Then again, maybe the Librarians in 2033 Redux *are* the ones from Last Light, in which case staring them in the eyes *will* make them bugger off and actually trying to fight them is just a massive waste of time and resources.

 

 

Personally finished up the new Shadow Warrior game, it was good fun, though the controls were dodgy and sprinting down a flight of stairs is very likely to get you killed (*facepalm*).

 

I tried starting Dark Souls but, wow, is this a terrible *terrible* port (even with the fixes). Even the tooltips in the tutorial aren't adjusted for KB/Mouse, that combined with the outright sluggish movement means that I'm glad I bought this in a sale because I doubt I'll be playing much of this.

I thought Tomb Raider 2013 was an enjoyable game (too much annoying QTEs for any rating higher than "enjoyable"), but a terrible Tomb Raider game. It felt more like what I'd expect from an Indiana Jones game than a Tomb Raider.

I am still so Stalker-burned out. All the bugs and linearity and bleh. So much potential, but they didn't used it. I restarted Clear Sky about 7 or 8 times, and even with the latest patch I was unable to play through the game because of script errors. CoP was better, but at that point, the Stalker games became way too annoying to me already.

 

Won't play a new Stalker game. It would get zero motivation from me and that probably will stay a while like that.

I sure hope Clear Sky wasn't the first Stalker game you tried, because really, that one was a horribly buggy pile of...well, bugs. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't already a fan of the series, and even then I'd add a warning label.

 

Personally I greatly prefer the first one (SoC) for its atmosphere and the sense of mystery, though the third (CoP) one had vastly better mechanics (well, they basically fixed the rather broken "gun upgrades" stuff from Clear Sky). Unfortunately the mod packs I used to use on SoC (OLmod fwiw) no longer works on the latest patch (yeah, it really is that old), it did stuff like add repair to shops and allow silencer to be used on a lot of guns that they didn't work on in SoC (like the Russian ARs). Though I think Stalker Complete added some of the same stuff, I should probably look up which mods I used last time through).

 

I still remember how me and two friends were playing SoC not too long after its release and we all got slaughtered trying to take out the bandits with just a pistol, over and over again... Of the three I was the only one that actually made it past that part and continued to play the game, I don't think the others ever believed me when I told them I easily took out those bandits nowadays on hardest difficulty. Man, that first fight used to be so intense...

 

Or getting past the Cordon, the hard way, with just a pistol and a sewn off dual barrel shotgun. Hehe, so many memorable moments in that game...

 

 

http://www.lar.net/2014/12/18/leaked-the-larian-plans-for-20152016-and-beyond/

 

blah blah blah plans to release more campaigns on the Original Sin engine

Pretty sure they always said that was the plan. I'm not sure how tightly the graphical style is tied into the engine though as I personally too wouldn't mind a more "realistic" art style (that said, D:OS graphics worker perfectly fine for the game, even though I had my reservations at first).

 

I always appreciate how Swen just throws his ideas out there, few game developers are as open as Larian about what's going on on the inside and I really appreciate that.

 

 

The one element I don't like about the D:OS engine is how it limits your panning ability. It felt awkward to be constantly fiddling with the direction trying to get a decent look at the scene.

 

It's not the engine limiting it and iirc you can turn that limitation off in the settings. However D:OS was made with that limitation in mind, so turning it off and looking at a scene from the "other side" will show you a lot of empty space since no assets were placed for those angles.

http://www.lar.net/2014/12/18/leaked-the-larian-plans-for-20152016-and-beyond/

 

blah blah blah plans to release more campaigns on the Original Sin engine

Pretty sure they always said that was the plan. I'm not sure how tightly the graphical style is tied into the engine though as I personally too wouldn't mind a more "realistic" art style (that said, D:OS graphics worker perfectly fine for the game, even though I had my reservations at first).

 

I always appreciate how Swen just throws his ideas out there, few game developers are as open as Larian about what's going on on the inside and I really appreciate that.

Happy holidays from Warframe.

Played through the Warden's Keep content in my DA:O game.  First time with this DLC, and I found it underwhelming.  Some nice loot, I guess, and I appreciate the effort that went into the backstory, but the gameplay was pretty brief and more-of-the-same from the base game. 

 

I've done the Circle Tower and 2/3rds of the Redcliffe questline (order restored, but Eamon still sick).  I've also visited Denerim and picked up/completed a few minor quests there.  (And it really bothered me that I couldn't properly warn/threaten/kill the operators of the Pearl for hosting that anti-Grey-Warden honeytrap.)  But I got a reminder about what a pain in the neck those inner-city random encounters are, and I have no real desire to fight another half-dozen of those anytime soon.  So I'll stick to the countryside for the time being.

 

Some of the sidequest content has reminded me how sharp the difficulty swings can be in this game.  I cruise through the demons and undead on the main-quest missions, but checking up on some lost caravan in the woods takes me 2 reloads to avoid a full-party wipe.  (I ended up with 0 civilians saved, and Sten and Wynne lying in the dirt.)

 

Probably going to see the Dalish next.  Not sure what order I should do the Urn and Orzammar after that.  I'm going to hold off on Return to Ostagar until I have Loghain the party.

 

 

I thought most of the DLC for DA:O were pretty meagre, content-wise. Especially when compared to the ones for Fallout 3 (which was released around the same time iirc)

 

I'll be wrapping up Dragon Age Inquisition soon. I'll play Mass Effect 3 next. Should I play the first two before this?

I would strongly recommend playing them in order if it's your first play through of the series, though if you dislike the Mako in the first game I'd also recommend skipping the optional missions that use it (you know, the mineral fetch missions on random planets, though a very few of them do have somewhat interesting content

 

Like the one related to the orb you can get from the Consort

 

)