marelooke

Finished Dead Space 3, can't complain since I got it in sale, wouldn't say I personally consider it worth the full price. Hope there's a sale again soonish so I can grab the DLC as well €10 is a bit too much imho. The game isn't bad per se but I doubt they'll ever be able to recreate the atmosphere of the first. I also didn't care too much for the weapon customization options, maybe if the UI for them hadn't been so convoluted I would have experimented with that some more. Character faces somehow looked rather deformed to me. Other than that it was a fun atmospheric shooter, it was just a bit of a bummer that there's missions you're locked out of when not playing co-op.

Looks like I gotta shelve this for now (though hopefully not for long, given the speed Larian's been cranking out patches) as the game rather reliably crashes after combat for me (one of the characters decides he wants to talk when another one levels up, this seems to produce a CTD when exiting combat). Well, I *guess* I could go back to the city and finish the murder mystery, which hopefully will give me enough xp to level without crashing, but I was kinda getting into the undead killing thing... (btw, did anyone succeed in solving the murder without breaking any laws? I don't want to know how, I just want to know if someone managed, the paths I've found so far all involve breaking and entering )

The combat was kinda frustrating me early on (difficulty went way up since early beta ), but that was because I was treating it as I would do other cRPGs. We've(*) lately been so conditioned to stay on the path developers pave for use that (ab)using our environment in combat is something we don't naturally think of anymore. So once I started using the environment better combat has become a lot more rewarding (and fun(ny) ). * at least, I assume it was not just me that had a "What the...? This actually *works*...???"...

Some of the optional puzzles are really tough, especially since they involve trapdoors and timed switches, so even if you know what to do they can be hard to complete and until you complete them you won't know whether you're doing it right or are just banging your head against a wall. Rather annoying at times (luckily there aren't many of those)

I've put Remember Me (and the rest of the games I have active playthroughs in) aside for Divinity: Original Sin. I'm having a blast so far, ran into one annoying "issue" where I didn't move forward far enough in the second non-optional fight in the game so the Legionaires stood idly by while I was trying to survive against a bunch of Orcs (and doing a rather terrible job of it at that). Not sure if picking the default characters was such a good idea either, but I'll stick with it for now and see where it goes.

This bit from the Divinity: Original Sin release announcement might be of special interest: Bit of a bummer Gog didn't manage to get its stuff done in time for the D:OS release, think I'll be going with Steam for now as it just makes multi-player just so much easier (not to mention that I'm expecting there'll be kinks that will need to to be worked out when Galaxy releases).

d'oh, totally read over that. I think I need more sleep

Ah, thanks for the correction, I've updated my original post as to not spread more misinformation

Actually it's "and". You can build on all locations if you have the gold and materials to do so (and match the requirements for the Thane to be willing to sell you the land).

As I understood most people's objections are to them touching and adding content to the original games (iirc the cutscene graphics are replaced with new ones and they've added some new companions). I haven't personally tried it though and since I already owned the Gog version I didn't see any need to get the EE. EDIT: see post below

I'll just quote myself on that topic (something that was conveniently ignored by many, I know, reading the rest before replying would've left far less room for wisecracking): As for the rest of that thread: You're pulling things so far out of context I nearly didn't deign it worthy a reply. Me posting a clip of someone actually speaking English in a natural environment in no way constitutes a statement that that is "the one true accent". Even stating so is insulting my and your own intelligence. For a) see my response to AGX-17, for b: get a map and locate Brussels, then figure out where France is, then wonder how often I might conceivably have to deal with "real" French speaking English (on top of the Walloons, of course). Of course, the French probably aren't a good reference when it comes to French accents, I'm sorry, I have little experience with the Quebequois. If you qre however saying they weren't going for a French vibe then I'm afraid they failed because everything about Orlais screams "fantasyland France", so in that case I'd have expected a more representative accent. So to make it clear to AGX-17 and Nepenthe I'll spell it out explicitly: It is my personal opinion that Leliana has an annoying accent, she also doesn't sound like any French person speaking English I've ever met (and I've met more than a few living where I live) and as such I do hope that they'll get a voice actor with a more representative (and especially, less annoying) accent for Zorro (sorry, keep forgetting his name).

Thanks for repeating the best criticism of DAO! (The voice actress doing Leliana is a native French speaker!) So it's official: true French accent is even more jarring than the fake! Or a true French overacting a French accent for a game. I'm pretty sure she has a decent accent when speaking normally. Here's a French woman (former French first lady Carla Bruni) speaking English (skip to the 4 minute mark) without trying to "sound French": *snip* Well, it doesn't sound nearly half as bad as my thick eastern-european accent, so I guess I've got no right to complain about the French *shrug* Oh, I have a pretty bad Flemish accent in English (too bad I'm not a girl, my sister has repeatedly been told by Americans that it's "cute" ), it's better in French although I likely butcher the grammar like there's no tomorrow Anyway I'm quite willing to accept it might just be personal preference in play here. Iow that I'm assuming she's acting it while she maybe actually does sound like that (in which case I think she has a horrible accent, but hey, de gustibus et coloribus ...). I don't recall being annoyed by the voice acting the The Saboteur so it must be something she does that ticks me off in which case I hope they get a better male voice actor for Zorro

Thanks for repeating the best criticism of DAO! (The voice actress doing Leliana is a native French speaker!) So it's official: true French accent is even more jarring than the fake! Or a true French overacting a French accent for a game. I'm pretty sure she has a decent accent when speaking normally. Here's a French woman (former French first lady Carla Bruni) speaking English (skip to the 4 minute mark) without trying to "sound French": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrL_lFabbQw I'll admit it likely is not quite as dreamy sounding for foreigners as Leliana's acted French accent.

Thanks for repeating the best criticism of DAO! (The voice actress doing Leliana is a native French speaker!) In that case she's doing a very good job of overacting. Note that I live and work in Brussels, I have to listen to native French-speakers speaking English all day. Though, on second thought, the over-the-top lisp she adds might be the thing that actually sets me off (because I hear it a lot on wannabe French-sounding actresses)

I sure hope his fake French accent will be better than Leliana's. Also, the guy reminds me of Zorro, so him even having a (fake) French accent in the first place might end up being rather jarring

I think that's mostly due to the colour scheme used. I probably would have preferred a darker setting (which would instantly have made it look more like 2D isometric game I guess. That said, creating simple tooling for a 2D isometric RPG seems rather hard, especially given the amount of reactivity the world has. It's decent in the latest build, though the UI certainly could be simplified (I'm still missing a "custom" option instead of having to start from some preset, for example). But UI design in general doesn't seem Larian's strong point (then again, it doesn't seem to be a strong point of many [game] developers. On top of that it appears it is generally treated as an afterthought as well.). That said, the UI is better than I feared given the earlier betas and seems certainly usable.

Not a fan of the rock, paper. scissors mini-game either and an option to disable it and just roll the dice (as it used to be earlier in beta) was requested by a bunch of people (including yours truly). The dialogues very early in are a tad cheesy I'll admit, it usually does get better later in the game though if their earlier games are anything to go by. Of course if Larian's sense of humour doesn't appeal to you you're out of luck I guess.

I'm always sad when wolves are used as enemies Poor wolves are in reality quite shy and extremely unlikely to attack humans... I know it's a fantasy world but there's already such an insane amount irrational fear surrounding the beasties (at least in these parts, where wolves are extinct and might finally slowly start reappearing in the coming years)...

I don't think it is tin foil at all. Art of language my friend, if he meant "we have eight companions" he wouldn't have said "announced" at the end of it. He would have just left it at that. I wouldn't be shocked if somehow all classes get covered. After all that is something any backer who has spoken on it pretty much universally wanted. On a sort of related topic, has something been mentioned about how companions will be interacting with each other, more specifically, will some *hate* each other to the point of it being a really really bad idea to have them together in your party (think Viconia and Keldorn)? Because if so 8 companions might end up a bit tight if you can have 5 of them in your party at one time.

Don't Trust Areal. Seems the Vostok forum thread has been deleted. Either way even ignoring those claims, their budget and team is way too small to create a decent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. successor so I'm just going to sit back and watch how this will play out. EDIT: also found link but all the source links are dead too. Smells fishy to say the least.

The story sure is enjoyable and I like the protagonist and most of the shortcomings I'm sure can be ironed out so a sequel does have my vote.

Still playing Remember Me, made it to Act IV and beat the boss there. The combat is kind of getting on my nerves. Besides my inability to reliably hit some combos (the timing seems really finicky sometimes. But I'm not great at these kind of games so I'm quite willing to accept the problem is me, or maybe I'm having input lag due to my laptop not being actually powerful enough, even though the game otherwise appears to run rather smoothly) and the camera doesn't make it any easier. The most frustrating fight so far was the (big) group of these invisible stalkers backed up with regular friends at the start of Act IV, most of the time I couldn't see anything due to the camera angles. Most other fights otoh, are easy (I'm playing on easy after all ) Then the bossfights, the Act IV boss was an exercise in frustration, not because the boss was hard mind you (because it wasn't), but because the fight took me well over 30minutes to complete (and that is a conservative estimate as I didn't actually measure it, note that I didn't die once, so this was *one* battle). Add on top of that the fact that to "finish" boss fights you get to do a bunch of QTEs (which I suck at) and the frustration was complete as I had to restart that QTE thing like 5 times before I had memorized all the different keys (luckily they weren't random). "skilled" people can probably do this fight faster, but seriously, if I were "skilled" I wouldn't be playing on easy. Other than that I'm enjoying the story and environments and I do intend to finish the game, but it appears it will be *despite* the combat mechanics. Semi-related things I've realized: * controllers hurt my hands if I have to use them a lot for things I generally use the mouse for (eg. looking and moving around), I never had this problem with racegames (which alongside platformers are the only game types I generally use them for) but I apparently can't play first/third person games for extended periods of time (= more than an hour) without my hands starting to hurt. * QTEs need to die and whoever invented them needs to be sent to the lowest circle of hell, and then down a few more floors. QTEs assume people know what buttons are under their fingers, I never actively do, not on a keyboard (unless my hands are in typing position, which they generally won't be when gaming) and not on a controller (where I just assign each "move" a "finger movement" in my brain), figuring out which action I need to take on a QTE takes me generally too long resulting in regular reloads. Just drop the damn QTEs and let me enjoy the cutscene, ugh.

It's probably the final chapter, just like there originally were only going to be three Mass Effect games (but hey, if there's money to be had... I don't really blame them for milking their franchises btw, it makes perfect business sense).

Waiting for a sale on M&M X and wondering if Aarklash will go under -60% (on sale on Gog right now though, so might just grab it there...) I also noticed Blackguards is one sale right but the supposedly insane difficulty is kinda putting me off.

For them "good" fade ghosts being so generally uninterested in mortals there sure are a lot of them inhabiting various hosts...