marelooke

Wasn't there some point where you could get D3 for free when preordering some WoW expansion or somesuch (or get a lot of game time when buying D3, much more than the game price) either way that surely would inflate those numbers "slightly" with a lot of "sales" that aren't (or not really anyway).

Just need to point out the heels. Pet peeve of mine, sorry. Other than that it looks good to me.

BRB going off to troll the World of Tanks forums.

It seems Shadow of the Eternals is really suffering from the Denis Dyack debacle (and probably overambitious funding goals), which is a shame since it seemed like a really promising concept.

Finished up that Stalker: SoC playthrough. I need to find a mod that makes those guns you only commonly get near the end available earlier... I think I fired a total of four shots with the Gauss Rifle Also I still want to fire this baby (screenshot from CoP): Come on admit it, you know you want to!

Agreed. Overall, it's my favorite entry in the series. I'm torn between SoC and CoP and in all honesty when I feel like playing Stalker I usually reach for my SoC discs for some reason. I guess the superior storytelling trumps the superior game mechanics for me. Now SoC with CoP's mechanics...that would be super awesome. Yeah, the ending wasn't exactly strong but at least it was better than Clear Sky's; which I never finished as I got fed up when I reached the NPP... Main reason for that is they had the bright idea to dump a load of guns in your inventory when you arrived there, since I am always balancing on the weight limit this meant I got gunned down while I was trying to dump stuff from my inventory to be able to take cover. One of the single most stupid things I've run into in games to date tbh.

I have been thinking about this for the past several days and while I can understand the reasoning behind what Josh said, I think that I may partially disagree with him in terms of whether it was a bad thing or not. Firstly, I would have to agree with the sentiment that compared to Chapter 2, the rest of the game felt fairly linear and less complex and that this detracted from the game. The following chapters were less fun than being able to mess around in Athkatla. However, at the same time, this doesn't detract from the fact that the multitude of quests in Chapter 2 was sort of fun and kept the player engaged and in fact may show that Chapter 2 was probably doing something right and the rest of the game was unfairly juxtaposed to a well-developed chapter. You had the same freedom once you got out of the Underdark, unless you suffer a serious case of completionist's syndrome and really *have* to complete every single quest before heading off to the Asylum. I don't think I've ever completed all the quests in Athkatla before heading off and I doubt I even did the same quests on each playthrough (though Nalia's keep was a staple) I also didn't feel like I was flooded with quests, more that Sigil, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter were some pretty dead cities, which might also be due to the fact that those entire cities are mapped while in Athkatla you only get to visit certain (parts) of districs, which imo worked a lot better and resulted in a city that felt much more alive. On that note I really dislike it when quests are stricly tied to a chapter (well, sometimes it makes sense of course, like Telos in KotOR...), this forces you to either complete everything before furthering the story or missing out on quests because they'll be gone if you do further the story... This is what I "read" when there's talk about "staggering" quests, I don't like it, it forces me to play a certain way and pits my "omg I wanna know what happens next" against my "noooo, must do all sidequests" and that sucks (DA2 was horrible in this respect)

Attempted to finish a Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl palythrough I still had lying around. Managed to fight my way into the NPP twice without picking up the decoder... Apparently I pick the thing up, manage to get myself killed without saving, reload, fight my way through Pripyat and end up before that damn door without the damn item. So, after that I decided to start on Warhammer 40K: Chaos rising, I'd finished the main game but never started the expansion, fixing that now

Thanks for the info and good to hear. Not quite sure what the good part of DK2 were that weren't in DK1 but I'll sure be keeping a close eye on this game now.

They're obviously making sort of a Dungeon Keeper 3 (and as I've heard they have Molyneux' blessing), but the thing I've been wondering (and nobody's been able or been willing to tell me) is whether it takes more after DK or DK2... I didn't exactly like DK2, DK1 otoh <3

I don't really hate the game that much. Is it no-where near as good as KOTOR1 and 2? Yes. Is the gameplay annoying at times. Yes. But hey, if I can tell Bio/EA where the pain-points are, maybe it can be improved upon. Sadly, the worst con is the support. Which is absolutely attrocious. Issues and issues cluthering up, no attention to people, same automatic responses to everyone, harming good classes in PvE just to suit some PvP'ers wish. Nickle-and-diming. That's the major pain point. Welcome to mainstream MMOs. Any MMO that considers PvP anything but an afterthought is going to balance classes around PvP eventually. It's the worst when they are balanced around solo-PvP (eg. arenas...) because classes lose their identify fast that way (just look at WoW)

The numbers are since going F2P, that was after the majority of people that stopped playing dropped out of the game. Just felt like that needed clarification. On another note, bought the expansion but can't say I have much of an urge to play, dunno why, the story seems decent enough so far.

I'd go so far as to say - if they don't stuff up the end (and I think I'm about 2/3 or 3/4 through) - that its the best one since the original (mind you I stopped playing the games in the series about midway through 3). Its not perfect - - but it does most of the things it tries well and I really like Lara's character and development like you. I'm not sure how they'd sustain this game model in a second game not so greatly hinged on a pivotal point for her character, but I'd like to see them try. Don't hold your breath for the ending imho. It's a good game an-sich, but as a Tomb Raider game, I dunno. I'm rather ambivalent towards this one.

Obsidian loses out - again. And so do we.

I likely won't get it at release, unless they do something massively to change my mind, because of my aforementioned doubt. By the time I *might* get around to it Wasteland 2 and D:OS will be released. So I guess I'll get it in the bargain bin unless it gets raving reviews (that is, raving reviews from people that matter, the disqualifies most major gaming press right there )

What, they want to look sexy for the orcs they're murdering? Give me a break. That said, the idea of a character whose power in battle is directly proportionate to how sexy she (or he!) thinks she looks is kind of awesome. I'm pretty sure Dream was referring to why women wear high heals irl. For bystanders it provides added hilarity, we have a lot of cobblestones over here, I'll leave the rest to your imagination...

I am really on the fence on this one. The concept looks really nice, but...they jumped on the "bad pre-order bonuses" bandwagon AND it appears to be designed for consoles (or at least controllers)... Getting a crippled game puts me off of buying a regular copy after release (and reviews) and the second puts me off of pre-ordering. I might hold out until a GOTY edition or somesuch, assuming they put in the stuff they cut out as pre-order bonus.

Except for the iPhone part that actually does sound awesome...

Swen Vincke said something along the same lines in one of his interviews (iirc he actually said that a lot of innovative idea "lines" from the "last golden age" as you call it have just died and are waiting for someone to pick them up and continue experimenting with them). I suspect that once we have the "classic genres" back that the big publishers dropped because they weren't mainstream enough we'll start seeing more experimentation again. While Dragon Commander at first didn't seem like my cup of tea I consider it a start in that direction (from what I understood you plan conquest turn based, actual battles are rts but you can hop into the fray turning it into more of a fps and somewhere in there is also a lot of politics) I think that this way less good games end up not getting funded than with big publishers, so it's still a win in the end

There are things that were removed after beta and never added back in but afaik still count as "requirements" to completion of certain things.

I find it sufficiently lame we don't get to do the same to any of the Republic bigshots (that I noticed), I smell a bias, raaage!

Of Orcs and Men has some really nasty DRM (apparently most Cyanide games do) which is why I've stayed well away from it for now. Maybe I'll pick it up when (if ever) it appears on GOG. ? I have a boxed copy of Of Orcs and Men, and it merely uses Steamworks. I think you've just been lucky to not hit the limit yet. See Steam forums here

I must be one of few to consider the combat being compared to Witcher 2 to be a bad thing. How bad depends on whether you mean fighting before or after they patched Witcher 2... Of Orcs and Men has some really nasty DRM (apparently most Cyanide games do) which is why I've stayed well away from it for now. Maybe I'll pick it up when (if ever) it appears on GOG.

It's definitely better than: <company name> has stupid idea, <company name> is told idea is stupid, <company name> goes through with it anyway, <company name> keeps insisting stupid idea was great idea. That scenario has happened all too often. Buddhists say there are 3 steps to wrong doing: Step 1: Thinking about it Step 2: Doing it Step 3: Celebrating it The sooner you stop the less damage that is done. I commend CD Projekt RED for stopping at Step 1. I can't resist but add "...this time" to that last sentence while pointing at Witcher 2.

Madness? That's a little bit over the top. A MP in style of the Infinity Engine games would probably not change the gameplay in a big way. Of course there enough examples of games that suffered from a misguided focus an Multiplayer. But the Infinity games never had the problem. Personally I thought multiplayer in the IE games was pretty terrible. I didn't want to play the Larian shill too much, but that was what I was thinking about when I mentioned games designed for co-op. Imho turn based combat works a lot better for this than a bunch of people fighting to pause the game.