Ganrich

Been into this band lately, and figured I would share. They are called Graveyard.

Awesome update!

The shotgun and Smart Pistol are very noob friendly weapons when used with the Camo ability and while flanking. The Chain gun that the Titans use is very much a lazer beam and easy to use. I also find the titans 40mm cannon to be pretty easy if the player can lead the target well. The Smart Pistol requires enough coordination to keep a reticule half the size of you screen on the target for 2 or so secs to get an insta-kill. It can also kill 4 minions in one shot. It seems to track around corners pretty well too. You just have to fire before they break LoS. The shotgun, as in most games, is a one shot kill at the appropriate range. I am not saying a SP campaign wouldn't help, but I don't think the game is noob-unfriendly for a lack of the option. You just can't stand in the middle of a street and expect to survive. Keep to the buildings, both inside and on top, and pay attention to your radar. Watch for enemy players to blip nearby and flank them as best you can. You also can try to avoid enemy players and rack up minion kills. They are basically fish in a barrel. I definitely think that bots would have gone a long way to help new players as well. At least allow players to get use to the guns, parkour, and titans in a "I am not beneficial to my team but it doesn't matter" environment. @Monte - I find the KB/Mouse setup pretty solid, and I recommend it. Hardpoint game type, shotgun, Camo, defend your node of choice is a good easy thing to start with IMHO. Take that for what it is worth. If you go Smart Pistol you can wall hang out of sight and wait for the markers to light up and drop them. < cheap but effective. Sabotage Charges make node guarding easier as well seeing that you can lay them around the node and wait for the enemy team to start capping and boom!

I don't think Titanfall is CoD with mechs. I find that a shallow, yet easy, assessment of the game. I personally think it is CoD gunplay strapped onto something more akin to an old Arena FPS game. With the parkour and double jump you have the mobility and speed of an old Quake game or Unreal. The Mechs are Quad-Damage/Quad-Armor with a graphical representation and a weapon change. The game, IMHO, has more going on than CoD in the tactics department simply because of how open the maps tend to be. You have almost infinite paths to where you are going. You aren't force down a corridor. Do you man your titan? Do you leave it on auto pilot to distract the enemy team's only Titan while you move to flank with an anti-tank weapon? Should you rodeo the titan? The game isn't as simple as CoD. You don't walk down one of a few hallways, shoot a gun, and toss a grenade here and there. You move as fast and platformer-like as you can. I like it far more than CoD. I haven't heavily played a CoD since 4 as I grew tired of the formula. This injects a Cod formula into a formula from my past (which I much prefer) to make a hybrid of sorts. Like I said, it is easy to call it CoD with Big Robots, and there are similarities. I find the differences between Titanfall and CoD to be more prevalent than the similarities. I really like TF, and I recommend it to anyone that can appreciate the type of gameplay we lost when Arena shooters died out to CoD clones. I am having similar feelings from when I first played Halo: CE, Quake, Unreal, etc. It has jet packs like Tribes, Parkour like brink, CoD gunplay, and then the titans. edit: Obviously, I am playing Titanfall, but I am using South Park as a breather when I need a break from MP shooter world. Thanks Obsidian! I am really enjoying South Park. I knew I would like it from the moment I tried to talk to Cartman's Mom at the beginning of the game. You guys made a great game, and I am glad I bought it.

I am fine with Titanfall's lack of a single player campaign. There are fps games I buy for MP only (Battlefield), and then there are some I buy for both MP and SP (Halo, and a few others). SP only shooters are few and far between, but Id is the only company that I would buy a SP only shooter from anymore and that is Doom. However, I understand people's want of a SP campaign to become somewhat acclimated to the game. I use the Campaign for that reason in a new shooter a lot of the time. However, TitanFall is very CoD in its gunplay so all I needed to understand was the titans and the parkour. The training simulator gave me the run down. I came into my first game doing pretty well. I went 9/8 KDR which isn't bad for my first game. While I racked up around 15-20 minion kills and 2-3 titan kills. I really like titan fall, and am glad to have something else new to play other than BF4 which infuriates me with its one shot kills and the benefits to players with 100+ ping vs someone playing on a local server.

Well the player does some crazy stuff involving a Dragon by end game. I would keep tabs on them in his shoes as well. Keep in mind Lofwyr knows the player and his team will likely be in Germany pretty permanently. It's better to keep dangerous runners close when they are the only mortals in a while to have

Yeah, Lofwyr is also in DMS isn't he? Lofwyr owns Saeder-Krupp which is a German MegaCorp in the SR universe. Honestly, I expected to see more of him then we did.

With a DM there to enforce things you do have to deal with mediocre stats, but in a cRPG you just have to click a button to reroll. If you make the player jump through hoops (instead of letting them just push that button) then they will curse you for it. I am a DM that usually, if the group consists of mostly seasoned players, uses a roll system in my games. If the game allows, that is. Seasoned players know how to use consumables and tricks to make up for shortcomings. If they are new to the game or PnP then I use a point buy system and help them build the character they want. For a cRPG I feel a point buy system is best.

Just finished my first play through of DF as a Decker/pistoleer. It is significantly better than Dead Man's Switch. Save system is better, economy is better, interactivity is better, encounters are better, just better all around. I think my only complaint over the game is: now that you have a runner group of companions you should be able to access their inventory more frequently to give them stuff from your stash. At present, unless I missed something, you can only give them stuff at the beginning of missions and sometimes your inventory is full while their's is empty. Why can't I select Glory's inventory when I pick up a med kit? Or Dietrich's inventory when I find a fetish? It is irritating, but it is mostly a late game issue. everything else is a thumbs up.

I agree with that, for sure. CRPGs definitely could dare to try something else. I think that is partially why I invested as much as I did for Tides of Numenera. I love Book of the New Sun and that kind of setting, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my few pen and paper sessions with Numenera. Now I just hope Numenera has great gameplay. I have tried time and again to get into JRPGs just for the settings, but time and again I fail to get invested from a character, story, and/or for sure gameplay.

I guess my blasphemy is... That I don't usually care for Japanese RPGs. There are a few I beat and enjoyed, but I don't particularly care for insanely over the top stories or old school turn based RPGs typically bore me (games like FF where one group stands on the right, the other on the left, and you fight in menu based style while watching crazy cinematics when using special attacks. Not turn based games like fallout as I actually love those). As I said, there are exceptions, like FF 6 (FF 3 for US release), FF 7, Chronotrigger, Shining Force, and Panzer Dragoon Saga. I am not going to get into all the reasons I liked these titles, and there may be a few I am forgetting, but for the most part I get bored with gameplay on these types of RPGs pretty quickly. These titles are the ones I beat, and remember beating.

AoE (high intellect build) mage won't be focusing on magic missile. I would expect a focus on AoE spells like fireball and poison type spells for increased DoT. Duration increase can also apply to buffs as well as de-buffs. Dexterity is a damage increase across all attacks though. It will decrease the number of grazes in combat, and increase the number of critical hits. This applies to all spells, abilities, and attacks. Can we say, for certain, that a character with might pumped and Dexterity fairly low will do more damage than a character that has Dexterity pumped and has mostly ignored Might? What if you mix a high might and dexterity vs high intellect and dexterity? The former would do more damage, but graze more often and crit less often. The latter may do less damage, but grazes very little and crits much more frequently. How much less damage does a graze do vs a full hit? With the change to perception we now have a change on how critical damage is dealt. So, will a might based build that grazes all the time and crits very little do more damage than a dex build that grazes much less and crits much more frequently? As tajerio said though, we don't know the spells included so we cannot ascertain whether Might or Dexterity would be more beneficial to a class because they have many more instant single target abilities. If there is a balance in the type of spells/abilities then intellect/might/ dexterity will be more equal. If the game favors instant type damage then might and dexterity will trump intellect. We really don't know enough to say at the moment.

Orogun, I agree. That said, I think some genres have a market. Castlevania games, in there old Metroidvania style, have a market. Guacamelee and Dust: An Elysian Tail are evidence of it. It doesn't have to be a hundred million dollar game, but they have a franchise the has recognition, and so they choose to shoehorn it into 3D. I refused to buy the 3D Castelvania games until Lords of Shadow, and I rented that first. Mario in 2 D still sells. Megaman, 2D Metroid, etc would sell. They don't need AAA budgets, and when their AAA incarnations fail they just cease to be made (Megaman). Instead they could do smaller Castelvania games on smaller budgets while working on the bigger budget game. I think the wise thing would be to use some of those old franchises to keep steady profit rolling in from more smaller budget games. That isn't to say that I don't think AAA versions of these titles should stop, but one should not override the other. Even though I think over saturation could be a fear with this system. Another issue is exclusivity. All games should be available on PC, On all 3 consoles, and capable handhelds when they are made by a 3Rd party. I understand we will never have Mario on PC, or Halo on Nintendo. However, it does nothing but hurt the industry when 3rd party titles aren't available everywhere possible. AAA developers need to realize that they hold the power... Not Nintendo, not Microsoft, and not Sony. If they said they (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Deep Silver, Take-Two, Konami, Capcom, Square-Enix, Namco, etc) required the systems to be compliant with a universal standard like OpenGL in order for them to support the system, so they could hit every market possible, then the Console makers would have to concede or there system would have little to no games and would flop. This is another issue entirely though, and it is an entirely different conversation. Also, @Alanschu, you are right. I should have worded things better. I was typing on my phone while at work and rushed a bit. However, Tomb Raider was likely profitable just not as profitable as desired.

I definitely think if a crash occurs it won't mirror the one in the 80s 100%. I have seen people point at the new console's sales numbers and GTA V as why everything is fine. However, not every game is GTA V and a AAA company that releases enough games that don't make a profit could easily see themselves in deep water. The less big profit makers we have, the less variety of games we get (which has occurred in everything being a shooter), and the less variety the more each title competes with the other. This will slowly eat at profits. If sony and ms aren't making profit on their systems then how many systems they sell is largely irrelevant. There are rumors MS is talking to Amazon about selling them the Xbox. It is a rumor, but there is a group of higher ups in MS that want to drop the xbox division for sure. I would say "recession" may be a more appropriate term than "crash." We will see, and I expect turbulence in the near future.

Take-Two owned Irrational Games. I believe they bought them around 2006. They were anything but privately held. This new thing Levine is doing is also under Take Two. Like I said Levine was probably told he could go the easy way or the hard way, but Take-Two preferred to keep him. However they needed him to keep a positive spin here too.

I definitely think we may be seeing what Raph Koster's lecture "Age of the Dinosaurs" talks about. It's mentioned in the comments of the Leigh Alexander post I so believe. Developing costs combined with marketing costs are ballooning to the point that if the game is anything short of a home run then it fails from the perspective of the publisher. Square-Enix considers both Deus Ex HR and Tomb Raider failures even though both sold millions of copies. Bioshock Infinite seems to be in this boat as well. AAA companies need to get a grasp on their spending or we will see more of this to come. It could possibly come to the point of having a few more AAA Publishers follow THQ into the Bankruptsy department. I definitely think they need to dial back a bit, and stop spending double production on marketing. Maybe I am being paranoid, but this and THQ combined with Square's comments I have read on DEHR and TR have me worried it will get worse before it gets better. They will continue to blame their "imaginary dragons" that are used games and the gamers themselves. Capcom blamed the audience of resident Evil for the failure of its 6th installment. They of course never considered that it was a poor game not quite worth $60 ati many gamers. Anyway, I definitely feel for the developers that are losing the most here. I wish them all the luck I can muster in finding a new job. Edit: I definitely don't believe Ken has any say here. I think the word came from on high, and Ken is trying to help 2k spin the perception. They are doing a good job of spinning it though.

They're going with a Baldur's Gate formula from what I understood: hard cap with different level caps unlocked by eventual expansions or sequels. I personally don't mind, I prefer low level D&D anyway and a huge amount of levels could either make the "numbers" grow out of control or simply devalue levelling itself. I agree with this. I would much prefer less levels in the game as you get more power gain from each level. In the IE and NWN games you would level, and be ready to get into combat to try that new spell you got from getting level 3 spells unlocked, or to try that new feat out, or to see if you can go back and finally unlock that chest. In most modern games with leveling systems that are higher, like Skyrim, you level up and you are barely any more powerful than before (woopity doo!!! I do 3% more damage with power attacks!) so it feels like the same thing it did 5 minutes ago. Although, Skyrim's Feat system made this a little better than some IMHO, but only when the Feat in question made a significant change like the 2 handed casting feats or the feat where healing restored stamina. Certain feats made you feel powerful others though... yawn. I want leveling to matter. It is a very gratifying experience to feel more powerful immediately after leveling, and many games throw this out of the window for a higher number for the sake of a higher number. I am glad Obsidian is going for a lower number here. It will also mean we won't have to reboot our character every sequel (crosses fingers) to the game like the ME series. That was something that truly irritated me from the very beginning of ME2. Although, at least ME2 tried to explain it through the story. ME3 just did it and didn't care if it made sense.

The attribute system keeps that from happening in PoE though. Intellect isn't necessarily the "go to" attribute for Wizards. It is the "go to" attribute for an AoE and long duration build of any class in the current iteration of the system. In other systems it is often set up that wizards require intellect, or said games equivalent stat, and thus races with a bonus to that stat get pigeonholed. You may want a high single target mage and thus select a race based on that, or you might want a tank melee mage and select the appropriate race for that. The Attribute system is the cause of that issue. Racial modifiers are not. This will allow for more build diversity based on the underlying attribute system than many other video games or PnP games.

Cool Class and Race combination (which is subjective to begin with) do not make interesting characters. I don't think I could care less about whether they are male or female either. Interesting characters make interesting characters. As long they are written well, and the characters are useful combatants within the group (unlike some rogues in BG O_o ), then anything else is irrelevant. I could see myself liking any of the currently listed companions. I know of Aloth, Cadegund, Eder, Sagani, Pallegina, Forton, and the Orlan Cypher (Don't know if we have a name). I haven't heard of the last companion, but may have missed it or forgotten it. I am assuming it is a Amaua character seeing as that is the only race not represented by the current list.

I definitely feel the same. I love the openness of BG1, and I definitely prefer it to 2. That said BG2 almost made up for it with character interactions and better pacing, but not quite. I also love low level D&D more than high level so that bias is probably playing a part on my feelings as well. I just hope the game is successful enough that the sequel and Xpacs get more wilderness.

I would give the core races attribute bonuses and a race specific ability. Then I would have the Godlike give no attribute bonuses and have their specific ability override the one given by the core race. Using 3.5 D&D as an example of an Elf. You get a dex bonus, bow and long sword proficiencies, and some saving throws. If the Elf were Godlike he would still get the Dex bonus but the other bonuses would come from being Godlike and not from the elven heritage. So you would lose the weapon proficiencies and saving throw bonus but gain whatever Godlike ability you have. That way you don't see double dipping and as much munchkining. This is just my first impression though. I hadn't given it much thought.

Shivering Isles, and the soundtrack.

Very cool. I have been truly excited about seeing many Japanese games start to trickle onto PC. I am really enjoying Remember Me. It is linear and the combat a bit repetitive, but the world is pretty amazing. My best analogy for it is Jade Empire meets Deus Ex yet linear and no dialogue stuff. Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 can't come out fast enough. I have had a similar gaming resurgence with Indies and Kickstarter. It's probably more fair to say Kickstarter has made me more aware and open to indies as a whole. I go indie nuts on the Steam/gog/origin/whatever sales as of late. One of my hopes is Sega buying Atlus might bring some of Atlus' stuff onto PC, but I am keeping those hopes in check. The last game I couldn't remember that I was playing was NWN2 OC and MOTB replay as a Bard Archer. I definitely took a bit of a break and completely forgot I was doing that replay. I wanted to get BG, BG2, PST, IWD, IWD 2, and NWN 2 all replays before Pillars of Eternity hit. I only lack NWN 2 and MOTB. I don't care about NWN1 as I only really liked it for persistent worlds as I thought the single player OC and Xpacs were " meh". I feel ashamed I forgot an Obsidian title on their boards. That is what no sleep will get you, I suppose.

I would also like to point out that buying a ps3 instead of upgrading the pc is still an upgrade, of sorts, to a single core Athlon PC. You are buying hardware to play newer titles. You may save money on the hardware going the console route, but it still involves that hardware purchase. Play games on what makes you happy, though. I am not judging by any stretch. I enjoy adding to my PC, myself. I have only bought consoles for Tekken (I play fighting games weekly with friends), and the occasional exclusive. I hope Tekken 7 comes to the PC this time around. Harada said he would look into it as a fan of Steam. Maybe 1 exclusive every 2 years or so, other than Tekken. Currently, I am juggling Borderlands 2, Remember me, Deus Ex HR, The Banner Saga, and something else I am forgetting. I just play whatever I am in the mood for when I get home.

I agree, SadExchange. I liked Too Human as well. It has a pretty cool premise, it's got a neat combat system and definitely was better in multiplayer IMHO. It is one of those games that I find gets much more grief than it deserves. The Lawsuit with Epic and the Neogaf debacle didn't help either. Many people put it on a "I hate that game" list based on those 2 incidents. Many bad mouth it because of Dyack. I actually think Dyack is smarter than people give him credit for, even if he is/was hotheaded. Look at his "One Console Future" arguments and how all next-gen systems have moved to x86 architecture to see the convergence he discusses. It is quite intriguing. There are definitely people that genuinely dislike Too Human though. It has its flaws for sure. I can't argue that. I would love a PC port, and for them to finish the trilogy planned initially. I have to say that Oblivion, DA2, and Fable are my choices. Oblivion because of how generic it is after following Morrowind, and the run forward hit baddie and backpedal melee combat. I have neither the time nor inclination to go over the "why" of Dragon Age 2. Fable made a whole lot of fuss over a whole lot of generic gameplay and systems.