Hurlshort

It's so tiresome hearing folks go on about how great games used to be. Sure, there are genres that don't get much love anymore, but there are also some amazing things happening with new games today. There also is nothing wrong with playing games that most people want to play, that's the entire reason that most people want to play them. I have some obscure tastes, I still pine for a good Xcom and Quest for Glory, but I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder about successful FPS and sports games and the people who play them. I'm just excited to see the gaming industry doing as well as it is. I'm not even a Halo fan, but I still celebrated the fact that it had a huge opening weekend that dwarfed the movies. As a fan of games, that's great news. So stay positive because really, negative thinking about the whole EA/Bioware deal won't do anything to change the situation.

I'm so excited, I hope I can name my character Winger, after the awesome Canadian rock band.

Don't expect much. I just finished it. I hate mmo's after WoW but now that I look back it was a pretty decent game compared to Hellgate. I won't say hellgate London sucks becuase I played it for like 40 minutes and combat was mildly amusing but I definitely could not see this game for very much longer. The 3 different places you are transported to are strikingly the exact same with a few little doodads here and there. The graphics are pretty bleak and depressing and I was begining to get sick of it with so little gameplay as it is. WoW is a much better game conceptually, graphically, and other lly's as well. The user interface is pretty lame compared to WoW as well. But I think it's exactrly like diablo in more aspects than just "fitting" your items in your bag and combat but I wouldn't know since I never played diablo but that game is like a billion years old. Don't know why you'd want to revert backwards. All in all Hellgate demo was alright just executed pretty bad in my opinion. Will definitely not be picking this up. It crashed a few seconds in. It was also running badly anyways, which considering the dreamy CoD4 runs fine and this game is fairly ugly, makes no sense to me. I might give it another try if I'm in the mood for a crash later tonight.

Downloading the London: Hellgate demo. We'll see, I'm skeptical but I'd love a pleasant surprise.

Clearly you've never seen Metalocalpyse. Or Tenacious D. I didn't think Tim Schafer would be the type to hop on bandwagons. Early word is that it's going to be a God of War clone with "squad combat" elements. And one would guess, leftover Metalocalypse plots and humor. Hopefully the kind of mouth-breather that would go for that sort of thing will buy enough copies for Schafer to make something worth playing. The second Fantastic Four movie had a good trailer too. To be fair, it's more of a niche market. It's not like Metalocalypse and Tenacious D are watched and listened by millions upon millions of people. Exactly. That's a pretty tiny bandwagon he's jumping on. The fact is we really haven't had a video game that was metal, so it's still very unique.

I'm doing the same thing, playing through the regular NWN2 campaign as a Blade whatever in order to get ready for the expansion. I made it to act III last time, but I lost my saves somehow and I want to finish before starting the expansion.

Toskala would have won the game for Toronto

Yeah, it's a good deal of income. Although most MMO's don't rake in that much, in fact quite a few basically break even after factoring in all the costs associated with running an MMO.

ET:QW shouldn't even be compared to the BF games, but to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. I thought W:ET was a lot better than BF1942. I played the Quake Wars demo, and it seems much faster than the BF series to me. I should give it another go, but I'm the kind of player who likes to find a good sniping spot and pick players off one by one. I find that's incredibly hard to do in many of the faster paced shooters.

It could be that you just don't like that type of game. Or maybe anything you don't like is terrible, my apologies. BF1942, BF2, and BF2142 are three of the best games I've ever played.

Actually I think Mass Effect is expected to be near Oblivion-numbers in order to be successful.

It's great to have that conviction, Sand, and I know you aren't alone. Unfortunately for your cause, there aren't enough willing to boycott EA to make any real impact on their financial success.

Hades, would you never buy an EA developed game, or an EA published game? EA getting the NFL exclusive rights is interesting. I was pretty bummed that they boxed out the competition, but then I remembered that Sierra used to make a great football game that really didn't need any NFL players or teams to be awesome. Front Page Sports Football was a great football game because of the gameplay and deep statistical roots. It let you design your own leagues easily. I think 2k sports and other groups are failing more due to lack of creativity and execution than a lack of an NFL deal. EA does let their sports titles get stagnant while rushing a new one out every year, but every few years they manage a pretty impressive overhaul. (although they've neglected the PC too much). This years iteration of hockey and football titles on the next-gen platforms (at least the 360) have been incredible, better than they've been in a long time. Agan, I think it's way too early to be doom and gloomy. EA has been making better decisions in the last couple years, they've improved faltering franchises and have a few non-traditional titles in the works. Bioware and Pandemic are both powerful development houses, and I doubt they'd embrace a deal that would let them get pushed around.

So...Americans are better at rebelling against authority?

EA published Valve's Orange Box, at least the one I picked up yesterday.

Really? It seems pretty smart to me. Most consumers don't care who publishes a title, so EA buys developers who are already going in a "new" direction and, viola, EA is publishing different titles in a new direction.

Eh, it's not bad to bring attention to environmental awareness, even if the science isn't perfect in his movie. Whether it's political or not, I'd rather us go overboard on protecting the earth than vice versa.

TF2. I'm terrible. Seriously bad. I don't know what it is. I'm decent at the Battlefield games, but something about these faster paced games makes me super sucky. I got killed pretty much all over the place. I also like Pyro, although I'm not sure how to finish folks off. I'll light a few people up, but they'll shoot me while they are burning. I also can't seem to figure out the spy game. I got a decent headshot as a sniper, but things are still moving too fast for me to get many good shots off. I guess I just need to practice. I also installed MotB, but I'm playing through the main campaign first as a blade guy (whatever the knife/kukri prestige class is) to see if I can finish it first. I've never played Half-Life 2, so I'll probably play through that and hope it improves my FPS skills.

Does that say Jack Black is starring in the game? Tim Shafer is one of the few folks who knows how to use humor in videogames well. Psychonauts made me nauseous, but I still played it quite a bit just for the comedy gold.

Huh? Have they started to cure cancer lately? Companies aren't 'evil' or 'good' in the world of business, unless they have something illegal as their main agenda. Anyhoo, maybe they have changed their business model on how to deal with developers and given them more space for their creativity, but sure DICE hasn't been up to much 'diverse' since 2004. Wow, you take me so seriously. It was just a lame joke. I really don't see this affecting Pandemic and Bioware in a negative way at all because they are both vibrant profitable companies. The companies EA killed were already running downhill at full speed, EA just milked what they could before they died. Westwood and Origin were in deep doodoo before EA bought them out. This is a very different business deal. It's also quite funny that I hear people clamoring for a KotOR 3 all the time. Bioware seems to refuse to get stuck churning out sequels. If EA really does get heavyhanded, you can look forward to a constant stream of sequels. But again, I don't see that happening, Bioware has enough weight to choose its own projects. In fact, EA needs Bioware and Pandemic much more than they need EA. So in essence, they hold the upper hand. And what's with all the complaining about Bioware's recent titles? Jeez, a few folks dislike Jade Empire and suddenly Bioware is no longer a good development studio. Bunch of fickle folks in this room. Anyways, I was reading the San Jose Mercury today, and they had this story with a picture of a Big Daddy and a claim that "Bioware produces RPG's like Bioshock". Awesome

Eh, EA as an evil entity is soooooooo 2 years ago.

EA has been working pretty hard to right the ship in the last couple years, so I don't see this as a negative at all. You realy think it was better when Microsoft was publishing Bioware's titles? Bioware is a big profitable developer and it's doubtful EA will do much to change that. There are already a couple developers in EA's stable that do very well and don't get much interference from the publisher. Also, I don't know what Daikin is talking about with DICE, they are sticking with a profitable franchise and they do a great job of implementing new concepts in each one. If I remember correctly, they already are at work on a different type of game and EA is supporting that decision.

I only saw a little clip of it. It looks like he just got his stick up too high. If he'd made contact in the chest, would we still have an issue? I don't know, I'll have to look for a better story on it. I miss NHL2night.

Very nice to offer it up Morgoth. Personally, I'm buying the Orange Box today, otherwise I would have deathmatched Pop for it.

Not really. Most companies are very honest about the fact they won't pull in 9 million people. They don't need to though, just getting a few hundred thousand people is more than enough to create solid revenue. Surprisingly few MMO's have shut down over the years.