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Sorry for a weird question, but does that scottish branche happen to live in Ayr, Scotland? I wish I knew. After so many drinks I barely could understand whatever comments directed at me, let alone their 'internal' conversation. I have just been pwned alright. Yeah, I've heard it's a pretty good action game. Anyone care to tell me why is it being bashed so hard? Yeah. If I were to RP a character, that would be 'Master Chief' alright. There's no other character with such a strong personality and custom traits like him. If there's a epitome of personality and uniqueness, that's Master Chief. I agree with Ender 100%. Just take into consideration that I'm drunk now.

Whoa! I got bored with PS:T real soon. As soon as I entered underground city or whatever. I still think FO/FO2 is the most versatile combat system up to date. There's a lot of ways of winning/surviving combat that AFAIK no other game has ever been able to match. Story-wise and gameplay-wise, FO2 is *THE* RPG. Sorry if I'm not making much sense. I was just bested at drinking by the scottish branch o' my family. I'm such a wuss... :">

Near 38 even though force powers wouldn't push your defense any higher, Sucks really because it would have been near 42 def or so... Anyway it doesn't really matter since once you're above 35 you're untouchable by anyone but the bosses. 2 EZ.

You sure that's HL: Source? I had read some very bad things but man... that is just ugly.

Yep. It seems pretty obvious they were aiming for a sequel. But that still doesn't justify they don't explain a damn thing. And I'm not referring to what happened while Gordon was away or who are 'our benefactors'. No, I'm referring to basic things like 'and why should I risk my neck going through the next soldier-infested area?'. At the beginning of the game you were being pursued and it made some sense, but after you escape you aren't given a single damn good reason as to why do what you are doing. Now on a personal note, I would have loved it if Cpl. Adrian Shepard had made an appearance. It only made sense since most of the characters from the first game were in HL2. Perhaps the devs were worried that he might kick so much more ass than Freeman and the audience might not like that... I for one won't be buying that supposed sequel thanks to the fiasco HL2 has been for me.

Heh, that's what I thought too. It's not like the original Half-Life had the deepest story ever, but it was enough for a FPS. It seems they spent all of the $40M in tech gimmicks (and the fabled Steam) and they found themselves with no money left to pay a good storywriter. Quite disappointing. <_<

Um, yeah. Anyway, what was the game about, again? I seem to have missed the part where... well, the whole story actually, if it had any.

So, what you're saying is that, just because you can't afford a good PC, gaming should be focused on consoles and the rest of us PC gamers that don't want to have anything to do with consoles should just settle for whatever crappy conversions they make? Whoa, you sure thought that thoroughly before you posted!

You sure could use some punctuation. I'm almost impressed by your uncanny twisting of well... almost everything. I'm not going to defuse your claims one by one because it's not worth it and because your paragraph-less post makes it next to impossible. I find it amusing though, that in almost every one of your replies to me, you assume I'm angry. I said it before, and I will say it again: you can't anger me, no matter how hard you try. You are just not important enough. Don't assume that just because I call someone a dumbass I'm angry. You on the other hand seem to be rather bothered by whatever I say, because if you didn't care, you would ignore me. I don't recall that guy asking you for help so you really had no business telling me who and who is not a troll. But you couldn't resist a chance to have a go at me. Keep claiming that you don't care and that I'm a last word type of guy, but the truth of the matter is, that you are just like me. So grow up, and don't take these boards so seriously.

Wrong. Vivendi is still the publisher of the game. Now, imagine if Steam sold HL2 at a cheaper price. Say, 10 bucks cheaper. Given that Vivendi gets a smaller cut of the profits from Steam vs retail sales, which version do you think gamers with fast net access will buy, and how do you think Vivendi would react? At this point in time, Valve CAN'T sell the game cheaper, or it'd have an already angry publisher even angrier. Do you actually know they can't or is that just speculation? I mean, is there something that legally prevents them from selling cheaper? Surely you got those conclusions from somewhere. If you provided a link that would add strength to your claims. Now that *is* speculation. I for one would still buy the retail version if only because I would not depend on Steam and I would have the original CD and box (not manual, though...).

Yeah, I yell 'troll!' at anyone whose arguments I can't counter. Plenty of examples everywhere. Care to post one? I didn't call you a troll, IIRC. Not directly at least. I just implied you might have been trolling with some statements which I don't remember and can't be bothered to look up now. But man, if this is a personal grudge with me because I called you a troll, it's about damn time you get over it. There are three possible courses of action one can take when facing a troll. Flame, ignore, or call them a troll. I could have flamed him, and I could have ignored him, perhaps that would have been the most intelligent thing to do, but still, that doesn't change the fact that his posts' only aim were to draw flak. Flamebaits are the handiwork of trolls. He might be a jackass as well, I don't know nor do I care, but what I do know is that he is a troll. Again, I hadn't noticed we were having a flamewar. That's not my style of flaming, anyway. If you consider telling people the truth without second intentions constitutes flaming, then it's your problem. You say you are pretty thick-skinned yet you jumped at the chance to tell me I'm always calling people a troll, even though it's a blatant lie. Yeah, you have proven you can keep your cool under really heavy fire, even though this whole business had nothing to do with you, and despite your previous apparent lack of interest in the Steam discussion. Not to mention that first you set me straight and then you proceeded to state your opinion on the topic at hand. Interesting set of priorities you got there.

You got that right. If anything I didn't like about the ending it was that. If there is something you don't quite understand, you are left hanging with the doubt. Again, I said 'that was more likely', because it's an educated guess. They could have explained a lot of things of the plot a little more indepth.

Meh. I didn't really bother trying to. I don't remember you were given the option during the setup program, though. Laziness on my part, I suppose. Yeah, it's understandable they want to make money. What I didn't like about it is that their intention was to remove the publisher from the equation, without decreasing the product price, thus making a lot more money at the expense of the user. That's pretty greedier than wanting to sell the most games, IMO. Perhaps. To be honest I really don't know but I think at first Steam was only a means through which Valve products would be distributed. I'm not sure all the authentication garbage for standard retail products was part of the original idea. Again, that's just pure speculation, I don't know for a fact.

So, you think that accusing people of piracy without proof and posting thrash like 'Guy x <--- cry' is actually useful for anything outside provoking? Because that's precisely what a troll does. It's pretty hypocritical of you to say that because I never call people a troll when they are honest about their opinions, whatever they may be. You have a problem with that, well, you can take full advantage of the 'ignore' feature of the forum. A pity you screwed an otherwise good post by adding that part.

Azazis <--- *troll*

Damn. Just when I was starting to have fun. Oh well, I suppose I'm as guilty as you of derailing the thread. Shame on me.

I find it rather amusing how you associate immaturity with intelligence. By that standard, a two year-old child would be more intelligent than you. Which seems to be the case, but not for the same reasons you state. Sorry, your logic holds no water at all. I don't doubt you may be more intelligent than I am. However you do one hell of a job at hiding it. I don't have to. You just sound wrong without me pointing it whatsoever.

Well, they were corpses at that moment as far as I remember - at least, I only remember that Giovanni only being able to turn corpses of those guards I killed into zombies... That's odd. As soon as I entered the house after beating the outside guards, Bruno came dashing through his conference room's door and started turning the guests into zombies. I may be wrong but I did't attack any of the guests, only the guards. But after a while there were no guests to be found anywhere, only a whole lot of brain-hungry zombies... Anyway, AFAIK Necromancy is more of a conduit to the Underworld that a way of doing nasty things with corpses. I'm not sure it allows to create zombies in any way.

You seem to have a problem understanding how a message board works. If you reply quoting somebody, that implies you are making reference to that particular quote, not a different part of the thread which may or may not exist. Clear up your posts first, and then come see me. That whole paragraph is a perfectly good proof of your immaturity. It's so very nice of you to provide evidence of what you are asking in that very post. Some more proof of immaturity. You are really making this too easy. Perhaps you live in a world where greed is exclusive of Bill Gates? If that is the case, you are in for a few surprises, I fear. Unfortunately for you, being arrogant requires some style, which you and your AOL typing lack in large amounts. And please, don't accuse me of anything! I may have trouble sleeping tonight.

Um, well. I'm no expert on all the possible uses of Necromancy but I'm pretty sure that none of them allowed you to turn perfectly good mortals into rotten zombies in the blink of an eye. And Vicissitude is the 'true' name of the fleshcrafting Discipline used by the Tzimisce.

What kind fo rubbish have you been playing? I have never played a MMORPG that has no point whatsoever. I like to battle with real people not becasue any of the things you say, instead, it's because human players are infinitly resourceful, 10 fold more challenging to fight and you can talk to the guy before and after ( w/o being a f**kwad i might add ). If I want true RP'ing, there's always the PnP. It beats CRPGs anytime. And yes, I suppose MMORPGs have a point. That is, to acquire new levels, better items and kick other people's asses for absolutely no reason other that to get more levels and better items. Not to mention that MMORPGs are full of powergamers which actually take all the fun out of the RP'ing system. Again, if you are a powergamer, that's your kind of game. Sorry, but I ain't buying it. No, you didn't get my point. What I meant is that those friendly, mature people won't care about the player classes as long as the rest of the game is good. Only munchkin kids would settle for nothing less than Jedi. Hence the idea of a MMORPG focused on Jedi would attract untold amounts of F*ckwads. Definitely not something I would like to see. And maybe you should re-read and revise your own posts (not to mention those you are replying to) before frantically clicking the 'Add Reply' button. I wouldn't patronize you if you didn't allow room for it. If you are getting involved in a supposedly mature discussion, the less you can do is act mature. Galaxies is a LA product developed and maintained by Sony. What exactly does Bill Gates have to do with it?

I think it would be extremely difficult to put some Disciplines in a PC game in all their PnP glory. Take Thaumaturgy for example. It was great in the PnP and in BL it's just another lame boss-killer. Auspex is even worse. I don't want to think what they would do with things like Necromancy and Vicissitude. :ph34r:

Why should you expect anything less? Because HL2 took 6 years and >$40M to develop , which allowed Valve the luxury to polish everything to a nice shine. That simply isn't going to happen with many games and certainly not with most PC RPGs (try a fifth of that budget and most often much lower), so it's unrealistic to hold everything to HL2's standard. That doesn't mean lower-budget games can't be polished but they can't do it all - they need to scale down content or find some other compromise. Of course, you may like the idea of mega-blockbuster titles, carefully planned to sell the millions of copies necessary for those budgets, along with the all design choices necessary to meet those goals. That's not a very sound argument, mind you. Let's phrase it another way, shall we? Should we just put up with whatever crap is released just because it didn't take them six years and $40 M to develop? Please. Don't forget that BL actually uses the same engine of HL2, and they were working on trodden road. Besides, unless you work at Valve, you don't know how many of those six years have been wasted on restarting the project from scratch, and you don't know how many of those six years have been spent in the hardware scaling part of the engine. For all we know it could have taken them the last month of the development time, the same time the BL team had after they had 'finished' their product but couldn't release it because of the contract with VU. But it doesn't really matter. Part of making a PC game is hardware scaling, of which BL has none. No, I don't hold everything to HL2 tech standards, and I will tolerate slightly worse products. After all, HL2 is revolutionary technically speaking. What I won't tolerate is a pitiful product tech-wise and then the devs' claims that the game's problems are *MY* fault. Yes, that's what I've heard too. I don't know how getting the licenses for an engine works, but was there something to prevent them from getting the last, optimized version of the code once Valve had it? If there was, tough luck. If there wasn't, then that's just laziness.

Cool! You just made my points for me. Now, seriously. I haven't had serious/stopping problems with Steam. I just don't like to be forced to use it *after* having paid my $50 for it, just like any other game. I don't like Steam popping up and complaining that I don't have a connection to the Internet as soon as I reboot my computer. I really, really hate to be forced to have an Internet connection to play an offline game. It's preposterous, really. And the reason behind all this is...? Greed. It all comes down to it. Greed on Gabe Newell's part, his desire to screw VU after all that lawsuit business, and his paranoia after Valve's intranet was hacked are what drove them to develop and implement Steam. I automatically have a tendency to hate anything that is designed upon greed. That's probably not a very rational argument, but I'm not always very rational. Yeah, you sounded familiar. You are a moderator there aren't you? I used to skim those boards for news but now that the game is finally out I'm not that interested anymore.

I think it was more of a problem with pushing the engine limits than the hardware limits of the Xbox. But even if you are right and the Xbox can't support it, maybe the PC could. It's such a shame that the PC version isn't featuring some nice little gimmicks just because they were cut out for the Xbox version.