Enoch

The machine next to the Border House? I think he means the bit with the tree in the opening dream sequence.

The deepstalker matriarch was wholly un-memorable. It was just another battle in a corner of one of the Deep Roads maps, where one of the Deepstalkers happened to be a little tougher than the others and have the "Deepstalker Matriarch" name. Because I don't think I was ever harmed by a single deepstalker (I don't know if the level scaling wasn't working with them or what-- they wholly failed to be anything close to a challenge) and because the matriarch was only marginally tougher than a normal deepstalker, I can understand not noticing. Frankly, I wish that the deepstalker leader had gotten a proper boss battle, like the spider queen did (which was a fun fight).

The Deep Roads were too grindy. But to me, the grind was rewarded by the area also featuring the most entertaining boss fights of the game (gangster lady, spider queen, broodmother, the fight at the anvil). Can't say the same about the tedium at the endgame... I also enjoyed the Broken Circle. A nice blend of combat and puzzles with kewl art design and such. The stat bonuses were a mistake, though. They're essentially the way that the PC gets to be better than the JNPCs-- a signicant hunk of bonuses available only to he PC. Nothing wrong with that, generally-- the PC should feel special and giving him/her stat bonuses that the other JNPCs don't get is a reasonable way to do that. But the better way to include them is to add them at character creation, or to give the PC more bonuses at level-up than the NPCs get. By putting them in the tower quest, the game unnecessarily rewards players who do that quest early (and punishes those who don't).

Must be recentish Jersey slang; I've never heard it before. Then again, I was never invited to a whole lot of parties when I lived there. Are you sure it wasn't just a party in Wall Township?

Really really old skool:

I thought those were Plot Drones. Those specific ones might be plot drones. They show up in other places as Geth Recon Drones. Ah. I was thinking of Tali's loyalty mission, not her recruitment mission. Sidenote: Doing Tali's recruitment mission with 3 characters with Overload was comedy gold. Based on the ability's visual effect, I started referring to using Overload as "popping" the Geth. Most enemies were "popped" as soon as they were spotted.

Currently downloading the M&M I-VI pack. This is going to be a nostalgia trip-- M&M I was my first ever CRPG (first played on my uncle's C64 when I was about 8 ). I actually have the CD version of this somewhere, but $9.99 is worth the avoiding the hassle of finding it and getting it to run on a modern OS. ... And the download is finished. All 6 games took a grand total of 4 minutes-- technological progress is an amazing thing.

Aren't the floating drones just an enemy using the "Combat Drone" ability that Tali and Engineer Sheps get?

On a whim, I booted up World of Goo the other night. I played through all of it when it was relatively new, but now I'm impressed all over again by how charming it is and how fantastic the soundtrack is.

That is usually my take on piracy/DRM related arguments. Most of them consist of a lot of fundamentalists complaining very loudly about restrictions that actually aren't all that unreasonable, and trying to stretch them into a defense of piracy. But, IMO, this restriction is pretty boldly unreasonable on it's face, so I'm in the uncomfortable situation of agreeing with them. (With the caveat that no DRM scheme is grounds for piracy-- it's grounds for not playing the game at all.)

Really? Protective makes them harder than most to blitz, but I don't remember Wang's unit probability as being all that high (which is a better indicator of what a military pain an AI civ is likely to be), and he tends not to expand very quickly (via settlers or via invasions). Protective + a not-huge standing army can still be defeated; just bring a few more siege engines. In my experience, Korea never seems to grab enough territory to emerge as a power in the mid-late game. And the AI is one of the more reasonable ones-- get them to "Pleased" and you know you're safe from attack. It's relatively easy to beat Wang in the land grab, contain him, get him happy with you, and spend the whole game peacefully trading with him while you wail on your mutual enemies. The truly fearsome leaders at higher difficulty levels are the ones who tend to jump out in the early expansion race, and follow that up by building lots of units and throwing their weight around diplomatically-- Catherine, Gilgamesh, Suryavawhatever, Zara Yacob, and sometimes Shaka come to mind. Edit: Yes, I realize that this post includes the phrases "Wang's unit" and "beat Wang," so there's no need to bother pointing that out.

Ooh, a hex-grid! Maybe the world can actually be spherical now. I am also surprised that this isn't a cross-platform title. Edit: IGN has a brief news item up that has a few screenshots not found on the teaser site.

Via Deadspin: (A note of explanation for non-Americaners: "Nips" was often used as a racial slur referring to Japanese people (presumably derived from "Nippon") during the WW2 period.)

F:NV inquiry that might have been mentioned in the magazine features but that I don't recall hearing about: What is the generic name that the gameworld will use for the player character? "The Courier" sounds pretty lame.

I played about 70% of HoW. Then I was entering one of the map areas, sent my stealthed thief ahead to scout out what I'd be facing, saw how many packs of similar enemies I'd have to grind through to continue, and had the epiphany that I had better things to do with my time. At that point, all the complaints about HoW's brevity brought to mind the old "The food here is terrible" "Yeah, and the portions are too small" joke. IWD2 had its flaws, but it had the advantage of a higher "interesting setpiece battle" to "oh look another pack of wights to kill" ratio. To bring us back to the topic, erm, F:NV should avoid long dungeons full of repetitive grindy combat without any interesting setpieces the break the monotony.

I reckon that I'm more DRM-tolerant than the vast majority of people who discuss PC games on the internet, but I have to agree with you on that one.

I'm sure that someone in here remember who worked on that unfortunate project named Torn. Nine years seem to be eternity in the intrawebs so I couldn't even find my own posts about it in various (mostly defunct) boards. The first name that my memory drags up as associated with the ill-fated Torn project is Dave Maldonado.

Then again... Who are we to question?

Bingo. Seriously, it's what Bioware always has done. The fans just couldn't handle a depressing and devastating end. I know I couldn't. I don't play games to fail and die at the end. I'll leave that to real life. I play games to "do" things that matter in my little game universe, things that make me feel exhilarated, needed, valiant... and heroic. I don't want a game to mirror life; I want a game to give me an adventure I could never otherwise have, and I want the satisfaction of accomplishment when it's over. I'm glad BioWare doesn't do "emo" games. I'm well past the age where I want to wear black lipstick and get a skeleton tatooed on my ass. I understand that point of view-- the heroic power fantasy is a rather core element of the appeal of a lot of escapist media (in games and elsewhere), and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that aspect of the experience on some level. But I think that developers can get away with more in what is clearly a middle chapter. We all know that the heroic ending is coming in ME3, so it's easier for fans to enjoy a setback or sacrifice of some sort at the close of ME2. You can make an ending a little bittersweet and still make the player feel as if he/she has accomplished something non-trivial.

Ah; that makes a bit more sense. PC Gamer is owned by Future Publishing, which owns a whole lot of different specialty publications. I don't see any obvious connections to Gannett, and it isn't exactly uncommon for newspaper writers to crib leads from trade magazines. But there could also be some cross-promotion arrangements between the two companies, I suppose.

Mainstream media coverage this early in the hype cycle? Wow. Most likely a product of vertical integration Is there some ownership connection between Gannett (USA Today's parent) and Zenimax (Bethsoft's parent) that I'm not aware of?

Simplistic and unimaginative is probably a better result than creating characters that the audience has no frame of reference upon which to base any empathy. if you make the aliens too inhuman, they're just isn't going to be any emotional connection with the audience. Granted, some ways of adapting human elements into alien races are more creative and original than others, but the lack of an emotional connection makes for stories that are a lot more boring than ones that use re-hashed space-[elves/Spartans/buddhists/druids/whatever].

Mainstream media coverage this early in the hype cycle? Wow.

I did. I preferred the ME1 option to not endorse a candidate-- really, both Udina and Anderson would be terrible Council members for a variety of reasons. I was irritated that the neutral choice wasn't supported in ME2, so I picked Udina because I knew that he was the default for a non-imported Shep. Plus, ME1 tried so hard to get the player to hate Udina, and I'm contrarian enough to want to see what happens when the player resists that temptation.

I don't know the part, as I let Mordin off the kid. I guess I should've reloaded and seen what happens. Still, Mordin's subsequent reaction about how he's already emotionally processed the murder of his protege was pretty good, too.