Diogo Ribeiro

Quantum of Solace does not have Eva Green. Instant FAIL.

Care to fill me in (and not in a sexual way) about that DR stuff?

Chaotic Porker?

While limited, one could argue that specific actions - such as becoming a Slaver or not acting fast enough to prevent the march of the Master's Army - *do* affect other cities or at least, your reputation and future NPC reactions in other cities. Dealing with the Gecko power plant, for instance, does affect Vault City. Likewise, decisions made across Torment's locations had but the most vestigial links between themselves and it's unquestionably the most choice and consequence oriented game of the Infinity Engine era. Would this really be meaningful in presenting a different story, or does it lose value because - at least in the Nameless One's journey - they are mostly personal? Can't it be argued that consequences on a global or personal scale represent a different path through a story, thus altering the story itself? I don't see choke points as necessarily inhibitors of diverging branches. Naturally, radical changes could present radically different story paths, but if the branch is significantly different, I fail to see how the fact that the locales are not interlinked in such a way really make it bereft of choice and consequence. Yes, you will always meet the Master, just as you will always meet Deinorra - the amount, type and result of interactions between them is constricted to a set few, but they provide different experiences which, in the end, tell different stories. It used to be common knowledge we couldn't replicate the multiplayer aspect of D&D on a computer game, let alone the ability to DM. It was a limit inherent in computer games. Now we have titles like Arcanum and Neverwinter Nights, among others, which do precisely that. The same was once said of transposing the *feel* of D&D on computer games. Now the Infinity Engine era is considered to be the best exampling of achieving this. Do we need to accept limitations, or do we need to challenge them in order to push forward?

Chrono Trigger used this to a certain degree; when the time to fight Lavos came, the Timemaster (or whatever its name was) told you of several events across the time stream that could be corrected. These were anciliary to the main plot and its characters, involved grinding but were optional. You could do them if you felt like it, partly because you enjoyed the story and wanted to see more of it fleshed out, but no one prevented you from jumping right into the big final fight.

I never could get into the action sequences. I'm not a fan of fast forward fighting scenes filmed by an epileptic. Still, it's good overall and managed to influence the latest 007s in more positive ways.

Just saw it recently too, very good. Brad Pitt as a dolt and Malkovich as a deranged drunk - awesome. Also managed to see 007 Quantum of Solace. Not bad at all, either, although Casino Royale still seems like the better movie. QoS feels too hectic, and with a terrible amount of screen time dedicated to pointless pyrotechnica.

Forgot to add - it's slightly inferior to the Falcon and the Centurion, the latter beating the Falcon. PS: Editing is gone?

As an entry level space combat with light sim aspects, it works well, mostly due to the incredibly easy and intuitive interface, and a graphical engine that still makes it run beautifully. I'm much more of a Sins of a Solar Empire and Escape Velocity Nova fan myself, two great titles that pretty much beat Freelancer to the ground, thanks to actually offering more freedom and a wealth of choices - the kind of choices Freelancer sorely lacks. All ships groups have the same level of maneuverability between themselves, with some minute differences. The Dragon, AFAIK, is a bit less maneuverable than, say, the Barracuda, but is one of the top HFs, losing out only to the Falcon. I always went for Freighters to exploit the static economic model of the gameworld until I could afford me some pimped out VHFs, though.

I prefer Fallout 1, but Fallout 2's gameplay and interface tweaks really made it a bit more accessible. Fallout 3... From what (little) I've played, all signs pointed to "NO" but it was too early to tell.

Icewind Dale 2. multiple roleplaying options and tactical combat hitting my head and punching my stomach, oh god its heaven Also a bunch of ZX Spectrum Games.

EMPTY YOUR PM BOX Trying to send you a PM, and it tells me your box is full Kisses and hugs from Portuguistan, ~DR.

Spore Creature Creator (there's hardly any 'play' in it, but you get the point). Spore can't come soon enough. Project Eden Devil May Cry 4

Which in fact are all the same, except rendered with different amounts of polygons, and given slightly different names.

I can't get the sweet aftertaste of Escape Velocity Nova out of my mouth

Wait, scratch that. I think I still have Gunners Heaven around here. Think I'll replay that. It's likely the only spiritual successor to Gunstar Heroes, if you discount Sin and Punishment.

Audiosurf is better than I thought, but not by much. The fun isn't so much in the core gameplay (think Klax) or the ambience (a Wipeout ship design, and Rez-like environments), although those are good on their own - but in how it allows the democratization of the gameplay by lettling players determine level length, ambiance and rhytm through its musical synthesis (read: loading music formats on your PC). There's not much of a challenge, unless you consider competing with the online scoreboard for a particular music. But it keeps me going for a while. Not sure what to play next.

Not that I disagree with you, but I don't think that time and money ever surfaced in Patrick's argument. His post was solely on the technical side of things in response to CrashGirl - ie, why today is better than yesterday on a technical level, not why today is more costly than yesterday. As such, I'm well aware of what you said but chose not to talk about it because I felt it would bloat my post (even more bloated than it already is!) with that perspective.

I'm not Xard (noshizzle?), but hacking should be like Uplink: Hacker Elite, only in smaller, concentrated doses. What I find fun in Uplink is that it's got several ways of hacking. An example I like is - make a prank call to the target's house, tape his voice and then play it back into an audio security system so that you can bypass it. I'd certainly enjoy a variety of methods, as opposed to having to play something reminiscent of Frogger to bind nodes and unlock a security terminal.

"Authorial fascism?" Honestly, when you typed this, didn't you feel just a little bit silly, considering you're talking about a video game? Well... maybe a little But haven't we grown to dissect videogames more thoroughly as time goes by? When we talked of Contra, we wouldn't even mention the designer's intentions - just the fact the game's design was arcade-like, in that it would constantly rob us of 1-UPs so we'd keep feeding the arcade with hard earned lunch money. Nowadays, with texts that compare, say, Half-Life 2's setting with that of 1984, it's not uncommon to throw about that kind of stuff about a designer's intentions. Would totalitarian be better? Or maybe just stick to "authorial intrusion"?

I *think* also won the bit about the best goal scorer... Or didn't I? Oh well, I eagerly await my prize of a date with Scarlett Johanson.

Oh, I agree. I do think it's an interesting game, as I've mentioned before, and it's certainly not without positive aspects.

True, but how many games outside of the obvious genres - firstperson shooters or thirdperson action titles - have used these inovations? We have the technical ability to allow players a degree of environmental interactivity that not only takes its lessons from games like Ultima 7, but it can easily surpass them. The main difference between previous generations and ours is that now, we are much more aware of what can be done on a technical level, but still see it not getting done. We run around saying advanced physics systems like ragdoll and certain middlewares are awesome, but I still have to fetch a key to overcome even the most ramshackle of doors. I can't destroy a wall, break through a window, climb a tower and jump across rooftops - unless we're talking cutscenes. Even today, with the advent of 3D being taken for granted by every single 12 year old runt who has an X-Box 360, there is still a good number of 3D games which don't even use the Z-Axis - one of the most important features it could possibly bring. Look at Bioware. Barring the Baldur's Gate saga, MDK2 was, as far as I can remember, the only game where they used it - all their subsequent 3D games have a three dimensional gameworld with characters behaving as if they were stuck in Fallout's isometric display. Freaking Fallout, considered to be a technological throwback by those same 12 years olds. Where's the Red Faction of role-playing games? There isn't one, even with games such as Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic trying a stab at more complex interactivity. Or, why is The Force Unleashed the only Star Wars game to make use of these advanced physics, and quite possibly, for purely pyrotechnical/eye-goggling purposes, for instance? Wholly new gameplay mechanics is nice and all, but these are only developed and implemented by a select few in the industry. Can we actually determine that gamers aren't interested in interactivity? That would imply gaming for many would be analogous to watching a tech demo running, or just reading visual novels. Besides, the style over substance argument only works so far. Wii Sports certainly isn't about the graphics, for instance, and neither was Nintendogs. Also, witness the deluge of japanese role-playing game fans who claim they only play these titles for their stories (and that these stories are "excellent"). PS: NOT AN INFLAMATORY POST, MR. DEVELOPER MAN!

There's only so much a developer can do to simultaneously tell a story and make a player feel his going through it, rather than than the character - DCotE didn't quite manage on the former, even if it did strive for it. Sanity is a double edged sword - it's a remarkable tool for storytelling and showcases how the character is affected by his surroundings, but players will avoid many situations because being exposed to them will negatively impact their gameplay, with Jack's mental lapses getting in the way of control, perception and whatnot. We are expected to believe all of these abnormal or supernatural occurences are part of the story and of how it's told (which is true), but we avoid them because if we experience all of them we can't play long enough to see the entire story unfold. It's telling us "this is how we tell our story but you can't see or experience it all". An opposite route would be, say, System Shock 2, where witnessing the atrocities commited in the Von Braun are left for the player to negotiate himself, never telling the character what he should feel, or (very rarely, if ever) exerting authorial fascism over the player, taking control out of his hands and telling us how the character is feeling. It's a much better implementation, gameplaywise, of that "feeling of being there" coulped with "storytelling".

Just beaten Rondo with Maria, which was quite easy to do thanks to her double jumps. For some reason she reminds me of Parodius, with the special attacks and mock ending. With Richter it's more of a chore, since he's got a few moves but is still very much based on traditional control - he doesn't have the nifty dashes, whip lashes and slides from SotN (just your basic backflip). Still, I've beaten it 100% - all stages plus all villagers rescued. Now, I think I'll play some Audiosurf.