Diogo Ribeiro

Curious, didn't know that. Have to check it out better someday. Thanks

Which is exactly how I've been feeling, for the second time this year

Yoshi's Island is like having God's seed pumped into you. It's just *that* good.

coincidentally, i had wild rice last night for dinner. my wife brought home some dinners (i still haven't figured out the scoop on that) with wild rice in them. my favorite long-grained rice. tough call between wild rice and the shorter grained risotto stuff, which i also love. btw, have you actually ever quit smoking and if so, how much and for how long? the first 24 hours is, if anything, the easiest IMO. i guess your brain still hasn't figured out what's up. it's the next two weeks that are horrendous while your body withdraws from the nicotine, then the mental addiction takes a few months before the anxiety leaves. even after years of being off nicotine, people still report having desires when they smell someone smoking. terrible habit to get into. taks Pretty much my case. The first time I stopped smoking was of my own free will, about 4 (or 5) years ago; coming up with mechanisms to replace smoking with something else. Going out for a stroll, going to the cinema, playing games, leaving a pack of smokes across the other side of the house, and so on. Eventually it went on like you described. Years later, I was pretty clean to the point of even disliking the smell of a lit cigarette. I won't go into how I got back into it again - suffice to say, stupidity seems a fair description - but I'm trying to quit it once more.

Yeah, I think hair metal has its more deplorable aspects just like some disco did too. As for being overproduced, I guess that depends. Couldn't the same be said of pop music nowadays? What would we consider overproduced - production value that add nothing, or even cripple, a song? If that's the case, I think I can find that common trend nowadays more often than not. Sometimes you get this eccletic mix of styles or supporting artists into a pop song to make it either accessible on a larger scale or to give off an ersatz feeling of the artists beings "in touch with modern sensibilities and cultures" (which often translates into something like Kayne West ruining "American Boy" with his monotone drivel gangsta shiznit posse stuff). On the other hand, the other day a colleague of mine said he didn't like Eurythmics because some songs felt overproduced, and I do concede that it happens in some but in others I found them to fit the core songs pretty well.

Here's a quick and general idea for some of the specific areas I've mentioned. *Arcane spellcasters find themselves in a city which phases out of existence on given intervals. At times, it is a large group of temples not unlike the cities of Maztica. Other times, it is a large ruined city engulfed in perpetual battle. It turns out the ruler (a prince) is a child who had latent psionic powers, but after witnessing the death of his parents by the invading horde, he unleashed his full potential, wiping out the horde. The city and its inhabitants are basically dreamlike manifestations of his mind; while they may be considered illusions, they are recreations of what the prince remembers. The hook here is to have spellcasters try to solve the problem by either wakening the prince, or to force him into a neverending sleep by exploring the mind of the prince (which is essentially the place itself). *Divine-based characters find themselves in a city where undead have created their own society, complete with an undead queen and an anti-pope. This place is meant to have divine-based characters question the notions of being undead, of necromancy usually seen as evil, and so on. Most of it is still under construction, unfortunately. Llyranor makes a cameo as a sarcastic undead noble, lulz. *Rogues... I like the idea, but I'm starting to think I may be going overboard. They find themselves in a deserted, partially ruined palace with an underground dungeons. It's all dead and silent, with only a handful of corpses and notes suggesting that it had once been a location brimming with life. However, as PCs enter the last dungeon floor they find themselves sent back into time (a time sink not unlike that of NWN's Creator Ruins, where players could only travel back and forth in time, but only in that specific place). Turns out the place was devised by a retired adventurer who created the dungeon to test the mettle of other adventurers. At the heart of it was a ruby, meant as the prize for those who could reach it. In the present, PCs learn that something terrible begun happening and no adventurer ever came back. Determined to find what was wrong, the retired adventurer goes down there but is also never heard from again. But in the past, the dungeon is beginning construction so the hook is not to solve the dungeon (directly, anyway) but to help design it. Rogues would lend their expertise in defining some elements of the layout, trap placement and so on, experimenting with time travel to determine just how easy (or hard) certain sections would be, in order to help the adventurer in the past and obtaining the jewel in the future. *Fighter types... I tried exploring the definition of fighter a bit, but also giving it a twist. The "idea" isn't well developed yet, but I wanted to make it seem that that part of the game was basically poking at bashers. One area is meant to resemble the old Wizardries. Firstperson, wireframe graphics, with the need to input which direction to turn or move into, and do nothing but fight after fight. It wouldn't be as elegant as the random dungeon scene in Torment, but it would use the same kind of self-awareness, ranging from weird enemies (Vorpal Bunnies, Entrepeneur Xvart, Disenfrachised Dwarf) to weird loot (Spork of the Many Stabbings, Club of Hitmore). One of the possibilities I was considering was to have about four areas or dungeon levels, each with a particular take on old RPGs or the fighter concepts in general (ie., one area could be reminiscent of Gauntlet, shifting perspective to a topdown view and having "monster generators" and the like). Others are still being worked on. I think I'd like to see Bards investigating Sigil, and at least that's feasible in terms of available haks. Now as I'm looking at NWN and NWN2, I'm *really* considering switching to NWN2 because of overal improvements in the editor and terrain possibilities. But the lack of a proper PC to run it is killing me. My old PC had troubles running Oblivion, as I needed to take down several notches in screen resolution and disable several graphical pretties. With that in mind, would it be able to run NWN2?

Not sure. I know that happened with Barry Allen, always loved that story; read it originally on those Flash chronicles talking about the 3 Flashes and that guy from the future... Jon something (Fox?), who was bombarded with Tachyon energy as he went into the past to warn the Flashes of a common enemy, then became a future Flash as well to stop that enemy. Few other 'tragic hero' stories in comics at the time got to me the way Barry's story did. As for Wally, I remember the same kind of accident happening, but at one point I stopped following the characters so I'm unaware of what now constitutes his true origin.

What about me, I thought he was going to do a cover of Prince's music in a Korean sailor bar!

GO GO HALFLING FIGHTER

Having finished HotU it seems to predate on some Torment, actually. The Planetar = almost like the Deva. Twist on how Mephistoles and the PC were tied, and the ways we can confront him in the end = Transcendant One. Party members wracked with guilt = Torment cast. Lone sisters anchored in a place waiting for someone = Deionarra and Rave, without the depth. Breaking some preconceptions about planar and devil hierarchy = Sigil and Planescape in general. This isn't necessarily bad, of course; just surprised where Bioware seems to have gone for some inspiration. Things that rocked: *Cast was much more vibrant and less annoying. *Act 2 was very good all around. Locations were pretty fun and so were most of the quests. *Combat was a lot less lethargic. *Having to replay one or two areas of the game with the Grappling Hook to reach previously inaccessible chests. Actually, I saw the areas but didn't bother going there. But the idea isn't bad. *I was surprised I could kill the Thiefling in the bar to get the Horn immediately rather than playing an obnoxious card game (something that my Dwarven FT/WM/DD couldn't quite handle with low Wis) and otherwise do several evil things (betraying the Seer halfway through the 1st Act, though it kinda made everything else prior to it pointless). Things that disappointed: *Knock it off with the Drow already. *Female Drow with a whip. No, no male teenager fantasy, no siree. *Stop shoving Aribeth everyfrigginwhere. Also, it was cute how you could tell Aribeth you loved her and still get endgame nookie with the dark elf who loved you. Yeah, that worked out fine in JE as well... NOT. *Having to pay with gold to learn True Names. To be honest, I was hoping they went along the lines of "in order to learn of someone, you must give of yourself first", followed by having the PC give off his essence (stats) like we did with Irenicus in BG2. Think I'm gonna exploit that... *While there are some interesting areas, like the Mimic section, it's still annoying that these feel terribly out of place and - worse - mandatory. *Too much phat loot to decide on proper equipment set up. Also, since I couldn't wear Valen's flail, I couldn't equip it and thus improve it at the Forge. Otherwise much better than the OC and SoU, though SoU had one or two highlights in some quests. Also going through the Fell Wood in IWD2. By going through I mean round and round. But still having a blast. I wish ToEE worked on my laptop :/

Oh man, I'm all about .

No one is faster than The Flash! He saved us from the Anti-Monitor only to go back in time and create himself!

Like I said, it isn't much - somewhere in the 6.50 range, almost 7

Hey, that's my line. In any case I am spending the holidays with *gasp* family. OH! THE HUMANITY! You have a family? Sweet Jebus, I always assumed you were an agglomeration of leftover putty from the Sistene chapel. Maybe it's a family of Gelatinous Cubes. I can only imagine how they will get through the door...

@taks: I smoked for a good 12 years, then quit. This period of clean living lasted for a good 4 years. Then I started back again last year and haven't stopped yet. And I actually need to, since my health is deteorating because of it.

Started out the first draft for a dialogue in my SEKRIT PROJEKT. I'm concerned the NPC I'm tackling may come off as too wordy, but it is one of the more important ones, and it's a fine line between giving it attention and making it a walking library. Also spent the whole day telling myself this would be the day I would stop smoking again. Then proceed to smoke an entire pack in an hour. Oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdear.

That's all good, but this reeks of a cash in to coincide with the next Bond flick: Summer of Spies.

Whazzup homies? I'm posting this because I need an opinion. I've contributed to the Spectrum Games Bible, a series of e-books containing reviews for ZX Spectrum games between 1982 and 2008 that cover everything from underdogs, sleeper and mainstream hits, as well as homebrew titles. In particular, my (inept) writing is going to be featured in the 1989-1990 book. If all goes well, I should be able to write some more for the remaining books, even though I'm a cad 'cause I said I'd write more to the folks behind the project and still haven't done so. SO! The wonderful chaps behind the project offer three solutions concerning payment. Every review is worth 50p (that's half a pound). You can be paid in full once all your reviews are accounted for through PayPal. Or you can contribute to the scene yo, and do the shiznit 4 free. Or finally, you can have the money revert to the Bleakholt Animal Sanctuary. ALAS! I'm a bit unsure of what to do. Getting paid to write about videogames, even if at this point the profit isn't exactly astronomical and I don't even write well, would be fulfilling a dream. On the other, the people that still strive to talk about the ZX Spectrum and keep such communities afloat should be commended and helped. But I also feel a tremendous amount of empathy for homeless animals. I am considering giving the money to Bleakholt, but I am wondering what people think about it. What would you personally do?

I think "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" probably applies best

:crowds boo and hiss: Oh, I'm not going into the definition of RPG. The Nameless One's skin is as smooth as baby's arse compared to the scars I've got from those debates. Suffice to say, I think I could resume my point with this. A cRPG is founded on both player and character ability. The more the axis tilts in favor of one of them, the other becomes increasingly meaningless. And I think there's no point in adhering to a gameplay convention when it's little more than a fetish to keep players hung on genre conventions. In fact, when Deus Ex: Invisible War came out, I was on the opposite side of most people since I had almost no problems with weapon skills disappearing. Why bother, really? I prefer that to schizoid character abilities telling me I can't do something but then having the game let my player ability override them. King's Bounty... Man. Even more than MotB and SoZ, that is the one game making me want to sell my soul to get my gaming PC fixed

Actually, I'm not that big into PnP nowadays. I had some good sessions over the years, but looking at it nowadays just makes my head hurt. I've lost the ability to care about rules lawyerism to a degree. I couldn't even muster enough brainpower to come up with builds for NWN; most of those I've tried came straight out of NWVault. The one thing I retain from those days, and which I carried over to electronic gaming in terms of cRPGs, is about giving every player a means to play their character. This is why I could play just fine through Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines, Gothic 3, Elder Scrolls and what little time I spent with Fallout 3. It's not a question of my ability as a person being used. As mentioned before, to deny its existence is to deny one of the core aspects of role-playing. I think the issue has more to do with how player ability is used. Tigranes makes a good, even if obvious point - a gamer that has an edge in planning and improvisation skills is going to have an edge over someone who doesn't. But that's fine, because Player Characters are vacant constructs. We are their conscience. That's rule number one for every game genre and subgenre. Troops don't move by themselves. Chess isn't one by taking your hands off the board. Frogger is gonna stand there and get squashed if you don't help it cross the road. And the main rule for cRPGs is Player Characters aren't going to display a semblance of personality if you don't intervene. What gets to me in a game like Fallout 3, where your reflexes play an important aspect of the game and character in terms of combat, is just how your player ability comes to a point where it risks becoming a more legitimate model of gameplay than the character's ability. Presumably, there are some who defend turn-based is the only adequate way of pulling it off, but I find that a narrow approach. In fact, the Infinity Engine games - and others like Darklands and X-Com: Apocalypse that spawned them - show the opposite. So if Josh's point is basically "that's how videogames are nowadays, chuckles, get with the program NYUK NYUK NYUK", that's fine. I'm not condemning nor trying to change the system, since it's a waste of time to tell people games should try to appeal to everyone in a consumer market because a) everyone has a different mindset on how to achieve that, and b) it's morally bankrupt to criticize someone's stance on videogame development just because we are selfish raggamuffins who want things our way. And it's certainly not without merit to consider you can move away from all the pointless fluff of the more simulationist concepts of PnP when discussing cRPGs. A background stealth check doesn't get in the way of me physically controlling a Player Character to sneak about, for instance. But the more you're straying from that and the more you're opening the game to a new kind of audience, you're also leaving out the other part. PnP was a polarizing experience in which only people with good improv skills and understanding of the rules could get anywhere. With the move to computers, we established a middle road of sorts; clearly, input mechanisms that allowed players to adopt their own playstyles was terribly popular - again, the Infinity Engine games were an example. For all the backlash it got on other elements, Arcanum did this as well. But with the genre finding progressive success by virtue of its reflex-driven input, you're now providing another kind of polarizing experience by excluding those that want to play a role without having to physically "act" it. You won't be able to play a Combat Boy in Fallout 3 the same way you could in Fallout 1 or 2. Mkreku pointed out it's a preference and to a degree, it is... If we were discussing preferences. But the problem is one of legitimacy of control over the character. And the problem isn't that you have to twitch around to play a gunslinger, the problem is twitching around is the *only* way you have of playing a gunslinger. What used to be an option is nowadays becoming mandatory. Yes, let's argue that people with better planning skills can play better than those that can't, shunning away certain players. But let's also discuss how those with better reflexes are also going to play better than those who don't have them. PnP, and turn-based, and "old RPGs" were polarizing because they forced on players a certain kind of gameplay. Fallout 3 shares the same herd mentality, only in reverse.

The evil CGI cartoons spreading across the world, man! They must be stopped!

Which isn't any kind of counterpoint to what I said since I clearly didn't question player ability in itself, just the degree to which it it used.

In PnP, a guy playing a Rogue doesn't fare better than another guy playing a Rogue because he's physically nimbler than the other player.