Diogo Ribeiro

For the PC: Bloodnet (replaying, trying to finish it) Neuromancer Battletech 1: The Crescent Hawk's Inception * trying to get Lands of Lore, Wizardry 7, and Bioforge to work with DosBox, unsuccessfully * For the Sega Genesis: Shadowrun (replaying) Snatcher (replaying) Shining in the Darkness For the SNES: Dragon Quest 1+2 (finished 1, now playing 2) Dragon Quest 5 Treasure Hunter G Shin Megami Tensei II

Why do you agree with the same assessment of Vampire and not of Morrowind when both need the player to aim and the character to hit? The player *has* to aim at his targets in both games, then expect the character to hit based on its own skill set. As a player who has finished the game without killing anyone beyond the required kills - both of which can be made without shooting - you'll excuse me if I doubt there's "not much more to the game beyond shooting". The remaining stealth, environment manipulation and character interaction segments not only allow for completion of the game, they are also an equally valid alternative to only shooting my way trough. Sidestepping the first and third person distinction, Splinter Cell, Metal Geal Solid, Thief and Deus Ex share the same scheme of combining stealth and shooting, and for the most part all of them allow the player to choose and play trough them either way. Why is 'firstperson sneaking' only a genre in those two games when all four allow the same? Doesn't seem like there's a good reason for this distinction.

Disagreed. This may be the case with a "pure shooter", but FPS is in my terms shooting/attacking from a First Person View on other people, where the death of an enemy is player-skill (aim) dependant, and the player has to make sure that he has ammo, or gets less health than 0. Deus Ex has all of this. Morrowind, Vampire: Bloodlines and Kitty's example, Omikron, also have these but they barely qualify as 'shooters'. In fact, the above requirements that fit your own interpretation exist in them as well. Yet in those games anyone can notice that there are more varied gameplay styles other than shooting things and that they do not make up the core gameplay of the games - for no other reason than if shooting was removed from them there would still be other ways to progress in the games. If Deus Ex did not sport any shooting at all, or if it was removed, it would still be able to be played and completed; on the other hand, remove the shooting component from a bare bones FPS and you can not complete it, let alone play it. This is what distinguishes Deus Ex, and the above mentioned games, from FPSers: they all have more to them than standard shooting, FPS segments, or the ability to play them as a FPS. And why does this apply to shooting and not other elements present in the game? What you've just said can easilly be applied and extended to other gameplay aspects of the game, ie, it doesn't matter that you are not forced to sneak or talk your way out, the fact that they are obvious possibilities makes them that way. And because they are obvious possibilities it boggles the mind why people fixate on only one of them - the shooting - in order to classify the game.

I did. IIRC all I had to do for the most part was set everyone in the party to Overwatch Mode and run around the map, letting them fire against anything and kill on sight. It was even more boring than the turnbased mode it sported.

Fair and noble enough, but how many think the same, and act under that mindset? It's also not just the simple emulation, either; many games which were never released outside of the Japanese console market have been emulated and translated, and if I recall correctly Final Fantasy 3 was one such title. Emulation has been instrumental in increasing some of my knowledge and appreciation when it came to titles I never even knew existed or could only dream of playing. Seiken Densetsu 3, Front Mission, Gun Hazard, Star Ocean, Shin Megami Tensei, Snatcher, Shining Force CD... It goes on and on. While I agree with the illegal implications of ROM downloading and playing, I have to be honest and say I have played emulated games on my PC - and still do, because it's the only way I'll ever have of playing certain games I can't own. Of course, it's not like I'm playing DS or Gamecube emulators (if there are any). I usually strict myself to old 8 and 16-bit emulated hardware and software library.

Considering the proliferation of emulation, I doubt there are that many who haven't played it yet.

I think that honor is probably best reserved for games like Thief and System Shock 2 - Deus Ex was just a logical extension of the type of gameplay those two presented.

Tactics wasn't a bad game, but I never felt it ever got good either. The inital feel of the game was let down by a very tedious and repetitive gameplay; there were only a handful of levels and objectives that really stood out. I also didn't felt like I was playing a Fallout game either, but that's a different story. In the end it came off as a competent game but not polished enough in several areas. Well I had to come up with some example of radical departure from standard gameplay :D True; pretty much the same as mentioned before, I guess.

For what it's worth, I've said time and again that I really enjoyed Deus Ex back in the day. I would probably enjoy a replay of it even now. However it's not without its faults and its hard for me to ignore them (then again that goes for about any game I've played), so I cannot just talk of the good aspects while forgetting the negative ones, or vice versa. They are all part of the game, after all.

Of course, there has to be some measure of continuity that establishes it as part of a series. Fallout Tactics wasn't even a CRPG to begin with, and it doesn't really connect to the Fallout CRPGs in terms of genre. In this regard the only applicabele continuity for the purposes of determining on what grounds it can be compared would be found in other elements that both games would have (ie, setting, story, etc.). But they all share some measure of continuity; some elements that when combined you'll go "this is a Final Fantasy game". It can be the artwork, the gameplay, the setting, the themes of the games or how said themes are handled; could be (and often is) all of these and more. But a chocobo pimping game, even if Chocobos are a recurring component of the games, has much less continuity with the Final Fantasy series than any other episode of the series when compared between themselves. And in the event of said chocobo pimping game was released as Final Fantasy XIII, Squarenix really wouldn't be justified in calling it Final Fantasy because it bears no resemblance to anything that uses the franchise name. Just as a firstperson shoother where you play the part of the The Chosen Brahmin on a quest to kill all the suicide Deathclaw bombers really wouldn't merit being called Fallout 3. Sequels should have continuity in regards to the series they are a part of (even in the case of games like Final Fantasy games which aren't direct sequels but are nonetheless possessing of an undeniable connection). Otherwise they really aren't sequels at all.

A game can be judged both as a standalone game and as a game that is meant to be taken as part of a series (when applicable), and while a bad game does not affect a good game in the series, it can contribute to a fluctuating appraisal of the entire series. Simple example (in the case of the Ultimas): the lower quality of some Ultima games does not influence the higher quality of some other Ultima games, but when considering the entire series it can't be considered superb or mediocre based on only the great or only the inferior titles: all of them, both good and bad, contribute to the overall feel of the series. One can't only enjoy 3 games out of a series of 12 then proceed to consider the entire series brilliant. Well, one can do it but he's most obviously lacking in clear judgement or objective capability.

Aren't the Shin Megami Tensei games the same as the Digital Devil Story games? I only ever played a SMT game, and it was the second of the SNES series. Seemed to have a nice setting and theme but it was vague and whacked out. The demon recruiting conversations led me to believe the developers were shooting themselves up with something nefarious during the game's development. Haven't finished it yet, though. Still it's good to know console games are using more and more of that.

To me that was always one of the problems with the game. Halfway trough the game you already have a sense of where the story is going, and some of the more important parts of it get revealed or hinted at during its middle stages, but then it seems like the developers just added a whole new slew of levels to inflate the game's length. The consequence is that there's this temporary lull in the game's flow wherein you know where it's all going and want to see it, but then have to dregde trough this or that large, pointless level by way of repetitive duct cleaning with JC's trenchcoat.

Usually, if the story only advances, or you can only reach the game's ending if you perform a set of actions in a linear, progressive manner then it can be argued that it is indeed linear; not the entire game itself, but the main part of the game. That's something I've always liked, and always seemed to be missing in most console games back in the day.

I've heard can be avoided but I never got around to achieving that. Either I blasted him or used the killphrase; same thing for . On the other hand, I think it was possible to have kill himself by using the augmentation that triggers the destruction of incoming projectiles or grenades - since he lobs LAMs at you, the trick would be that they would explode on his face. Don't remember testing this, however.

A bit off his rocker, isn't he?

Didn't they, like, suck and all that jazz?

Because they're impressionable little things. However, it's nonetheless a very fine game.

Hey Paladin, back already? How's that game sales going?

Nice dodge. Herve would be proud of you.

Self-serving mindsets don't count. Unless you want to state that games like Final Fantasy, which use extensive text in the larger part of dialogues and story presentation, are low budget. The same applies to pretty much all other RPGs, console or computer-wise.

True, because more and more gamers invoke a dozen definitions of immersive every new day until developers have to conform to their tastes. In this case there's some consensus that voice acting is immersive and required for a larger number of games and game genres, hence devs follow the trend. Looking at how much text is still used in games - and oftentimes needs to be used - I don't think you're terribly accurate there.

Appearances can be deceiving, though. How many games use 3D models and zoomed in model faces and use audio to carry out the lines, but the model's mouths are either out of synch or static? Immersion-breaker right there. On the other hand, there are some moments in videogames which use text to convey situations which are much more solid and evocative than most lines ever said by some voice actor.

Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime