Whipporwill

I think an ensemble cast would work better than focusing primarily on the same character each episode.

They didn't create Alpha. They imprinted him with a bunch of personalities, but he was always ax crazy.

Aaand ... we're out. A bit of a fizzle, I thought.

Did Not Finish.

"You have beaten me. I admit it." "Then why are you smiling?"

The last one. If you're online when the registration is open, you'll see a button that lets you sign up.

You swine.

I thought the "eternal life" thing was overplayed. Thinking you're Napoleon is not the same as being Napoleon, and while it makes sense for Echo-as-Margaret to be fascinated by the concept, both Adele and Boyd know how the dollhouse actually works and should not have taken the idea seriously. In fact, based on the attention paid to teaching life lessons to dead Margaret, I got the impression that the writer of the episode was also confused, and had the impression that the machine could actually summon the spirits of the dead. The murder-mystery aspect of the plot seemed adequate, but I'm not much of a judge. I dislike the mystery-novel formula and have for years. "There's been a murder." "That's great! Let's see if we can figure out who did it!" The best part of the episode for me was Topher and with Sierra. Once a year Topher makes a geek friend to play with. This managed to be cute and pathetic at the same time. Ballard and November were very very creepy and dark this week. If Ballard sleeps with her he's basically raping her. If not, he risks tipping off the Dollhouse. He chooses to eat the kitten.

I've submitted a request for Melpomenne. Edit: Everyone who hasn't achieved a higher rank is a Padawan.

Look for brutes that you have an advantage over. Korqeldroma and 00raiser both have pets. You don't have a pet and you don't have any anti-pet specials. KittyBangBang is basically the same sort of fighter as you have, only a level higher. EDIT: Woops! I must have looked at Korqeldroma's fight twice. 00raiser doesn't have a pet, just a powerful weapon. He's also two levels higher.

I believe "lightening" is a boost to your speed stat.

You're missing the point. The situation swings out of control, you roll your eyes and reload. It's poor gameplay.

IIRC that section in question was a gang headquarters. The city goes hostile because those aren't normal citizens, those are gang members that are attempting to eliminate a nuisance to the gang. Nice try, but wrong. This was in the Enclave city, and the NPC was a relative of one of the party members. A realistic response would have been a refusal to trade, and perhaps some fisticuffs.

I bought the Fallout two-pack in the post-Baldur's gate era for about ten dollars. Suffice it to say that although I don't regret the purchase, neither do I have any emotional attachment to them. I have never bothered to complete either game. By today's standards, the gameplay is poorly balanced and far too reliant on trial-and-error. I particularly remember one NPC where, if you were overly short with her, would attack you. Once you damaged her, the ENTIRE CITY would turn instantly hostile. This inevitably meant a reload. People would throw a fit if a modern game tried this, and with good reason. It's neither challenging nor fun, and exists solely to frustrate the player. Longtime fans don't step in the noob traps; they know where they are. And the noob traps didn't bother them when they were noobs, because noob traps were de rigeur in pre-millennial gaming. But a modern gamer picking up an old game like Fallout is going to find them particularly obnoxious precisely because modern games don't pull that crap.

FO 1 and 2 were hardly perfect. They had their share of broken quests and moronic AI moments.

The Ring Two. Not particularly scary or even tense, but it does work as a sort of love-triangle drama with extra deer.

Level 4, and a sword. Won all three fights. Melpomenne with out a sword was ... tragic.

That damn dog is no substitute for an actual weapon http://melpomenne.mybrute.com/fight/35494555

Dollhouse actually reminds me of Firefly quite a lot. It has the same mix of an unlikeable main character, a hard-to-swallow premise, and writing that thinks it's more clever than it actually is. Firefly wasn't a bad show in the sense that, say, Birds of Prey was a bad show, but it always felt slapdash and smelt of flop sweat. Its cancellation was neither surprising nor particularly disappointing. I'll probably watch Dollhouse until it goes away, but I'm not expecting it to last long.

I call it the "Spartacus Problem."

I pretty much agree with Kotaku on this one. Bioware seems to have no understanding of the various sub-genres of fantasy. Their tale, focusing as it does on the Darkspawn and their origin of daring to enter what had been forbidden to man by the Maker, is firmly in the high-fantasy camp. Calling it "dark heroic fantasy" because people die, there's no flat-out proof of a deity, and there's blood everywhere is just plain wrong. Lots of people being wrong on the Kotaku thread, too. High and low fantasy are simply different traditions. High fantasy draws on earlier literary works based ultimately on the medieval romance, while low fantasy draws rather more directly on the pulp adventure story. Since pulp adventures are themselves derived from the medieval romance, it's a pretty blurry distinction.

I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. Romances have been part of adventure games since King's Quest 2.

I paid about fifteen bucks for Dungeon Lords and had some old-school fun with it. I wouldn't have wanted to pay forty, but I felt I got my money's worth. Dungeon SIEGE, on the other hand, was a complete ripoff even at ten bucks.

Driveable vehicles are right up there with pretty shoes on the list of "things I don't look for in an RPG." Driveable vehicles were done perfectly back in Ultima Endbracket Beginbracket and no one's improved on it since.