Gorth

Heh, wasn't until finishing ME3 it occurred to me that I could have changed the difficulty to save myself the aggravation of the last mission I don't seem to remember any particularly "hard" battles in Dragon Age, but then I usually play on default settings. I think tedium is a natural consequence of the way most developers approach "difficulty", especially the antiquated anachronism called "boss battles", which is usually just a big cheater with a gazillion toughness, stamina and resistance to everything. First a lot of trial and error, then a lot of tedium once you figure out which way to run around in circles while taking potshots at "boss". It worked fine in 'Space Invaders' in 1978, but it grew stale as a concept already two decades ago. I know there are people out there (Tigs?) who love those improved encounter mods for old IE games. I tried one once by a guy named Blucher or some such. Got my ass handed to me and wondered how people can enjoy that stuff Fun challenging combat is something without a "pre-determined" solutions. An enemy that can only be beaten by one particular pattern of attack is not fun. Anyway, games today seems "generally" (there are notable exceptions, but they are exactly that, exceptions) way more forgiving towards players. No looming insta-deaths without warnings. No letting you almost complete a game just to tell you, you made a bad choice somewhere in the beginning, easy modes, cheat codes, hand holding, tutorial levels etc.

Ok, I'll bite. How many times to you fetch the Amulet of Yendor in Rogue?

I am tempted. Never played Shadowrun, but if it's anything like a Bladerunner type game, I might just brandish my CC at the oblivion threatening good games and yell 'Charge!'

Which is kind of pointless, because it stops tingling when you touch it.. Here I wondered why some people never pick up the phone

Yeah I know. Different people have different preferences regarding who they take on ground missions (I'm pretty sure Bioware has the numbers somewhere). The main point was that it felt like their attention to NPC's had been stretched a bit thin. I even forgot Tali because she shows up relatively late in the game. Personally, I wouldn't have minded somebody like Jack and Wrex/Grunt in the party instead of some of the others. In a full scale war on the front lines, you need "bad ass" characters, not prom dates.

Thread getting a bit long. More news this way

Start of old thread End of old thread News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising. Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922 King's Bounty is silly, but surprisingly good. Worth its price in any sale if you're a fan of turn-based, imho. And re Max Payne 3: the previous games had that not-so-serious vibe to them, the baseball bat boy and the comics, and MP2 had a TV show with a NY detective who said amusing things like: 'When in my situation, you can only use metaphors...' I fear it's going to be less like that and more like Max Payne shooting in GTA tech. Never finished Kings Bounty. It was a nice game, but no substitute for HoMM3 unfortunately.

If it's good enough for Khorne, it's good enough for the wasteland. Tail guns are cool...

Extended cut here

Start of old thread End of old thread Meh, game descends into abject absurdity from the moment you hear the citadel has been kidnapped. Been thinking a bit about some improvements (with the benefit of hindsight)... Drop all the pointless Fed-Ex quests. All of them. They add nothing to the game and adds to the sense of bad pacing. No trace of those quests would add more to the game than it lose. Drop Vega, Ashley, Liara and EDI as party members (Kaidan was actually surprisingly tolerable when you play a male Shepard and can ignore romatic pursuits). Reallocate those resources spent to one or two interesting party members. Drop Kai Leng. Adds nothing to the game. Put a stop sign at the outskirts of London and tell people 'To be continued' and then find a decent way to wrap up the game.

That would be support worthy too

There are days where I actually feel sorry for Bioware.

I don't care as long as I get my box with signatures on it. I noticed that they changed the reward description some days later to include MCA on the list of signatories Edit: Oh, just noticed, $2.395m not including Paypal. Still approx. 4 days to go. Might actually reach $2.5m

Well, combat was what turned me off in the DA2 demo and since I already disliked the setting from DA:O, I was a lost cause. It's possible that there was an interesting story in there, but the packaging obscured it.

...and Doomdarks Revenge! Barring that, Master of Orion 2. Edit to add: Icemark for the heathens who are ignorant regarding the greatest game ever.

That sounds ridiculous. Did you play ME1 and ME2? I fail to see how ME3 is a huge departure from those two, particularly ME2. I'm also pretty sure your opinion is in the minority. The only major griping I've heard has been over the ending. Heck, the whole Tuchanka section was one of the best parts of the whole series. Maybe a minority, but far from the only one who thinks the ending wasn't that games biggest problem. But lets not derail (yet another) thread with ME3 stuff. Plenty of words spoken on the subject in the ME3 thread already

I don't know about BG1, but after completing BG2 the first time I started a more "roleplaying" approach to subsequent playthroughs, giving people their "signature" weapons and armour rather than finding and equipping best possible loot. Of course, some people prefer the latter.

Sounds like nethack I think food killed me more times than monsters, backfiring wands, angry shopkeepers, unidentified potions and cursed scrolls added together.

For all the negative stuff about the main story, it can be hard to remember some of the highlights in the surrounding detail. I still get a chuckle out of drunk Tali and her straw emergency induction port (went to youtube to rewatch a few favourite moments). Managed to walk in on her and Garrus too in the weapons battery room

It could have been fun having a growing crowd of bickering military personnel in that unused meeting room next to the comm room, comparing military priorities and philosophies (and insults). A wasted opportunity?

tl;dr No mate, good to hear from you, a good read and thanks for sharing. The world needs a bit of that fighting spirit Strange paraphernalia... you guys do ritual virgin sacrifices? How long did you enjoy lobster leftovers for after that food orgy???

A shame converting the assets to the ToEE engine isn't feasable. I feel a bit cheerful today... what is your advice oh griefmaster? Not sure what I think about the whole thing really. Mildly curious? If they really wanted to add something, they would come up with a game engine that was configurable, so you could mix and match 2d/3d (so you could add 3d avatars on 2d backgrounds, rather than pre-rendered "sprites"), allowed for easier change of rulesets (nothing hard coded into the engine) etc. One more online client however is a killer. When Origin gets uninstalled again shortly, Steam will be the only thing barely tolerated on my PC.

I think the game would have been better for it if they hadn't touched the origin of Reapers or their motivations at all. Just settle for a bloody nose and send them back to intergalactic darkness for another 50000 years for somebody else to worry about, but that's just me. I mentioned end of Thessia a few posts ago as the breaking point for me personally. Up until then, the main story had been rather meh, failing to compel me, the player to save an uncaring galaxy, but then it was sprinkled with all the little good bits all over the place. As empty as the main plot felt, as much did some of the surroundings feel alive and a number of excellent little stories and details played out in the periphery (sp?). Two things killed it... First off, the katana wielding Jar Jar Binks, as a failed comic (book) relief. Ok, so some cartoon figure shows up and wants to fight, no big deal. I, Gorth, then proceeds with beating the snot out of him, leaving tissue there, brain matter splattered on the wall and the rest of him in a broken, bloody pile on the floor. That's when the game decides to tell me: "Sorry Gorth, I can not let you do that. I have now unilaterally declared your opponent the winner of this contest". Gorth said to the game: "WTF, you've got to be kidding me???". Game then starts yet another long, uninterruptable cutscene, showing Gorth falling into a chasm and bad guy making off with the spoils. Good grief, it was a completely unfunny gamer experience with Malak in Kotor1 and the intervening decade hasn't improved it one inch. Second part was the immediate aftermath. After having been cheated not by Cerberus but by the game and the designers, I, Gorth, wanted to grab a Cain 920, a backpack of ammo and a magnetic grappling hook and head for the nearest Reaper, shoving my mini-nuke into it's face and pull the trigger while yelling: "This hurts you, you'll feel this!"... and what happens? Everybody in the room gets into some kind of conspiracy to agree on Shepard feeling some kind of guilt over having been cheated by the game. For effins sake, those Asari ****'s had it coming with their arrogance, smugness and covetousness. So much for adhering to some treaty about sharing Protean tech. They got their blue butts handed to them? They got exactly what they deserved. Wanted to tell Hackett as much, yet instead my Shepard goes "Waahh!... I lost" like some kind of frigging Emo (which is one of the worst derogatory terms I know) and pretends to be in on the joke, Almost surreal that such things happens in a game that features brilliant stuff like Tuchanka and the Geth/Quarian conflict. The latter sure caught me completely by its outcome Lots of great detail, not very good main story arc. In ME2 it didn't matter, as it was secondary to the sidequests and companions. In ME3 it matters and falls short. When finally getting through London, the ending didn't upset me, as I stopped being "invested" in the game since before going to London.

If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you give him a save editor you ruin the chance that he will buy the previous games and DLC If you give a man a fish, you may create a new market. If you open up a fish store you can sell fish and fish bits to him regularly Judging by the mod scene for the ME franchise, the engine/file format is not easy to dance with.

Just bring enough mortar shells and mustard gas