Janmanden

Don't know about Skyrim, because I couldn't care less about Bethesda games, but Might & Magic rocks, except IX that sucks. Aah, memory lane.. It's funny the way that Might & Magic VI utilizes graphics for characters, close-ups, menus, shops, etc makes it so easy to ignore the fact that the game world itself looks really awful and pixelated. When I think back I only remember good graphics.. So I had to pull it out again.. Still looks uh.. Whoa, there is music too? Funny I think I actually got so tired originally of the New Sorpigal theme that I switched off music entirely, but it's actually pretty nice. Imagine that, fourteen years later I hear the music. Found some old savegames from 2003 in a backup.. Still nice, but the controls ugh.. Arrows, seriously?! It took me quite a long time to switch from arrows to ASWD, but I've been using that for half a decade at least and now it's just completely opposite. MM7 and 8 at least have a bit of customization of keys, but unfortunately not all.. I have started so many fights out of habit of using ASWD.. A for Attack.. Oh well, I can't quite remember how to play this game, but some things did return. Like using flight outdoors in turn-based combat and dodging attacks with swift adjustments of altitude.. And the following inventory clutter and management of all the goodies.. That's a like mini-game in itself to get all the items to fit.. I remember hoarding rings for enchanting.. Making my own cool items.. Something about solstices and places I had to try out.. Had some problems installing it again.. Even purchased the one on GoG too, but it was just my AV with ridiculously tight settings that messed it up and I also forgot to uninstall the original again, before installing the GoG one.. So now I am playing the GoG version with the original CD of my old copy.. How messed up is that.. Well, I've always had fond memories of Might & Magic VI, because it made such a huge impression on me and there was also so much more freedom and ease of play not least in regards to Town Portal and Loyd's Beacon. Love those teleportation spells setup for quick access to repairs, shops, special fountains with healing, mana or special bonuses without losing track of your progress through a dungeon or map. Utilitarian spells like that really endear me, but unfortunately the follow-ups were not quite as 'sweet' in that regard. Do miss them.

Because you haven't scanned enough uranus. That's 'probing uranus'..

Well, low bar based on the previous game. Don't think Generals players really care much about the SP story though. There were some hot babes and a bit of distraction.. Having big chunks of cutscenes full of epic drama would probably only serve to make the player (me) forget how repetitive and boring the gameplay is, as usual.. but just once!.. or twice.. or maybe a few times, until that becomes repetitive too.. I can easily imagine how some of the trailers of the pre-launch would be.. A little girl happily running around, playing in the field with a model of space ship of some kind and then a big shadow looming over her, getting closer and closer, increasing in size.. It's a Reaper Crawler of the red team.. I think a hot little romance would be a welcomed change.

Hmmmm... So you are the commander of the most advanced ship in the Alliance navy with dozens of crew members and probably some VI's too and that is why you have to scan each planet manually for resources.. Because that's what commanders do.. I wonder why scrubbing the floor, dusting and cooking isn't also part of my chores.. There is an abundant potential of silly duties here that could have been turned into mini games.. Thankfully Bioware was reasonable enough to leave it at scanning planets and playing cat and mouse with the Reapers only. The Reapers are supposed to be like 2 Km's long.. That would be like 5 times the Empire State building, but I think they must have shrunk a bit, because they are not that much bigger than the Normandy (wonder how long that is supposed to be, likely less than 100m) and they barely seem to be more than twice as tall as the tallest buildings.. They should at least be somewhat covered by the clouds.. Low clouds, but maybe that's why they picked a clear sunny day for the invasion.. Picking up the body count from the trailers.. 2 millions dead in the first day and another 7 millions at the end of the first week.. What?? Big freakin' cities with millions of people in each.. 2 millions is not a lot for a coordinated Reaper attack on major cities and only 7 millions more after a week.. They must really take it slow.. Carefully chewing each piece.. Flossing.. Brushing..

I like some mini-games, the context switching is sometimes nice, because it break the flow and add some freedom of play. Excercising some less used brain cells. A bit of pattern recognition (like the hacking grid with blocks of text rolling by) to wake you up from the mindless tunnels where you are being herded through the game. Maybe mini-games just exists to distract you from a thin story or plot or make you forget how restrictive the game is. Maybe it's a bit too organic and erm.. educational somehow, like mental fitness, but it was kind of invigorating. The new automatic system shown in the part 2 of the demo of ME3, where you just let the hand do the talking and wait.. seems a bit too passive.

There are lots of great ideas in this blog. One of the things I've always missed in Fallout was the chance to play as a mutant, but unfortunately being dipped in the FEV vats was part of a death screen.. I imagine what it would be like to be that mutant.. How would it affect me, what would my choices be, would my past life have a side-effect, would I even be able to remmeber.. Would I join the masters army or wander off into the wasteland and if I did, then what? In most games you are always the 'hero' or 'saviour', there is always a bigger evil making your attempts of being evil too a bit silly somehow, but what if you were the evil monster. A lonely and scared scary monster.. Maybe you know that you are the monster or you are just realizing it slowly by the scared responses.. Being a big and scary monster would probably limit your choices quite a bit as to the ways you can play, but if you were something like a doppelganger or a 'body snatcher' you'd have to blend in, study and impersonate your victims.. You'd get around a lot of different dialogue and challenges during your impersonation.. I wonder would a doppelganger inherit any of the features of the victim.. Would probably be a bit difficult to make friends if you switch character too often.. Should you fess up or keep pretending? What about romance, would that be possible.. Maybe it would be a trick to get close enough to switch, but what if you got involved and had to make a hard choice.. Maybe you don't have to kill anyone or maybe you do.

It would have been nice to be able to use those Ship Upgrades of ME2 yourself. The Thannix gun. Having a gun turret of some kind like KotOR.. More choice, less cutscene, is always good. That might be a way to defeat them. Gather all the resources before the Reapers get them, defeat them at their own game, but first you need to find the magic Bag of Galactic Holding, because otherwise it's going to get a bit crowded on the Normandy.

Hmmmm.. New and improved? It sounds like a step down since it does less than the old one and even less than the really old one.. If it's able to find things that is added randomly.. Could it be random things popping up in ME3? The thought sounds revolting considering how little air there is around the game, but if that's the case I'll take it unless it turns out, that I find the same 'random' things in the same 'random' places on replay. Scanning for resources was necessary in ME2, because they were needed to complete research. I wonder if scanning is necessary now, because all the fuel stations has been disabled by the Reaper presence? Makes sense, I guess, I feel a dread building up, I imagine more work, have to make regular scans for fuel to scoop to cover my dwindling resources.. Keeping Shepard locked up sounds more and more like it was the right choice, because now that he's lose he's leading them to more systems. I wonder what the Reapers do after they have entered a new system and failed to catch the Normandy.. They just leave again or do they make the planets in the system suffer for their frustration or do they leave covert sentinels to guard it?

I'm curious since I've seen this comment thrown out a lot lately. What Bioware games would you say were about choice? Yeah, many of their games have a couple big choices you can make at the conclusion of major quest lines, but I don't think a couple "do I kill you, or let you go" choices are enough to make the game about choice. Bioware haven't made any games that were about choice, as far as I know, but choice has been part of many of their games to a lesser and lesser extent especially degenerating in relation to ME - or maybe it's just now that I see it. Deciding whether someone should live or die is always a big thing, especially when it change the course of the game or the thought revolts you. BG and KotOR being the most obvious choices. Jade Empire and Dragon Age probably less if the decline has been consistent, but I can't say, because I haven't played either one of those two. Judging by various reviews they do seem to be in line with Bioware's own impression as well.

No, I am afraid that it isn't just you. It's a sad prog.. regr.. degeneration. Bioware games used to be about Story and Choice, but now it's apparently down to just Cutscenes and Action.

I agree, this is all very interesting (not really), but this is the ME3 thread. Please take all your DAO hating somewhere else. Shoo!! Well.. It feels like cheating (Boooo) and I think it should have been covered by the Genesis DLC anyway.

It's pretty crazy that you have to play the game all the way from ME1, then import to ME2 to get everything set the way you want it. I got that 'comic' what's-its-name.. Genesis DLC for ME2 to fix that originally, but it only covers the big picture with 2-3 choices that doesn't include your dealings with any secondary characters like Conrad Verner, Gianni Parsini or Shiala.. I felt ripped off. Stalling the intro 15 minutes more with nothing gained.. Not to mention how boring and monotonous that was.. Pffthh!! Doubtful whether any of these encounters will have any effecf on ME3, but maybe there will be one more husk to kill..

A union of gamers would be nice to put some pressure on game developers and publishers, especially the rich ones, that could easily do better, but let's make an exception here. The sooner you all buy it, the sooner Bioware will have satisfied their profit margins and the sooner I can get it with a discount. Don't stall it ffs..

Is Left 4 Dead a classic? It was a lot of fun for a very short time, mostly the time it took before it lost its novelty after a few months or the maps got to repetitive, because it's really such a small game.. It took me less than a week to be fed up with it. It's surely a better looking and more polished version than any of it's predecessors, but I actually thought the game would be much deeper in the single player, I was fooled by a few online comics, I was expecting some dialogue and adventure in the singleplayer, getting to know your crew and so on, but I was really surprised about how short and shallow it was.. And online it only worked well with friends.. and no more than eight of them. That was quite a limit.

Hehe.. Rolls eyes at self. I thought he was trying to dub it differently at first, because it seemed like the voice was lip syncing, mostly with Cpt. Admiral Anderson, but as the female shepard and Ashley moved their lips too it got weird.. after five minutes it was just noise, sorry. I notice that he's sprinting through part 1.. I did that too.. I wonder if everybody did.. It sucks to have to pay for extra content, but I don't think it's unethical.

They are in the business to make money and rather sooner than later, but anything will be sold. Having a special limited edition with content that you can't get any other way, would be a rather stupid move of Bioware, because there will be lots of people that would like to buy that stuff separately. Giving people an incentive to pay sooner rather than later is a good move, but I am sure that everyone get to pay something for it. I think it will all be available for Bioware credits or what's it called, but the combined price will probably be higher, because that's how their business is.

Obviously the single-player is just like a tutorial teaching you the game, before the cooperative play.

I would like to try, but I am taking it one step at a time. First I was stuck at 'Loading', then in my next attempt I got as far as 'Please wait'.. Maybe some day when I have more skill points to put into Patience, but it's probably going to take a long time, because I didn't get any exp for enduring any of those sessions.. That sucks.

"Additionally we will be making a donation of $1000 in Jennifer's name to Bullying Canada. Please feel free to also donate to this worthy cause in support." At first I thought that was a bit of dark humor, to shift the focus away from bullying Jennifer to bullying Canada, which was a worthy cause indeed.. It seems to be posted in the Dragon Age II forum.. Is it related to ME3?

So they can burn our flags but get angry if we do the same to their Holy book. You know what let's just bomb these mothers out already. Burn our flags and you barely hear a sigh, burn the Quaran and the whole muslim world go nuts..

It seems to be out-of-character with the Reapers.. I don't think they'll bother about rounding up little girls, because they are more into massive crowd control and they make servants to herd them together.

I never played the original. I heard great things about it, but the game I found didn't match it in any way, but maybe I found it too late. I found some gameplay on youtube that jerked my memory. Gritty graphics, terribly depressing music and micro-management. There were some semi-cool cutscenes, but the whole game should have been made similar to that. It always makes me a little angry when a game uses a cutscene like that and then the rest of the game is just some gritty looking pixel pushing. The old one was, apart from the research options, just about moving some pixels around and kind of shooting corporate style in trenchcoats.. Doesn't seem like there was anything tactical about the combat, no crouching, sneaking, proning, taking cover or anything tactical apart from shooting and blowing things up, it just looks like point and click shoot to me. Saw some gameplay from Syndicate Wars too.. That's just plain silly. No wonder I didn't bother. It's probably a matter of taste, if you like that kind of senseless shooting in games, that's great.. The new game looks very sleek and polished. But.. No trenchcoats, isometric view or research? At least it's still got point and click shoot and it's repetitive by the sound of it.. Judging by the reviewers comment it feels like he forgot what the original was about. It was probably a bit daring of Starbreezer to add more of a story or attempting to mash it on without too much thought. I get the feeling that it's more of a style over instead of substance game.. How is that any different from the original? The change of view from isometric to fps makes for some obvious changes to tactics as well as is usually the case, because of the loss of tactical overview. Maybe the verdict is harder because it was written by an experienced pencil-pusher, but his joy and fun doesn't seem to be consistent with his score. I think that Reviewer could have done a better job of pointing out the differences, between this and the original(s). No mention of research and funding and nothing about vehicles.. Maybe it's not there or .. Maybe all this game needs is the same sad and depressing music score as the original with the original sound.. That would really make it stand out. Vague: He can't say he's got a a great desire, but he doesn't say he's got no desire.. Btw, If I am not mistaken it sounds like Morlin (ME2) voice some of the trailers.. The other review.. Doesn't even seem to care about the original Syndicate, but only relates it to other Starbreezer games.. That's really useless. I honestly think you should say goodbye to these two reviewers too. Gametrailers at least include some references to the Original, but I just couldn't keep focus with all the distractions. It did cover something about research and upgrades, but it flew by too fast. Seems like a slightly dumbed down shooter-centric Syndicate fps game in 3D.. Had they been more true to the original, they could have cut it down the action to just mindless old-doom style shooting, I think and added more different missions.. -- edit: wtf happened to the few formats --

Says the pervert who keeps posting pictures of skinny half-naked girls. On his defense 99.9% of women in games are half-naked; if they did a KOTOR 2 remake now, Kreia would have a tank top. I think Kreia would be made to wear a robe no matter what and that's the full extent of what I want to think about that.

Well.. The Mako was part of a whole different game, than the Hammerhead. There was actually a point in hunting Thresher Maws in ME and killing random stuff, because you were getting exp, loot, credits and gear for it. Sure the Mako could be 'exploited' to snipe enemies from afar with rockets or the rail gun.. There is a lot of freedom to play as you like in that way, which has been removed from ME2.. You can even fall off the map and die.. Whew.. In ME2 you are just dropped at the beginning of a one-way tunnel, where all the doors close behind you.. You are being herded through the game.. That works for that game, because there is so little else to do than just pushing forward.. It's a bit odd that it's so limited and confined considering the scenery. Quite a shame really. There was a time that I would like to take time to enjoy and explore the that more, but you can't do that either, in ME neither, because it's confined to what you see and you can't 'jump' out there.. Can't jump in, if you are lost out there either. Sucks to be stuck in geometry without a way to 'jump' off.