newc0253

i never understood the whole motion sickness thing until i got a widescreen monitor and got slightly woozy driving the buggy in Half Life 2. oh wait, that was the booze, sorry.

*shrug* what's to deny? you say you dislike Mass Effect, i believe you. asking me to deny your reasons for disliking Mass Effect is like asking me to deny your reasons for disliking chocolate ice cream. it's a little hard to understand your extreme hatred for Mass Effect, however, given that you liked KOTOR - they're very similar games. that's like a fan of chocolate hating chocolate ice cream ... because of the chocolate. yes, i 'm certain you believe you're being objective... in Mass Effect? lots. i thought it was generally well-written, with decent characters, art design, etc. I think KOTOR had a better story overall, one that was complete on its own terms, rather than Mass Effect which was obviously written with a view to establishing a universe and further sequels (something KOTOR didn't need to do, being set in a universe familiar to most of the movie-going population). Mass Effect also relied more heavily on generic features like the Mako exploration, but that's pretty understandable given that KOTOR allowed you to land on approximately 6 worlds and Mass Effect allowed you to land on more than 100. the bottom line, though, is that the two games have far more in common than they are different & that's why i find the declarations of undying love for one and the vehement declarations of blistering hatred for the other a little hard to grasp. but i'm sure that's simply because i'm not as objective as you.

uh, hyperbole much? i can get KOTOR fans not loving Mass Effect as much as KOTOR. i have an inordinately hard time understanding how anyone who liked KOTOR would describe Mass Effect as 'garbage'. of course there's more to a game than the look of the corridors. but if you agree that they looked similar, then it's hard to understand your complaint about the future looking like a strip mall. also, you don't have to be terribly objective to see that KOTOR and Mass Effect had the same visual team and overall look - Mass Effect did rely more heavily on set pieces (e.g. every mine looked the same) but it's not like each part of KOTOR was lovingly hand-crafted... nothing worthwhile? yeah, hyperbole really is your thing.

every time i hear that definition trotted out, the dumber it sounds. think about it: you could have a CRPG which had almost zero combat in it, but so long as it had one fight, and that fight involved a combat mechanic that was partly based on the player clicking at the right moment, it would qualify as an Action RPG under that loopy definition. by contrast, you could have a CRPG with BG's combat mechanic but zero story and just involved walking from location to location, killing monsters, collecting phat l00t and levelling up. by the same loopy definition, that wouldn't be an Action RPG, even though the game is nothing but combat plus treasure. Mass Effect's combat mechanic has little bearing on the game, just as the Witcher's does. Both games quite obviously belong in the same category of story-driven CRPGs like BG or Torment, but are nonetheless regularly mislabelled as 'action' RPGs all because fanboys insist on parroting out some retarded definition they read on RPG Codex.

i find the Mass Effect hate bewildering. Maybe if your first love is the Star Wars universe, i can maybe see how a KOTOR fan would be disappointed by ME. But often i was playing Mass Effect, i could have sworn i was back playing KOTOR, especially when the corridors of the Citadel look identical to any random spaceport in either KOTOR game. ME is KOTOR sans lightsabers and wookies. either that or KOTOR is ME without a cool space buggy. really KOTOR fans, let go of your hate of ME. it is the path to the dark side. more importantly, it makes you like quite silly.

you know, even a broken clock is right twice a day and this time even Volo is actually half right. why would anyone in their right mind describe Mass Effect as a shooter? I played it on the 360 and not even a console controller in my hand could delude me into thinking that. Volo is, of course, not entirely right: Mass Effect is a straight up CRPG, not an Action RPG - at least as we understand games like Diablo, Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest as Action RPGs.

hmm, what other 4e augmentations are there in SoZ? will my gnome have a lair?

wuh, they commissioned a theme song called 'Still Alive'? will there ?

it's a big man to admit he's wrong on the internet. kudos, sir, kudos. p.s. you teh suck, l0ser!

i don't know what framerate the 360 is limited to but it looks great. my PC has a GeForce 8600 GT graphics card and to my rough untutored eye, it looks about the same quality as the 360 (having regard to (i) the obvious differences in screen size and (ii) the fact that you sit a lot further away with a console than with a computer screen).

as much as i dislike MMOs, i like the fact that games like WoW now offer an experience more similar to PnP D&D, where you & your friends form a party, as opposed to the old MMO model of a playing with a bunch of random freakshows you met online. the core of D&D has always been party-based play and it's ironic that, in the course of replicating the old D&D party experience, single-player games like Baldur's Gate have evolved into something distinct: the story-driven CRPG with lots of NPC interaction and even romances (something which old PnP crowd would never have bothered with). it's odd that the essence of D&D has become split in this way: the old PnP social interaction of friends around someone's kitchen table is now mostly online; while the authorial role of the DM in guiding and directing the adventure has been overtaken by the more immersive story possibilities offered by the single-player experience. so now we get online worlds of genuine PnP-style parties of adventurers, but adventuring against something that's been designed for a lowest common demoninator mass-audience and structured accordingly. you get the on-the-fly unpredictable kind of adventure that's only possible with social interaction, but without the kind of immersive detail and focus that you get with a DM or a well-written SP game. or you have a very immersive single-player experience, potentially far richer in terms of plot and story than your average PnP session, but without the essential flexibility and human interaction that comes with an individual DM and fellow party members. the better D&D CRPGs are typically the ones that do a better job of replicating the D&D party experience, even if they're never able to provide a proper substitute.

i have a 360, a year-old PC with a decent graphics card and processor, and painful painful memories of playing Crysis on settings that revealed it to be the distinctly-average shooter that it was (buried beneath the glossy graphics you saw in the ads, graphics that were apparently only available to the folk using the computer at CERN). i also recall playing Oblivion when it first came out on a previous PC of mine that really wasn't that far behind the curve at the time - Oblivion ran very smoothly for the most part and looked excellent, except whenever i got near an Oblivion gate and the framerate slowed to a crawl.... when it comes to Fallout, i don't want to risk running into something similar so i reckon i'll get the 360 version - it is a shooter after all - and then do what someone above suggested, picking up the PC version for expansions. and, to be fair, i've all of Bio's recent CRPGs on xbox: KOTORs 1&2, Jade Empire and Mass Effect, and they were all fine.

yes to subtitles. not only are they incredibly easy to do & profoundly important in terms of making games accessible to the hard of hearing, but they're also mighty useful for hearing folk like me who want to skip through the recitation of less-than-essential dialogue (i'm looking at you, mass effect)).

unless you've got a state of the art PC with the latest graphic card, it's safe to say that FO3 will almost certainly run better on a console.

i'm not an RPG vet either. my first experience with RPGs is Bio's Sonic Hedgehog!

Yup, it's a white. Er, a wig-it. I never know how to say that word. rhymes with 'blight', 'fight' and 'might'.

hey, what the frak happened to my earlier post? this is a DRM thread, and i posted about DRM: a heart-rending tale about how DRM can ruin lives...

the point about licences is that, if the licensor feels the licence isn't being exploited properly, they can always rescind it no matter how long-term and exclusive Atari's licence is. Atari may well be looking at ways to get the most out of the D&D licence & if they think there's money to be made in casual games and handhelds, then they're right to develop that. what's unlikely is that WOTC will allow Atari to abandon the PC game market: not only are games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights potential gateways into D&D but 4e itself relies increasingly on PC tools. Hell, the biggest crowd that 4e is pitched at are the folks on PCs playing World of Warcraft - you can't tell me that WOTC would ever permit its licencee to ditch that potential market...

strictly speaking, as a publisher, Atari doesn't licence games at all. it has a licence from Hasbro to publish D&D games, but there's nothing to stop Hasbro licencing another publisher.

again, WOTC don't make the games, they just licence other people to make them & rake in the cash. they hardly need to restructure in order to licence handheld games, and it wouldn't require them to stop licencing PC games either. you can chew gum & walk at the same time.

why wouldn't they want to licence further PC games? it isn't like it costs them anything & i ain't never heard of a business that didn't want to make more money...

to the next person who starts a thread whining about DRM: your DRM hate is boring. enough already.

yeah, i always found the retrospective attacks on NWN2 a might weird: once MOTB came out, suddenly NWN2 was crap and awful. maybe with a little more hindsight, we'll see neither NWN2 or MOTB deserve their current reputations: NWN2 was actually, despite its flaws, a very good effort and MOTB, while also a very good effort, is hardly the non plus ultra of CRPGs. despite its superior graphics, for instance, i'd definitely rank it below HOTU. speaking of retrospective attacks and back on-topic, i also don't understand Kaftan's earlier comment that 'everyone said Witcher was rubbish'. really? who the frak said that?

enjoy it while it lasts. because, other than premium mods, it definitely is the last 3.5e game you'll see.

well, if it's that unimportant to you, why'd you start the thread? seems to me that if you care about the music you download, you'd pay attention to the emails that come from the folk who're selling it to you, e.g. "WARNING: YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO BACK UP YOUR PURCHASES AFTER OCTOBER 9". BUT if you don't bother to pay attention to the emails you get, then who else do you have to blame?? it's not like they're shutting it down and not telling you.