ScottishMA

That would be my vote. Any later and the tactical level of warfare will primarily be restricted to battalion commanders and below, which to my mind is too small for the Total War theme. Plus it would just be really cool to have your rifle companies form square as cavalry charges down on them.

First Half of the Game: 7/10 Second Half of the Game: 3/10 Terrible combat, level design and AI do not make a good shooter. The roleplaying elements were generally good and aside from some spotty level design and storyline that doesn't really go anywhere the more open first half of the game was pretty enjoyable. Once you hit the King's Way mission the game totally fell apart and devolved into a terrible budget ware shooter. Overall I found myself pissed off with Bloodlines more than I enjoyed; I'd say I was disappointed but to be honest it was exactly what I expected coming from Troika and all. I'm probably in the minority when I say this but I think even Invisible War was a better shooter/rpg than bloodlines. So wasn't there supposed to be an announcement about Troika's future this month?

DVD-ROM drives are cheaper than new games these days...

Gonna have to agree with kumquat here, IGN reviews drag on for 5 pages without saying a damn thing. Not to mention the rampant spelling and grammatical errors that heavily detract from the readability of their articles. I've been tempted to print one out and bring it to an English professor just to see what they'd say about it.

I strongly suspect that CompUSA just picks game at random for that shelf. The local CompUSA had DX:IW as the number three seller when I was in there last summer. Bottom line: Vampire: The Masquerade has not once shown up on the NPD top 20 charts in the two and half months since it's been out. I'd imagine that means it's not selling to well.

F.E.A.R. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 Fallout 3 Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil

Son, If you really truly believe that crap, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that I'll sell you cheap... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Steam has also worked great for me, maybe I'm just lucky but I haven't had a single problem with purchasing, authentication, patching and playing through steam. That I was able to start playing the game three minutes after it was activated for the world was pretty sweet. I also believe that digital distribution is the way to go.

Maybe I didn't express this correctly, I had maxed my hand to hand combat skill but had no skill in melee weapons and no flamethrower/skill in ranged weapons. A hand to hand character is unable to complete that fight as far as I can tell.

Bah, I finally finished the thing last today and my opinion of Bloodlines and Troika dropped dramatically during the slog through the final third of the game. It was pretty good up until Hollywood but then it just completely falls apart. Sidequests go out the window as does any (weak) pretense of solving quests how YOU want to. It's just mindless combat area after poorly designed and executed mindless combat area. By games end you have to have a specific sort of combat character build otherwise you simply won't be able to finish the ****ing game. My bouncer/boxer Brujah could not kill Ming Xiao without the aid of cheats, I guess I should've read Troika's mind and jacked up my ranged weapon skills before hand. Utter bull****, the last half of the game completely and utterly destroyed any enjoyment I got out of the decidely average first half. I think any praise directed towards the first half of the game is the result of there being a complete lack of traditional RPGs for the PC right now than any sort of merit.

Yes. Rather than having a splashscreen and narration to explain what happens to each planet and npc, you have the conversation with Kreia where she looks into the future and tells you what will happen.

The clipping stuff sounds like a bug but are you sure your first game was actually at a stand still? I thought I had explored all of Nar Shadaa without finding anything until I triggered a cutscene that advanced the story and opened up more of the planet. Is it possible that that is the same case for you? Other than framerate, one journal entry that doesn't resolve despite solving the quest, and a few references to a male Revan when I had said Revan was female, I haven't had any issues with the game.

I finished late last night and also enjoyed the ending quite a bit. It seemed very reminiscent of Planescape: Torment in that the resolution comes in a final conversation not some bombastic fmv sequence. Also like PS:T the ending is left open but the resolution of the main character's story arc gives you a good idea of what will happen in the end. The only area where the ending pales in comparison to PS:T is the emotional impact and I think that stems partly from the fact that the last few areas of the game get rather muddled in terms of storytelling. I think it'll take another playthrough before I truly understand who and what The Exile was and what exactly the villian had wanted with him. Since it's difficult to fully grasp all of that in the first playthrough the emotional impact just wasn't as strong as PS:T. Despite that I found the ending far superior to the first KotOR, especially in terms of conveying what ends up happening to the planets you visit.