MrBrown

Frankly, if they want to make a more story-focused game, I'd prefer they use a predetermined main character. The more choice you give to the player about the main character, the more you have to either a) change the focus of the story away from the "main" character, which results in him/her becoming a sort of observer who goes to places to find out the stories, rather than the stories revolving around him/her, or b) make game content that is exclusive of each other, which they always want to minimize because it means they'll be putting work into content that will only be used by a some of the players.

You can steal anything in the game this way. You still get negative karma, but no one gets hostile. It's useful for getting limited stuff like books, or getting money early on.

There may be a design flaw with energy weapons. I haven't been following it close, but these guys have... That's interesting. I wonder how that'll turn out in future patches. Not that it matters much gameplay-wise, Plasma Caster and the YCS/186 still kill everything so fast it's a joke.

No no, that's there so you can

I really enjoyed Marcus in FO:NV, him being his usual self. Very intelligent, but not a man of many words. I wonder who wrote Marcus for FO2 in the first place.

Following the main quest is the only sure way to get appropriate encounters. The rest of the wasteland is full of variance. You can end up finding a cave of deathclaws next to a cave of coyotes. Anyway, to get to New Vegas as early as possible, go to Sloan, and proceed northwards on the ridge of the mountain that is on the westside of the road. Going too much east or west gets tough encounters, but there's a sweet spot. It isn't hard once you figure it out. In Vegas, even a level 1 character will survive easily, as long as you don't go to the southeast sections.

= "Wait for me here." For the whole game, I bet.

If I remember correctly, Caesar also aims to create a civilization that lasts. As he sees it, the NCR functioned best when it was still a de facto dictatorship under Tandi, and it's pre-war values of democracy and western individualism will eventually destroy it, like it destroyed the pre-war world. What Caesar is creating is a nation that values the whole over the individual. I still gotta check that speech victory over Lanius, though.

There are supposedly 110 caps placed in the game world, + any you get from bottles. Unless you rush through the game, it's kinda hard not to find lots of them. Pew Pew has a base DAM of 77 or thereabouts, btw. It's one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

I'll probably end up playing the old Fallouts again, just because New Vegas constantly uses their background music. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

"For Auld Lang Syne" brought a tear to my eye.

RE: Lady killer and associated perks: Unpatched, you were able to use Confirmed Bachelor to get free repairs out of Major Knight. Talk about broken. It doesn't seem to be a bug though, since the dialogue seems to imply it. Recently, I've been attempting to break the game by getting the good equipment as early as possible. Currently I have a character that got a Gauss Rifle, Plasma Caster and the Intelligence Implant on level 1, and Reinforced Combat Armor MkII and the YCS/168 by level 2. Haven't tried getting power armor early, but I think it's possible. Power Armor training, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be.

I was walking around Primm and had just found a trail of frag mines I was disarming and taking. I got to the last one, it started going 'beep! beep! beep!' and suddenly I was in a conversation about bottle caps. As soon as the conversation ended, the mine blew off my legs. I was backing away from geckos, fell off a cliff, and he met me halfway on a ledge. He was hanging upside down during the conversation. It was pretty surreal.

Mixed feelings about Civ5. The new combat system alone makes me never look back to previous Civs', but as to how long I'll be playing 5, I dunno. It seems like there's only one or two ways to play the game efficiently, while in 4 there were several. 4 certainly had it's share of always-do-this strategies, but those were restricted to early game, where as in 5 infinite city spawning and trading post spamming is a strategy for the whole duration of the game, and seems to dwarf every other possibility. And while I'm talking about difficulty, it seems like the game only has 3 difficulties: very easy (1-4), easy (5-7), impossible (. In short, the difference between them doesn't really show. Maybe this is just an effect of not being able to see what techs the AIs have, which was the most obvious effect of the difficulty rating in Civ4. The AIs also lack in personality. Every game seems to bring about just two types, a) Sociopath bent on world domination and b) loser with a couple of cities. I certainly don't want the AIs to consciously make stupid choices because it's their "personality" (I'm looking at you, Tokugawa from Civ4), but it just doesn't feel like Civ when Gandhi is conquering the world and Montezuma likes you. Anyway, I do like the game and, as previous posters have said, will probably play more of it when there's more patches/expansions/whatever out. - MrBrown @ only 100+ hours of Civ5 so far.

Aah, japanese can get so touchy when they get critic from foreigners. He even quotes Jesus in the original letter, heh. Back when this rapelay debacle first surfaced, and the japanese gaming industry considered censuring the games, some adult gaming companies started banning foregin IPs from their websites, and all sorts of messages in the line of "if you don't understand our culture, get lost!" started appearing on the sites. And webforums, of course. It's all rather funny, really.

It won't add anything really useful to your party, no. Some of the jokes are funny. Your call.

What's wrong with a little funnies?

Frankly, I can't see this being any worse than games that depict realistic killing of people. Certainly there will be people to whom such a game will be one driving force that will lead to real acts. But for every such case there will be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? of people to whom a game will be just an afternoons fun in a normal life. An adult, healthy mind is always able to separate imagination and fantasies from reality. As for RapeLay itself, I played it back in 2006 or 2007 when a friend recommended it to me. Why? Well, I watch porn too. And I assume a healthy majority of this forum does too. Japanese have been making porn (and rape) games for a long time, but most of these are text adventure games with pictures; unmoving and 2D. RapeLay, and the creator company Illusion's games in general, tend to be 3D and involve more than clicking next and choosing whether to ejaculate inside or not. Anyway, the "rape simulation" part of the game involves the player moving the mouse in a circular motion, so that character will caress the women to get them excited enough for the sex scene. After it took about 10 minutes of wagging the mouse for the second girl, my wrist got tired and I just downloaded a save game crack from the net to get all the scenes. I swear, in some of Illusion's games, it's harder to get sex than in real life. I suppose some people would get excited from imagining a rape situation, but I doubt anyone enjoyed playing this. As for the sex scenes themselves, they were no different from typical porn scenes. Sure, the women cry and shout "no!", but they do so in just about any kind of japanese pornography. I suppose someone could write their doctorate on the cultural differences of depicting sexuality in pornography, but I think analysis of whether it's more right/realistic/whatever to go "please, no!" or "****! **** me more!" is kinda beyond this forum.

The blood talents (but not the items) from Warden's Keep, as well as the items from Return to Ostagar are supposed to transfer to Awakening.

That exactly was his explanation - you don't need them. I suspect the real reason for not including them is some sort of inter-company bureucracy.

DA is buggy in the romances. I had a male character who I tried to court Leliana with, and I ended up triggering relationship related banter from Morrigan (not so surprising) and Alistair (shouldn't even be possible) as well.

I played FF13 through a few weeks back, still got side-stuff to play. The combat system is great. It's basically a better version of FF12's system. Like all the reviews say, the game is more linear than the previous, meaning it has alot less sidequests and other stuff to do besides the main plot, and most of it comes late in the game. Still liked it though, probably for the combat system. The story is your typical character centric melodrama, so if that isn't your thing, skip all the cutscenes. And by the gods, thanks for the skip function... and they didn't add that until FF12. I used to leave FF10 running and go do something else while the teen-drama was going on.

Reading about the death mechanics almost made me give up playing it, but I'll probably give it a chance soon. How necessary are rogue-skills or arcane magic stuff in SoZ?

Hmm. While I liked party management ala BG and IWD, NWN2's UI doesn't really seem suited for it. Hopefully it'll be modified for this.

The Koreans and their vassals (the Japanese and the Babylonians) as well as the Egyptians only acquired Gunpowder a few turns ago, so I doubt they'd pose much threat even 4vs1. Elizabeth and Zara also dislike each other, so it might be wise to make them fight, or at least cut all deals, at some point. They're the biggest enemies, really.