Musopticon?

"Look hon, soon we'll have a new member to the happy family!" I loved it.

STALKER: Oblivion Lost mod with Panoramic Blowout at Garbage, some of the missions went totally haywire with the post-blowout mutant summons. Notice the awsum Abakan with attachments. TMP that came with the mod, saved me a million times in ambushes, since the AP ammunition is almost as plentiful as FMJ. Panoramic mod background skybox in action, with an unwary guard at Agropom about to buy the farm. STALKER: Sunny Day, Beach Trip is A-GO! The Dogcatcher of Viz...Rostok.

In spirit of alternative history, I'd actually want to see the Transformers "what if" scenario during the late WW2 come into games. That was brilliantly geeky.

Primordial - The Soul must Sleep Finest point of the Spirit the Earth Aflame album, a personal favorite. Great to see a band that started as a Venom and Death cover group in the 80's has come so far.

Well, well, trite high fantasy. It's been a while. Where have you been, I've missed you! Everyone has! I see you brought your friends bombastic music and cringeworthy writing with you, how nice to see you guys. Man, we are gonna party like it's 2001 and Athkatla again! Honestly, I've missed this feeling. I can't think of a better way to spend nerd time during rainy days than a Bioware fantasy hack.

Could you explain what these "concept and execution" are?

I liked the one that made you completely undetectable to cameras. I honestly can't remember what the last aug was, but I'm partly sure that there was one which made it is possible to hack remotely. Nevertheless, all of the augs were pretty one-situation tricks. I honestly never used raw strength except for one box puzzle just to try it out. Combat strength was far more useful since you could instantly destroy combat bots with it and dragon tooth. The aim assist thing sucked all juice in a couple of seconds and I didn't see any point to the improved muscles thing that made you jump far and run fast.

As always, mkreku is grossly overexaggerating. Unless kicking someone for 15 meters to get them to die in an enviromental hazard is considered "immediately". And please, go kick the cyclops into the face, see if it cares. I never understood this complaint anyhow, since it's like complaining about force push in JK2 or that you can save-load-spam in Fallout 2 until a critical hit ensues. It's as if everyone took the one flaw in a otherwise neat game and then proceeded to whip themselves with it. There's absolutely no reason to spoil your own fun by choice and then lenghten the pain again and again. I actually tried to play the game just kicking everyone and an orc threw me off a cliff. Had far more fun tripping the bastard and then skewering him. Or making a critical hit with the lightning spell and watching the massive fx budget kick in.

I love action game naming trends. I mean, guys like Cutter Slade, Bolt Logan, Marcus Fenix, etc. Funnily appropriate and still hilarious.

I made a Hispanian just because of the odd lightning. And because I like to feed my inner prejudices by playing EL BANDITO!

Paul Ruskay - Sajuuk-Khar

Well, I kinda wish that one unnamed project had come to something, since there was every inclination that it would be another original ip. Correct me if that became AP.

It's in Ubisoft Exclusives mid-price releases. You can find it pretty much anywhere for fifteen or eight. Well worth playing, there's even a level arch devoted to nothing else but rooftops of a rainy city night.

I'm actually contemplating on digging up Doom 3 and starting the Dark Mod based on the screenshots. And since I'm running Vista and can't be arsed to feck around with Thief 2 problems. Only problem might be that it looks a bit too much like Thief 2. It's like they made exact copies of most of the textures and just went for higher resolution. Not to mention the random architecture(solid grey walls of brick in every intersection) that had more to do with Dark Engine limitations than style. I hope some of the later project missions display a more unique style. I actually thought that Deadly Shadows had a very nice art style

Yeah, DM is a pretty decent action game which actually uses the huge dimensions available in Source engine development. Too bad that they decided to go for fun over plausibility. Every level is full of rickety scafflds for dropping barrels on enemies and spike racks for kicking people into them. Despite this, it's bloody brilliant the first half of the levels.

"Highly unsophisticated" meaning "completely broken and unrewarding"?

^Please devs, copy Stalker:Clear Sky to your hearts' content.

Yeah, I remember reading about the game in it's alpha and beta and going "wow" just based on the team(Two Thrones was goooood) and the setting and then seeing a preview video which had these scifiy video errors and I started to wonder whether the game was something else entirely or the people at Ubi had awkward notions about staying true to the spirit of the medieval setting. Then again, it could be just Warrior Within syndrome all over again. They'll get it right eventually.

Well, the dev interchange was pretty remarkable between ISA and Looking Glass. And Oblivion(cf. the comment about wind and rats) had as its only good thing the stealth system designed by Emil Pagliauro(aka "Mr. Assassins" IIRC).

On book licenses(and I love Herbert and Erikson, reading Deathhouse Gates and Heretics right now), it's something that usually starts with the one holding the rights, not the developer. So there would have to be interest from the other end first. Though I can imagine both Erikson and Esslemont(who hold the ip) having some interest on making a Malazan game. They have their own rpg afterall, made from the ground up during their free time. As for Shadowrun being a blatant Tolkien rip-off, feck off. I don't like the setting myself, but it's pretty one-sided to shout out "rip-off" with such a malleable genre where all influences go back and forth. I mean, Tolkien didn't invent elves, nor fantasy. And just as well, there are far worse rips in the genre, like that Shannara travesty.

Though to be honest, Deus Ex's augs weren't anything to write home about. Around 5 were useful(invisibility, heatless image, soundless steps, regen and remote) the rest either degraded your reserves too fast to be actually useful or didn't have enough effect(I mean, raw strength, whee I can move crates) to matter. Not to mention, abilities seem to have a pure combat use in AP, so I wouldn't even start a direct comparison. Now, variety, that's where I agree. I really hope that the other skills have their own abilities as well. Though it would be kinda silly to not have one for explosives and martial arts, for instance. And as for weapons, sigh. I wish they'll have customization to some extent. That would remedy at least some of the lost opportunity. I mean, I get that each weapon is tied to a relevant skill, because the whole system is based on that, but we can only hope that weapons don't just recieve "an upgrade" every other level, but that there's actually several types per weapon class with different pros and cons.

*grumbles about WH40k rip-off*

"Gorn to the bear pits tomorrer. Wanna come with?" "We'll boil yerr KNICKERS!" "Must have been rats" etc

Oh yes, Dark Project is my fave as well. Eerie, very conscious of its influences and nicely written as well. I just prefer the Metal Age mods, actually. Edit: And I played Dark Messiah as a Thief for as long as possible. You could sneak every part until the House of Ash except for one bossfight in the Spider Temple end. Very nice game, just flawed at parts.

Don't stock up on the junk, sell it away. There'll be plenty more to find in the over 150 locations you got left to rummage! And the part hunt is kind of a minigame as well. Funnily enough, I'm finding a similar thing to happen in Oblivion Lost. I'm basically artifact hunting just to get the best combination(or "mesomodificate" as the silly Ukrainish likes to tell me) artifacts as possible. It's also nice to see how much previous knowledge of the story helps me out. Yesterday I took a vacation from the main story and, instead of going to x18 to fight Burer and face poltergeist hell, went to Wild Territory, deftly avoided the Kruglov escort part and did some missions in Yantar. Am also avoiding using the Nato weapons, even though I found an awesome H&K G36 from Army Warehouses, just because finding ammo at this part takes some effort and because I like the Kostyer attachment. Gadgetry has to be one of the better points of the game. You don't necessarily need all the attachments, but since finding them is kind of random and rare, it feels very rewarding. Case in point, I've only used the attachment grenades against random dog packs, even though it packs a massive whallop and some of the new monsters are pretty deadly. Not to mention, the updated controlled(or the older version actually) is one nasty bastard. Two of them zombified the Duty camp and half of Freedom base before I decided to intervene and the Freedom guys finally use the Vintorezes to their utmost. I love the new random and natural conflicts and situations that spring up constantly in the mod. Not only do they keep the player on his toes, but also make the game world feel more lifelike and deadly. Also, the dwarves are borderline hilarious at times.