Musopticon?

STALKER: Call of Pripyat. *Optimized Clear Sky engine *Larger areas *Post-SoC plot *Apparently tons more stable than predecessors *More difficult Borderlands *Murderous art design *Lovely genre mishmash *Scintillating co-op features *Inviting class choices Halo: The Reach *Curiosity *Being a cat

An anecdote: I didn't know why everyone found the valley of mines chapter in Gothic 2 so easy-peasy. Then I tried Dragon Snapper transformation spell. Sheesh. Easy levels galore.

Northern Lights! Decapitation-disembowelment! Yay, gore!

^innuendo, lol

Funnily enough, my char just died. Yeah, bitten to death by a hound of Lamashtu, as ordered by the aasimar priestess Nualia. Well, that was a fun 2. level character. Didn't guess that Runelords could be this deadly. And as Sandpoint, the main town of the scenario, doesn't really have anyone with high enough casting level to summon Niero from the clutches of death and because the body was left in the tender care of a demon cult six miles into the wilderness, far away from anyone with a good or neutral alignment...well, I'll be making a new character. Preferably one with divine casting levels.

And Chaos Theory was a bit TOO open and forgiving. As a Thief veteran, it was ridiculously easy compared to the puzzle-like predecessors. I just knocked out everyone and kept whistling.

He's unstoppable way before that, in the second level(the Fortress one, not the mines) he gets an Elf Sword, which has ridiculously long-reaching three-hit special attack, called the Dream(shown here at 00:50). I saved that sword almost till the Shalatuwar fortress level, where every other weapon had almost triple the basic damage of that sword, but nowhere near as good a special. Bloody hell, I should end that dwarf game sometime. And I would, if Gothic 2: Night of the Raven wasn't so good.

^So old it's hilarious. Amon Tobin - Easy muffin

The nice thing with the knight(Sargon?) was that you could use all the story weapons with your own combos. He was unique in that regard.

Note for everyone, if you manage to install the game, just copy the whole install folder into a flash drive or similar and the game will play on any platform or OS you attach it. It's only the installation where the game might fail. This way'll you'll never have to do it again. I played it on a uni computer straight from an old Kingston flashdrive. Anyhow, the Amazon is for pussies and newbs. Granted, the starting level is kinda hard, but there's no challenge at all in spamming whirlwind attack. I think there's only one enemy in the whole game where it won't work and that's a boss with immunities. So, go play a barbarian or a knight: at least you'll get a complete combo list and the largest amount of weapon variety in the game. Or play as a dwarf for real challenge, since that stunt has such a short range and starts with such small weapons it has a hard time keeping up with the starter orcs. Of course, standing still usually solves those problems, since they'll just bumrush you eventually and you do pack a punch as a compromise, but it was a big undertaking to actually learn to fight as the runt after finishing with a barbarian. Three tips: One; you'll eventually run into a sword that sucks lifeforce, you'll know it's the one since it's one of the few(two, actually) weapons that have a cutscene for themselves. Keep it. Even if you are an amazon or a barbarian, who suck at using one-handed weapons, keep it. Everyone can do the health-replenishing combo and it's therefore a life-saver on so many further levels. Two; dodge and special attack, dodge and special attack. Three; throw stuff. Pick up some of the huge barbarian weapons in the first knight level and show that end boss who is the man. Hold q(IIRC) to charge the throw and attack to launch it. The bigger the object, the sharper the blade; the moar awsum the end result.

I'm all for QTEs, but only if you do them Prince of Persia:Two Thrones-style and not Cliver Barker's Jericho way. Meaning, instead of having several QTEs in a row, each requiring success in order to not fall down a pit and die or get devoured(works a bit like d20 Chtulhu, heh), have a few QTEs where the difference between a success and a fail is a different outcome to the action or combat scenario. In the Two Thrones example, failing a QTE often meant that you had failed a sneak attack and got to resort to combat. You could actually take this further and have different story outcomes depending on whether you e.g managed to catch a cab or miss a train stop in a hurry. QTEs can be used for the greater good.

Okay, that's seriously good 2d animation. Good going guys!

So do you, yet(or maybe because of that) you are not a bad fella.

Yeah, the same game.

Good Omens could be a hit or miss, depending on how much you like Pratchett and Neverwhere is a bit of bore, but you really can't go wrong with American Gods. Get Anansi Boys by the same author while you're at it.

^Ouch, evil. I laughed out loud, thanks for making the day a bit better, Walsh.

*laughs and closes the brown ledger* Alright comrades co-patriots, you now have the official seal of approval from the Ministry of Free Thought and Humour, we'll call off the politruks.

The only big gripe I had with the game was that they obviously had had to cut down development time, since only two of the characters(Sargon the Knight and Whatshisname the Barbarian) had complete combo lists, everyone else had two or three combos only. Of course the unique weapon special attacks sort of remedied that, since most of the combos you likely never used. Still, the half-done lists are an annoying reminder of what could have been. Bloody great game.

Eh... surely not John Howe, the famous Tolkien illustrator?! Well, yes and no. Apparently the dev team which developed Blade of Darkness stripmined most of their monsters from various fantasy artists, most famous of which was Howe. The basic orcs you face throughout the game had the look from their posture down to the very basic armor textures.

Yeah, the bazaar looks nomnom. Actually, the whole jungle continent looks glorious and I really like the exploration theme.

So, does this require a monster rig? Because if it doesn't, it's binge time. I'm *this* close to reinstalling G2 because it's been so long since the last time I played open world rpg.

Just browsed through the Dragon Age wiki, at Wikia and honestly now; Morrigan. It's like they browsed through "Making a Fantasy Character for the lowest common denominator 101" and went "woah, this is WILD!". I admit I've kept myself in the dark when it comes to DA for quite a while now, mostly because my weekly fantasy fix is easily sated by pnp rpgs, but that character design is just a laugh. Granted, if that first dialogue is supposed to be some kind of thinly-veiled entre, then I'll have to give it to Bioware for finally recognizing their strength in cliches and going tongue-in-cheek. CDProjekt did that and their game was worlds better thanks to it. On the other hand, I'll take Morrigan over Dawnstar any day. At least she seems like an adult ffs.

Nevermind the bollocks on what kind of idiot clusterluck of sexism and rampant "no waii" this thread has been since the second page, I could bet my left testicle that the OP was referring to Invisible War with "Deus Ex". I can't imagine anyone as having such a bad case of double standards like almost everyone in this thread seems to be implying that she has. Furthermore, my personal opinion is that Invisible War did different genders and the choice in between affecting gameplay very well for it's time, so the OP has every right to argue her point. She has come to, if not expect then, favor that kind of reactivity and choice in her titles. People, please. This isn't 4chan.

^Jags is making fun of him, not going against him, you doofus. Anyhow, I'll third Homeworld, Outcast(the world design and vibe was magical), Hostile Waters(VO done by the cast of Blake's Seven and plot and characters by Warren ****ing Ellis; what's not to love?), Blade of Darkness(John Howe, olol), Nexus, King of Dragon Pass and Crusaders as well. I really got to play The Last Express, eventually. I actually like rotoscope techniques and also the Third Man, huh. And I'd like to offer a differing opinion on Homeworld 2. Sure, the adaptive AI element was anything, but successful, sure, it took quite a different direction gameplaywise and sure, there's something to be said about the game not building on Cataclysm's new elements, but my god the art direction and music especially(this is a battle theme). I think the game is a flawed classic that gets bad rap far too often. Granted, that actually seems to be a consensus in the 'nets, so I know I'm just preaching to the choir, eh.

Well yes, quasi-fps' tend to concentrate more on writing and plot, maybe because the cross-genre features, usually from rpgs, often include more reading(item descriptions, pdfs, etc), but the list of fps' with actual writing is really short if we don't include them. Another one just came to mind: Doom 3.