Amentep

Sad, sad news. Its been quite fun seeing her back on TV with the Sarah Jane Adventures and of course her original turn on Doctor Who is one of the highpoint periods on the programme.

I remember hunting a Wampus in M.U.L.E. Isn't Hunt the Wumpus more of an adventure game than an RPG though...?

Maniac Mansion (which I never beat) and Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders (which I also never beat) were Lucasfilm Games, as I recall. Fun games (even with my lack of success at them). My first RPG was SSI's Phantasie on the C64.

Because Matter-Eater Lad is your favorite comic book hero. "Trust me. I'm a Senator." - Tenzil Kem, Matter-Eater Lad The issue where M-E Lad defends Polar Boy is pure GENIUS. >_ Doesn't she do this pretty much without help anyhow? ba-dum-dum!

Crimson Skies maybe Or maybe Air Power: Battle For the Skies by Rowan (1995)? Kinda hard to place where early PC games should be...

I don't know how work is divided at Bioware but it's believable that, if nothing else, they transferred to other teams to work on other project. That said, what matters is whether the final result is acceptable or not. I've wondered - considering the short development time and this is pure speculation - if Bioware had a plan for a Dragon Age direct sequel and EA wanted a DA followup in a short turnaround time and so they created a side-story that could set things up for the bigger story, shaved off a small team who, as their jobs wrapped, moved back to the other DA sequel team. Still the reused maps didn't bother me - its not like my game enjoyment is tied up into how amazingly twisty the caverns are.

Arcanum had bad combat - that's my opinion. Not a rumour, myth or innuendo anymore that your opinion that Lionheart was plain crap.

But I already got the shovel...!

Perhaps this will give you a clue on how much they reused maps. There is ONE cave map that basically is used for just about every cave. It's a nice long cave...but is probably re-used for EVERY cave in the game. One map. So this guy is saying they only had time for ONE map? A similar issue is with simple buildings in Kirkwall...they basically have ONE warehouse layout used for EVERY Warehouse/Building. I lost count how many times I went to that building. Literally...I have NO idea how many times I went in that one building. Oh...it's a different quest and supposedly different building...but it looks the same. I think they reused that building more than they reused the infamous two buildings that they had for generic planet quests in Mass Effect 1! (they used the cave less though then those two buildings in ME1). Overall, I can see the guy's point...but they kind of went to the extreme of reusing in DA2. REALLY to the extreme. Imagine if in BG2...every building was EXACTLY the same. When you go in the palace, or the the Dark Elf levels...they all are the same since they all use the same map. The small dwellings in BG2 were sort of like this...but nothing on the scale they did it with DA2. IMO of course. The cave map uses a door system to block off sections of the cave and paths in the caves. I thought that was a nice solution to the reuse of maps, because you couldn't ever be sure of the path in the cave despite it being the same map. There are two "warehouse" maps, each with four doors and two linked rooms that could be blocked off (although a bit more obvious). I actually had no problems with the reuse of the maps. Heck I didn't have a problem with it in ME1 either, so maybe I'm totally off the curve.

I loved the setting and the lore. The Barcelona sections were awesome. Once you left the city, the story was still interesting but it became wave-after-wave of opponents and IMO the games combat mechanics weren't well designed for mob fighting. Could be they thought people would play it more in co-op but I found it near impossible to get through the mobs outside of the city as it got near the end game. Still a really, really cool setting. I actually have an itch to go back and replay the game (at least through the Barcelona stuff anyhow).

To tell the truth, there aren't many PC games being released in the US that are PC exclusive and that I'd like to play. Given that I've been a console plebian for many years (well since the Atari 2600, the C64 and Apple IIe not withstanding) I have not problem playing games on consoles.

I kept expecting when you got to the extreme of techno or magic that you'd be attacked by supporters of that side (since they interfered with each other). I will say that while I think Arcanum was hugely flawed (and stand by my assertion about Lionheart) that it was fun to play through once.

RECORD OF LODOSS WAR tv series (with primary elves Deedlit and Pirotess) still predates FFXI by a decade...

I loved the setting for Arcanum. But to my mind its only two steps removed from Lionheart which I also liked the setting to; the big difference being that - Arcanum's inventory bug notwithstanding - it was generally playable whereas Lionheart IMO became utterly unplayable after Barcelona. Combat in Arcanum wasn't just unbalanced - it was tedious. Painfully slow in turn based, two fast to properly react to in non turn based. And it also had the same problem the Fallouts had of combat triggering because of something you couldn't see on screen and having to wait a couple of turns to see what was attacking you. As for role play - they made a quest about a gnome conspiracy to create half-ogres...which if you're playing a half-ogre your PC has no extra comments on, IIRC. There were a lot of great moments to use skills and reactions but it could have been a lot better in that department too since there are a lot of combat sections that can't be talked out of.

Unless your memory has been altered of the event, that is.

I didn't like the bug that ate my inventory (including quest important item that caused me to have to restart). I also didn't like that technology was, essentially, underpowered when compared to magic and that magic basically trumped everything else anyhow (melee combat, etc).

I liked some of the ideas behind Arcanum but felt the execution of the world left a lot to be desired. I'm also not sure even if there was someone who wanted to pony up the money for a sequel if it'd be easy to get.

I always thought the Elven-ear look was attributable to the RECORD OF LODOSS WAR tv series that came out in the 1990s and its subsequent popularity...

The original embargo for Batman not killing was made in 1940 after Batman #1 featured Batman gunning down giant men (created by Hugo Strange) from his batplane. Editor Whitney Ellsworth put a stop to Batman killing (this was a shrewd move - there was already anti-violence in comics rumblings at that time anyhow - which is why National/DC hired William Moulton Marston to write testimonials on the positive effects of comics - which would ultimately lead to Wertham and the kefauver hearings...) That said I believe Batman traditionally took the pulp way out - the villain was killed by their own mechanizations at the end.

Am currently playing Saints Row 2 and Plants vs Zombies.

Kresselack's Tomb! "Promised? Promised?! I made you no promise." Tony Jay's work was awesome...

Then what is a Black Box? A flight recorder in a plane? An event recorder in a locomotive?

Hopefully its the lumberjack beard w/swamp hat!

Bit disappointed in the delay, but if it makes the game better I'll be happy in the end.

Anything else. Disney, Warner Bros. Anime started out as: How can we do Disney but cheap? Cut out the animations and place it against a static background. Take a look at this, from 1937. Look how smoothly the characters move. Look at the most recent anime out of Japan and it looks like stop motion in comparison. Every moment a character is on screen, they are moving. It looks... life like. Even though many of the backgrounds are static, watch when Snow White runs through the forest and pushes the branches out of the way and interacts with the environment. Can't really blame "anime" on cheap animation - that was pretty much pioneered by Hanna-Barbera ("Limited Animation" they called it) to do animation on a tv budget. Thus recycled animation pieces and static, non animated scenes (or barely animated, like mouths only). Anime didn't start out as "Disney but cheap" it started out as "Lets do animated movies like Disney". I'd stack the best of Japanese animation against the best of US Animation personally - if its good, its good, if its not its not. Country of origin is pretty irrelevant IMO. ObTopic: Looking forward to Mass Effect 3 - but no interest in the animation because it won't be "my" Sheppard.