Video Games, The Gameocolypse

[Mindphlux]

I am going at the moment with a Mino axe warrior, a human mace warrior and 2 mages at the back. Works well against some of the harder fights, a combination of cheesing with doors and freezing monsters, with knowing where to retreat help as well.

2 mages is pretty great. Sometimes annoying to cast in combat but since they never miss and do craploads of damage I can see why they did it this way. I'd be tempted to try a 4 mage party but I'm on the 7th floor and have found 2 whole mage items... so either I'm terrible at finding secrets or they're very scarce.

[Werthead]

I am looking at Pathfinder right now, and I'll have to ask my DM what he thinks of it. It looks great. Have you played it yet?

Yes. It's a notable improvement over 3/3.5E whilst still keeping the things that made those systems work. Lots of fans call it '3.75E' for a reason :)

[Kosciuszko]

I don't think it's so much Gamebryo being bad at animation as Bethesda doesn't put as much effort into them as they do other things, just due to the sheer size of everything. A ton of games use Gamebryo and the animation can be a good deal better than is seen in an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game.

[Shryke]

4E was an attempt to convince people who played WoW to play a tabletop RPG, which was clearly never going to work in a million years. Instead they alienated a large portion of the people who'd been playing the game for the 35+ previous years and saw sales plummet like a stone as a result. On the other hand, Pathfinder, which has evolved the 3E rules even further, has been selling very well indeed (and for anyone playing 3/3.5E D&D, I heavily recommend checking out Pathfinder).

It seemed like it wasn't just "Let's get MMOers playing" but also people wanting to incorporate newer design ideas from computer RPGs into a PnP RPG. You can see the design fingerprints all over it with it's focus on balance and normalizing power curves and such.

[TheRaggedWildling]

Anybody take a look at the Sniper V2 Elite demo? It is so far glorious.

[paddington]

So Witcher 1 is on Gog for 5 bucks. I am picking it up, playing it, and waiting for the price to go down on the sequel :P

Now if I can just get my bank to approve Gog's credit card transfers... what a pain in the ass.

If you complete the Witcher 1 remeber to hold onto you save files. You can import them into Witcher 2. I didn't so I can't tell you how much they affect the second game.

[Jon AS]

I didn't so I can't tell you how much they affect the second game.

It has very, very little impact. That was clearly a case of "all the cool kids are doing save imports these days". TW2 even retcons Geralt into a relationship with Tris even if that's not how the first game played out. You can get some additional starting items, but even Aerondight becomes redundant before you're finished with act 1.

[Fiddler]

I've recently had some free time(slow at work) and I've played a few new games.

I bought Legends of Grimrock when it came out. I absolutly love this game. Its has a good mixture of tension and exploration and can really draw me in. I would like to say that I hate freaking spiders though.

I finally played Dead Space(had it sitting on the shelf for a while now) and I really enjoyed it. It had a nice story, some cool jump moments and an enjoyable weapon selection. I would reccomend it to anyone interested in it.

Next up is something I have been putting off for a while. I wanted to have some free time to really enjoy these games and now I have. I started up a Mass effect play through. I have 1 and 2, but have never played either of them. Now I've started a female Vanguard sheppard who is going full on renegade. I'm enjoying it very much, not far into it, just saved the blue chick(cant remember her name) and I've just got a couple of questions if anyone might be able to answer:

1. Is there any problems with being full renegade? Will I miss out on anything by intimidating and punching everyone I could?

2. The game counts my saves, does this mean it will effect anything in the game? I have memories of playing resident evil and trying to keep the saves to a minimum.

Also have Batman arkam city, got it with a buy 2 get 1 free deal from gamestop, and Dynasty warriors 7(brother has that currently) so I have some other good games on the shelf. Not to mention that I really want to get Witcher 2 and Dragon's Dogma soon.

[Jon AS]

1. Is there any problems with being full renegade? Will I miss out on anything by intimidating and punching everyone I could?

Punching and intimidating won't lock you out of future content. If you kill someone, they obviously won't show up later, though.

2. The game counts my saves, does this mean it will effect anything in the game? I have memories of playing resident evil and trying to keep the saves to a minimum.

It has no effect (except to drive me insane as I, for no reason whatsoever, try to keep that number as low as possible).

[ICE CROW]

In Mass Effect i had i think about 700 saves on my paragon profile and 800 on my renegade, im a prolific saver there is nothing i hate more than having to redo things. Mass Effect 3 though funny enough is the least saves for profile i ever had, my paragon has 300 saves.

[Serious Callers Only]

BEHOLD:

Let the femenazi apocalypse commence

If you want something sweeter, but slightly more disturbing:

Having selected a virtual girlfriend (let's say Rinko), you're supposed to engage her interest in real time, by taking her out on dates and planning things together. She may be shy at first, sending you mixed signals about your relationship with her. Eventually, though, if you play the game right, the two of you become more intimate. In an interview about the game, Koh, a married man, answers some questions:

Q: Koh, what do you and Rinko do together?

Koh: OK, this is pretty embarrassing. The DS has a mic and a touchscreen, so... one time, she asked me to say "I love you" a hundred times into the mic. I was on the airplane when she asked me that, so I was like, no way. There was also this part where you have to hold her hand on the touchscreen. If you touch her hand with the stylus, you get to hold her hand. And then there's the part where you have to kiss her.

Q: Did you do it?

Koh: No, no! The girl's face shows up on the screen, and you have to touch her lips to give her a kiss. That's pretty weird.... this is embarrassing. I'm sweating right now just talking about it.

As previously detailed, the game has a "Boyfriend Lock" feature, where the girls will be initially unresponsive to anyone except their boyfriend.

The game uses facial recognition to remember your face. The girls will remember you even if you've made some changes, taking off your glasses or hat, changing your hair style and so-forth.

The girls will be friendlier if the user is recognized as a friend or family member of the boyfriend. They'll remember a person's name, and will engage in chitchat. If time has passed since the meeting, they may forget, though.

....

New Love Plus will also introduce Girlfriend Mail, wherein players will receive email from their in-game girlfriends, accessible via PC and smartphone.

Girlfriend Mail will cost 315 yen ($4) per month

, but Konami is offering it for free until March. Owners will also be able to link their game data with Girlfriend Mail, so emails will include their pet names, and on birthdays or anniversaries players will get "special mail." Whatever that means.

...

The girls will also be friendly with one-another. You and your fellow Love Plus players can use the game's wireless functionality to get your girlfriends talking to one-another. They'll hang out, engage in girls' talk, and even send e-mail to one-another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIYithT_k80

:dunno:

[Sad King Billy]

Punching and intimidating won't lock you out of future content. If you kill someone, they obviously won't show up later, though.

It has no effect (except to drive me insane as I, for no reason whatsoever, try to keep that number as low as possible).

What I noticed about ME is that you pretty much have to powergame your alignment.

"I really want to tell this annoying bastard to go to hell, but then I might not have enough paragon points to break up the fight between Legion and Tali".

Which is a stupid and annoying design decision.

[Fiddler]

Cool, thanks guys.

The counting saves thing seems really odd, but I am an avid saver, I also hate to repeat things. RPG's of old beat that into me, lol.

[Jon AS]

"I really want to tell this annoying bastard to go to hell, but then I might not have enough paragon points to break up the fight between Legion and Tali".

If you import an ME1 character into ME2 it's not an issue, and ME3 replaced that system with a generalised "reputation" stat that I never bothered to try and understand (but I think it simply combines renegade and paragon points).

[Durckad]

In Mass Effect i had i think about 700 saves on my paragon profile and 800 on my renegade, im a prolific saver there is nothing i hate more than having to redo things. Mass Effect 3 though funny enough is the least saves for profile i ever had, my paragon has 300 saves.

I think, compared to ME2, ME3 had a very good autosave feature so I rarely had to rely on saving things myself. I just let the game do it for me.

What I noticed about ME is that you pretty much have to powergame your alignment.

"I really want to tell this annoying bastard to go to hell, but then I might not have enough paragon points to break up the fight between Legion and Tali".

Which is a stupid and annoying design decision.

Yes, that is pretty stupid, but I consider it slightly less stupid than putting points into Charm or Intimidate like in ME1.

Well, actually, just a different kind of stupid I guess. I was going to make a point about how the new systems are better, but they were lost in the ethers of the sudden realization of 'no, they really aren't.'

If you import an ME1 character into ME2 it's not an issue, and ME3 replaced that system with a generalised "reputation" stat that I never bothered to try and understand (but I think it simply combines renegade and paragon points).

I imported both of my Sheps into ME2 (a renegade and paragon) and, on my renegade Shep, I still didn't have enough points to keep Tail and Legion loyal. My renegade points were pretty high, IIRC.

I was playing on Insanity, so I don't know if that makes a difference.

[Jon AS]

I was playing on Insanity, so I don't know if that makes a difference.

I've never played anything but Insanity (at least in 2 and 3; I might have gone down a step in the first game as it was just time wasting there) and I'm fairly certain that has no bearing whatsoever outside of combat. I've never not been able to resolve the intra-squad conflicts.

[kungtotte]

I thought Metro 2033 was pretty cool, like a more focused STALKER, but I really didn't like its penchant for taking control away from the player for the sake of "cool scenes".

[Chise]

but I really didn't like its penchant for taking control away from the player for the sake of "cool scenes".

ha ha, I call it the Devil May Cry syndrome. In the 4th game there's a whole ridiculously badass fight with Nero & Dante and the game is like "listen.. you only learned how to dodge and shoot 'bout a minute ago.. so just sit over there and don't cramp my style for next 20 minutes, yeah?"

[ICE CROW]

I've never played anything but Insanity (at least in 2 and 3; I might have gone down a step in the first game as it was just time wasting there) and I'm fairly certain that has no bearing whatsoever outside of combat. I've never not been able to resolve the intra-squad conflicts.

In the first Mass Effect you couldn't unlock Insanity until you beat the game on Hardcore, which was the next hardest level down. Although i suppose there was probably a PC hack that could have let you play it from the beginning.

[Jon AS]

In the first Mass Effect you couldn't unlock Insanity until you beat the game on Hardcore, which was the next hardest level down. Although i suppose there was probably a PC hack that could have let you play it from the beginning.

I actually had a line about that in the post, which I deleted for being too much needless information. ;) I did unlock it the "hard" way, but both ME1 and ME2 had the achievements (which in ME1 goverened the higher difficulties and the ability to reach level 60) in simple local files that could be edited (or you could use console commands to unlock them as well).