Erkki

The Daedric quests are fun but most of them seem to be pretty evil. I did the Peryite one and the Sanguine one but declined some others on moral grounds and once even killed the questgiver.

I can't be arsed really to read all the contest rules and stuff... do I have a chance to win something if I don't do anything? I already clicked on the daily sales every day for the wishlist giveaway thing, but to actually maintain chances of winning that, would I have to play some of these games and get the special achievements or lumps of coal or whatever?

This happened: I'm now stronger at unarmed combat than with a one-handed weapon thanks to one of the heavy armor perks.

I have something to say but didn't want to create a new thread for just that topic. So maybe this can be the topic where you can just rant a bit if you have something to say about computer and video games that isn't really specific enough for another thread. I've played a few adventure games recently (To the Moon, Book of Unwritten Tales, Back to the Future) and wanting more, went to adventuregamers.com to look for recent reviews to see if there was anything else good (haven't been keeping up with them point'n'clicks). I know, review scores suck, but as I haven't been keeping up and reading about these games, the scores are as good a place as any to start looking. Somewhat surprisingly, when I looked at the last two year's reviews, the best scores were not necessarily given to traditional adventure games. Lots of games with 4/5, but above 4 were these games: Book of Unwritten Tales L.A. Noire (ok, that decided it, I'm going to get the PC version) Portal 2 Stacking Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (a DS game, I don't have a DS) Amnesia: The Dark Descent Heavy Rain (I excluded some reviews of old games from the nineties or their remakes) Holy crap, only 2 of those can be considered traditional point & click adventures (I'm assuming Ghost Trick is one)! Or maybe 3 if you count Heavy Rain among those. So most of what AdventureGamers thinks are good recent games for adventure game fans aren't actually traditional adventures! I think this good -- adventure game elements are finally appearing strongly in other types of games and I want more of that! I also would like to see more developers who still make traditional point'n'clicks stepping away from that traditionalism. Argh, I've probably talked about this wish before on numerous occasions so I'll stop now. I don't remember thinking about it this way before, but essentially these games (Amnesia, Portal, LA Noire, Stacking, Heavy Rain, probably some others as well) are almost bringing adventure games back to the mainstream, in a new and possibly improved form. [edit] oh my god, justadventure.com has had a redesign! incredible. that site still used to look like 1996 when I last looked at it.

Does the war start in the main quest? Or after you join either Stormcloaks/Imperials? I haven't done the main quest besides answering the Greybeards' summons.

I think the economy is fucked up. I know they are trying to make things realistic, but there are already so many conceits anyway that it's not worth it. You don't have to eat or shit, and so on. So what does it matter that a merchant has the amount of gold on his person or somewhere -- I'm assuming they have as little gold as they have to support thief characters? They could just have infinite cold and give only a little of that when robbed.

Also, I'm not sure how the game levels up enemies, but sometimes it seems that Heavy Armor is not that useful (and that the game takes armor rating into consideration when leveling enemies). For example, when I'm wearing the best armor I've seen so far and a Forsworn with two swords can kill me in 3-4 hits or one with a bow can kill me in 5, I'm thinking why didn't I go for light armor (but now I've leveled heavy armor up so much that it seems too late to go for light).

I do not collect everything. Well, besides the valuable stuff (I do wish the game would actually display the weight/gold ratio) I do try to grab most magical weapons though, so I could learn the enchantments. Usually it turns out something I already know as I can't remember what I already learned. Most of the ingredients should be weightless, though! They made that conceit for arrows (thank god!) so why not for ingredients? Also I have a lot of potions -- you never know when you need 'em (and I'm not just saying that, I've actually used most of them and been selling the ones I don't use). I wear heavy armor, battleaxe, bow, + a heavy one-hander for emergencies. With all the loot sold/stashed, all this with the potions and ingredients adds up to weight/max of 270/370 (and I have taken most level ups for Stamina, currently level 25 I think). [edit] But then, if the ingredients thing was fixed (sometimes I just resort to eating random ingredients that I have more than a couple of to drop weight) and perhaps if potions were lighter, I wouldn't mind the system so much -- it absolutely makes sense that you can't carry everything around. And it was better when Lydia was still alive, I could load some stuff on to her. But she died during a fight in Markath and I decided to let her be dead instead of quickloading because she had annoyingly little to say about things.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations for one. Trine 2? Also, Dead Island is on sale again today!

I'm getting kind of tired of Skyrim. I've played 50 hours (and I only got it a bit more than week ago!) so clearly it has something going for it. But in that 50 hours, I suspect I've seen only about a quarter of it (Whiterun, Markath, Windhelm, some places in between, and I've done only half of the quests given to me in Windhelm so far). It's definitely better than Oblivion, but the formula is the same since Morrowind -- explore, do quests, head back to town to sell stuff before you become encumbered. And worse, often I want to store stuff at my home, but I only have a home in Whiterun so far, so quite often I will end up making my way back there, encumbered, on a horse, and on the way there will be events that make me get off my horse and fight, and I will find more loot off the bodies and become more encumbered. And the world is still quite generic fantasy with lots of similar places, just this time it's are a bit more interesting (than Oblivion). It's a good game, but I wish they took a different direction in next games -- having less filler. Maybe I'm playing it wrong by collecting that much loot. I guess Dragon bones/scales take the most of the weight limit, but I'm assuming I'll be able to craft something from them eventually.

It seems this isn't quite illegal, but it's definitely a bit shady. I mean, region locking sucks badly, and it's good there are ways around it, but this is just exploiting the fact that games are sold a lot cheaper in Russia (and probably some other places) than the rest of the world. Probably this is to get people in Russia to actually buy non-pirated games. When I used to buy/rent pirated games years ago (the shop was also run by Russians) I think the pirated games they sold actually had about the same price as legal copies in Russia nowadays.

Yeah, something similar has happened to me. The quests all seem to be disconnected and quite linear. Not a lot of different ways to solve them. Sometimes you have two choices, and that's it. But they are usually not completely broken either, just that you might have either more or less information than the game is expecting. Lockpicking is easy in this game. It seems half the time I pick a lock, I end up having more lockpicks than I started with (many locked chests contain a few picks). I currently have about a 100 lockpicks so I can easily waste 5 or so on a lock without much worry.

It's definitely better, although things are still sort of wooden feeling.

Man, sometimes this game just keeps dragging you into more and more shit. I was exporing new places and clearing a dungeon when I realized I wasn't probably well-supplied enough to make it to the end and also badly needed to sell some of the loot I was carrying. So I planned to resupply and return; went to a yet unexplored but nearby Rorikstead, where I got drunk

I've noticed my enjoyment of horror-themed board games depends a lot on the other players. Well, more so than my enjoyment of other types of games. In horror I think theme is more important. Of course, nobody is going to have an Amnesia: The Dark Descent like experience playing a board game in a well lit room, but I'm still expecting the theme to be more prevalent in horror games than it turns out to be. If there are players who think/speak in terms of the mechanics or maths instead of the theme, I usually don't have such a great time. Some players even ignore the flavour texts completely and just read the stats/effects. The thing is, many of these games (Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness) have complex rules which necessitate the focusing on the rules, mechanics and maths. On another note, I've played some good games recently that I'd recommend, but I don't have the words to describe them: Civilization Kingdom Builder Battlestar Galactica -- this is really awesome. Being new to board games and used to licensed video games sucking, I'm amazed that many licensed board games are actually really good. The game creates a real atmosphere of suspicion -- who is a cylon and who isn't. I'm told that cylons win almost all games though, so perhaps it isn't that well balanced. Ankh Morpok

NightSky is a seriously good game where you roll a marble ball and solve physics puzzles. Better than Saira. But on the topic of Humble Indie Bundle: I find it completely useless as I've usually already purchased the games I'm interested in before they make it to a bundle.

I would have to go with The Witcher 2, probably. Blocks That Matter would be my second choice probably. It has a really good balance of hard puzzles and fun. Of course, as mentioned there hasn't been a shortage of good games this year. I think noone even mentioned Deus Fucking Ex yet. Skyrim is good, and Batman seems to be as well. I just started playing Trine 2, etc. The thing is, most of these games are sequels that seem to be mostly perfecting what the previous games already did. The Witcher 2 on the other hand took almost all that was good in the first game and raised it to a whole different level, while having probably the best-looking visuals in any RPG ever. Plus, it had a hugely branching story line where you could pick an entirely different side to play in the preparations for battle of the second act (or was it third?). Brave!

Hooh. I only played 4 hours today but I feel like I saw a lot during that time. This game is so much more varied than Oblivion, it seems, and I've only seen a tiny part of the world -- Whiterun and some of the surroundings, Riverwood, Helgen and Ivarstead and the big mountain. Today I ventured into some really awesome looking cave/dungeons and the misty geyser pools near the underground tree of life thing. I love it! But really should tune the graphics a bit. On the other hand, the game is definitely still very player-centered and trying to spew out most of the lore in text. Others have said it better than I could. Everything that happens is mostly quite disconnected from everything else. I understand why it is -- Bethesda have been perfecting what they already know how to make and make it full of details; they are not inventing something completely new. But still, I'd love to see an RPG of this scale where the designers took the opposite approach. Instead of seeing everything as branching out from the player and being there for him/her, make everything in the world work and have a reason and then throw the player into it as if he/she was just another NPC. And only then make sure it works for the player. I don't know, could end up like crap, or having a smaller scale, but I'd love to see something like that attempted. I haven't played Dark Souls (countered to Skyrim in the article I linked to) but I suspect that's not quite what I mean.

Forget zombies. Where are all the vampire games? Apparently this shit is hot right now in books and maybe movies? I know Twilight and some other Vampire cash-in riding on Twilight's coattail* is trying to take over the sci-fi section in the book store. * I'm probably thinking of another expression here but can't remember.

There's something called that on Steam. I really enjoyed the first game, not because of the crashing really, but because I liked the tracks, the visuals and the physics (I believe it was one of the first racing games to have destructible physics objects like fences?). Anyway, if I remember correctly, the second game wasn't as good, or just didn't have enough new stuff or had worse tracks. I played it, but it felt somewhat boring. I assume this third one is going to be crap. The videos on Steam seem to focus on all the wrong things, such as the stupid brake-make-man-fly minigames. Any more knowledgable opinions?

Respect

So I've already played 11 hours and so far like it a lot. It definitely feels like an Elder Scrolls game, which is somewhat of a shame. I hoped they would have picked up more from recent open world games. There's hardly any ambient chatter with companions. Horses are slow (or at least companions keep up really well) and generally the travel vs. fast travel times are so far apart that it often makes sense to go for fast travel. Did anyone return from the Throat of the World without using fast travel? I think Red Dead has crazy horse speeds but that works much better. But otherwise, it's been awesome so far. I should probably look into some graphics tweaking guides, though, because things that are far don't look pretty at all.

I'm currently enjoying Dead Island and if this is anything like it, I am interested. Looks to be more about survival than Dead Island. But if it's as linear as Uncharted, which I suspect, then I will wait for the reviews.

But that already happens -- I can already target limbs. Although admittedly it doesn't always seem to work. So it's much easier to hit the targeted part with the analog controls?

I probably should give it a try at least, but I think I won't agree with that completely. Firstly, the combat is already so gory that it seems like a statement on how desensitised we've become to all that. I doubt I'll take any extra enjoyment out of smashing specific limbs. Although I already do target the arms of Thugs so that they would have less chance of hitting me.