Erkki

Man, I need to get a new one soon. It needs to malfunction a bit more before I'll build a new one though, currently it's still too easy to turn it on: 1) Turn off the power from the back for 5-10 seconds 2) Turn it back on 3) Press the front power button 4) wait a bit 5) Hold the front power button for 4 seconds to turn it off 6) Turn it back on 7) Press F2 to load BIOS defaults 8) Change the date once winxp has booted. Restarts not allowed, have to go through this every time.

Yep, it's my favourite game soundtrack. And I think it fit very well.

The combat can get boring after a while, towards the end of the game, but what impressed me was how it only works with buffs at the harder difficulty. At least it did for me. There is no spammable healing potion, you have to drink buffs before combat starts to boost regeneration rates and stuff like that. And you can't drink a whole lot of them -- your blood poison level or whatever raises with each potion you drink and you have to keep that down. So you have to plan your potion usage. For me that kind of gave a wholly different angle to the game, although I guess games like Dragon Age also have battles that require buffs. But in the Witcher I really felt like I was an alchemist/monster hunter and had to exercise both of those skills to reach my goals, had to plan ahead a bit whenever I encountered larger than usual monsters and had to know monster lore (available in the journal after buying some books) to fight more effectively. To some extent (and only occasionally), the game really does play like this suggests.I also like the way the dwarves and elves were handled a bit differently from typical fantasy settings. It seems as if Dragon Age copied some of that from Witcher (elves living in a ghetto in the city etc.).

The loading times were fixed in a sequence of patches that came out before the Enhanced Edition. It sometimes took 2 minutes to load an area (after going into a house for example). But one patch completely eliminated the problem. [edit]oops, somehow I missed Patters' post which said the same thing.

It has some installer trouble (fixed in a later re-release) and of course the resolution is rather minimal for todays standards, but otherwise it seems to have aged quite well (IMHO).

Btw, my votes in their reader's choice were: Outcast, Grim Fandango, Half-Life 2, Thief 2, Far Cry 2. I didn't put Deus Ex mainly because it didn't age well at all, mostly for technical reasons. Thief 2 is more playable today than Deus Ex.

According to RPS, the list was scandalous for not actually having the 57th best game at 57 (also, that article explains some of the motivations for the list) I would put Outcast much much higher, though.

When I say "Yes" when Windows Live asks to download an update, the game crashes Anyway, I uninstalled it already, will try again whenever I get a new PC.

Asph

Listening to the podcast now... I see that I'm not the only one who though this.

I got Space Asshole from the holiday sale, but it's just not clicking for me. It seems like a complete bullshit game. I admit, it may be because my PC can't handle it properly. It just hangs for 10s of seconds or even minutes at times, sometimes during a building collapsing, sometimes when a video/audio message plays, sometimes when I switch a weapon. I may decide to get a new PC sometime soon, so I'll give it another shot then. Don't want to miss the fun just because the machine is too weak for it.

Thanks. I tried to emulate you and ended up doing a 60-something combo and getting three medals in the extreme sewer bat challenge. Also I found that I can do some of them (such as the sewer one) better in X-ray vision, maybe it's because I'm somewhat color blind, but on some levels I have a much better overview of the whole arena in detective mode.

Only a few crap games have been translated to Estonian I think. I've never played one. I did like how in The Last Express some people spoke in their native tongues and subtitles were provided for the ones Tyler understood. Or was it Cath, I always mix their names up.

Beyond the beyond of good and evil

I decided to replay on Normal instead of Hard since it warned me that hard has no hints when guys are attacking ( the first time I played was on easy ). I completed it and I've also done 65% challenges, including all off the stealth ones except DLC. However, I'm having lots of trouble getting medals on the combat challenges. Those of you who are good at them, do you use various moves a lot? I just use counter and attack (plus cape-sweep and jumping as necessary with the knife and taser carrying guys) because I fear I might mess up the combos if I try the more advanced stuff. Of course, I usually mess up anyway. Maybe I should read this FAQ that Nachimir linked to? http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/file/952337/57661

Man. That sucks. I think the game is relatively bug free, thoguh. Maybe if you give it another try the bad luck will go away . I also have gotten stuck and had to reload a couple of times, but it was between rocks that had some weird geometry.

I might even tentatively agree with that.

I don't remember how long I played but I think 40-50 hours.

Yeah, the Gothic games are pretty much the same in almost every way: progress, selling drugs, different factions, magic, combat, skills, atmosphere, asshole NPCs etc. Gothic 3 is HUGE. It practically has 3 worlds instead of 1, compared to the other games. But it's the buggiest and it might get boring at some point. I don't recommend playing that considering your backlog and the other games you mentioned I think Risen is maybe even the best of them. Or maybe Gothic 1 or 2. I am probably most fond of Gothic 1. It was the first RPG that I played that had both somewhat believably behaving NPCs and a good faction/reputation system. But then Gothic 2 improved on that while losing a bit of the charm of the original. And Risen improved on it more, while losing more of the charm... Also, the ending to Risen sucks badly as do some of the later parts of the game leading up to it, so if you won't finish it but play only 2/3 you'll not miss much. Still, I'd suggest maybe going with Gothic 1 or 2 if you have time for only one of these games.

The only ones who'll end up able to read it are polyglots. Or it would have to be translated, but that seems would be missing the point... Or not?

God damn Windows Live. I finally decided to look into why it wasn't letting me sign in during playing Batman (it was trying to download a required update but failed every time, turned out it wasn't able to process it without first downloading a fix for WinXP). Now I got it working, selected the save slot that had my 94% complete game and pressed Enter. Boom, save deleted without so much as a warning. I guess this might lead to me replaying it on hard or giving it up...

Yeah, some of those are HARD. I've done 34% of them and I can't do the rest without learning some new skills. Also found all the riddles. The last Arkham one was so obvious that I dismissed the actual solution at first but then decided to check it anyway.

Not only the PS3 GOTY, but overall GOTY as well.

Just beat it. Though I'm not a big Batman fan*, I think all the characters were really well done, especially Joker, Harley Quinn and Batman himself. The final boss battle with Joker was a bit unsatisfying, though. I found the previous one more challenging. I played on easy or normal, don't remember which, but the game didn't feel particularly challenging at any time (except for some riddles). Not that it's bad -- if I choose easy mode, I want to just experience the game more than be challenged. ------------- * well, he is my favourite superhero but then I don't like superheroes and practically don't read comics

Dammit, seems like I must play this game. If I ever get that bonus I was supposed to get months ago already, I'll buy a PS3.