Erkki

Amazing. I never payed much attention to Psychonauts because of the ridiculous amount of fanatism in here and the AG forums, but now I see that at least the story and the characters indeed look very promising. BTW. The large MPEG trailer was actually large -- 640x480.

ETC

I haven't played the original or this, but the only flight "sims" I really got into was Master of the Skies: The Red Ace and it's sequel Red Ace Squadron. They're shareware and can be downloaded from here. They are also very easy to control (your mouse functions like joystick) and look good -- not technically maybe, but they please the eye. The game was kind of poorly structured (as shareware games tend to be), but I think it was really fun to fly around and I completed the free parts of them anyway.

I noticed this Half-Life 1 mod called The Ship Online in Steam's third-party games. I don't have Half-Life 1 installed at the moment, and can't figure out what this exactly is from their website, but it seems to be something like a multiplayer murder mystery. Has anyone tried it?

Hm... you're right of course. I'm stupid.

How does the summon spell work? Does the summoned thing follow you around and help you fight? Does it get killed easily or timeout? Can you summon any creature if you upgrade it or something?

I see your point, Treesus, but if you make the main character's bows powerful, you must also make the monsters bows powerful (if the game has such monsters). Well, you don't have to, but I think it would make sense. And getting killed by one arrow shot by a Goblin Commando or something wouldn't be very fun.

Umm... it's getting kind of strange talking to myself, I hope at least someone listens. Actually the speed in the game is adjustable. It was just hidden away like everything else. I didn't find any info on it, just accidentally pressed the keypad +/- keys. And it's starting to bother me that information is hidden too deep or not available at all. As I get better at the game, I need more and more info, but the game just won't give it to me. For example I'd like to know a bit about the dynasties of other kingdoms before I click "Propose Royal Marriage" (or something like that). Instead, I'll just have to see their reaction "No you son of a bitch! Might I remind you that we don't have any offsprings to marry." ETC. But despite that, the game rocks. (how many times I've said that) But I hope the full game won't be too easy because I was already the second most powerful kingdom when I played for the third time on the 'hard' difficulty. But quite a few things have been disabled in the demo so that may make it easier.

I think I'll get the cheapest Steam version. I'd like to play the remastered Half-Life, but not enough to pay for it.

Damn Steam has pre-loaded it for me. I have no interest in it. Now there's already 3GB of HL2 stuff on my hard-drive. Every day I hope I can finally buy it and start playing

Do I understand correctly that the renown names can only be bought? That kind of goes against the 'for every action a consequence' advertising. As does changing alignment for money etc. I still think I'll enjoy it once I get to play it, though.

Yeah, I was right. The game gets much better with the 'normal' difficulty setting. Getting a trade agreement is hard with larger kingdoms, let alone an alliance. I'm getting addicted to this demo. Unfortunately, it always ends soon after your first king dies (or it may be triggered by another event, not really sure). This time I managed to make Scotland the 10th most powerful kingdom in Europe. Now I guess I'll try the 'hard' difficulty. The ingame help and the interface is not the best though. I still haven't been able to figure out how some things work. A layer of polish is perhaps missing, but i tell you this game will be pretty damn good!

Hmm... maybe it isn't. As I read it, he invented the style of animation (including the term perhaps)?

Oh wait. Did you mean to google for what animutation is? And yeah, that intro/trailer is pretty similar to it. Actually I just googled for 'animutation' anyway. I didn't actually know it was *invented* by Trapezoid. I only thought he was one of the first to do it. You learn every day

I'm an idiot. What exactly am I supposed to google? I tried Katamary(i) Damacy(shii) animutation but nothing.

The demo rocks! At least somewhat. The tutorial is crap, because it isn't continuous and it shows you all the aspects separately, not how they work together. Most learning I did by playing. Playing the game itself is pretty damn good. There are a few problems, like no adjustable speed (sometimes you have to just wait for things, sometimes too many things going on at once); not very efficient interface etc. The diplomatics are funny. When the game started I made Alliance with ALL KINGDOMS! Of course, that's not smart but I had to try and noone refused. But maybe that was on the easy level only. But later in the game, the diplomatics got quite interesting actually. I haven't tried controlling the battles myself yet. One thing that kind of bugged me at first was that not much was interactive. You make your decisions in the towns or by giving a few simple orders to your knights, and by going to auditions with other kings (where you make the diplomatic choices). But the villages and other settlements outside the cities can not be controlled. I guess in the end that's actually good because that reduces micro management. And in this game, micro management isn't really an issue it seems. You HAVE TO make choices what to build because the building speed is rather slow and your cash is limited (although the other kingdoms seemed to have lots of it because they payed me ransom (for releasing a prisoner) several times, and it was more gold than I ever had before. It seems armies can only be moved when there's a Marshall leading it, so the number of armies seems to be quite limited (you can have 8 or 9 Knights total -- including Marshalls, Spies, Merchants, Clerics, Builders, Landlords). But maybe that's also good.

http://demo.knights-of-honor.net/

Your avatar offends me. Congratulations, you just pushed me over the edge! I'm leaving now too.

Yay! The English (and French) demo will be released tomorrow (28 Sept).

I can't think of much evil I've done, really, besides causing as much pain and suffering as possible in GTA VC, but is there someone who hasn't done that? That actually gets boring after a while though, but there's not much else to do after you've achieved 100% completion. I'm sure I've done something evil in the Baldur's Gate or Gothic series, but can't remember because I usually decided to reaload soon after -- I always played a neutral or good character. In Gothic 1 I took Mud to a cave and killed him. But that's also almost guaranteed to happen, because he gets really annoying and follows you around, asking stupid questions all the time and destroying your groove.

And also the downloadable thing is intended as a demo only and they're hoping to find a publisher for the full game. Well, but to be fair, if they'd fix those things I mentioned, it might actually turn out a solid mediocre FPS game.

You should frame him for something that will get him fired. Ah, sweet revenge. I wish I had something to revenge.

"I thought about it*, but decided not to do it." * continuing this discussion

I've played the Dawn of War demo a bit now and it surely seems an interesting game. But again, as with Rise of Nations and other strategy games, playing the demo has already satisfied my curiosity and I'm not that interested in the full game. I just can't fucking help being bored by base building. If I do it once, maybe twice in one game, I've had enough. And I didn't really appreciate Dawn of War's "solution" to the question "How do those units magically appear from the barracks?" So still, I'd go with Evil Genius. Well, that has of course even more base building, but you know what I mean. I didn't like Dungeon Keeper much though, so it may turn out I won't like this either.

Discuss. I think it's a good concept, but badly done. It's short enough to play it to the end without getting *too* bored. The city is too big (with no content) and the streets lack personality. The story is the most awful piece of shit I've experienced in a game in this century. etc. BTW. How closely is the city modelled after the real LA?