lobotomy42

There was an interview with the author of the book in Edge last month. Based on that - and that alone - am I interested in this game. He seems to take the game seriously as an extension of his ideas, despite acknowledging that the game will inevitably be a simplification of the book. Anyway, he seems to be working the devs and publisher to try and make sure the game retains some of the key themes of his work, as he sees them. Here's hoping it's more than just another shooter in post-apocolyptia.

I got through Mass Effect 1 just fine by mostly ignoring my teammates. Mass Effect 2 is similar in this regard. (I played both on Normal, not any of the higher difficulties.) Also, I'm playing through Mass Effect 1 again currently. The mission equivalents in ME are indeed longer than their counterparts in ME2, but that's only because there's so much more talking and so much less shooting. (Oh, yeah, and a Mako segment.) If you compare just the stretches where you're shooting to the other stretches where you're shooting, ME2's are definitely longer. The shortened missions in ME2 have as much shooting, I'd guess, as all the shooting segments in one of the main ME planets combined. Thinking about it now, the ME1 main quest spots do "feel" more substantial, though. I wonder how much of that is the short Mako segments. Do you think breaking the shooting segments up makes it seem like you spend more time shooting than you actually are?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bubsy, the first one, was a pretty damn good platformer. Yes, it could be a collect-a-thon, but there was a reason to collect every damn thing in sight - you needed to accumulate as many lives and continues as possible in order to complete those goddamn impossible final levels. Seriously, there were some very clever level designs in that game, with tons of multiple paths (some netting you far more extra lives and powerups than others,) shortcuts, etc. And, when I was 12, I enjoyed the goofy death animations and catchphrases. I'll admit the catchphrases seem cheesy now, but Bubsy had some serious personality and charm. On the other hand, Bubsy 2 was a cheap cross-promotional gimmick that was used to sell a Nerf gun with no difficulty whatsoever (to say nothing of the sudden addition of weapons,) and Bubsy 3D has been recognized the world over as a disaster. Nonetheless, the original was kick-ass. Now, Smartball - that was a shitty platformer.

Started a replay of Mass Effect 1 last night. Wow. It's incredible how stiff the controls feel and how slow the game seems. It's especially surprising given that I was just playing this game last week in preparation for Mass Effect 2, so it's not as if my memories of this game are distant. I knew Mass Effect 2 was significantly different from Mass Effect 1 as I was playing it, but I didn't realize to what extent. More than anything else, I think this is a testament to how a lot of small, subtle tweaks can add up to a huge difference. ME2 is similar enough to ME1 to feel like a natural continuation, but different enough to make going backwards an almost painful task. The devs really did an impressive job at sliding these changes in under the radar, and making you feel as if it's the same game, when in reality, there are some pretty substantial differences.

You should play the first game, I don't think this would be half as fun without doing so. Also, as mentioned previously, read this article. The mechanics are not "the first one improved," unless by "improved" you mean "they changed every fucking thing." Here's the choice quote:

I'm not sure what this means. There are only so many colors, and only so many combinations of colors that look good together. KotOR had a small city-planet, a field/farmer planet, an evil Sith world, a water planet, a forest planet, a desert planet, and a giant evil space station at the end. ME2 has a lot more locations than that. I don't think too many of them correlate that precisely - either visually or functionally - unless you want to make comparisons as vague as "Taris and Ilium are both big cities" or "Ilium and Manaan are both blue." If anything, the planets in ME2 look and feel a lot more similar to each other than they do to planets in KotOR. Or am I completely misunderstanding?

Just once, I would like a conversation in this game to go like this: "Hi, I'd like such and such." "No, asshole, we don't do that." "Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain. I'm Commander Shepard." "Who?" "You know, Commander Shepard. Saved the galaxy a few years back from an invasion by a huge alien ship..." "Yeah, sorry, I don't really follow politics. You can wait in line like everyone else." "You didn't hear about the first human spectre? About humans on the council? About the citadel being destroyed? About how this awesome human single-handedly saved everything?" "Listen, buddy, I run a shop. I don't get off-world much, and I certainly don't follow galactic politics. Now get in in line like everyone else or shove off."

As I've been recounting in this thread, I just finished Neverwinter Nights 2. It was really good, if you can get past the still-rather-severe-buggy-ness-despite-years-of-patches. One thing I've noticed as I've started Dragon Age is that they essentially copied the influence system straight out of Neverwinter Nights 2, with the one addition of "gifts." I haven't seen this relationship mentioned anywhere else, but I guess it's nice that Bioware is paying attention to increasingly-distant cousin Obsidian's work! Other than that, it's been a long time since I've *finished* a game. Been really good at starting them, though.

You can pre-order on Amazon.com and get release-date delivery. Might be too late for that now, though.

Yeah, I know, I'm starting a thread about a game from a few years ago and as a result no one cares. But, whatever, it takes me forever to play games, so this is what I'm playing now, and this is what I have to talk about. On the plus side, whenever anyone asks me about Dragon Age, I can just pretend they said Neverwinter Nights 2 and respond accordingly. "Hey, I'm playing Dragon Age. Isn't it awesome?" "Hell yeah. I just proved my own innocence in trial and got my own fortress!" "Yeah! Wait, what?" Seriously, though, I am loving Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm a sucker for all things written by Chris Avellone, so that's part of it. But part of it is that Obsidian really did a lot of work pushing the 'influence' system with their companion characters in RPGs (which has now made its way into Dragon Age, I hear.) The good bits: Some awesome companions, written intentionally as standard D&D cliches, but nonetheless given full backstories and motivations. Also the absurdity of the D&D universe comes to life here in some delightful ways - characters, plot items and references are drawn from all over the universe. Also some hawt loot - nothing is cooler than seeing spikes of light radiate from the sword you're wielding. The bad: Everyone in this universe surrounds their euphemisms in ellipses. E.g: "The situation requires a certain...skills...to resolve." That was a dumb sentence, but you get the idea. Every character has an awkward pause before any word that could possibly mean something non-literal, and the voice actors are only too happy to oblige them by putting all their weight into that pause. It's a small thing, but it drives me nuts. Also, there's lots of dungeon-crawling. There are a handful of places where the dungeon crawling goes on for hours without much plot advancement. These parts in particular feel like filler. So, um, did anyone else play this?

Ok! So after breaking for the holidays, I finally beat the main campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2. What inspired this rush to completion? Well, Dragon Age was on sale on Amazon in one of those gold box deals, so felt compelled to buy it. And then it was scheduled for delivery today, so I thought "Holy Crap. I can't be in the middle of TWO swords-and-sorcery rpgs at once. That's crazy!" So last night, I rushed through to the end of NWN2. I have mixed feelings. On the plus side, I think they used the influence system well. I was genuinely upset to see some of party members leave me (which happens with increasing frequency towards the end of the game.) Although I do wish influence had been tied more to how much time I spent with the characters and whether I had completed quests for them, rather than random lines of dialogue I said to *other* characters which they just happened to overhear. Also, the ending battle was really cool, but the ending cutscene was terrible. A narrator? Really? Worst of all is that it never really resolves what happens to your party members. Would have been nice to see a "1 year later" epilogue which shows each surviving party member and what they're up to now. Instead, I'm left to guess! Now the decision - do I jump straight into Dragon Age, or play the NWN2 expansions? I'm worried that if I play Dragon Age, I won't want to regress back to NWN2 on a technical level. Mask of the Betrayer does seem pretty cool, though - I played the first few minutes last night (with my imported character from the main campaign) and was immediately taken aback by the change in tone. It already seems darker and, frankly, kind of awesome.

I feel your pain, man. I've been having difficulty focusing at work these past few days, because in the back of my head, there's Mass Effect 2. So close!

The one thing I will say in David Cage's defense was that he wrote a great post-mortem for Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit over at gamasutra. He was very honest about the game's faults, and you can see how the thoughts he had in the post-mortem lead (today) to Heavy Rain. One that really sticks out to me was his observation that people will only accept one major change outside the bounds of reality, and this is part of the reason IP/F's ending was so unsatisfying -- it simply piled on the crazy. And now, here we are with Heavy Rain, which he promises will be (almost) a completely straightforward story, with little-to-no supernatural stuff. Yeah, he's still a bit of a tool who would clearly rather be in film school. But at least he's capable of learning!

This isn't *that* new - there's a pre-rendered trailer for the original Mass Effect, as well - it plays when you boot up Mass Effect and leave the menu open for a period of time. There was definitely a pre-rendered trailer for Jade Empire, as well. Not sure about KotOR but it's not like this is something out of the blue.

Yeah, as I progress in the game, the aesthetics are growing on me. (I just finished Chapter 3.) What initially seemed like "warehouse in space" is becoming a more interesting and detailed environment. It's also becoming more consistently scary as well, in a kind of tense "Oh god are they behind me? Where are they going to appear next?" kind of way. They really did nail down a lot of what was great about Resident Evil 4, in terms of feel and gameplay. (On the other hand, even early on in RE4, the player was treated to some incredible "spectacle" moments that Dead Space has yet to match.) One other minor thing that's been bugging me - the plot/characters so far are shit. Things would feel a hell of a lot more tense if Kendra and Zach were anything more than the most obvious sci-fi horro cliches.

Having finally finished the series, I have decidedly mixed feelings, especially about how it all pulls together. All that being said, I do think these are a huge step up from Sam and Max and Strong Bad. The production values were higher, the puzzles were (mostly) well-balanced, and I definitely felt compelled to keep playing. I played Episodes 3, 4 and 5 all in one sitting, essentially, and that certainly speaks to the quality of the games.

I played the first half hour or so of this game, and I have to say the controls and visuals, at least, are immediately gratifying. It felt good to move around and interact, and that's the first hurdle I usually have with any sort of action title. That said, since its controls are so obviously reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, it's a bit of a shame that the atmosphere (at least this early on) is as generic as it is. Aside from a fairly awesome opening sequence (complete with solar flare,) the beginning has felt like a very by-the-books shooter, which is disappointing. I'm still very early on in the game, though, obviously, so hopefully it gets more interesting.

I just bought this because it was $15 on Amazon. I hope it's good.

One of the most frustrating things for me about Mass Effect was the limited options for character development the magic dialogue wheel provides. Paragon/Renegade is indistinguishable to me from a Good/Evil axis, except that Paragon/Renegade seems to lack any sense of subtlety. Where was my "reluctant protagonist" option? Or "sarcastically indifferent?" Most of the options you're presented with fall into Priest-With-A-Gun, Deranged Sociopath, and Apathetic Robot. Frankly, moral choices have always been a sore spot for Bioware. For that reason, I'm more looking forward to Alpha Protocol from Bioware's distant cousin Obsidian. They've had (IMO) a slightly better track record with writing morally ambiguous situations, and the spy genre will (hopefully) lend itself to that as well.

Unfortunately, her computer can't really run NWN2, or we totally would. In other news, Keep management is awesome! It's an abrupt change - one minute you're questing, the next minute you're suddenly allocating resources to optimize your town, but it's so cool. It's also nice that one of these games finally recognizes that an uber-powerful group of adventurers would probably not just remain benevolent free-lancers for eternity, and explicitly makes it clear that you're working for a Lord, and your power must be absorbed into that of the monarch. Also, I really enjoyed the

Ha, yeah. I've purchased all three, but I'm not even done the first campaign yet, as you've probably noticed. But I'm inching my way through it. The hardest part is that my girlfriend keeps wanting to play, too, but I get really possessive about my character while she plays. I end up sort of sitting behind her and backseat-driving: "I wouldn't do that....No! What are you doing? Use this spell. .... Hey, my character would never say that! .... Stop re-organizing my inventory!" Yeah, I'm kind of an ass. In your opinion, what were NWN2's "issues?"

So I just turned Khelgar into a Monk. I didn't realize that forces you to re-level him from the beginning! Crap. He had all this bad-ass armor and a glowing, spiky axe-thing, too. Does that he mean he can't use it now? Now I'm torn between giving a dwarf his lifelong dream, or having someone in my party wield a kickass set of items.

I played Hotel Dusk for a few hours before giving up. For me, it was the damn text speed. I read way faster than the text would appear and found myself constantly tapping to make it skip and go faster but was still agonizingly slow. I always meant to go back and finish it. Of course, I say that about *every* game.