Razor

They did change the movement all the time though and also added and removed gametypes and stuff like vehicles over the iterations. They also switched up some weapons. The game is still very very early so I'm sure they will change and add a lot of things over time. I just hope the basic weapon selection isn't final yet.

I got to admit I'm a bit disappointed that they left the weapons mostly untouched. I wouldn't mind seeing some old ones replaced (Biorifle anyone?). They are redoing the basic movement system slightly, so that's a start. Also I hope someone puts domination back into the game soon.

Great, didn't hear that before. I was hoping they would release it as a whole but whatever. Anyone remember Origin's first try / steps regarding DLC, the addon missions for WC5? Those were pretty good. I'd be happy with something like that although I'd wish for a full on Strike / Wing Commander style campaign with talking heads in shady bars.

RE: console version The same state of the universe + community goals across platforms implies synchronized patches etc. Warframe attempted this but they had to abandon that idea. Now the console version lags behind. If they keep it in sync I wonder if you can use the same pilot across platforms.

I used to play a lot of Ascendancy and Star General. Both weren't too complex and had great atmosphere IMO. Only the music in the latter was terrible but aside from that I especially loved the simple ground combat they did there. I was really disappointed in that part of GalCiv2. GalCiv2 and Endless Space are both decent but I never got really deep into either. Also I think the art direction is all over the place and everything feels extremely generic. I couldn't even tell you the difference between the two now with some distance to the last time I played them. Another decent one would be Empire at War which has a huge Star Wars bonus going for it and of course Star Wars Rebellion which was more of a 4x boardgame adapted as a video game.

Why is that funny? The way they interact with other often can give that impression.

I watched pirates 2 yesterday and hell that is maybe my favourite scene in the movie. It's really well done IMO.

I loved the LA adventures for their story mostly but also for their presentation which was AAA in it's time. Seeing MI on an Amiga 500 was amazing. Sure, I can still go back and enjoy Monkey Island to this day, so I won't judge unfairly. But time has passed and games have evolved - the verbs were terrible even back then and every LA adventure seemed to find a way to reduce them until they virtually went away and transformed into a mouse cursor icon. I just wish they would have picked a later game to continue their retro legacy. Like The Dig which was also a fantastic adventure IMO. Also, I don't really like Twin Peaks as I incidentally found out recently so that story doesn't do that much for me.

I upgraded my PC for the first time for that game. I was blown away by the cutscenes but also by the 3d visuals. Visible, transparent shields, holy shit! I played through the game in 3 afternoons after school which was kinda disappointing. It was the first WC game I played, I was an XWing / TIE Fighter guy, and WC was a game my Amiga 500 friends used to play (C64->PC here). It always looked cool, but playing it, it felt a bit simple in some ways. The non-linear story aspects (you could annoy people) were somewhat bad IMO. If you skipped every possible dialogue, soon enough everyone would hate you. I'm a little afraid to go back to it. I loved the game - even though back then it felt short and kinda simple, I thought very highly of it. I still have the CDs lying around somewhere. Nostalgia is a bitch though. I found very few games actually hold up after 20 years. I think my biggest problem nowadays would be to find a joystick for it. Maybe I'll get back to it when/if I get one for StarCitizen.

This looks really good so far. I hope someone will make assault maps again. Also I'd love to play a multiplayer FPS again in which most weapons aren't hitscan.

OpenFeint is also getting shut down soon. If google would step up with gaming, it would 100% be tied into google plus somehow. That's where they've been heading for the past year full steam ahead. Can't wait to spam-post my highscores to my circles. There is no way around iOS when it comes to games though. If you want the best video games platform on a smartphone or tablet you'll have to stick to apple. My anecdotish experience suggests that it is this way only (mostly) with games. For everything else there isn't much missing and then android has some fine exclusive non-game apps of it's own. That doesn't mean I think there aren't games on android; quite the contrary, android has been really good at the catching up game this past year. But the most unique games people keep talking about are usually exclusives to ios. To get a bit back on topic here, these are some Android games I have enjoyed in the past: - Z (yes the old pc game) on a tablet (can't really recommend it on a phone size screen) - Final Fantasy 3 (the actual part 3, but this is the 3D DS remake which is pretty well done) - Chrono Trigger (the iPhone port version which was well done) - Draw Something - Puzzle Quest 2 - Plants vs Zombies - World Series of Poker ("WSOP") - the usual suspects: PS1, SNES, GBA, ScummVM emulators (if you own the original games of course) Something I haven't tried but heard good things about is Splashtop 2 for turn based PC games like XCom or Civ 5 via a tablet.

That looks amazing. Nothing better than horror games set in space! I love how Amnesia popularized this whole genre of games where you cannot fight but still die while not being a sierra adventure. Which is probably not a good name for a genre.

We've to keep believing. $100 say the next installment in the Half Life franchise will be out before the first human sets foot on Mars.

I only really bought it to support double fine, I wasn't expecting anything from it. Seems like a good port to pc and decent play on the usual tower defense formula. The game throws new stuff at you pretty fast and I don't really have a feel for what I should use, only played it for like 2 hours though. Also it seems there is no way to sell any tower you placed? Since I don't know in advance which enemy type comes from where that makes it a bit annoying. Accidentally placing a shotgun tower in the path of only air enemies makes me feel stupid.

Again and again over more than 2 decades now. Started with the c64 like so many. I've started a lot of little projects, often I stopped when I had the basics down though - I was always more interested in the inner workings and mechanics than the actual game. Usually once I felt the game had the right feeling and the gameplay was what I wanted and then "only" had to start creating content (more than the minimum that I did while creating the framework of the game) I lost interest and moved on. I even did this with Neverwinter Nights. I mean I completed a couple modules in NWN but most the things I did where create a different type of gameplay within the limits of the game (while trying to extend those limits). For example I made a mod which played like thief (I think I spent 2 days trying to figure out how to make LOS work for npcs without making the CPU go kill itself) and one which was a persistent world with a skill based system - I hear there where a lot of those later on but I never played those, no idea how they worked. In my version you had a certificate like item in your inventory which the game used to determine your level of a given skill like fishing or chopping wood or whatever. Both mods only had two maps where I played around and tested everything. I also tried to reenact the original Diablo where the interesting part to me was random loot (which wasn't in NWN). Making my own loot tables was incredibly fun I thought, really cool to be able to balance that kind of thing in a game and see it work it's magic. I can't remember though how many of the original 16 levels I then implemented. I did a slideshow intro with Terminator 2 music for the game though which was pretty horrible but it was one thing I never did before (making a video) so I had to try. The last game I completed to finish was a vertical scrolling 2d shooter with an upgrade system (although I never really played it I think r-type had a similar one). It had 2 levels with an endboss and ran on windows & 360 (and I made an effort to make both control schemes feel good.) Here is a lame screenshot where you can almost see nothing going on at the moment: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28489/screenshot.jpg It's not the last game I worked on, that one is in limbo now for a couple years now - it's a combination of asteroids and bomberman for up to 4 players. I had some real trouble with the physics since I didn't use any existing frameworks. Maybe I should have just left drifting out of the game for now, it was already in a pretty playable phase last time I worked on it. The most important things if I want to complete a game have been, use existing stuff (programming frameworks, engines or even just mod an existing game, existing assets like graphics / music / sound from legal free sources on the net) and set realistic goals. I did this in my free time and when I knew I could do this or that in 2 weeks of working on it every night it meant in reality I would need 2 months. Also important in the realistic deparment to me was to have a list of the important things for a finished game - over the course of each development I come up with a million things I could or should do and so I started to make a feature list for the 1.0 and the 1.1 version with everything not vital going to 1.1. It is so good a feeling when you reach that 1.0, I really would recommend doing it that way.

Deus Ex is pretty cheap and even on sale on steam now! Also I always have to mention Ultima 7 (both parts, they are different, one from Richard Garriot, one from Warren Spector), and of course Planescape Torment. Those three are not only great PC games but IMO the best games, on any system from any time period. Sadly, no recent game really got there but maybe they came out exactly at the right time. Others I recommend: System Shock 2 Thief All Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 All Valve games

Yes!

lots of people missed that you have two cannons, used by the left and right trigger. maybe that's the problem?

I love this game. It's one of the very, very few games I played through, and immediately started over and was so entertained that I played it to the end again. I came from the opposite direction as the OP, I expected it to be System Shock 2, which it tries to be at times but overall is not. Maybe they just wanted some parts to be an homage to SS2, as this apparently started out as SS3. Still IMO it's more SS2-y than Bioshock. And it has enough unique elements to stand on it's own. Also the visuals always deserve to be mentioned. If there was something like an oscar for video game visuals, this game should get it. Some parts were incredibly beautiful. I always enjoy rewatching sunshine for the visuals, and this game is the closest to that.

I agree as well, I have played (at least I think I have) all Mario Kart games and the first is still the best, if just because no blue shell. Additionally I think it has the consistently best racing maps, while most others suffered from "lets do something different" syndrom too much. IMO only GBA / NDS versions come close, and NDS only for the multiplayer. GBA gets bonus points for having all the original tracks included as well, although the driving models feels slightly off and the size is somehow wrong.

sorry in advance for wall of text. the weekend deal on steam (like so, so many times before) finally gave me a reason to buy ME for the pc (already have two copies for the 360, german, and english which I won at shacknews.com and which Nick sent me. Thanks again, Nick!) Although I have played that part like 6 or 7 times already, the approach to the Citadel still gave me goosebumps (probably mostly due to the music). And I still think the faces in this game are the best looking ones I've ever seen in a game, including various Half Life 2 games. I also chose the premade John guy like in my first playthrough, otherwise I tend to create female Shepards for some reason - probably because I prefer to either choose something which resembles me or which I like to look at (mutual exclusive I guess) Two things bug me so far: first, the game seems to be unable to restore from tabbing out. Some autoupdate window popping up killed it for me and I had to restart. Second, the Mako controls on PC are absolutely horrible. Maybe I got so used to it on the 360 but it feels like the just mapped the analog stick to the cursor keys and it shows. I died on the first mission because I drove into lava with one wheel. Minor problems I had with the pc version were some clicking sounds after certain parts (which may be my cheap onboard sound's fault) and the fast loading seems to cut certain sequences short which made the sound end abruptly, and too early. Still this is my favourite RPG since Deus Ex and it mades me somewhat sad that they said in an interview on giantbomb that they put more focus on combat and less on talking in ME2 like "in some parts of ME1" (which seems to indicate that we won't have a place as cool as Citadel in the sequel.) Regarding the Wizard-class, my first playthrough was with a Soldier on normal and the second a pure Biotic on hardcore. After knowing the game, I thought the biotic playthrough was actually easier despite the game difficulty being ramped up. Of course it would've been harder on my first play-through than with a solider but only because I didn't know wtf. IMO the tech is the only bad class in this game, and even there some people like it more than the others. So I think balancing wise they did a good job, they just didn't manage to explain the use of skills in certain situations very well. The game just gives you stuff and says good luck, cya. Oh, and another reason why I like to compare this game to Deus Ex; in this playthrough I want to always choose the red option, or if it's missing the one on the lower right. This led to not having in my party at all which I didn't know was possible. Finding out about this kind of stuff after repeated playthroughs is among the things that keeps me coming back, like finding out that you could save in Deus Ex after playing through that like 5 times and taking it as a given that it's not possible.

I loved that the crusader newsletter had the System Shock / Shodan reference. AFAIK all Origin games had that kind of fluff in the package. Ultima with cloth maps and ingame related stuff made real (like a pentagram medallion or an Ankh), Strike Commander with an issue of a mercenary manual from 2010 or something (whenever the game took place), and Wing Commander usually with flight manuals with hand written notes, similar to Crusader. Incredible stuff!

READERMAIL: Why didn't you guys play Ultima? PLEASEEEEE... at least try and play Ultima 7 (part 1 for open world done right, or part 2 for a more linear masterpiece from Warren Spector, preferably both) And Ultima Underworld. Again 1 for more non linear approach and 2 for a more guided story. If you can get your fingers on a copy of any of the Ultima 7s, go there and use this exult.sf.net for nicer rendering and compatibility with every electronic machine conceived by man.

it looks fantastic from the GiantBomb quick look. Wish it came out on a different platform, too. Got so many bases covered and am still missing out on some fun stuff, I wish I had too much money to burn through on gaming.

there was stuff about relationships but that was not really irrelevant IMO. It added to the atmosphere and maybe made you think "oh wow was that zombie I was just shooting maybe her boyfriend?" Also it gave a "life" to the ship in which you otherwise were pretty much alone. The game had some completely irrelevant content though, one which maybe was the most awesome one of it's kind. The GamePig! It was fantastic to sit in a corner, being afraid that every second a zombie could come around and kill you and enjoy your gaming nature by playing a simple Ultima 1 clone. Which also answers the question what would happen if a gamer would end up on a zombie infested Spaceship?