Murdoc

I remember a really long time ago IGN did an artcle on fantasy armor for women in video games(It was around Ultima Online days) they had some really good comparisons and did concepts for what would be more practical; I think UO had some pretty good options for women(am I wrong?) but their concept I have yet to see in any game that wasn't trying to make the womab a thick biker lesbian with a brush cut.

Just curious since you pluralized game; what the other ones are? A little short sighted in my memory, but I recall anything other then Max Payne that used bullet time well. Yeah, and it still holds up, I mean polycount/oldschool look aside, you crank it to high res, it's actually pretty nice to look at. The dialog is cheesy, but thats the point in a lot of it, so it's cool. Still like the sequel a lot more though.

How does difficulty work? Does it just increase health on other enemies or spawns more guys? I was drivingaround, saw a sign that said fort, went in and busted up some stuff, but there were like maybe 8 guys in the whole place. It was awesome because I shot a propane tank and it just swirled around everywhere lighting the place on fire, but it would have been nice to take on a few more people. Anyway, day 2 of nothing to do, so starting up some more, I should probably do a mission today.

I had nothing to do today so i booted it up at work and everything was on low... it didn't look good, I stuck it up on ultra high and yeah it stutters here and there, but I'll live with it. Man, I knew I loved the game, but I thought it was just brainwashings from the thumbcasts, but shit, I love this game.

I feel more sad about this issue with games i careabout like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. From the looks of a few shots i've seen of Mass Effect 2 they've uped the tit factor. Which could have been an influence from the ridiculous DA stuff; look at the concept art, it's fucking normal, but then the game theres less clothing and more silicon! I want games to grow up and something like this would be a small step.

I dunno dude, they all work on mine, sure you installed it right?

Difficult maybe, but honestly, what developer that would have costed MS less to purchase couldn't have done all that? They are neat additions to the Xbox, but nothing over the top mindblowing in the innovation or execution department. Furthermore, I would have much rather had a pinata instead of an avatar; I love me some squizzels or fudge hog to great me every day* I turn on the box. *Note I do not turn on my xbox every day in fear of it dying before ME2.

Global Agenda: A weekends play point of view... Alright, so I've been mildly curious about this game since I saw a few screenshots and thought it looked like Tribes; now after a pre-order buy in I was able to see it in action with beta. It's a little more RPG than a shooter which was a bit surprising; but after playing again some people it still contains a lot of the stuff I like about a shooter(fast thinking of what to do/use) It's kind of set up as guild wars was, where you get your chat/trade hub and then you just click on missions to go to an instanced zone; the instanced zones act basically like any other FPS server. There is a PVE game that gets different missions/difficulty as you get higher in level and a PVP missions where its two teams again each other doing something. So far I've leveled to do capture points and the TF2 payload thing; both are pretty fun. You collect items automatically by killing things and they seem to be 99% geared to crafting and I have only recieved on blueprint so far, so I tend to just sell everything. If you sell things at the store they give you like 5 bucks for it, so you might as well place it in the auction house to get some cash I don't think the economy has really sorted itself out yet, because people are paying anywhere from 15 to 5000 bucks for the same obscure item. Also considering level 1 noob like me is collecting some stuff, I don't think it's worth 5k. Theres a persistent game going that sounds more like Planetside, but you have to pay monthly for it; and I'd consider it since I really liked what planetside tried to do if I could actually check this part out, but I have no idea how to or if its working(there are server announcements about it being tested or broken most of the time) It is beta after all. Theres even places to buy vehicles and facilities that I think have more to do with this part of the game, which sounds pretty neat. Armor isn't very varied and is purely asthetic from what I can tell; you can dye it and change the emissive glows so I guess it does create a variety, just not really from a design standpoint. Same with helmets; but I have a rockin fro so I don't use one. I think on each body part you have some sort of cybernetic upgrade, but I'm a little confused as to what these do (+10 on Output mod... awesome? I dunno) so I bought one that does the same thing as my regular one, but gives me +1 melee and +2 ground speed... I can't really tell, and it's an "epic" quality mod that costed around 10k, so not sure if that was worth it or if you get ever bodypart outfitted with this stuff if I can tell a difference; also it has durability... which makes me wonder can I repair this? If not, wow what a waste of 10k. Theres a pvp arena as well that doesn't give you any bonuses or penalities so its fun to pop in and play too. There are classes like solider, medic,scout/spy, and heavy; I think like in tribes they even differ depending on your equipment as some soliders seem to be more engineers. From what I can tell the spy and engineer are the dangerous classes. an engineer can set up a minibase with turrets, force field, respawner and healing station, and spys keep whacking my ass with their sword, so yeh. Anyway so far so good, its a mmo and I haven't really played one in a while, nor am I the time to play these, so I think it may turn into a bit of a grind I'll put it down. I could see playing this regularly like l4d or something if a few friends join and we start our own mini agency to roam around in, might even make conquest worth it at that point.

I really want to wait for a schedule, but I do want to see Newyork this year while I'm on this side, so maybe that'll be a good time to take a week and see the eastern seaboard.

lol. *** Alright, well working American isn't working out so I need some advice based on the following vauge description. Basically, if I can't work in the states, I might as well go back to school this year(I'll sort that out during registration) but int he mean time I need to actually work to make money. I have a full time job at a game company in Montreal(take your guess, I think theres like three here, but what do I know) so right now I have the choice of either... 1. Help dismantle a game I love with a sequel that will either end up still being cool or crap; but either way we're shitting over the thing I love 2. Help rebuild a broken franchise by doing pretty much the same thing that broke it, but this time better; it's really a gamble and the reason it broke I'm literally so emotional I was talking to my computer while watching the presentation of the people who broke it... so yeah. 3. Work on something new that could potentially suck or be disinteresting. Either way I won't make it to ship if I end up in school, on the other hand, I may not make it into school so whatever I decided I should consider being on until the end. I may just throw names into a hat and pick them out because they are all equally interesting/disinteresting.

Yeah, when I saw these and immediatly got scared.

Love Hl1, but would love to do another play through, but I too am waiting for Black Mesa.

Lol, I thought the exact same thing. Maybe I took my "roleplaying" too seriously or it's just my natural inclination but I couldn't give two shits about the darkspawn or the archdemon. The only reason I did/had to(which means I just killed them a lot) is because thats what the overarching game was about and I didn't have a choice. In the real world the moment duncan died I would have hoofed it to the next country that wasn't so screwed up. Even after my success in the game with the darkspawn I couldn't care less of their obvious motives or their secret ones.

Sorry if this is a rant, since life this year is wayyy better then how life was at the start of last year and it's mildly game related... but.... So I work in games(doesn't matter with what or who, it's not impressive at all) I'm in a mostly new city where I don't speak the language and it's freezing god damn cold... this is all mostly fine. Anyway, I got this chance to talk to a company in the states before Christmas and things were looking hopeful, like some sort of bizzaro world hopeful where my life was actually going pretty well and things were going to be really cool. So roll 2010 and whatever equinox that shown it's luck on me faded and basically immigration takes too long for them to hire me, so that is that. Super bummed right now because (not to brag, just I thought it was cool) was it was like like an opportunity to fullfill a life time goal and was amazingly honored that they would even talk to me, but every time I talk with an American company everything goes well until hr and attorneies are involved. Anyway, first dissapointment of the year, not the last, hopefully the worst. Oh, side question any women here (HA!) that are American and would be willing to come to an arrangement where you get a percentage of money and I could get a visa through marriage? Does that still work down there? Figured I'd ask...

Personally I gave up, I put it down and never picked it upa gain. It's not the "hardness" I have a problem with, its the repetativeness. Call modern games a cake walk or whatever, but I have shit to do, I like a challange, but this was a memorization game more then anything to me; which is fine, just not my cup of tea.

Well, my media black out unintentionally came to an end when I was going to watch something on gametrailers and saw the gamestop advertisement for ME2. I don't know if this came from EA, Bioware, or Gamestop, but jesus christ I just want to burst into tears, I may need to take a personal day for this. I know it's just an advertisement, but fucking come on, toliet humor?

Glad this came up as it tends to get a lot of shit from people and usually with good reason. The main problem I found with it was what it did well, it didn't do enough of (Area changing based on your decisions and I thought the combat was done well, but they didn't set it up properly most of the time to make it shine) The world was amazing, but lost a lot of the charm of the first one; which I hope they can try to get back in later iterations. I really enjoy the designs and the character style was getting to be pretty close to awesome. The one thing it did that rises above the rest in its "genre"(making decisions that are "good" and "evil") is this odd grey area, which made things a bit bleak. Aside from an a grey area in parts, I really really liked what they did with the major good decisions near the end; it introduced the idea of sacrifice as a hero to do the right thing. I thought that alone is a concept bioware really needs to take note of, because no longer was the altruistic idea of being good because its the right thing, this time around doing the right thing harmed your person and would be a better mark of a true hero. It's odd, but things I'd really like to see this series do is really feeling the effects of your change in the world(sounds like thats what fable 3 is about) and I honestly liked the family ideal, they loved the hell out of me but I saw them once a year because I was too busy saving the world or something; would be nice if they expanded the dog concept onto the children. Like if your a jerk they grow up to be douchebags or something.

Lol, yeah I'm doing the same and I just landed on Nick saying how StarCraft 2 will probably be released last year. Also very weird they were talking about L4D1 when it wasn't even released yet in one of the early eps.

I was hoping to go visit those other countries, so that's cool. Also, what kind of hudsucker proxy is this? Why are the grey wardens continually putting the mail room boy in charge of things like killing arch demons and rebuilding an order? Also, I wasn't too thrilled with the grey wardens; Duncan was cool, but . Something in that organization wasn't working, so I think it needs some reorganization, i'm basically thinking an rebranding it as the Insidious Order of Assholes; which i'm sure will be one of the options and not too far off from what they did to me anyway. Another thing, if I "import" my character is it considered the same person or just a another guy that looks like my character? I'm not sure if I understand that.

Anyway, just could be my opinion, but Bioware marketing has been really shit since the EA deal (I'm not anti EA, just could be a timing thing) They seem to literally carpet bomb news sites with any peice of information, put together crappy videos (at least they went out and paid a million to Blur for a good one* this time rather then license an inappropriate song) But yeah I'm a hater of rendered cinematics because there doesn't seem to be a point; but the reason I'm posting is to say Biowares marketing is pretty crappy lately so that could just be the answer as to why they would do this. *Media black out, I haven't seen the video, but it's Blur, so I'm sure its cool. Also there could be an inappropriate song on this, I don't know and won't know until post release. *** I'm in Montreal this year and you know what? No 7/11s so my plan to go try to get mass effect early is totally ruined to that weird fact. I may have to go to Futureshop and get a part time job a week in advanced and smuggle out a copy(I'll still pay for it).

Just finished Filthy Lucre on the flight home this holiday. I thought it was pretty interesting take on captalism and the economy. The themes are a bit repetative of the guys last book(The Rebel Sell, also very good). If your interested in the subject matter it's worth checking out, I really enjoy the writing style as it's informative to a simpleton like me with added humor. I don't really agree with his views on everything, but it does create some decent conversations. http://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Lucre-Economics-People-Capitalism/dp/1554683955/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262627002&sr=1-1-spell

I'd buy that one.

I agree, but to be fair, a seperate company made bully 360 port and I'd argue that the original PS2 version would hold up at the right resolution; just int he 360 port they tried normal maps and lighting, etc.. that wasn't intended and looked pretty piss poor.

All in all I think the DLC integration was probably the biggest innovation in Dragon Age. It's something to admire and fear because if all games are like this by the end of next year I'd really be surprised. The fact I spent so much time in the game to have someone just ask for some money after telling me a little story is very convenient and compelling to just drop 5 bucks here and there. Though I think you still have to restart the game after downloading it or something, but as soon as they figure a way around that and have complete ingame transaction/dl/and installation, games that do so may start costing me a lot of money. The only saving grace I think for this is I got more out of the dialog tree game in DA then the fighting(it was fun, but it was a lot of filler at times) and I don't think their DLC is going to be very robust in that, it'll just be items and combat missions.

Nah I get ya and honestly agree with you more then my argument; it's just I tend to side with the language being used by most people even if I personally don't like it. Hopefully with more games coming out with different techniques a new term will be used commonly. *** Continuing to play, but something just isn't capturing me on this one. It's odd how a few mechanics I can accept in a game like Diablo or Torchlight but I just can't in a fps. Things like "barrels" with items in being respawned every time I log in (Like why does Dr.Ned keep filling his lockers full of stuff and allow me to walk in and take it?!) and the fact the world is so damn empty of civilians. Got passed tutorial city (I was taking my time) and the driving is not fun at all, so playing short bursts at a time. The combat is getting more fun with different abilities and weapons, but it's the world that isn't getting me into it.