AndrewArmstrong

He's a womanizer in action only since his words never fit the mould I think - it just seems so unwarranted and sometimes just entirely inappropriate to suddenly do it. They really wrote most of the encounters really poorly and placed them in the most insane places, mainly going for women he's just met after some massive danger or whatever. Would make sense with prostitutes, but some of them are just strange. That might be the point though, and most are optional or whatever, so I guess it's complaining just since it was the only thing that really stood out as a lazy exercise in their design (the fact it does just end with a very short video and a card also speaks volumes - you never get to discuss anything about it afterwards, it really does come down to card collecting sadly!). Perhaps if they only had put more effort into it, it'd not be so embarrassing eh? Seems like this time they might try harder, one can hope!

Wow, sounds like all kinds of wrong to be honest, but dating services (or is it more like a phone sex line?) get anywhere they can I guess.

The original game was pretty poorly written especially around those parts. I know that it was "Meant to be in the books" but in a Video game it just seems like another score counter the way it was done - I bet the books were a lot better written rather then "Can I bonk you now?" or sometimes "Would you like to bonk me now?" that I remember Came up very suddenly the first time too. Apart from maybe one longer-term relationship (Triss) most were one off affairs too, thus the dirty old man thing. I need to replay it with the directors edition stuff, I finished it before that major patch was finished and never went back to it. Perhaps, perhaps...it will be a lot better. Then again, maybe I'd have skipped those parts in the books too if they are that constant and heavy handed Looks like the sequel goes a bit more long term (I guess you get companions now?), since Triss is in so many scenes.

Didn't notice this, the original was good fun, I need to play it again I think. I just remember being annoyed that the Order's guy who you can be friends with turns out to be someone you just have to kill...gah...thought I could persuade him to not be a idiotic murderer after hearing his lovely singing voice, hehe The only odd bit was the lavish womanly offerings placed constantly in front of you. Very out of place, and horribly written too (amounting to "Sex, since I saved you?" "Yeah go on then!" "Picture card achievement acquired"). I hope it isn't so desperately stupid this time. Being a womaniser feels so dirty. Dirty old man feeling. Urg...

It's coming slowly on Amazon's free delivery, man I'm cheap... Gold was by far my favourite of the series (and still is). It just is probably the best example to me of a pretty strictly "game" game having a good if not perfect sequel. Probably was down to a mix of adding so much (attaching items, 2 world maps (!) where you REVISIT the last game's places! lots of HM's and exploration, and clock! repetitive rival battles! phone calls, which were a little odd...I did like the later trainer-rebattle-item as an alternative I gues) which then got removed in later games, or sometimes added back in much later. It also had amazing AI (for the time, if not now) from what I recall - it was battle-tower like AI for most trainers, no more random attacks as in Red and Blue! This game actually made the normal trainer battles both fun and a challenge. The Elite 4, even at so low a level were hard if I remember rightly Red was insanely hard, unless he ran out of PP on moves. I mean, one of the Gym leaders had a Dynamic Punch/Lock On combo, and USED IT TO KICK MY OWN ASS. I also remember Slowbro in the Elite Four wasting me with Curse, and Umbreon being an annoying Dark staller. I wonder how many of these survived to the DS edition. Actually this is one of the main things that went backwards. Apart from the "Final elite 4 person", most trainers basically sucked, even if they got more or less predictable in Gold and Silver due to the fact they always sent out the most effective matchups in battle. They changed pokemon mid-battle much more too (Lance kept doing this if you send out ice types, he'd get out his Charizard, the git...). More multiplayer battle stuff too, like an instance of having your last battler copied so the AI could play them in that special trainer battle area kind of was the first "Battle tower" like thing too. Man that was fun since I had a cousin who cheated to get insanely high level, underlevelled ubers with mis-matched moved and the AI kicked my ass compared to him until I cheesed them, heh. I wonder if that still exists (not likely, heh). Also added Dark and Steel (although plainly not enough of either type considering some of the Gym's uses of them), and sorted the Ghost type, pretty much standardising the matchup charts and some balance issues with Psychics by making Special 2 stats like attack/defence. The fact it was a large world map, plus not "too many" pokemon (man it's too many now), meant it fell well (but not over) populated, fun to explore and so forth, lots of little nuggets of interesting areas (hidden places over sea, through bits you can chop down, waterfalls etc.) - it was a leap ahead of Red and Blue there. At least this was mainly retained in the sequels. I could go on for ages, so many great bits of design and some really fun ideas implemented so early on in the series - and still never have bothered to raise something to level 100 properly. Closest is my current level 80's...maybe one day...one day. Defiantly will be great for the bus. Glad some others here like it too.

Interesting suggestion, I am sure there is public money for fashion design - but that is just it, as arts go electrical generation will get sciency-money and local locksmiths are a trade (like any building) not something that really pushes forwards cultural boundaries. I think if there is money for films (which produce some really good local flavour films - I like Shane Meadows (I'm a Nottingham lad) who uses some of that kind of stuff, but there are tons of other examples of great art funding), there should be some for video games or other interactive art. It's pretty silly to have it not apply equally when it comes to arts. I might be cynical and say tax breaks are a possibly the "big business" way of getting a bit part of the pie but the "big business" of film and TV get similar things.

I'm looking forward to the far flung future when the open source drivers can be ported efficiently to Windows. If ATI's cards were simply not superior in power to nVidia I'd be ditching the poor drivers. One major thing is the missing application-specific settings which nVidia allows. You want per-application settings for AA and Vsync? tough luck This highly annoys me now since I have the latest range of cards, and can't use the more advanced/nicer looking AA in the drivers/on the card with Dawn of War 2 (which took me ages to figure out), yet other games it works fine. Tough luck for me is very annoying. Also means for older games, you can't force AA, making them look worse then they could.

I have a love of The Last Stand. I don't think I've clocked up more hours (steam has 200 hours in it, wow...barely play the MP side and the campaigns are maybe 50 of that at most). Some of this was just getting up levels, 5 heroes takes forever to do. I did finish wave 20 finally, with allies who were both squishy (so died quick and stopped re-raising things) - although one managed to clone the Chaos Warlord twice and the other ran around confusing things...was kinda bloody epic, racing around slowly gaining the advantage. I want to do it again, and I'm amazed such a rag-tag public game did it at all (getting near to level 19 is usually insanely hard). I also can't believe we did it since we (or my allies, since I was a tank) kept dying through the other waves. I'm in the Steam group as Finaldeath, if anyone is up for a game. Annoying how GFWL works but I will add people there too if needed. I basically have never played a actual non-public cooperative game so never get to experience some of the cooler meta-gameplay - my friends who had this originally only got a hero up to level 7 or 8 then stopped Only thing I wish would be if they had more maps or random waves. If their map editor worked with it, that'd be awesome. Also; horribly clashing Wizard heroes for the win! (although I've gone back to gold and shiny red now, I loved bright blue and green, heh). In any case, by far the best part of the game - although I certainly enjoy the singleplayer, the Multiplayer is just damn hard for me though

Man, meant to join up to this forum, what, 2 years ago or something? Thoroughly enjoy the podcast, very few worth listening to (or can be listened to), gets a spot in my ear every time it's downloadable. Why now? Hmm, mentions of people liking Dawn of War 2 Last Stand here (got my first level 20 victory yesterday, hah!) and other reasonable discussion, with what me having only one other game forum I'm currently active in too. Need to find those other games that are good to play. PC and DS gamer, with a bit of Wii on the side. I'm a partial game historian, and do some random IGDA volunteer stuff (although not currently in the industry, maybe in the future...wooeeeooo). Also using my real name, I think this place is mature enough for that. It's a typically annoying affair having alias for forums most of the time, and I'd still link to my website and put my real name in my profile anyway. It's Finaldeath most places though if it isn't stolen (why, why oh GFWL do you not do it like steam and just let people change their usernames and allow duplicates? 16 characters sucks). Now to find some other threads to post in, eh wot?