CaptainFish

In ME you're getting xp on an enemy per enemy, and action basis, none of the Doom style end of level score lists existed, although at the end of quests you'd get some epilogue text. The skills are have more breadth and depth. I actually think it's a bit too granular in terms of the number of points and upgrades, but I much prefer the number of skills each class has. There are skills for renegade and paragon convincing separately, and I always dislike those, because for story purposes you always want the maximum amount, so I prefer the way your ability to charm or intimidate is just tied to your amount of Paragon or Renegade morale in ME2. The interrupt system is a big addition as well. Also, salvaging and door hacking is tied to a skill level, so you'll want an engineer to deal with that if you don't have the skill maxed out yourself. I always had Tali with me to deal with that stuff. The way skills work in ME are a lot more combinable, since they all have their own cool down. You can lift and push right after each other without any waiting. I really prefer that, but otherwise the combat is a lot smoother in ME2, and the ability to intelligently curve biotics is a big improvement. In the first game there was no thermal clips. In the ME world guns shoot by shaving an infintessimally small needle off of a mass and launching it a high speeds so ammo is never an issue, but in the first game each shot would increase heat up to an overheat point, at which you had to wait for your gun to vent. This also tied into skills like overload, that would cause a meaningful overheat period for your enemies. It was very possible, by learning to control your rate of fire, to fire a gun forever, and there were skills and weapon mods that would mitigate heat to let you fire more rapidly. There was risk reward between damage and heat, with some mods/guns adding damage for less heat control. The ammo and gun mods also allowed you to customize based on what opposition you think you're facing, shredder rounds for humans, armor piercing for robots or geth, force mods for your shotguns for more punch. All in all it was a lot of interesting systems, but the interfaces were not easy to explore (specifically the inventory) and that caused issues.

I'll just leave this here. God speed thumbs. God speed. Edit: Just finished the cast. It was awesome, the music was fantastic, I'll miss you guys even more now. Also, great Far Cry story Sean, still waiting on that photo.

Yea I heard Activision didn't want to take the risk of going to modern combat, IW had to beg to get them to do it. It just wasn't in line with their yearly release of iterated content business strategy. Also they weren't all that happy with someone else making the games in the interim, there's a rap song in one of the CoDs that has a line like "The third from infinity ward". It seems like Black Ops is trying to be very old school by having a bunch of really implausible, but still real weapons in the game. I think it's cool, because there are too many assault rifles in games already. The game modes seem interesting, even if they are just CS mods that have been claimed. I'll start worrying once they start showing an iceworld trailer.

This post is kinda spoilery, I guess don't read it if you're not done the game. This is conjecture, but I think it's all a set up for Kerrigan to get control of the various rogue zerg broods. Kerrigan is a powerful psychic and the zerg are controlled psychically, so now that she's experienced the proper wavelength to exert that control, she'll be able to slowly rebuild her control over the zerg. That'll be a big part of why she'll have to build up her swarm much like Raynor. If they keep that part of the gameplay similar (which I think is the plan right now) I'm assuming the death of the Kerrigan would mean that the protoss zerg hybrids would have full control of the zerg swarms. That's been proven in Brood War to be enough to crush all opposition, but with the aid of the hybrids it would be overwhelming. In that possible future it seems like the zerg have just taken over the entire universe.

Duke Nukem Forever already looks more interesting than most FPS in that you can interact with stuff in the environment. Everything isn't just a geometrical shape to knock over or run into or hide behind, you can actually do stuff with it. It's a good design philosophy that hasn't been followed at all. It's crazy that in an FPS you can't climb objects that arent ladders, crawl under low stuff, or squeeze into small spaces. As depicting a persons action, FPS are super restrictive in that way. The only really accepted change to motion is crouch jumping, and that doesn't really represent any sort of real motion. The only real change to interaction is the ability to get a gravity gun and throw things, or maybe shoot something and watch it change between discrete damage models. How long will it be until I can use my arms to climb something, or grab a ledge I missed, or better yet land with only my torso on an object and scrabble up using my legs on the side. It's crazy that the only FPS that have interactive locomotion with respect to obstacles are Mirror's Edge and Brink, and the only FPS I've seen that lets you just write on a whiteboard is Duke Nukem Forever. Penumbra also gets points, although a lot of those interactions are physics based, there isn't a single fake locker or desk in those games. I'm not saying that the interactions in DNF will be great or interesting, but it will be an interesting design idea that I hope other people look at.

I think it would be more interesting if it handled like an old school shooter with speed, but with aim down the sights, it'll probably be more CoD-eque. Also with all the development time and money spent on this, I doubt this will be anything but a full price Duke.

In my opinion banshees are much better for taking out the nydus worms than battlecruisers. They're much faster, can cloak, and can be quickly replaced.

Yea using the dpad to select one of 8 weapons would be fine. I'm callin bullshit on Broussard.

Y'know, regardless of the quality of the game, Duke Nukem Forever will be a huge launch when it comes out. I really hope it doesn't mean that gearbox will only be making those games though.

I'm not sure if you can call what you do to Ashley cheating. I guess you don't officially break up (I don't remember if there's an option to do that), but I would if I could. She's already come to terms with your death and says she's moved on. I haven't seen what happens if you meet up with Liara after she shacks up with you in one. I guess she never gives up on you being dead, since she goes after the shadow broker for your body. She might honestly believe that after she's gotten her revenge, that she can return to a normal relationship. I know they've said that if you've gotten with a ME1 girl, and then hooked up with someone else in 2, there will be consquences in 3 for being a womanizer or whatever. It strikes me as something that doesn't make all that much sense. While I'm being a curmudgeon baby, I might as well mention that I'm not a fan of Bioware's list of DLC for Mass Effect 2. It's getting to the point that when I buy all of the story stuff it will end up costing enough to justify a more meaty expansion pack. Especially for a game like ME2 where I'm gonna want a run to include all that stuff before the sequel comes out. It's my main problem with DLC, one I had with the Fallout 3 stuff after it all came out. It seemed very silly to pay the price of the game over for 5 pieces that don't total up to the fallout 3 experience.

I'm waiting for "a later date" to give it a spin. Hopefully it comes to steam, not just GfWL. I liked the combat in 2 enough to really want to check it out in a new narrative.

Well I'm just going to ignore the announcement and continue speculating. So it's a turn-based adventure with a dice based combat system, that takes place over an intergalactic theatre. It's based off the Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes splinter Spaceman Spiff universe. You find weapons, ideas and items, tie them to different sided polyhedrons, and use them in tandem to converse, solve puzzles and fight evil Zorgs. It also has a Persona style system, where when you're not imagining you are Spiff you have to deal with school events.

I may be the worst person for thinking this, but if telltale could get an "I was frozen today!" out of Christopher Lloyd and put it in the game, I'd be a happy camper.

I just added all the NA dudes, it wouldn't let me add EU guys (is that correct? It let me add cigoL but I think it was a different dude.)

Agreed.

It's a fair complaint, but you might be mistaken for directing this at video game people. Designing women to look this way is an extremely comic thing to do. We're talking about dudes that went from this to this I can only imagine the conversation for that cover art. "Well it's okay, but it needs more cleavage." "Shit yeah! Motion seconded!" "All opposed?" *Silence* "Motion passed! Next order of business..."

Bunch of screens released for Arkham City. It looks really nice, and I like the designs for the named characters. Harley's new design along with one of the pics might imply that she's no longer a villain. She definitely looks less crazy than in Asylum.

This doesn't have anything to do with season 3, but I just started replaying Max e Sam season 1 and 2, and I can't focus on the dialogue at all. I listened to the soundtracks a lot, and even tried playing along with them, so all my focus is on the music in every scene. Curse your catchy music Jared Emerson-Johnson!

I think that's the wrong reaction, it should be more like That sounds more reasonable. I remember EWJ having a creative mix of mundane and outrageous things that made the game seem really weird. I guess having a meme in there isn't entirely unlike their previous stuff (lawyers in heck was another cliché), but I think the original guys would have just made a new thing out of whole cloth instead. All this is just making me want to buy the pack on steam. I never played EWJ3d because I was without N64, and I really like Jim. I'm willing to deal with the fact that game might suck.

I'm not going to try to defend the story more, I think I've done that enough in this thread. I am going to be a huge Starcraft dork and talk about one issue I had. I do think that they should have kept one thing from Brood War: Raynor's hate for Kerrigan. By the end of BW Kerrigan has been a huge bitch to everyone, used Raynor, Mengsk, Duke, Fenix, Zeratul, Rhazagal, basically every named character up to that point, and then back stabbed them. There was a big thread of indecision for Raynor et al, of whether Kerrigan was truly evil or if she would be more like her normal self after the Overmind control over her stopped. This is why everyone agrees to ally with her. When she kills Fenix (who was Raynor's best ally and friend at that point), Raynor realizes that Kerrigan is bad news and vows that he will kill her one day. It's the point where she stops being Kerrigan the victim in his eyes. Then SC2 starts and he's just staring at photos drawings of her and everyone one is alluding to some relationship beyond friendship that they never really had. When Zeratul shows up and it doesn't make any sense, because the character is clearly fawning over her at every chance he gets. He shows all the guilt and regret for being involved in Kerrigan's creation, but none of the anger over the things she did of her own volition. I understand why most of the Brood War stuff isn't really referenced, because that game had a bad plot, mostly due to Kerrigan godmoding, but I think that aspect would make Jimmy more interesting.

I definitely got the vibe that Solid was basically a remake+ (Think Evil Dead 2) of Metal Gear 2 on the MSX. I played the first one in the MGS3 subwhatever pack, but I don't think I beat the second one.

Well it seems like they're going forward with using that method of rewarding pre-orders. Worms Reloaded offered a bunch of bonuses for the soldier. I like worms fine, but it was weird to see that even though I had no problem with the Sam & Max stuff. Although, I gotta type, If all the pre-order bonuses for games on Steam were just TF2 decorative items that I could easily ignore without losing gameplay, I'd be a happy camper!

I can't believe you managed to construct that much technobabble (LOL moar liek a Techno Babel) and still have it make sense.

So, like the Kingdom Hearts GBA game and PS2 remake Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories?

You're right there was that whole ion cannon thing, where the pickups were in missions, but I don't remember if they were cordoned off in certain branches.