I was interested in D3 up until the summer of 2010, at which point I stopped being interested in Blizzard's products. No, I do not think "sure, a few trannies get killed" is an acceptable tradeoff for "our chat feature is 2% more useful to a few people than it would be if we used handles instead of real names".
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I've been video gaming since Pong, and have never seen anything approaching the nerdrage exhibited over the conclusion of the ME trilogy.
I do not consider the endings as bad as many do, and the endings most certainly didn't ruin the whole series for me. It's much more about getting there than arriving, IMHO, and the journey throughout the ME series in general and ME3 in particular was nothing short of superb.
Even so, the ending was a big disappointment on many levels. I'd read a lot of nerdrage about the ending before getting there myself, so I didn't experience it "cold." Had I gone in unawares, it likely would have felt like getting smacked upside the testicles with a canoe paddle.
Okay, so the Reapers are owned and operated by an AI powerhouse known in the game as the Catalyst, which appears for the first time in the game's final minutes and takes the form of a young boy who Shepard saw get killed early in the game when the Reapers invaded Earth.
The Catalyst is convinced that the created will always destroy their creators, i.e., synthetic life will always destroy the organic life that brought it in to being. The Catalyst wants to protect organics from that fate. So what does it do? It builds the Reapers, and sends them through the Milky Way every 50,000 to kill all the advanced organic species so that they can't develop synthetic life that will grow up to kill organic life.
In other words:
The Catalyst gives Shepard three options for using the Crucible superweapon: destroy the Reapers and all other synthetic life; synthesize all life into a new form that uses both organic and synthetic components; or take control of the Reapers. Shepard dies in the last two scenarios, but might survive the first (how that can be when Shepard himself is partly synthetic is one of many plot holes).
Why are those the only choices? Why didn't the Catalyst simply off Shepard, destroy the crucible and let the cycle continue? Fucked if I know. Shepard, who throughout the series was consistently reluctant to take anything at face value, takes all the Catalyst's statements at face value!
Shepard dying isn't unexpected. A dark ending was eminently predictable. The big problem for me is that whatever option you select, the mass relays are destroyed.
So did you save earth and the rest of the galaxy? It doesn't seem likely, seeing as how in one of the DLCs released after ME2, Bioware told us that the energy released by the destruction of a mass relay wrecks the entire solar system to which the relay is attached.
If the solar system somehow survived the destruction of the Sol relay, a lot of people are still pretty fucked. A massive fleet of turians, salarians, asari, batarians, elcor, volus, hanar, quarians and geth came to earth for the final battle. Without mass relays, they're all stranded in a system that's inhospitable for many of them under the best of circumstances, and this ain't the best of circumstances.
If destruction of the mass relays caused destruction of the sort that happened in the DLC, then Shepard activating the Crucible destroyed more organic life than the Reapers ever dreamed possible.
The plot holes and other errors are too numerous to list, so I won't do it! Many are requesting that Bioware rewrite the ending. Others think that the in-game ending isn't the real ending. We'll see, but I'm not hopeful.
The game was truly superb up to that last five minutes or so. The current raging is a testament to what a magnificent job Bioware did in creating a series of games that truly engaged people and got them to care.
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
"What the fuck is a German muffin?" ~ R. Swanson
Last edited by Stephen Maturin; 03-21-2012 at 08:06 PM.
I finished it two days ago and I agree with Mr. Maturin for he is very wise. Seriously though, the game was fantastic and the ending isn't nearly as earth-shatteringly awful as a lot of people make it out to be.
I'm very much looking forward to Legend of Grimrock. An old school dungeon crawler.
Ooh, that does have some appeal.
Me, I'm still playing Rift. Where "playing" means, a lot of the time, "parking in a corner and working on addons".
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
So the new PS4 is in the news, apparently they won't offer backwards compatibility or the ability to buy and play used games. I guess they hated making all that money and have decided to throw it all out the window in the name of beating piracy. It's also being reported that the new Xbox will be the same way. Time to save up for a gaming rig if this actually turns out to be the case.
Wow, apparently Sony disliked having the number 1 selling console ever (partly due to a large used games market) and didn't want to repeat that by pissing off it's customers in what I'm sure won't be another DRM debacle for Sony.
I haven't bought a PS3 or Xbox360 mostly because I can't afford to (and I don't have the time to play all the games out there on all three consoles, and Nintendo's properties are my favorite, so...), but this definitely will not make me want to buy a PS4.
If it could play PS3 games, I'd be a more likely customer, because I would be able to play some of the games I missed out on, and it would lower the cost of entry.
If it could play used, it would also lower the cost of entry, and would be good, for example, for catching up with a series.
But assuming the Wii U will play used games (and in fact, most of my games I buy new, but it still annoys me), it will have backwards compatibility with the Wii and Wii controllers. I think Sony will be helping Nintendo to dominate the next console market as well.
I'm very much looking forward to Legend of Grimrock. An old school dungeon crawler.
Another GOG gamer?
I just got Age of Wonders (I) from them. It was either that or Dragon Age: Origins* (since I got to watch curses play it last weekend). I went with the cheaper one as hopefully I'm going to be spending more time on tabletop games now that the weather has shifted warmer.
*not GOG, of course.
__________________
Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I was on a nostalgia kick and grabbed the first Master of Orion and Master of Magic from GOG last week. The times, they were good.
It actually made me like MoO2 less when I replayed it next, 'cause after the simple elegance of the MoO1 planetary interface, the tedium of structure-by-structure city building for EVERY SINGLE ONE of my galaxy-spanning MoO2 colonies was almost overwhelming. Yes, I like having multiple planets per star system, it makes more sense. But the one-thing-at-a-time, all-or-nothing nature of colony industry, the fact that I have to actually tell the starving idiots to build hydroponic farms or terraforming, and the fact that if I automate it the fucking AI starts pumping out obsolete ships from designs that I haven't updated and don't need, all combined for an experience more frustrating than I recalled.
I'm very much looking forward to Legend of Grimrock. An old school dungeon crawler.
The game's out now and it is everything I hoped it to be! I just wanted to test it a little and finished running around Mount Grimrock for hours. Great game so far!
If you liked Master of Orion, there's a "Starbase Orion" for iOS which is pretty much that game, although noticably incomplete... But with an active developer forum and such.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I'm very much looking forward to Legend of Grimrock. An old school dungeon crawler.
The game's out now and it is everything I hoped it to be! I just wanted to test it a little and finished running around Mount Grimrock for hours. Great game so far!
I am very very very slightly disappointed that they didn't use DM's "you can level all classes on one character" thing, because the hybrids were amazing, and you could adapt your characters to your play style.
Still, pretty optimistic. It has the feel of a game done by people who really enjoyed DM and wanted to do an homage.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Just going from the gameplay vids it reminded me of the old Might & Magic titles from the 90s, so I'm super excited. Should be able to get it soon, I am always hugely appreciative of a new game that doesn't have a $60 price tag.
Just going from the gameplay vids it reminded me of the old Might & Magic titles from the 90s, so I'm super excited. Should be able to get it soon, I am always hugely appreciative of a new game that doesn't have a $60 price tag.
I tend to divide dungeon crawls into two genres:
1. Might & Magic, Wizardry, Bard's Tale.
2. Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt.
This is VERY strongly in the second genre. I mean, if you are familiar with Dungeon Master, you will recognize a number of the dungeon dressing pieces. The thing where you find a 2x2 space to roflstomp enemies that could slaughter you toe to toe? Yeah, that.
If you like that, this one is at the very least decent. Might not have some of the depth of DM, might have more in some ways. But it's basically a game.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I've been playing Radiant Historia on my Nintendo DS. It's really, really good - probably the best JRPG I've played in years and years and years.
The combat is surprisingly engaging for a simple system - enemies appear on a 3x3 grid, and your special attacks can sometimes move them in various directions, or hit enemies on a row or column (mostly just a single point). When your characters attack in sequence (something you have to arrange by carefully swapping moves with enemies) you can bunch up a whole load of enemies on one square and blast them with a really powerful attack.
The game rewards these 'combos' by giving you extra experience, gold and items after battles where you chain together long sequences of attacks. Damage also increases - so it's well worth using a weak attack to 'shuffle' a few badies onto one square, as the resulting damage will be higher. Despite this, the difficulty is tuned quite tight, and I'm not at all breezing through the battles.
The story is the high point, and is delightful. Like Chrono Trigger of old, it features time travel - and just like that wonderful game, it has a nice ensemble of characters who drive the story. To add to the confusion, there is also an alternate history taking place. Early in the story, a choice is made that defines two paths through history. Changes in one 'alternate reality' can also affect the other. So not only do you travel through time, you travel through time in one reality! The interface for this moving around the 'tree' of history is really nice. So far the only branches appear to very quickly lead to an 'ending' that is a bit of a downer, but it may be they are a bit more complicated past the first chapter.
Add a healthy dose of politics, mystery and hints of romance (I don't know if they will ever materialise into anything yet), and you have a cracking game so far.
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Ok so I've got Legend of Grimrock bought and installed (rather excited about supporting a DRM-free site like GoG, makes me wish I had more money to throw at them), and after a few bumps like figuring out how to actually fucking attack I'm off to the races.
I find myself kinda wishing combat was more pause-able-turn-based like most of the Bioware rpgs, but it's not too bad. Also, figuring out spells is a bitch, srsly. But it's fun, and very atmospheric. I hope to finish the first floor today.
In case it's not totally obvious: "Stand toe-to-toe and attack" is not an intended combat strategy. There's a reason there's so many 2x2 openings and rooms.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I'd be doing a lot more moving around if I could either A) pause-unpause to issue commands; or B) have a key binding for attacking, instead of having to click on the weapon I want to use. And spells? Forget it, there's no way I can do that on the move in a combat situation, at least for ones involving more than one rune.
As-is, it's a mild frustration in an otherwise stellar game.
That design's directly lifted from Dungeon Master. It is at least marginally a learnable skill if you have two hands and a bit of patience to practice it.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn