FadedC

[quote who="RavenX" reply="101" id="2903309"] 7? I think you miss-counted, my friend. They have 5 mostly, except Varric who has 4 because you can't change out his crossbow. They don't have multi-pieced armor, so no gloves, boots, or helmets/hats/hoods. Companion armor comes as a one piece uniform, of which I've only found one upgrade for and that was Avaline, which when I found the upgrade, didn't change her look at all. So far, all my companions (which I'm pre

I don't find many things dumbed down either. Crafting I don't like as much, but although it feels different it's not actually that big of a change. In DA1 you found herbs, then spent money from a merchant to buy the things you needed to turn them into potions and poisons. That's what you do in DA2 as well. There are no craft skills but we always gave those to dummy characters we weren't using in our main group anyway. The only key difference is not having to worry about running out of raw cra

I wouldn't read too much into the big difference between user and critic scores until the game has been out for a little longer. Early scores are frequently extremely skewed, either towards very low or very high. I doubt many people (if anyone) have finished the game yet, so the only people likely to review it are the people who hated it enough to have intention of finishing it, or people who aren't buying it in the first place because of what they have heard. Two months from now if t

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="65" id="2902274"]Annatar, while I have not played the game (nor do I intend to), I can confirm that based on pre-release information, the upgrade of your companion's armor is indeed cosmetic, like in Mass Effect 2. [/quote] That's not true at all. There are several armor upgrades for each non main character and they all give various statistical bonuses. You can also equip accessories and other non armor items just like the main character. <

[quote who="Mauxe" reply="11" id="2900406"](aside) I did not get the chance to usurp the Mad Overlord back in the day. Sad. A good friend of mine did enjoy his adventure on a nice colorless Mac. I still remember his joy when wielding the dreaded Epee of Dismay... Anyhow, FadedC's comments about moving money around brought back a host of memories. The ability to (P)ool gold was definitely a nice bit of streamlining. Automap was a nice feature as well.&n

Well when it comes to streamlining I think it's hard to say that it's outright bad or good. I'm sure even the most hardcore complexity fan can find streamlining changes they actually liked if they think about them. An example would be back in old school days of the wizardry series. Back then when you found gold it was automatically divided up among your party members. When you wanted to buy something, you had to manually transfer the gold from each character to the one doing the buyin

I wouldn't necesarily assume that magic using classes will be any less item dependent then physical classes. Blizzard learned with WoW that it's important that every class be equally excited about a shiny new weapon, whether it's a staff that boosts your spells or a sword. In WoW all classes are equally item dependent, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that in D3 as well. Other then that, I'm all for maximizing the parts of the game you enjoy. You just have to realize that many peopl

It's been awhile since I played it, but I don't remember the translation being that awful. I remember there being some grammar issues and awkward word phrasing, but nothing so bad that you didn't understand what was being said. It was nothing like some of those Japanese translations people like to joke about. Personally I didn't like the game that much though (though I thought parts were very creative). But that's another matter entirely.

If you really enjoyed Dungeon Keeper 1, you could consider getting 2. In many ways I actually felt it was a far superior game. Someone had mentioned Evil Genius, and while I don't really feel it played at all like Dungeon Keeper (other then the basic concept of having an evil base) it's still a really interesting game, and in many ways like what dungeon keeper should have been. It's also extremely flawed and buggy and frequently frustrating but it may be worth checking out still. Of course no

[quote who="Pbhead" reply="39" id="2884638"]like bioskock. seriously, if its on a consol... why is it in the list? [/quote] If you were to remove any game that is on a console from that list, you'd also have to remove Knights of The Old Republic, Morrowind, Call of Duty, and several others.

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="40" id="2889094"] Quoting Annatar11, reply 19 ...In fact, the things you listed to start your commend is the only true way to determine a "top" game... If Sales figures alone determine the "top games" then Deus Ex was a failure in the "only true way to determine a top game" and Call of Duty: Black Ops is the single greatest piece of art ever created. I refuse to accept this. [/quote] Don't forget Deerhunter..

[quote who="oera" reply="18" id="2888086"] Quoting lbgsloan, reply 17 I would strongly suggest you just stick the with main missions and get through it at painlessly as possible. Talk with your party members between missions and do the subquests on the main planets of course, but I'd skip the side planet stuff. You won't miss anything except some boring Mako sequences and more loot that you won't need. Being at max level at the end of

The thing that people love or hate about ME2 is that it streamlined things a lot. In ME 1 you could find 50 versions of the same sniper rifle each doing slightly more damage the one before it. In ME2 there were only a few weapons of each type, so you could choose between a slow firing high damage sniper rifle and a more rapid firing low damage one. But instead of finding a +25 slow firing sniper rifle and having to swap out the +24 one from your inventory, you instead just foun

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="16" id="2886637"]It was my very first strategy game that I remember. I played the Broken Alliance demo (which allowed all factions in the game) and was hooked! I never really got the same kick out of HOMM III, I don't think it had been properly rebalanced with the changes from HOMM II and I personally don't think it had the same style and character as its predecessor. When custom campaigns come along to fheroes2, it will be awesome! A g

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="204" id="2886502"] If Steam were the only viable option for digital distribution, the PC would effectively be a closed platform. Companies with their stand alone stores? Please. All Valve would need to say is that if they don't play ball they won't list their title on Steam. [/quote] It's true, I mean that's basically how brick and mortar stores squashed online sales for so many years, and why digital sales of games have on

So the basic concept sounds interesting, where your trying to create satisfying adventures for heroes who come into your lair. The part where your doing this to kill them later sounds a bit odd though. Might have been more interesting if they dumped that part and just made it more of a kind of wierd dungeon theme park. But still it's an intriguing concept, but it sounds like maybe I'd be better of waiting if I planned to get it?

Yeah Kohan was my kind of RTS game. It had bases to build cool structures in but absolutely no peons to worry about (or at least I don't think it did). One of the things I loved about DoW 1 was that it kind of had a more realistic sense of base building. I always had a problem with games where the entire invading force attacking a planet consists of 5 workers who build everything on site. If WW 2 was a RTS then D-day would have consisted of 5 guys landing on the beach and starting to

I don't really view base building as a chore. However by far one of my least favorite thing about RTS games is peon management. I hate having to constantly produce worker units and tell them where to mine/build/etc. To me this the real chore that takes away from the game, although I have noticed that recent games tend to reduce this somewhat. Personally though I'd like to see the peon unit either go away completely or be something that you don't ever have to build more then one or two of.

How about Dead Space 1/2? I guess it's a bit more survival horror, but it has one of my favorite shooting mechanics with the need to shoot of the limbs of the aliens and different weapons have different damage patterns which strongly effect how easy it is to slice off an important arm or head. Being a survival horror game though there isn't as much emphasis on spraying the environment with hot lead. Differences in weapons are very distinct though.

[quote who="TorinReborn" reply="15" id="2879884"]Hey, don't piss on Plants vs Zombies That game is soo cool [/quote] I'm not that surprised to see Plants vs Zombies there either, if just as a nod to the casual game market. These games are huge and popular with a lot of people. The entry for this game outright said that they had to list one game of this type. And it is just a fun game. Tropico 3 was a stranger pick. I actually do think the original was a class

It's got a much bigger empire building focus then say Sword of The Stars. You spend a fair amount of time micromanaging your colonies. I actually thought combat was the big weak point of the game, but just my opinion. It's actually based very strongly on the extremely old game called Armada 2525. It manages to capture a lot of the things that made that game fun but I still didn't really like it that much.

Well if I remember right, the AI was still pretty incompetent at higher difficulty levels. It just got so many bonuses that it was able to overwhelm you with massive numbers. Of course the same can be said for a lot of games. I don't really mind if the AI in a game gets bonuses, but I do like there to be some illusion that were are playing the same game and that it understands how to play.

I remember ST:Birth of a Federation. It had some really cool concepts with the minor races and the way that all the sides played really differently. It was one of those games that I really wanted to like but that I couldn't. I think what killed it for me was the insane amount of micromanagement that it eventually required and the poor AI which generally kept the game from being at all challenging. But it was one of those games where you could really see the glimmer of what could have bee

[quote who="Diardiamond" reply="100" id="2865566"] Ah Rulemaster! It was an awesome rpg.. you actually needed to be skilled at 'math' to 'play' through combat resolution... they actually made a program for really really old comps (back then it was cutting edge.. lol.. modems the size of cadilacs) that helped the more math challenged players have an easier time of it. When it came to 'fun' though in combat, Stormbringer was classic with its 'parry-riposte' combat sy

The elemental forums are generally pretty good here, although the miscelaneous forums are pretty poorly moderated and much less civil.