Game you're playing. How far you are.

[SenisterDenister]

I find Total War games to be a good middle ground between grand strategy games like Europa Universalis III and traditional strategy games. Sometimes I wish the grand strategy aspects of the total war games could be up-played a bit more, but the games are about fighting and conquest, and with the combat being done well enough I've more or less been content with the series. Well, until Empire. I've continued to buy the newer games hoping that they'd be better but I still find myself getting either bored or disinterested rather quickly. Shogun 2 is pretty "meh" to me, and I still find myself reinstalling Medieval 2 and Rome pretty regularly.

[Tofu Man]

Maybe on Asscreed: Plantations he could be turned into a vampire and visit New Orleans

I hear he's going to be modelled after Weissmuller, wear a red thong and googly glasses and swing around skyscrapers with his best friend Bob the drainpipe alligator. They'll call him Ropeman. Also, have casual flings (HA!) with underage strumpets while hanging off the sides of buildings. By his dick.

[Stalagmite]

As far as Empire goes, ever since I watched Mel Gibson's The Patriot I've always wanted a good war game with realistic rank and fire musket warfare and Empire delivered, and that's the extent of it.

I felt Medieval 2 was too bland, going Adolf Hitler across Europe Medieval style got boring and stale after taking 30 nations or so, but in Empire every battle felt like a smokey barrelled iron punch through conquest, at least in my opinion.

LOL@ Jet Baby saying that Alpha Protocol's combat sucks because it's not quite like gears of war. I never played Gears of Fail for more than 10 minutes and I never will so how could someone compare a game to a console shooter with no player stats to speak of to a game with a significant level of character diversity?

[jetbaby]

LOL@ Jet Baby saying that Alpha Protocol's combat sucks because it's not quite like gears of war. I never played Gears of Fail for more than 10 minutes and I never will so how could someone compare a game to a console shooter with no player stats to speak of to a game with a significant level of character diversity?

While you slaver and froth, let me just leave this here for you to reread, you silly, silly fanboy. Clearly you didn't make it past the word "War" [possibly even "Gears"] otherwise you wouldn't be throwing childish tantrums for the world to see.

Alpha Protocol [just started last month, I only play here and there, I have not yet finished] suffers from [just going at combat, not pointing out the obvious] being a generic pop and shoot. That's about it. It's Gears of War with smaller magazines, much lower testosterone levels, and less enemies. Enemy AI [or the lack thereof] combined with very small areas for firefights leaves combat severely wanting. Pretty much as Poops said, the game's emphasis was on combat and combat was sorely lacking. If they had spent more time further developing character interaction and placed heavier emphasis on it it could have been a good game. I'll still support the brosefs at Obsidian, but there's a reason I waited this long to buy it, and this game would have been much more harshly reviewed in my mind had I paid $60 rather than $15 or whatever I paid for it.

[Blargh]

How could you believe that something as unremarkable as the combat could be the focal point of AP ? With this in mind, and the detail that Obsidian isn't staffed by fuckwits, the emphasis was clearly narrative plasticity. This is supported by the undeniable efforts they paid in pursuit of a malleable plot structure. The punchy-shooty was a concession to certain inexorable market realities (SEGA being chief amongst them) ; unless you believe that a CYOA could be competitive alongside the various AAA juggernauts and the lapdog of Games Journalism ? If so, I would adivse that you keep munching those pills, as the comedown will epitomise cruelty.

[St. Toxic]

Just beat Alan Wake. Y'know, it's not bad -- or at least, not badly made. There's craftsmanship in that game. The ending was kind of shit.

[Blargh]

So, The Darkness 2 . . .

Despite being written by the same author, despite being somewhat narratively superflous to the first, despite it feeling a bit like fan-fiction, it's quite good. Solid gameplay, amusing gore, decent gunplay, unimaginative boss fights, tedious antagonist, structural and characterisation contradictions, Cockney darkling, tired pseudo-orchestral music, no pretense of an open world, Mike Patton, woeful co-op, catastrophically telegraphed, terrible post-credits sequel hook ; at about 7 hours, it's not too much of a time waste if you decide that it's excremental.

Now, the Syndicate reimagining ? Ahahaha, that was excremental. With the sole exception of co-op, strangely.

[Wolfman Walt]

Playing Syndicate. God is the single player horribly bland. I can tell you that you can guess the fucking storyline RIGHT NOW. I would be horribly impressed if you were trying and couldn't within a minute. It's that bland. The multi player, on the other hand, is pretty fun. It's kinda like left for dead meets rainbow six. The whole game should have just been this. As it stands, it's only about ten 10-30 minute maps.

Even with that said though, as it stands, it's only about ten 10-30 minute maps. The whole game should have been based around the co-op as it's the only part that feels remotely like Syndicate. Even with that though, the game is just wasted space. It adds nothing to syndicate, it doesn't really feel like syndicate and it could have been ANYTHING else. ANYTHING. Hell, it'd have been better served, in my opinion, being anything else. At least that point I can say they were trying to be somewhat creative instead of just dumping ideas and plopping the Syndicate name on it.

[Blargh]

It really is unrelentingly dull. Setting aside the stifling linearity of both objectives and level design, banal dialogue, unimaginative weaponry, and the disturbing frequency of being thoroughly trounced in non-interactive cutscene melee by various opponents, including bog standard humans, when the player character is meant to be a next generation murderbot - personally, I found the most egregious misstep to be the inability to kill the obnoxious Lily Drawl, despite the following details :

By this point, you have been all but bashed across the head by her pivotal involvement in the hilariously out of place plot to neutralise the megacorporate ogliarchy in favour of a reintroduction of good old democracy by way of blatant foreshadowing, contrived plot details and a particularly amusing recording of a lecture by her father regarding these halcyon days that barely anyone can remember between old age, memory alteration, assassination and rampant conventional censorship.

She has carefully guided you to muderbot your way through the various corporate factions for the sake of raising global tensions and concerns about espionage, as a way to trigger the hostile takeover/outright destruction of Eurocorp, despite the fact that the actions you undertake (mostly destruction of property and personnel, aside from the occasional brain excavation for chip analysis, nothing is actually stolen) are very much business as usual for the setting.

She has cleverly manipulated you to murderbot your way through the one group who were aware of her double agent status, a loose collection of non-chipped starving anarchists, because they were no longer useful to her and Knew Too Much.

She has admitted to deviously tricking you into murdering the Eurocorp CEO, by claiming he had the capability to convert any Eurocorp chip into 15 grams or so of molten metals. Oh, also agent recruitment includes a mandatory inhumation of parent units. Shocking twist !

She has just handed you a pistol.

She has turned her back to you.

It's practically suicide-by-automaton. Yet . . .

You. Cannot. Shoot. Her.

You can't even let her die during the finale by allowing the innumerable mooks a clear shot or twelve. Mission Failed.

I suppose some handwavium could be wrangled regarding the insurance she allegedly installed while she was Eurocorp's star neuroscientist ? And yet, the leadup to CEOcide includes a near lobotomy by malware, that could similarly be handwaved as damaging the infrastructure sufficiently to render any extra features non-operational . . .

All in all, aggravating. Particularly when one considers that it could have been exceptional. Wasteful.

But hey, at least it's a lark to wind up the manchildren in multiplayer.

[Tofu Man]

It didn't look the sort of thing I'd touch with a two metre mast if Rosario Dawson gave me a "touch but don't stop" lapdance and Brian Cox fed me grapes while singing "O Fortuna" in a tutu. And that was before reading these.

Mayhap I'm ignorant in only just realizing this, but gaming must be the most profitable venture since cocaine. I mean, it's not like you could have used these resources, this mise en scéne, this paucity of choice, imagination and general knowledge of HOW-TO-MAKE-A-FUCKING-SYNDICATE-GAME (or even HOW-TO-MAKE-A-GAME-THAT-DOESN'T-TOTALLY-FELLATE-TESTICLES, apparently) and used them in an area they'd likely be praised for. Like a Sci-fi film!?!? No?

No. We get movie-type funds wasted on miserable soaps, sub-soap drama in on-rails, franchise defacing games and a remake of Total Recall on the big screens. Maybe I should just change planets.

On that note, Más Erecto! 3 deserves a mention. Same old. Same swiss cheese plot, same incongruities, same 30 minutes of mostly meaningless talk for 30 minutes of -by now- annoying 3rd person shooty-throwy action, same "balls-on-sandpaper" grating male voice actor, all presented on typical Bio-blandness-scope. How people pay as much as 80 dollars to play something they've already played (twice) just because the (by now screwed up) story is finally going somewhere (however stupid a direction (Yeah, this is rich- Plans for a huge gun found on our backyard! Wo0t? We'd have found them early had we not been busy dealing with our crew's psychological issues and playing with toy spaceships, but then i'ts not like something horrible is just about to happen, is it? OH SH-)), is something I'll never know. Bravo, EA. I'd send you a "wish you were here" if I didn't have to apply a 3rd party crashfix to even be able to get to the main menu. A game that crashes before it gets going. It'd have been a first but then, Mass Effect 2 did it as well.

I might just send that "WYWH", after all. On a goatse postcard...

[SenisterDenister]

After TOR I lost all faith in Bioware. All of the leaked information pertaining to Mass Effect 3 make it look like absolute tripe.

[Blargh]

Be fair, Clotilde - occasionally amusing absolute tripe.

Honestly, I cannot fathom how so many people (and with 3, we can safely include the Bioware development team) have completely missed the point of the Mass Effect series : Archer in Space.

Also, worse ending(s) than Deus Ex - Human Revolution.

I feel they deserve some kudos for trolling the tali-mancers (sic) with that masterfully effortless face reveal, though.

[SenisterDenister]

It just seems like Bioware half-assed and squandered what could have been a legitimately good science fiction trilogy. The first Mass Effect wasn't perfect, but it had potential, and I had hoped that it would have become something great.

Also, I've been binging Mechwarrior 3, 4, and Living Legends with all the new footage and stuff going on about Mechwarrior Online. I'm getting pretty psyched. I haven't been this hyped up over a game in years. Nine years coming, guys. I've waited long enough.

[Tofu Man]

TBQFH Clotilde would've been smart to have "lost all faith" with the whole DA2 fustercluck. Dino, Dino. What manner of boulder have you been sleeping under?

But putting aside the bile for the sake of sake, there's 2 positive points in it. Actually, 1 and two 1/2. The armory is one half, although I find it rather silly that they'd limit heavy weapons to purely situational encouters (GO GO GADGET DLC!). The occasional avoidance of climactic cheese is another welcome half, undercut by not being nearly as prevalent as necessary and also humped dans le cul by the sac of constant, over-dramatic and unecessary dying of most of the least aggravating of the co-Archers. Although I have to admit I cheered when the singing toad got turned into gaseous viagra (oops spoiler).

The true good point ends up being the aural treatment. The obnoxious twat that got us that theme that's winning all the "Wish I Was Deaf" awards (srs, wanna troll me effectively, link that instead of Mr. Astley) manages pretty well in putting 3's ost back in contention after 2's squandered away all the good 1's did. It's a shame that there's not a lot of it to go around, but then he's a fancy Hollywood bloke and all that. Also SFX, particularly guns, deserve mention.

Shame that, with that arsenal, bgm and sfx, the gameplay that could have been decent is completely and utterly shot, prestissimo, by repetitive enemies, way too passive companion AI, that one-button-for-everything bullshit and, by far the worst offender, considerably roomy arenas with pause-button-led tactical capabilities delivered in a glorious* 30º viewing angle. Which can't be changed.

Oh Mr. K-to-the-C might be sad to find out that his jet-powered tractor only makes an appearance as the butt of a joke. But hey, maybe Dino'll like this, at least you get to pilot a mech!**


*by which I mean game-breaking

trolling the tali-mancers (sic)

<strike>Lmao</strike> (wait, this deserves better) HA HA HA!
Also, don't be a cunt (of the bad kind) and share your press save-states next time. Worse endings than DEHR? Do want. Along with most of the hours spent playing this.

[SenisterDenister]

Dragon Age 2 could've been a pothole in an otherwise decent road, y'know? It takes more than one game to prove that a developer is shot and everyone needs to abandon ship. Since DA2, however, Bioware has consistently proven to me that all hope is lost for them with each game released since then.

[Retlaw83]

I got bored with Mass Effect after the second mission, so I've saved myself the disappointment of the sequels.

[Blargh]

I have considered providing an abridged version of the ME3 ending(s), but, aside from being somewhat superfluous due to youtube and the widespread dissection by various games media sites and forums, I think that I would probably suffer a mild stroke as a result.

Suffice it to write that it's profoundly stupid, boldly incoherent, hilarious, and has squandered any potential the trilogy had for a <strike>well written</strike> satisfying resolution. I maintain that the DA2 fiasco demonstrated that not only were Bioware's writers not up to the task, they simply didn't care. Not that Baldur's Gate 2, for instance, was itself a masterpiece of wordsmithery.

I doubt EA is to blame for any of this. At worst, they're reinforcing a path that Bioware chose of their own volition. Path of least X.

Honestly, the Bioware forums fallout is the best part of this. Tears, wangst, apologism and overt censorship. Business as usual.

As for Tali's face - while I'm aware that the use of stock graphics resources isn't exactly uncommon within the industry, they do tend to be disguised. Aside from schadenfreude (which I would applaud), I don't comprehend how Bioware can defend not having one of their numerous artists spend an hour or two on an original work instead of clumsily repurposing a photograph they likely found through GIS.

Overall, completely hilarious.

[Blargh]

yeah so basically you owe it to your soul to look into a vastly better game to make up for the deficiency of quality and paucity of visual gags that you have imprudently exposed yourself to you indolent boobs

[Tofu Man]

vastly better

I love that trailer, the animation is really something else. Have to give this one a go sometime.

[Burning Oasis]

I got bored with Mass Effect after the second mission, so I've saved myself the disappointment of the sequels.

Dear Allah, this.