Duck and Cover

The game looks very bland.

It's not bland, but for how good the art direction is, the graphics engine driving it isn't stellar. The story is engaging so far, and replaying conversations does lead to new options.

Retlaw83 wrote:It's not bland, but for how good the art direction is, the graphics engine driving it isn't stellar. The story is engaging so far, and replaying conversations does lead to new options.

What do you mean by "replaying conversations"? Talking to the same NPC twice, or in subsequent replays? Does this mean the dialogue trees aren't static?

Art direction is so undervalued in games IMO. Good, cohesive art direction, music etc. does more for me than improved graphics and voice acting by the LoTR cast. I'm fucking too old for the generic Tolkien/D&D medieval or derivative Sci-fi settings.

By replaying conversations, I mean my game crashed a couple times so I had to redo entire pivotal conversations. I took different tacks each time. From what I saw the dialog trees aren't static, and characters never repeated precisely the same dialog if you make the same kind of dialog choice.

For example, after returning from killing Barret, I was talking to Sarif. I replayed the beginning of the conversation totally differently, but at the same point in both conversations I chose "refocus" because it was the obvious choice to get him to go along with me. Despite the fact I chose "refocus" at the same time in both conversations, Jensen said something entirely different both times and the only similar thing about the dialogs delivered by Sarif were that he called Jensen "son."

Yeah, it's much easier to spot if you take the 'Social Aug' (though there is a way to tell if you haven't : see if you can skip lines) - essentially, most of the 'major' conversations (i.e - the monocular leader of the first scenario batch of mooks, the deskshirt during the morgue branch, post-Barretalyptic Sarif etc) have a degree of randomness with regard to their responses and how effective certain topics can/will be. They replaced the One True Path of Bioware and their ilk with Three/Five Paths of Manipulation. Pity it was only for some of the blather.

Improvement, or obfuscation ?

To whom it may concern:

The Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad Beta should be up for launch very soon after I make this post. Can't wait!

I've been waiting to play the beta since the 23rd when it was originally scheduled. At this point I'm past being patient, I'm impatient. That's right I said it.

Downloading now

Okay so I've played about an hour or two of it, and I've enjoyed it. Being a rifleman (my favorite class) doesn't feel as hazardous for my health any more. The maps are big, everything is balanced pretty well, and crashes aside its pretty damn fun.

Blargh wrote:Improvement, or obfuscation ?

For one, it does mask its limits well.

I recall having one of these main quest convos in which I pondered about the answer for longer than it's cinematically acceptable and got thrown a "Hey man, you got nothing to say?" which left thinking I might have screwed the pooch. I neglected the F8 check to see what'd happened (otherwise I'd never progress any, took me long enough to finish that first damn mission with the regular "oh let me try THAT out" quickload), but it does strike me as evolution, if it's not yet at Masq levels. Like Blarghyman points out though, shame not to see every npc interaction treated equally.

Nothing to do with the above but WHERE IS A FLOGGIN' TRUNK OF A HIGHWAYMAN WHEN YOU NEED ONE?

Cimmerian Nights wrote:I won't be playing AP or DX3 until I get some new gear, still running a 7yo Vaio with a 512MB AGP card. Let no man accuse me of graphic whore-ism!

I wouldn't bet my life on it working on yours but regardless, I'm playing this on a 50 year old Athlon single CPU/ 1gb RAM on XP/ 70$ recent but bottom of the barrel GFX and it runs great. Granted, everything turned off but hey, from one "non-gfx-whore" to another, who fuckin' cares as long as it plays properly?

Seems (?) most/all of Eidos Montreal were drafted into production of, what did they baptise it - ah yes, Thieyourfth.

OPTIMISM (in spite of the ridiculous name)

Random thoughts/spoilers :

Found it highly amusing that once you acquire the PLASMA RIFLE, the only remaining targets to use it against are, with roughly four exceptions, zombies. Innocent, harmless, virus addled zombies. An obvious consequence of being able to GIS with your brain. That, and plasma facials.

It was satisfying to crab-hand/eviscerate both Taggart and Sarif. Colossal, ego-maniacal twats that they were.

In contrast, it was almost infuriating to witness the nadir of Adam with regard to the tête à tête with Zhao. Just stands there. Complete muppet. CUT HER. Fuck cutscenes that impose choices so arbitrarily through a wet hedge backwards. Fuck cutscenes in general, actually.

Explosive bullets are ducky.

WHO DOESN'T KNOW THAT ENGLISH ACCENTS ARE THE TRUE VILLAIN. ALWAYS. CHRIST.

I doubt I'll purchase the Icarus Aggravation System on subsequent play-throughs. Far too twitchy. Should be on a toggle of some sort.

Three seashells.

Highly disappointed by the absence of eye lasers. Generally felt the selection of augmentation and upgrades was lacklustre. No jump higher 2 ? Bah.

Patchouli IV wrote:TRUNK

Yeah, I concede to finding it tricky to shake OCD inventory management tendencies. Eventually I dispensed with every weapon bar the stungun, revolver (for those wonderfully out-of-place boss fights) and various grenades/mines. However logical, it was mildly jarring to have to set aside space for ammunition, so unlike the original. Surprised there wasn't an immovable These Are Your Goddamn Elbowblades item, to be honest.

Kept running out of food, though.

Red Orchestra 2 beta. It's pretty good although I hate waiting a year to respawn.

So... Finally finished the first mission in homo revolution... And I must say I like the game. So far it's not outstanding, but it is worth playing. The hacking minigame IS outstanding however.

Each time I find anything worth complaining much about I get corrected. At first it seemed you couldn't hack cams and turrets... But you can. I then thought you could only get augs by leveling, but you can indeed find hidden kits.

I recall tho' that in one of the other DX's there were some super special aug canisters... Amirite?
I would, however, have enjoyed if one when lifting a turret were able to:
A) destroy it by throwing it.
B: fire with it while carrying it like arnie does with the early tracked terminator model in the flick with the red clad slut cock hungry female terminator.

But I'm enjoying myself this far.

Do you mean trigger it manually ? Because (as you may be/probably are aware), you can carry a turret and have it blast things as a semi-autonomous shield. You just need to tweak the IFF first. Usually by way of console.

And yes, the hacking mini-game is easily the most successful implementation of such a system I've encountered. Not a chore at all. Quickly pays for itself, too.

Ah, hadn't tried yet. So thats yet another thing I felt was missing when it was there. Sure, I meant firing it myself but this is good enuff.

I plod along with turrets while they shoot for me. It's also handy to drop them when you need to take up a defensive position.

Every time I carry a turret the "My Robot Friend" song from South Park gets stuck in my head.

Before I forget (something which I am trying to do with vehemence, I assure you), the way in which the ending(s) are handled, from the ridiculously lazy three-buttons-in-a-room-and-one-around-the-corner, to the astonishingly vague, utterly devoid of closure, meandering montage monologues . . .

While I can appreciate that they clearly wanted to keep their options extremely unfettered with regard to how much (if any) of the original narrative they want to include/reference in any future sequels or DLC . . : Horrific, nonetheless.

Kind of pissed at the (it feels disingenuous to call it resolution) end to the whole Megan plot thread. Underwhelment. Would have been mollified to have had the option to batter her into unconsciousness and take out a load bearing narrative threshold, perhaps.

And the post credits content ? Suffice it to write that I am, for the first time, grateful for the existence of Youboob. Ehue.

A guy made this video portraying the gritty intensity of Red Orchestra 2 last night on another board I go to. Doesn't do the game full justice, but the voice acting in it is superb.