Video Games

[Blicero]

I've been playing KotOR 2 for a while, with one of the restored content mods. However, I just couldn't get into it. Currently I'm in that underground base of Telos, and I literally cannot muster up the motivation to play any more. After that needlessly long and tedious opening (that was only interesting when the Sith showed up), I kept waiting for the galaxy to be opened up for my exploration and to be greeted with a flurry of morally-challenging quests to choose from, while finally getting a chance to experience some of the excellent dialogue and characterization I know Obsidian is capable of but had to until this point not really encountered. It never showed up. Just pointless and trivial mook fight after pointless and trivial mook fight. I'm like level 11, and I still don't feel like I have any good grasp on the story.

Out of frustration, I reinstalled Torment and found it to be just as compelling, entertaining, and generally awesome as it had been before. And the prerendered backgrounds are still pretty, especially with the enhanced resolution mod.

I've ordered a copy of Dragon Age. Hopefully it will be like Baldur's Gate, not KotOR 2.

[Akula]

KotOR2 was a very ambitious sequel. Bigger, more choices, more classes, more meaningful dialogue with your companions. But the opening is pretty fucking boring, I didn't grasp the horror the first time through, and so I was only happy while talking to the NPCs. Now I know the plot and wouldn't want to play through again. I really liked Nar Shada, but didn't get much further because I encountered a number of bugs that just fucked up the gameplay. The Lets Play is really good though.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I've ordered a copy of Dragon Age. Hopefully it will be like Baldur's Gate, not KotOR 2.

Ahahaha!
Hahahahahahahahaaa!

Well, it's not terrible. I found the railroad you are stuck on for the first couple hours to be rather annoying, but I hear that things get a bit more open-ended once you join the mandated organization and receive your main objective.

At that point, you are gathering support in a manner that has some similarity to the second (I think. The one where you are tasked with getting at least 20,000 GP) chapter of BG2. Some of the characters are annoying and badly-written in a number of areas, but there are also a substantial amount of engaging and interesting interactions.

I prefer Neverwinter Nights (not the official campaign. Stuff like Adam Miller's Shadowlords-Dreamer-Demon arc can be very good) and Jade Empire.

[Cielingcat]

As far as Dragon Age goes, I have one suggestion:

Cone of motherfucking Cold. Seriously, get that shit and spam it forever. It lasts about 10 seconds, on a fifteen second cooldown; if you get 2 mages who can cast it, you can freeze a target in place forever while people beat on them. And it doesn't even take very long to do, as it has no cast time, so you can just go around using your other spells while throwing Cones of Cold on the person you want frozen.

Also, Mages are better than everyone. Not only because spells will kick you in the face, but also because Mages get Lyrium potions to recover mana, and Rogues/Warriors don't get to recover stamina in combat at all.

[Avoraciopoctules]

One note: unless you are playing on Easy, friendly fire is on for area effect magic. This can be problematic for blaster mages.

The spell chain that lets you stick someone in a telekinetic sphere is good.

There's a mage option that lets you gish if you want. If properly built, you will be better at doing warrior stuff than actual Warriors. Most of this will come from buffs, so you won't have much straight spellcasting in combat. But hey, mana potions.

[Koumei]

There's a mage option that lets you gish if you want. If properly built, you will be better at doing warrior stuff than actual Warriors.

Situation normal then? :p

[Maxus]

I'm taking a small break from Okami because I might need a pick-me-up after a while on the other games I picked up.

Namely, Lord of the Rings: Third Age.

(Yes, I know. I'm a dinosaur. But thanks to my budget, I tend to buy games used and cheap, and I'd never played Okami and only played LotR a little bit.)

It's okay. It's just very much an old-school cRPG where you're constantly upgrading all your armor and weapons.

And then, I ran into three motherfucking Ringwraiths as a random encounter, killed them, and got a fuck-ton of money and loot off them.

And I guess my memory's faded a little in the few years since I took this game for a spin when a buddy had it, I forgot just how fan-fictiony it is at times, especially given how the party is a step behind everyone, the entire time.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I've been playing KotOR 2 for a while, with one of the restored content mods. However, I just couldn't get into it. Currently I'm in that underground base of Telos, and I literally cannot muster up the motivation to play any more. After that needlessly long and tedious opening (that was only interesting when the Sith showed up), I kept waiting for the galaxy to be opened up for my exploration and to be greeted with a flurry of morally-challenging quests to choose from, while finally getting a chance to experience some of the excellent dialogue and characterization I know Obsidian is capable of but had to until this point not really encountered. It never showed up. Just pointless and trivial mook fight after pointless and trivial mook fight. I'm like level 11, and I still don't feel like I have any good grasp on the story.

The Telos military base is quite short, and the very last place before the game becomes (somewhat) open ended. So far I've found that you can go to and leave Nar Shadda, the Sith graveworld, and Dantooine pretty much freely, while some of the other world trap you with contrived crash-landings. The main piece of useful advice I've gleaned is to keep Kreia in your party.

[Blicero]

Well, I'm about 10-12 hours into Dragon Age, and I must say that I'm really, really enjoying it. There are a lot of things that are bugging me so far (you can't attack non-hostile NPC's, the outdoor environments are really rail-y, most of the numbers are hidden, you can only interact with certain NPC's and objects, quest-givers have fucking exclamation points over their heads), but I'm still totally hooked. The combat just "feels" right, and the quick hp recovery/revival with injuries system works really well. Based on the fact that I haven't been dying every other battle, I'm assuming I have an updated version of the game.

One other gripe: While the writing is (for the most part) excellent, the game isn't really "dark fantasy." Hell, BG2 had a "darker" plot (hunt down the mage who is trying to steal your fucking soul !!). All we get here is a standard "save the world from an enroaching horde of automatically evil forehead aliens." The name "darkspawn" could be evocative of so much more than just some stupid orc-lookalikes. (although ogres look undeniably sweet) That being said, the implementation of the plot is quite good, at least from where I am (did all the quests in that initial village and am now in Redcliffe). I think the plot could have been a lot more effective if it actually started out with

the king getting killed/betrayed in Ostagar with his army by Loghain with a civil war ensuing from the resulting confusion. (side note: I was really hoping Loghain would turn out to be a "good guy" who just didn't like the PC's and just happened to look kinda evil rather than the Bad Guy.) The darkspawn would then show up later once everything was totally in the shitter; showing up later would also allow them to be more formiddable opposition that would not be easily killable by four level 4 noobz.

Also, if darkspawn blood is so deadly, then why do you get sent out into the forest to retrieve some before you become immune to it? And how do the non-Grey Warden NPC's in your party not get wrecked after being spattered with the blood? That could have been a genuinely horrific or "dark" mechanic to deal with, but instead it looks like it's just getting dropped.

[Kaelik]

I hope you know where to look for numbers. Numbers are good.

[Blicero]

...pardon?

[Kaelik]

All the descriptive text in game is shit, and some of it's misleading, because all of it was made before the abilities were actually playtested, "balanced" and finalized.

But those numbers on the bottom of the character screen are right about 90% of the time, and hopefully you can extrapolate some of the rest of it.

There are places you can go to find out numbers, and the game is much better when you understand the numbers and what exactly is going on.

For example: melee character prior to level 7:

If you are unpatched or playing on the Xbox, daggers are Str based instead of dex based like the text says, and bows are just ass.

If you are patched up, +1 str adds .4 damage to each dagger attack, and +1 dex adds the same .4.

In all cases and across all weapons, +1 Str or +1 dex adds .5 to attack.

+1 dex add 1 to defense.

Ect.

That information is out there, for you to find, on the internet. That's all I'm saying.

[Parthenon]

Just completed Mass Effect 2 last night. I really enjoyed it, but the main plot is fucking stupid.

I found working for an evil organisation with no redeeming features from the last game utterly retarded and that the Collecters seemingly turned up out of nowhere in the setting.

There's various unexplained stupidities such as already having one of the seeker swarms for Mordin to examine.

The whole collectors taking over the Normandy was bullshit from start to finish, from everyone leaving the ship for a couple of hours rather than waiting a little to do all the tests, all the way up to suddenly not needing a crew.

The last boss was like being pissed on from a great height. It was stupid as hell, and a huge disappointment. I'd rather have to fight my way out under a strict time limit before the place blows, fighting a rear guard action while trying to keep my teammates alive and having to use medigel to keep them standing, and have the ending differ depending on whether they stayed with me as I escaped.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised at was that for the whole game I was expecting the Illusive Man to turn on me and betray me, whereas he merely just used me as bait and sent me into places without proper warnings.

If you ignore the main plot as much as possible the rest is great.

Theres a bunch of really nice things about it:
[*]the XP is now per quest rather than per kill so it encourages getting stuff done rather than hunting down every last enemy and makes running past enemies a reasonable choice
[*]the combat is excellent, and I had a lot of fun starting on difficult and slowly ramping it up to insanity as a sentinel
[*]the paragon/renegade is less good/evil and the renegade is often just not putting up with bullshit. Theres still the black and white good and evil at times though
[*]the writing is generally excellent and funny- Garrus still gets the best lines in my opinion
[*]less pissing about with useless items and keeping to only 2-3 of each weapon improves the game a lot

I just wish it made the hack more interesting by increasing the scroll speed, having four columns and making the patterns harder to differentiate. And bypass more interesting by having up to six node patterns to match and some dummy nodes. Otherwise it was just too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

[Blicero]

@Kaelik: Ah, I see what you meant now. I hadn't even thought to look for that much detail. I was thinking more how much of a penalty all those Entropy debuffs and such actually deal, and the range of damage for spells. How they calculate Resistance checks and DC's (or whatever they're called) would be nice as well.

I also miss having all of the combat rolls visible on the bottom of the screen and available for post-battle perusal.

[Kaelik]

@Kaelik: Ah, I see what you meant now. I hadn't even thought to look for that much detail. I was thinking more how much of a penalty all those Entropy debuffs and such actually deal, and the range of damage for spells. How they calculate Resistance checks and DC's (or whatever they're called) would be nice as well.

I also miss having all of the combat rolls visible on the bottom of the screen and available for post-battle perusal.

Totally from memory a long damn time ago:

Roll is 1d100+spellpower vs 20+physical or mental stats + bonuses (items or classes).

IE, for every point you put in a physical stat, it increases your defense of that kind by 1. Every point in a mental increases it by 1.

As for the spells, it's a lot harder, because yeah, the debuffs and stuff are hella hard to figure out, and are actually a function of spellpower vs resistance, and so vary based one enemy.

1) Never do Revent fights at all. Like, at all. When you find one, run away like a bitch, and do it later, by which I mean, when you have leveled 20 times since then.

2) The best shit is lockdown shit. Cold line is good for this, especially Cone. But also, the magic shield line is badass. Force Field is the bitch, and Crushing Prison is almost as good. And telekinetic is mandatory for Revents.

3) Just in case, you should know that all boss fights go like this:
1) Force Field Boss, kill minions.
2) Cone of Cold Boss, Kill Minions (skip against Revents, cold immune)
3) Crushng Prison Boss, Kill minions.
4) Hope your Force Field is back, Force Field boss, finish off minions.
5) Crushing Prison boss, have allies wail on boss who can't respond.
6) Hope your stupid allies survive long enough for you to regain Force Field.

Because Bosses output fucktons of damage, and all have enough minions that they output lots of damage. You will get owned if they are attacking you.

Also, if you want your Wizard to be a badass fighter, here's how:

1) Take the Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage things.
2) Use up all your Mana Sustaining badass buffs, like, all of them, including your fade thing for Arcane Warrior.
3) Fight Fight Fight, Fight Fight Fight, Throw out killer wave of stunning+health drain that heals you of all your damage.

The secret is this: 1) Every single point you ever get should go into spellpower. Your mana will increase just fine.
2) Arcane Warrior gives you:
a) a 20% miss chance on all incoming attacks, which is as good as any fighter is ever going to have anyway.
b) The total replacement of Str with Spellpower.

This means your to hit is going to be 100+spellpower(.5)+buffs vs 50+Dex+other bonuses of other people. AKA, as good as a fighter that puts every single point into Str, but better.
Your damage is going to be +spellpower to everything +buffs.
Your Armor is going to be Best Armor in the game+buffs.
Your defense is going to be 20ish % miss chance.

[TarkisFlux]

Just completed Mass Effect 2 last night. I really enjoyed it, but the main plot is fucking stupid. [...] If you ignore the main plot as much as possible the rest is great.

Theres a bunch of really nice things about it:
[*]the XP is now per quest rather than per kill so it encourages getting stuff done rather than hunting down every last enemy and makes running past enemies a reasonable choice
[*]the combat is excellent, and I had a lot of fun starting on difficult and slowly ramping it up to insanity as a sentinel
[*]the paragon/renegade is less good/evil and the renegade is often just not putting up with bullshit. Theres still the black and white good and evil at times though
[*]the writing is generally excellent and funny- Garrus still gets the best lines in my opinion
[*]less pissing about with useless items and keeping to only 2-3 of each weapon improves the game a lot

I just wish it made the hack more interesting by increasing the scroll speed, having four columns and making the patterns harder to differentiate. And bypass more interesting by having up to six node patterns to match and some dummy nodes. Otherwise it was just too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

With you there (beat it, enjoyed it, railroading main plot was "meh" at times) and agree with your bullet points (though I preferred the doc's offhand ramblings to Garrus; his singing is still one of my favorite moments), but I don't much care for the paragon renegade mechanical changes. I preferred the old setup where you spent character resources on benefits (whcih could have been better, but were still benefits) that also opened up new conversation options which you could use to boost your paragon / renegade scores (to open obscure missions that you could otherwise ignore). The new setup, where you boost your p / r scores to open up new conversation options, left me feeling less in control during a conversation. I made choices I wouldn't otherwise have made solely because I wanted to boost a score, which was annoying at times.

[Leress]

And I guess my memory's faded a little in the few years since I took this game for a spin when a buddy had it, I forgot just how fan-fictiony it is at times, especially given how the party is a step behind everyone, the entire time.

Or how the love story just springs out of nowhere, or you get to fight along important story figures in the game. And the ending battle is just plain ridiculous.

But I did enjoy Evil Mode.

[Maxus]

And I guess my memory's faded a little in the few years since I took this game for a spin when a buddy had it, I forgot just how fan-fictiony it is at times, especially given how the party is a step behind everyone, the entire time.

Or how the love story just springs out of nowhere, or you get to fight along important story figures in the game. And the ending battle is just plain ridiculous.

But I did enjoy Evil Mode.

Here's the absolute best of its worst bits:

All bits where Gandalf narrates some weird bit of the game--whether it's him wanking off over elves or saying how the party's dwarf was a hard-hearted bastard--and none of the characters ever talk about this shit.

The main character gets a telepathic message of "Oh, yeah, that guy you were following? The son of your Steward? Yeah. He's dead. Look, here's some nice footage of his body going down river in a boat..."

And Berethor doesn't see fit to comment on this.

[NineInchNall]

This response is going to sound angry, but please be assured that my ire is not directed at you, but instead at Bioware for disappointing me so much. In other words, I apologize in advance.

Just completed Mass Effect 2 last night. I really enjoyed it, but the main plot is fucking stupid.

Yes, it is. Like "I think I need another drink" stupid.

I found working for an evil organisation with no redeeming features from the last game utterly retarded and that the Collecters seemingly turned up out of nowhere in the setting.

Yes, these were both retarded. And irritating, 'cause suddenly everyone has heard of the collectors. It really broke suspension of disbelief.

There's various unexplained stupidities such as already having one of the seeker swarms for Mordin to examine.

Again: retarded.

The whole collectors taking over the Normandy was bullshit from start to finish, from everyone leaving the ship for a couple of hours rather than waiting a little to do all the tests, all the way up to suddenly not needing a crew.

Again: retarded.

The last boss was like being pissed on from a great height. It was stupid as hell, and a huge disappointment. I'd rather have to fight my way out under a strict time limit before the place blows, fighting a rear guard action while trying to keep my teammates alive and having to use medigel to keep them standing, and have the ending differ depending on whether they stayed with me as I escaped.

The whole "Suicide Mission" thing was a piece of shit. Skill was not involved at all in it. Get all characters. Complete their loyalty quests. Choose 1) Tali/Legion, 2) Miranda/Garrus/Jacob, 3) Anyone, 4) Samara/Jack, 5) Miranda/Garrus/Jacob. You win. No deaths. No difficulty, so tactics, no strategy, no skill, no shit.

I mean, if you don't choose one of the three in 2), it doesn't matter who you chose for 1), that person suddenly loses the ability to hack doors and becomes vulnerable to one hit kills. A rocket to the face is NOT LETHAL in Mass Effect, and it breaks suspension of disbelief for someone to suddenly die to one.

A fucking terminator is the last damned boss. What. The. Fuck. Shit. Piss. Cocksucker. [EDITED]. Motherfucker. Tits.

And what the shit was up with the responses to the Illusive Man's question at the end? If you choose, "I'm gonna blow this thing," the reason Shepard gives is not something rational like the fact that the IM is completely fucking untrustworthy or the danger of highly advanced technology getting into the hands of societies not capable of using it responsibly. No. It's instead, "I won't let fear change who I am."

Seriously? What does that even mean? Whatever it means, it sounds really self-centered and vapid.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised at was that for the whole game I was expecting the Illusive Man to turn on me and betray me, whereas he merely just used me as bait and sent me into places without proper warnings.

One of the things that pissed me off was that this never happened. I wanted an opportunity to rid the galaxy of him and his organization.

If you ignore the main plot as much as possible the rest is great.

Try mediocre. The global cooldown thing was like the worst idea ever ever. For a class like the Sentinel it wasn't as big a deal, as that class doesn't have much in the way of function overlap. A class like the Adept, on the other hand, is defined by having a bunch of abilities that do basically the same thing.

Step 1) You choose between powers A, B, and C.
2) You realize A is your best power in 80% of situations and B is your best in the other 20%.
3) You use A or B.
4) Global cooldown timer.
5) Go to 1.

It leads to repetitive ability spam that is fucking boring as watching shit be shit.

Theres a bunch of really nice things about it:
[*]the XP is now per quest rather than per kill so it encourages getting stuff done rather than hunting down every last enemy and makes running past enemies a reasonable choice

This was actually a good change.

[*]the combat is excellent, and I had a lot of fun starting on difficult and slowly ramping it up to insanity as a sentinel

No, the combat is not fucking excellent. It's fucking repetitive and mediocre.

Step 1) Get to cover.
2) Run ability use logic.
3) If enemies are not all dead, go to 2.

[*]the paragon/renegade is less good/evil and the renegade is often just not putting up with bullshit. Theres still the black and white good and evil at times though

Par/Ren in ME2 shit habanero shit all over the variety of characters that you could have in the first game. The fact that your Par/Ren score determined your conversation options straitjacketed you into following one path or the other until maxed. This is a layer of separation between the player and the character. This is bad.

[*]the writing is generally excellent and funny- Garrus still gets the best lines in my opinion

The dialogue is in general quite good, as long as you don't count nearly every line that Shepard has.

[*]less pissing about with useless items and keeping to only 2-3 of each weapon improves the game a lot

It would if there were any significant difference to the weapons aside from a damage increase. The whole problem with having so many weapons in the first game was that there was no differentiation to speak of. Every gun was defined solely by its damage per shot, accuracy, and heat tolerance. That (aside from the terrible interface) is what made fiddling around with the guns such a chore, 'cause there was nothing to it aside from "equip gun with biggest numbers hurrr."

I just wish it made the hack more interesting by increasing the scroll speed, having four columns and making the patterns harder to differentiate. And bypass more interesting by having up to six node patterns to match and some dummy nodes. Otherwise it was just too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

These minigames were effing pointless. They should have dropped them entirely and simply had Shepard do a hacking/bypassing animation or something. They added nothing to the game.

And don't even get me started on the planet scanning.

</rant>

[NineInchNall]

And holy fuck there's a word that gets filtered. [EDITED] [EDITED] [EDITED] [EDITED].

[EDITED].

[A Hammer]

(ME2 spoilers)

Out of all the weird things with the plot, what I got stuck on the most was probably the whole deal with Wilson. He starts killing everyone with robots, gets shot, and then... nothing? They drop him entirely after the prologue. Not really sure why I can't get over Wilson, seeing as there are a slew of issues that objectively speaking are dumber, but still, it'd have been nice to have gotten any sort of discussion towards his motives for getting up one day and deciding to kill his coworkers.

And what the shit was up with the responses to the Illusive Man's question at the end? If you choose, "I'm gonna blow this thing," the reason Shepard gives is not something rational like the fact that the IM is completely fucking untrustworthy or the danger of highly advanced technology getting into the hands of societies not capable of using it responsibly.

And then there's the thing where literally every piece of Reaper technology found so far has turned out to be a trap...

No, the combat is not fucking excellent. It's fucking repetitive and mediocre.

Step 1) Get to cover.
2) Run ability use logic.
3) If enemies are not all dead, go to 2.

I suspect that your experience with ME2 combat is coloured pretty heavily by what class you picked. Personally I've had a lot of fun playing as a soldier, shotgunnin' dudes in the face.

Then again, that in itself is a pretty sterling example of bad design.

Also, to Bioware: Please make female party members less embarrassingly fanservice-y so I can admit to playing your games in public without fear of being ridiculed, tia.

[NineInchNall]

And then there's the thing where literally every piece of Reaper technology found so far has turned out to be a trap...

Yeah, no kidding. How about, "You saw what happened with the IFF. This base is a wee bit bigger than that."

I suspect that your experience with ME2 combat is coloured pretty heavily by what class you picked. Personally I've had a lot of fun playing as a soldier, shotgunnin' dudes in the face.

Then again, that in itself is a pretty sterling example of bad design.

Yeah, most likely. The global cooldown mechanic in itself leads to a certain style of ability use (i.e., spam a small subset of your abilities) so if you don't have a decent spectrum of things to do outside of those abilities, then things are going to suck. Individual weapons might be considered discrete abilities, but far too many classes have access to only two guns. Which bores you to tears. Which is what happens when you play an Adept.

Contrast this, if you will, to playing an Adept in the first game. You had a wide selection of "activated" powers - ten of them, in fact - and could reasonably expect to use all of them in a given fight. Well, all but one if you were doing things right.

Also, to Bioware: Please make female party members less embarrassingly fanservice-y so I can admit to playing your games in public without fear of being ridiculed, tia.

Yeah, the only alternate color scheme I even cared about was the one that put a shirt on Jack.

[NineInchNall]

As far as Dragon Age goes, I have one suggestion:

Cone of motherfucking Cold. Seriously, get that shit and spam it forever. It lasts about 10 seconds, on a fifteen second cooldown; if you get 2 mages who can cast it, you can freeze a target in place forever while people beat on them. And it doesn't even take very long to do, as it has no cast time, so you can just go around using your other spells while throwing Cones of Cold on the person you want frozen.

Also, Mages are better than everyone. Not only because spells will kick you in the face, but also because Mages get Lyrium potions to recover mana, and Rogues/Warriors don't get to recover stamina in combat at all.

I found the Telekinesis line to be more than sufficient. That, combined with the Healing, Blood Mage, Paralysis, and Spirit Healer lines meant that I could lock down the entire field of play, pretty much indefinitely.

What irritated me was the ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AI that plagues your party members. Even the minor decision trees you can add are insufficient to fix the bullshit that requires constant pausing.

[Cielingcat]

Telekinesis was also very good.

What really bothered me was the way they did leveled enemies. It wasn't that you fought things which were increasingly powerful as you leveled up-no, you simply fought the exact same enemies to the point where at level 18 you were just as threatened by a pack of wolves as you were at level 2. I wouldn't have had a problem with leveled foes if the enemies had stayed the same power but gotten different names and models, but they didn't even do that.

At level 3, I fought Darkspawn. At level 18, I still expected to fight Darkspawn, because they were the main enemies, but I expected that, having grown in power, the Darkspawn I fought would be easier to beat. But no. They had more hp, did more damage, to the point where I really would have had more fun in the game if they didn't bother to give me bigger numbers as I leveled up.

Granted, the new spells I had made the fights easier in the sense that I could lock out whole sections of the battlefield from acting, but I never actually felt like my character was growing in power.

[NineInchNall]

I noticed that, too.

It might have been their way of doing the whole "lateral advancement" thing, but maybe that's giving them too much credit.