Video & PC Game Discussion

Yeah all the console COD's are just poorly built, but at least I enjoyed 2 and 3.
I like to enjoy my games, you know. Not that huge a deal. 4 on there was hardly even a campaign and they just sucked. But enough talk about f*cking COD....


Buying Demon's Souls tomorrow. Heard enough about it from lots of people, gunna do it

Playing Baldurs Gate (the oriignal!) right now!

I have the intention to buy a console and restart gaming big time. Last console I had was PS1. It's been four or five years since I stopped playing on a regulary basis.

Yeah PS2 was the best system I've ever had, no doubt.

Might as well go with that. I regret selling my old one. Especially since I was assured PS3 will be backwards compatible, oh wait! Well it WILL be. Uh...eventually?
Shoulda bought a used old one that was....

Conor Fynes wrote: Playing Baldurs Gate (the oriignal!) right now! Anyone else played it?

Yeah, I've played through it several times.  Same with BG2.  Great stuff!

If I was getting a console I would get an N64

Just finished Bioshock... generally a great game (haven't played SS 2 though). The story was superb, the characters brilliantly written and voice-acted, the use of visuals to suggest narrative and vice versa was very rewarding and it genuinely looked superb, horrifying, beautiful and awesome simultaneously. The setting is superb, even if there is quite a lot of Fallout influence on it. I didn't think it dragged in any particular sections. It didn't generally pull the cheap trick of prohibiting you access to areas until you need to go there. Superb game. Oh, and the soundtrack was great.

Some weak bits:

... found that it actually got much easier as it went on for the most part but that's largely due to excessively cool weaponry (once you have a rocket launcher, electric gel and a crossbow, big daddies cease to represent a serious challenge as they did earlier and I thought that particularly was a problem) and there being lots of resources all over the place. I wouldn't have minded a more consistent challenge level and needing to use a bit more of my many many cool things to deal with splicers. The hacking minigame was a bit incongruous, though I thought it was good to have the ability to hack things. The research element was similary rewarding but also a bit... odd in the context of the game. One issue was that a couple of the spawn points felt a bit obvious, and especially with the big daddies, I feel they'd have been more of a memorable event if they were roaming more evenly over a level rather than just respawning in the same places. As it is, you'd end up fighting two or three in more or less the same area. Oh, and splicers turned up in one or two areas that you'd had to go through some extremely tortuous route to get to with no indication of how they did it. That hurt immersion just a bit.

Some things I'd have liked:

A few more optional areas with a bit of development. There were a few around (and some of them had lots of narrative strength) but I think a few more wouldn't have gone amiss. Making the machine gun a bit less unreliable prior to its upgrades would've maybe made me get them sooner... keeping a

One fairly significant problem:

The ending was entirely disappointing. I mean, there was a lot of build-up to it, the boss battle would've been harder and more fun, I guess, if I hadn't abused the crossbow but then I felt kind of cheated by the conclusion of that and the optional ending I got didn't really reflect the character I had at the end (I probably saved/harvested about half/half on the little sisters, but I something of a change of heart after a certain point in the narrative, so my character's decision in the cut scene at the end and therefore the conclusion did not reflect the mindset I was playing him by that point of the game... ) and I think having Tennenbaum as narrator smugly reinforcing that with some surprisingly mindless judgement made it far more awkward.

So, yes, trying not to spoil anything... thought Bioshock was a generally outstanding game but it didn't really end on a high note.

I never made it through Icewind Dale (or Icewind Dale II) the whole way.  I should try to find those two and play them again sometime. 

Last time I tried to play IWD2 something disagreed with my graphics card - that was on my old computer though, hopefully this one goes a bit better. 

Hm... played both IWD games last Autumn, I think... the first had a much stronger plot than I remembered and I played it with a genuinely dice-rolled party rather than min-maxers, which made for a much more interesting and characterful game... personally, I really liked the loot randomisation... made it feel sort of worthwhile to have a few points in various weapons rather than just specialising in the best thing I'll get.

IWD II is actually pretty good... I'm not sure if the 3rd edition class system really transfers all that well (or if it does, it transfers with its problems... if I want a fighter/mage, I want them to be a fighter/mage from level 1 rather than just a mage with two levels of fighter thrown in for the feats... I think there are a lot of customisation options but most of them aren't all that useful anyway). Still, there are some brilliant settings, it builds on the character types available pretty strongly, has a lot more diplomacy and thieving available than the first and the time loop is just insanely good.