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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24529 |  RedRay (462) Dec 18, 2011 - 04:36 am
| | Yeah, I'm in. I played in the beta period too. TOR is an evolutionary improvement over other MMO, not a revolutionary one. All these MMO's from Mafia Wars up to TOR are basically games where you are asked to click your mouse on something from 40 to 1,000 times and then they congratulate you for clicking the mouse that many times. There isn't a deeper meaning to these games. If you have fun, great. If you don't - then stop spending money on it. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24462 | RedRay (462) Dec 02, 2011 - 12:49 pm » Edited on Dec 02, 2011 - 12:50 pm
| Since the NDA on my SWTOR beta testing rounds has been lifted I can say this: SWTOR is an evolutionary upgrade to WoW, not a revolutionary one. Lots of improvements to the UI, but ultimately you are still clicking the mouse repeatedly to get a reward.
Positives: UI, full voice acting (and good voice acting, not Bethesda quality voice acting) for all NPCs, large map if one includes all explorable planets, good balance/opportunity for solo and team grinding.
Negatives: The space combat is a arcade, rail, mouse click fest shooter. Land/personal combat is your typical ability/cool down affair with the well known, DPS, tank, healer roles. Some class imbalance in PvP (i.e. Sith Inquis). Feel of exploration and discovery isn't as good as in older MMOs since every location has an easily discernable purpose.
Overall I like it and am going to give it a whirl.
EDIT: Last beta was with full game client. So not dumbed down. Going forward Bioware can of course add more game mechanics via expansions. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24409 | RedRay (462) Nov 17, 2011 - 07:21 pm
| The problem is that "sometimes" approaches 95% for items that are listed below other items that you have equipped.
I do like the Enchanting and crafting mechanics. And Bethesda used the bigger map to do a better job of spreading out the hotzones for ruins, dungeons, etc. than was the case in Oblivion. That gives the sense of exploration a much better vibe. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24420 | RedRay (462) Nov 17, 2011 - 01:07 pm
| | Causality? My post made no claims about WHY Elemental bombed, merely that it did. I note you aren't disputing what causality I did claim, namely that if Elemental had been a financial success, Impulse would not have been sold. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24382 | RedRay (462) Nov 17, 2011 - 01:06 am
| | The whole strategy of knowingly releasing a game before it is finished because the dev & publisher won't fund anymore development is getting rather common. Sword of the Stars:Lords of Winter, Stronghold 3, Elemental:War of Magic. You'd think that with the Minecraft example fresh in everyone's mind they'd simply do the same thing and cut the price to $15 or so. Oh well... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24409 | RedRay (462) Nov 16, 2011 - 09:01 pm
| Everything in the UI is setup for use with the console d-pad. For instance selling an item takes two clicks in SWTOR: click on the vendor, right click on the object to be sold. That same action takes 10+ clicks in Skyrim: click on vendor, hit Enter key to select dialog choice, hit down arrow 4-6 times to highlight item category, hit right arrow key to select item category, hit down arrow 4-6 times to highlight item, hit E key to sell item.
The rest of the game seems nice. Some graphical artifacts in game. Object and corridor interiors look blocky compared to Rage for instance. But overall scope of the game is unmatched by anything else on market. You could easily spend 200+ hours on this t*tle. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24420 | RedRay (462) Nov 16, 2011 - 08:54 pm
| | I don't doubt that Impulse was profitable and even the most profitable part of Stardock at the time it was sold. But let's be honest. That was so only because Elemental:War of Magic was released six months prevously and bombed. Had Elemental been successful, Impulse would never have been sold. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24332 | RedRay (462) Oct 26, 2011 - 03:14 pm
| I think this single player review is pretty much on target. I know there Jacob didn't give a score/rating yet, but personally I'd give the single player campaign a B- grade. Great graphics, some interesting shooting, some horrible plot writing and a few times where CoD style infinite respawn is too evident.
At least it's not terribly buggy. There are some clipping issues though, for example on the mission where you get evac'ed by a Ospray helicopter you can clip right through the bottom of the aircraft if you don't approach it directly from the rear entry ramp. But no CTDs. Much cleaner than Rage for instance. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24223 | RedRay (462) Sep 30, 2011 - 07:29 pm
| | At first I thought there would be some persistence with Barney-like marines and shared ammo supplies, but about midway through it became clear the marines were just Star Trek-like red shirts. Too bad, it would have been nice to add some strategy elements with AI companions and increase the horror vibe with ammo scarcity. Instead it seems this will be another shooter, maybe it will work, maybe it won't. Time will tell... Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4707 | RedRay (462) Sep 30, 2011 - 07:09 pm
| | The British media is horrific. In addition to the phone hacking scandal, even the "higher crust" media firms have egg all over their faces. In just the last week we have the BBC interviewing a supposed "trader" making all sorts of financial claims - turns out he was just a publicity hound and does not work in the financial industry, and the BBC also had a segment where the interviewer kept on referring to an EU official he was interviewing as an "idiot". Complete lack of professionalism. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24082 | RedRay (462) Sep 01, 2011 - 09:52 pm » Edited on Sep 01, 2011 - 09:53 pm
| I more or less agree with the review, but I do see some additional flaws in the game. The most noticeable to me was the reuse of level maps. It's not as bad as Dragon Age 2, but it's there and it's worse than in Halo 3 for example. The game teasers boasted of sending players to locations around the world, but in reality there are only two exploreable maps - Detroit and Hengsha, and they both get reused.
Partially for that reason I think the replay value is lower than the reviewer does. I just couldn't get into the game in a replay. I tried, but lost interest after a couple of hours. The hacking mini-game is great, but after you've done it 500 times (you will literally do this in a complete playthrough), my will to do more vanished.
The game AI is also too prone to exploitation via modified pulling. Kill one enemy, flash stealth, run away, let alarm expire, repeat. The boss mobs are tough until you discover that their scripted attack patterns can also be completely subverted by flash stealth useage.
Still, the overall atmosphere of the game is superb, the plot is good, and I didn't notice any bugs/hangs. Definitely one of the top games of the year so far. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24044 | RedRay (462) Aug 20, 2011 - 12:55 am
| It wouldn't surprise me if there was some aiming assist given to the console folks.
On the other hand, it might be kind of interesting to have limited types of team based multiplayer where the console and PC people were grouped onto opposing sides and the console people were given a numerical advantage... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=24030 | RedRay (462) Aug 19, 2011 - 07:41 pm
| | If EA, Ubisoft and MSFT all combined their separate online sales portals into a single unified portal and sold their games only through retail and their united portal, Steam would have real compet*tion. But that would require cooperation. It's hard for these old dogs to learn new tricks sometimes. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23956 | RedRay (462) Aug 04, 2011 - 09:08 pm
| | News Update: After some consideration iD decided to delete the part of the Doom 3 code that automatically spawned a mob in a dark corner 2.6 seconds after the player had passed that part of the corridor from the code that will be released. Carmack noted, "That code with some small modifications occurred so many times in the full source code that by deleting it we can reduce the size of the code base we're giving to folks by 25%. And the compile size falls by 40%!". Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23795 | RedRay (462) Jun 20, 2011 - 03:25 am
| id got lost in the quest for better looking mobs. They sacrificed the number of mobs to have fewer, better looking ones. A bad gameplay design decision.
But there have been plenty of games that went the other way. Halo really started the the trend of returning to large numbers of mobs onscreen at once. CoD followed that path. Nowadays most of the commercially successful FPS t*tles tilt heavily towards more mobs. Only the strat/RPG FPS games still veer towards lower mob counts. And even then a game like Mass Effect 2 will aim towards having 6-8 mobs in a wave - in addition to your henchmen. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23748 | RedRay (462) Jun 12, 2011 - 08:09 pm
| | That's pretty much what I do. Unfortunately it only works for about 10-20% of apps. The registry is the problem. Still worth doing for game apps though as it will transfer over your save games. Copying over a saved copy of the registry file is an option, but I wouldn't execute that copy command until after you have updated things such as video drivers, sound/network drivers, firewalls, i.e. everything you'd have on your new boot drive. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23771 | RedRay (462) Jun 11, 2011 - 03:05 pm
| | Don't kid yourself. The games on offer will be shovelware. Since advertisers will only pay a couple of pennies for each blurb run, no dev would market a current triple-A t*tle this way. This is just an attempt to flog older intellectual property before it becomes completely worthless. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23748 | RedRay (462) Jun 09, 2011 - 11:39 pm
| | It would have been nice to have added a section for people that have two SSD/HD devices and install the OS on one and their apps on another. Many PCs are configured this way. After an OS reinstall, reconnecting the apps can be tedious, particularly games that need to see a particular save file directory on the OS drive. There are some steps that can be taken before the OS wipe/reinstall that make that process quicker. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23605 | RedRay (462) May 24, 2011 - 09:34 pm
| | The game had far too many parameters that affected combat & production. While that complexity sounded great on paper, in practice the dev didn't have the resources to check whether every single one of those factors was play balanced. Frankly they didn't even have the resources to check that the parameters worked as described and weren't bugged. The new game description sounds worrisome in that it too seems to offer a lot of complexity - which still isn't working properly in the previous t*tle, as mentioned by the prior poster. Flag this | Edit this post |
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