The Videogames Tab

I agree KOTOR is a great game, but that pause-and-go battle system is getting a bit long in the tooth. I would say the same for Baldur's Gate II, although it is definitely one of my all-time favorite RPGs. It IS older though, so it has some annoyances, such as the aforementioned battle system. Both are certainly worth playing, though.

Closed an Oblivion Gate last night! The level was challenging, but not frustrating, so I think I am just about right as far as character strength at this point, although I am a bit weak with my melee skill, which I am working on now.

The flame chicks were rad!

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I accidently hit someone in the bloodworks - so i had to go to jail

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I sometimes steal things by accident and end up paying a fine. Usually only a few gold here and there.

Something happened to me in-game recently that I've not seen before - two vagrants were fighting and a guard waded in and dispatched one of them. Being the upstanding citizen that I am, I looted the dead guy's corpse and found nothing but an apple with the little red 'stolen goods' jobbie hovering over it.

Rough justice.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

This paranoid dude cracks me up. I have a feeling he is imagining all this stuff.

It's OK, it's borderline decent.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

There are some brilliantly quirky little quests that, unless you've got a walkthrough, you're probably only gonna wander into by accident. That's not one of them, I guess, (EDIT - I mean, it's quirky but easy to find) but there's some good loot in his house I think.

I tried Operation Anchorage last night and it was a flippin' disaster. I'd deleted my previous lv20 save file and tried to tackle it at lv5 - it's tough.

Discretion/cowardice became the better part of valour in the end so I backed away and will return to it nearer the end of the game. There are some great sidequests in Fallout 3 (the Blade Runner one where you have to 'retire' an android is excellent) but I'm not getting much motivation for actually seeking them out.

Two demos coming out today , one for PS3 and another for 360.

Killzone 2 for the PS3 , which has been in development for about 5 years.



and Halo Wars for the 360 , which is an RTS (rts on console usually isn't a good idea - but microsoft seems to be putting a lot on this one)

We actually had to go out and socialize last night...the horror!

Hopefully I can get some game time in this evening.

Im hoping to borrow Batalion Wars 2 and Hitman for the 360 tomorrow from my bro-in-law so hopefully I'll post soon about them.

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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~

I steal things... on purpose.

I did the Draconian Madstone quest last night. Gave it to the Countess, she put it in a display case behind her throne and rewarded me with a circlet of something awesome, and then when everybody went to bed, I "repossessed" the Madstone from her case.

If you join the Dark Brotherhood, one of the most satisfying ways to assassinate someone is to discreetly remove every piece of food in his/her house, and then leave a poisoned apple behind. You don't even have to be present to get the job done. The game's coding compels the character to eat what is available.

Another very diabolical way is to obtain a hood and enchant it with a damaging effect (like fire damage). Interestingly enough, it costs almost nothing to make, since the game doesn't know why you would ever want such an item. But since almost no one in the game already wears a hood, you can sneakily put it in a person's inventory while they are sleeping, and the game's coding will compel them to wear it. They are unable to "decide" to remove the garment, so they die by subterfuge.

Between my friends and I, we've seen tons of bizarre stuff in the game. I've seen Imperial knights defend evil wizards and necromancers from other Imperial knights. A friend of mine once saw an entire contingent of guards fighting the Countess of Bruma. (Which is funny, of course, because she can't be killed, so the guards would put away their swords after knocking her unconscious, and then draw them again to continue the fight once she got back up.

The Countess of Bruma, by the way, makes bizarre periodic trips out of the castle with her entourage for no other apparent reason than to stroll around. This becomes particularly troublesome for her the more your character levels, because after a while, there are grizzly bears and minotaurs stalking the road.

Early testers of the game noticed that in some places, the AI was either so good or bad that the results were painfully troubling. For instance, a group of minotaurs in the game have the sole responsibility of guarding a unicorn to the death. But their initial aggressiveness was so great, that they killed the unicorn.

One developer also gave two separate characters a broom and rake (respectively), and the appropriate commands associated with each. This worked fine. But when he swapped each character's tool for the other, they both fought to the death to obtain the tool needed to perform the designated task.

I think the goofiest thing I've ever heard someone seeing was this:

Playing Little Big Planet. It's mostly for kids, but it's fun and challenging.

That does seem like a very addictive game and I wouldnt mind playing it myself but the problem being is that I dont have a PS3

I would play LBP more if it had better online.

I've seen a lot of stuff like that too - 2 Imperial archers going at it to the death in the wilderness etc but never before a character actually stealing something (which led to his demise).

As to the Adoring Fan - try pushing him off Dive Rock.

Little git...

I've reserved The Last Remnant and Civilization (picking them up later) on a total whim this morning. I've heard mixed things about The Last Remnant but apparently the new Civ game is as good as RTS gets on a console. They'll probably both get traded on Monday.

I seem to remember back in Morrowind that if you threw down a particularly valuable item, somebody would often run over and snatch it up. I almost always found myself overburdened, so I had to throw down a lot of swag and come back for it.

Yeah, he's a punk, but I prefer to walk around with as big an entourage as I can manage, and he makes one more. So far, I've amassed a Knight of the Nine, a Mages Guild apprentice, a Dark Brotherhood apprentice, a Battlehorn knight, and my adoring fan. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of the Staff of the Everscamp, or I'd also have three Scamps in my posse!

On that note, the Halo Wars demo was released on X-Box Live yesterday (for us state-siders, at least). Gonna give that a go tonight.

This thread shouldn't be in this folder, really. Why is it? 'games', but it's obviously for movie games and stuff. It's stupid.

I rented Farcry 2, which I wasn't impressed with, so I rented that WWE 2009 game which I expect to find frustrating. I played Beautiful Katamari a lot recently, which was decent, really.

Civ is TBS, or it always has been on the PC, anyway. Not sure about the title you are talking about. Has Civ branched into RTS, as well?

I am SUCH an Oblivion addict right now. Unfortunately, I am just getting my head around the intricacies of leveling properly, etc. This character...is still a bit flawed, even though she is my second one. When choosing my Major skills, I had thought it would be smart to choose one skill each from the governing attributes, so as to better control leveling of each skill when needed. I think this was a mistake, as I ended up with a couple of skills that tend to screw up my leveling. I am a frontline mauler sort as far as combat is concerned, but I use Magic quite a bit, too, so I want most of my points to end up in STR/END/WIL/INT but each time I level up I have random points in Agility, Speed and Personality, and I rarely seem to to gte +5 in anything. I didn;t want to over-level, so I left stuff like Block as a minor skill.

To get +5 in the skills I want, it seems like I have to hang out doing something like the following:

Summon Skeleton > Cast Shield > Zap Skeleton with Destruction > Block a few strikes > Kill Skeleton with Mace > Fix my Armor

This levels 5 of my Major skills (Destruction, Alteration, Conjuration, Strength, Endurance) rather quickly...too quickly.

This gives me the points I need, but it levels me up pretty fast, and even goblins start to get difficult to deal with it seems.

If I adventure around in dungeons, Athletics, Acrobatics, Sneak, Mercantile etc. start dumping points into my level-up screenm even though almost all of those are minor skills. I thought it didn't work that way (minor skills affecting level up), but it seems to.

It doesn't seem to work that way in some cases, I can stand around making potions all day, with Alchemy as a minor, but i always seem to only have +2 available for INT at level up. Will only goes to +3 tops, even with me cranking Restoration as a minor, and constantly using Destruction, Alteration, and Conjuration all at Major. I would think INT/WIL would go up faster with those skills in such high use.

Advice?

My character does pretty well, but I hate seeing all those wasted points in PER/SPD/AGI...

My Endurance is the only Attribute I seem to get +4/5 on each time, as I have Armorer as a Major skill, and I use Block/Heavy Armor constantly as Minors....

Because it's a tab, and this is where tabs go.

It is the Videogame TAB, after all...

Won't you eventually max out your Major Skills faster this way? That might seem helpful, but after you max out the skills you use most often, you'll hit a level wall and be forced to manually level up skills you never use.

My character, for example, is very singularized in Marksman, Sneak, and Security, and at level 20 was already maxed out in those skills. So it's nigh impossible for me to level any further. Because you have to advance four separate skills before you can level, I've had to start using my dukes and casting spells just so I can build up other skills and level to harder enemies. And that's when the game gets the most tedious.

Yeah, no matter which skills you want to level, you can always count on clocking time to activities that come with your day-to-day, which means those skills accumulate points, too. So even if you haven't advanced Mercantile, for example, you can still bet on seeing a +1 or +2 on your level screen during the next go-round. The game doesn't care which four skills advance to reach the next level, as long as four skills advance. So it clocks them all.

It all depends on how you configured your character at the beginning. Theoretically, you could set your character up with Marksman, dump no points whatsoever into Blade, and then use a sword 100% of the time. Even though you're using that skill as a primary skill, if you didn't earmark it as a primary skill in the beginning, you're only going to get as many level points equal to the value you placed on the skill in the first place.


If there are skills you want to advance that aren't advancing as strongly as you would like, take advantage of trainers and books that advance those skills. (I strongly advise buying the official strategy guide for reference.)