This game is freaking incredible.  Very slick presentation (over the top by design, but great).  I didn't think it was possible on the xbox, but they managed to improve all of the vehicle models, effects, and overall gameplay from BO3.  

Back to playing...

That beast with the wicked looking horns in screenshot 2 looks like it's ready to dish out some asskicking.  Thank goodness we don't have monsters like that running around today.  If we did, I’m sure they would be hunted by brave warriors eager to prove their worth besting such a fearsome prey in noble combat.

I played last night for a few hours, and yep, it’s basically Burnout 3 on the psp.  With that said, it’s a terrific game for the psp.  I’m floored by how good the graphics have translated over.  This is imo the best psp title out there (right now), and definitely the best psp racer.  It’s not BO Revenge, but it’s definitely a BO game done very well on the psp.

What accessories did you preorder?  As long as I have 1 controller, and the hdtv cables are included, I'm good (and of course Oblivion preordered).

I would think most people would preorder through a local store, unless they live in the boonies.  The local ebgames or ebxs near me (in northern VA) are still taking preorders.    

I've been donating all of my old and unplayed xbox games to my xbox 360 preorder "personal fundraiser" at the gamestop near me.  I'm about 65% of the way there to having it fully paid off without spending any real $.  Yay me.  I know my wife is happy that her xmas gift for me keeps going down in price.  Gamestop has that 40% extra value on trade-ins deal if you have 4 or more, so I've been trying to work that.  I've exhausted my library of games I'm willing to trade in, so I'm stuck at about 65% paid off unless I go GTA on a truck shipping xbox titles.

I have sword envy now.

Team Xtender will also be including a port to make PSP games compatible with standard Dual Shock 2 controllers.

OMG, that is fricken awesome!

Between this gadget, the wireless connectivity, and the web browser, it's getting really hard to not want one.

Yeah I just got mine keyed into my wireless network, and it's nice being able to surf the web from anywhere in the house with the PSP.  I travel a lot, and despite the slow initial launch of titles, I've used it a ton.  Some of the titles coming out this fall look promising.

I think it's a great idea by Sony, only problem is I play console games on the tv room floor, or sitting on the couch, so a keyboard/mouse setup isn't too handy for me.  The only reason I buy FPSs for the PC though is because of the keyboard/mouse control.  I hate playing FPSs with dual analog controllers.  The minute I set up a table or desk in the tv room to play games, my wife will throw the ps3 out the window.

I think you could classify Kreia as a villian, depending on your perspective.

I wasn't trying to criticize you, I was asking, why isn't there a villain thread yet?  (I haven't played KOTOR2.)

Not insulting or critical at all, didn't even cross my mind.

I think you could classify Kreia as a villian, depending on your perspective.

This supporting character may not fit neatly into the console sidekick stereotype, but Kreia from kotor2: sith lords was not only the highlight of that game, but one of the most interesting sidekicks in recent memory. The story and writing for her character had a lot to do with it, but the voice acting of Sara Kestelman made Kreia even more memorable for me.  The cutscene at the Jedi Academy with Kreia and the 3 masters is one of the best gaming moments I can remember.  Too bad the game turns into poo shortly afterwards.

On the console I’ve always liked Kain from the Legacy of Kain series, mostly in the original and early titles. He has the right mix of disdain, angst, reserved tough guy, dry humor, and a good sense for delivering payback.  His character was always fun to play (except for the not so good xbox title).  Anti-heroes are always fun to play for me.

Playing a FPS on a dual analog gamepad feels like I’m trying to aim, shoot and move using an Etcha Sketch.  It reminds of me of trying to play Centipede with a joystick and not a trackball.  Sure, you can do it, but it’s not ideal.  That being said, I do have some FPSs on the xbox, but HL2’s performance scales up so nicely with mid-range rigs that I went PC.  

Surprisingly, the best controller setup I’ve had for a FPS wasn’t a mouse and keyboard, it was a stick and trackball controller with programmable buttons and hat switches that I used when UT first came out. It was kind of weird at first, but man it was great once I got the hang of it.

Is that the shadow set that Mordred is wearing?

Lothar's set looks good too.

Finala looks like something out of hellraiser :shock:

My party is level 18.  I can hardly wait till we gain a couple of levels so we can go back and tackle that one MONSTER beastie guarding that one guy's blacksmith gear.  I read somewhere that you incur a pretty big experience penalty for fighting stuff more than 4 levels different than your own.  Since he was a 24, I figure at 20 I can go back for him.

Someone looked at the game code and posted some experience formulas on the gaspowered games garage forums.  According to the post, if your party's average level is more than 4 levels below a monster's level, you won't get full XP for the monster. The % of XP you do get scales even further down the wider the difference.  More people confirmed what he was looking at in the code.  

Btw, I came back and got revenge on that section at lvl 25, it was fun  :twisted:

It's not just that one guy either, you'll run into a full room trackers beyond him.

I liked how Horizons outsourced their billing site to a porn pay service. I thought that was a nice touch.

I'm surprised Horizons is still around.

The other night I set the first hotkey slot, F7, for my single target high damage boss killing powers/spells, and the 2nd slot, F8, to aoe powers/spells.  Now I can have the entire party switch quickly back and forth to their aoe or single target powers/spells together by just pressing F7 and F8.  I'm probablly late figuring that one out, but it's helped a ton since I set it up.

A sword and board tank becomes almost indestructible.  Provoke is a great power, and ranks up nicely.  I had my sword and shield tank spend some time as an archer ranking up Survival to about +35% resists.  He had the cool title of "Raider" for awhile, now he's back to being a Knight.  He's like a cockroach now, even nukes don't kill him.

The daedra(sp?) armor looks incredible in the last screenshot.  You get to join the dark brotherhood??  Wow.

I’m embarrassed to ask this, but for 1280X1024, would height be 1024 and the width 1280?  I took “Calculus for Liberal Arts” in college, and only managed to get a C-, so I’m definitely a mathematical retard.  

Thanks for the tip on adding the resolution change to the command line.

For action rpgs on the xbox I enjoyed both BG:DA 1&2.  I really tried to like Xmen, but for some reason I found it really boring (and I like hack & slash games).  

I liked Sudeki too, especially since it fit in nicely between the action rpgs and the more epic rpgs at around 16-19 hours.  The ending was pathetic, but everything up to that point was fun.

For the longer, more epic rpgs, I liked the last 3/4 of Kotor 1, the last half of Jade Empire, and the first 3/4 of Kotor 2.  I enjoyed playing MW, but to this day I've never remained focus enough to finish that damn game.  

Hope you find a good one in there somewhere Xmann.

I enjoyed it, but I can appreciate the bad quest design and slow-pacing comments.  I think the Chinese mythology setting made up for some of the negatives for me.  While Kotor 1 & 2 had their share of boring fed ex quests, Jade Empire seemed to have more.

I played through JE twice, and found myself skipping the side quests, or just sticking to the main storyline quests the second time.  While I really liked JE, the pacing is rough for the first half of the game.  But, I had the same opinion of Kotor 1 also.  The cast of characters is ok, but doesn't really get too deep (other than a cool love triangle that develops later in the story - if you're playing a male).  The pacing picks up considerably the latter half of the game.

Crossposted from OO:

Just finished it on the PC, very cool game. It's a short one though. Cinematically this is one of the best games I've played in a long time. The story is great, music is superb, the dialogue and voice acting are above average to good, and the gameplay is fun. Whatever issues the xbox version had with the control scheme seems to have been worked out for the PC. I remember reading about how annoying "flick targeting" was on the xbox. On the PC you don't have to use flick targeting, but all you have to do to use it is roll the mouse wheel up or down. Piece of cake. I alternated throughout the game using flick targeting and just blasting freely. The framerates were good on my rig, with most of the graphics options (minus shadows) set to their highest. I typically got about 35 - 65 fps (p4 3.2, geforce 6800 gt, 2gb ram).

I can definitely see the comparisons to halo, but Advent Rising is a 3rd person shooter with more in common with the jedi knight action games than to halo. Your character, Gideon, will start the game using ranged weapons, but will gradually start awakening powers that are very jedi-like. About 1/2 way through the game I stopped using weapons and relied mostly on his powers.

The cut scenes, story, and music alone could almost justify the $30 PC price tag imo. That's not to say there aren't negatives though:
- short game
- graphics are excellent, but not superb
- no save anywhere, checkpoint save system
- towards the very end you can exploit a certain power to bypass a lot of fighting
- some of the boss fights can be frustrating until you figure out their attack patterns, and what powers you should use to exploit their weaknesses or openings

I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes, but it looks like some folks are having problems with the cut scenes stuttering on the pc version.

I bought the game Fri night, and completed it by Sun night. I didn't play more than 2-3 hours each night this weekend. I'm guessing the game was around 7-10 hours long (if that), but it was a good ride. If you complete the game, make sure you let credits roll. After the credits you’ll see 2 more cut scenes, fight 1 more boss, and play another very short level (not in that order).

I don't know why I find this so funny, but everytime they show a scene that has a bunch of no-name island extras in it, I start laughing.  I saw an extra this episode that looked like the red Swingline staple guy from Office Space.  Look, it's the island extras!  Woot!  It's almost like the "extras" are their own entity at this point.  I loved it when Sawyer started yelling at the extras 2 episodes ago when he was getting headaches.  I would've lost it if he mumbled under his breath after his yelling outburts, "damn extras".  Keep it down extras, we're trying to do a show!

I really enjoy playing RTSs, but I'm too slow with economic and military build-ups to ever be any good.  In scripted missions and RTSs that don't have an economy I do a little better.  I tend to spaz when I have more than 1 hot spot at the same time, which apparently makes for a bad RTS player.  I usually get frustrated with RTSs, and will stop playing them faster than any other genre.

Segacius Zu's commentary in the credits was classic.  I also liked Dawn Star's "dramatic" audition lines.

It took me about a week and a half of 2+ hours of play most every night (on average) to complete JE.

There are definitely some tough fights later in the game, but they are the exception.  


Spoilers....















The 2nd to last arena fight is a bitch.  I thought it was the hardest fight in the game actually, with the last fight in Dirge tied with the pre-final fight for 2nd.  The final fight can be tough too if you don't use PP or any other stunning support style.

I'm normally a modest guy, but when it comes to thumb wrestling, I've yet to meet my match.  I don't think my thumbs are abnormally long, in fact, my hands are kind of small.  But my thumbs seem to be able to almost launch themselves out of their sockets and successfully attack and pin all opposing thumbs.  

Oh you meant video games, well then, not really, none come to mind.

It's weird to me that the end game in WoW (both pve and pvp) is geared towards rewarding almost exclusively the player that can commit hours and hours at a time, when most of the game (into the mid 50s+) can be enjoyed by casual players.  I imagine there's a lot of people that don't have the time to do the same 3-4 hour raid every night hoping for the off chance that they'll get the class item drop that they wanted.  I personally don't think grinding through 20+ three hour raid runs sounds even remotely fun, just to get better equipped so you can go to the real 40 man raids...and do them over and over again.  It just seems like a really weird break in the game concept.

"The name earwig is derived from a European superstition that these insects enter the ears of a sleeping person and bore into the brain."

Would you rather have an earwig in your ear or a spider that spins webs in your inner ear canal?

My thompson drive xbox is on the verge of dying after 2 years.  I've been hoping that the drive will make it to December, but based on how Jade Empire played, I'm guessing it's days are numbered.  With that said, I need backwards compatability, since my original xbox will be dead by then.  I'm willing to pay extra, although I think they're crazy not to include backwards compatability with the main baseline unit.

I loved having my xbox serve as my dvd player, which helped motivate my wife to jump on board with purchasing it at launch.  If the PVR comments are true, I'll use that to get her on board again

I finished tonight, great game.  The pacing and story get A LOT better after the Lotus Assassin Fortress.  Character level - 22; total hours: 24.  

Bioware did a good job of resolving all of the sub and main plot lines.  

If you finish the game, make sure you sit through all the credits!  There's a very funny running commentary by Dawn Star and Segacious Zu.  Some of the Segacious Zu comments are hilarious.

I don't mind not having inventory to manage besides the gems, but it would've been nice to have a couple of outfit choices or changes throughout the story.  I found it a little silly that they would let my character run around in his normal clothes in the Lotus Assassin HQ for example.

Quick question on upgrading styles:  I am starting Ch. 2.  Should I put anything into Heavenly Wave, or should I save the points and wait until I get a better support style?

It really doesn't matter, but I'd recommend maxing out 1 martial style, 1 weapon style, 1 magic style, and the duration effects for 1 support style.  By the end of the game you'll have enough points to do all of the above, and have points to train up another 2-3 styles.  

Heavenly Wave is a great support style that I relied on heavily for triggering HCs until the latter part of the game.  Storm Dragon and Paralyzing Palm are both excellent support styles.  Storm Dragon you can get relatively early in the game, and works very well against a single target to keep them incapacitated for several seconds while you pummel them.  Paralyzing Palm is received through a quest series at the Black Leopard School off the Imperial City.  PP is a very good support style against almost all foes (it works against all humans and most spirits).  It's almost overpowering when you consider that a PP user can lockdown boss characters for the entire fight by timely use of PP and a WS or martial style. To answer your question though, the only support style I spent training points in was PP, and that was just to max out the duration.

It's nice being able to switch between multiple martial styles, or a couple of weapon styles, but you don't need them.  If you just max out LS, 1 magic style, a weapon style (I'd recommend waiting until you get dual sabers or twin axes to do this) and 1 support style, you'll be in great shape.  As far as the weapon styles are concerned, since you can't get dual sabers or twin axes styles until later in the game, I'd suggest maxing out the focus cost reduction on your staff.

If you have a martial style damage option, a magic damage option, a weapon style damage option, and a support style you like, you'll be in great shape. The only martial style that I would absolutely train up the chi damage option for would be thousand cuts, since that is the least damaging style, and each hit would benefit from the chi strikes.  

In fact the lack of options that seem to truly adhere to the Closed-Fist philosophy vice being outright evil is a huge missed opportunity.

Agreed.  The way of the closed fist, as it is explained in Twin Rivers, is not necessarily by definition evil.  According to the game lore, the closed fist path is based on personal strength and encouraging others to find their own strength.  The best western comparison that came to mind for me was "tough love".  Unfortunately, there are very few decision paths in the game that offer choices outside of good vs evil.  I originally wanted to play a closed first character following the philosophy outlined at Twin Rivers, without being evil.  There's absolutely no way to make progress far into the closed fist meter without choosing most of the evil options.  I thought initially that Bioware had created an alignment system not based on good vs evil or even tied to morality, but in the end, that's exactly how it works.  It seemed almost like the writers either didn't have the creativity to develop more solutions that were in keeping with the closed fist philosophy, or they took the easy way out and reverted back to the old good vs evil system.

Did you ever try out white demon with paralyzing palm?  For it to be an effective combo you have too up the speed on demon and up the duration of palm.  Once you get it right, its almost unfair.

I was using that combo last night, PP + white demon (speed & damage maxed), and it was oh so sweet.  I have duration maxed on PP and start with the 3 hit combo to stun, power attack to trigger HC (if enemy is vulnerable to HCs), white demon power attack (enemy is now petrified!), and then 1 more normal hit will explode the enemy.  If the target isn't vulnerable to HCs, I'll start with 3 hit PP, white demon x3, tiger style x3, PPx3 and repeat until dead.  

PP HCs drop either a chi or unblockable power up.

If you want to see carnage, try chaining back and forth between the twin axe style and white demon.  The twin axe style can hit enemies near the targeted enemy during the 3 hit combo.  It's a slower WS than dual sabers, but it seems to do a lot more damage (even compared to the artifact dual sabers).  

The further I get into the game (18 hours now) the better the combat gets.  The romance love triangle is getting pretty heated too…great character development.

Well, I was sad to see Lynn and Alex go, but I like all the teams except Romber.  I was especially sorry to see Joyce go through with cutting her hair off - it grows back, but as a woman, I am sure that was a little traumitizing.  But good for her for going through with it!

LASTLY - Ron needs to dump Kelly NOW!!!!!  Dump her Ron, Dump her!!  The preview for next week - shows her saying that he has issues with commitment.  Ending with - him saying - what about my military career, what about commitment to the military?  She has the GALL to answer - you got out of that by being a POW.  WHAT!!!?!?!?!?!?!?  :shock:


Ron dump her now!!  For your own good!

My wife and I were speechless for a few seconds after hearing Kelly say that during the preview.  Based on that unbelievably absurd comment, I'm not sure if Kelly is:
a) a moron
b) beauty queen on the outside and a cold bitch on the inside
c) both a & b

I'd like to think she's just a complete moron, and has absolutely no clue or understanding of what she said.  If she did understand what she said, and made a conscious choice to make that statement, I agree, Ron needs to get out of that relationship asap.  I think it's probably a lot of A and a little of B combined.

But yeah, that had to be one of the most idiotic and ignorant comments I've heard in my entire life.  If that quote doesn't end up in Entertainment Weekly's "They said that" weekly quote section, I'd be shocked.  

In her mind, there were a heck of a lot of pows from WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and most recently in Iraq, that got out of their military commitments by being lucky enough to be pows.  

"You got to be a POW", as if it's some kind of selection process that you win.

That arena comment was aimed at the last qualifier for the championchip fight right?  That was one hard ass fight.  i actualy had to do that one 3 times before i won.

Exactly.  It only took you 3 tries?  It took me about 5 attempts, very tough fight.  The humans weren't too bad, but throwing in the demons, that's what made it tough.  That little monkey-looking guy (1 of the 3 brothers) can drop your health in seconds if you're not paying attention.  That fight, plus the one just after, made me realize that trying to scrap with demons in melee range is a bad idea.  Horse demons and their damn damage shields!   Better just to blow them away.  I'm glad I picked up maribelle too, although I would've loved to have Sky with me to regen focus.  

By the way just for comparisons sake, i like the conversations, the story, and the conversation options.  I thought the baker bei quest was very light hearted and funny in the face of such a grave main quest.  I appreciated it for the small funny distraction i thought it was ment to be.  I say this only so that this style of gameplay is not counted as a mistake, for people like me, this is exactaly what we want.

I think Bioware did the best they could to try and cater to all types of players.  At least I can just skip through dialogue when I don't want to read it, and I'm not forced to read it.  A quick example: In the debate part of the Sir Bastard quest, I didn't even bother to walk around and talk to all of the judges, I just started the quest and winged it.  It took me all the way to the 6th question, but I was still able to get a majority vote by mixing up the answer types.  I loved his dialogue, but it was late, and I didn't want to read through all of the different judge dialogue too.  At least for the dialogue impatient like me, I can still complete quests like that.

I'm about 16 hours into the game, and while the pacing does get better as far as action vs. reading/listening to dialogue is concerned, it's still clearly an rpg, and not an action game.  At this point, if it's not dialogue concerning my party members or the main plot line, I tend to just fly through it or skip it.  I'm sure I'm missing some good backstory and fluff dialogue, but it's becoming a little tiresome for me.  I do appreciate Bioware's effort to include all of the scrolls, history, and spoken dialogue, I just tend to lose interest if that's all I'm doing for an hour.  

Btw, if you thought the combat was too easy, wait until you get to the imperial city and fight through all of the arena matches.  Single human foes are not too tough, but wait until the final matches :twisted:

Any tips for fighting demons in general?  Magic and support styles don't normally work against them, the A+X martial style doesn't work against some of them, leaving only martial and weapon styles.  

Any tips for fighting golems?  The ones I've fought are immune to martial attacks, magic, and most status effects from support styles.  Once I run out of focus fighting golems, the only way I've been able to kill them is by using spirit thief in chi mode, which takes forever.