they haven't explained what may have happened during the intervening years, so who knows why tech didn't progress.  from what I understand technology actually regressed during Palpatines reign due to the way he ran things, so something could have happened on a longer scale.

Yes, technology regressed in the Empire. The Rebel Alliance did massive amounts of research to compensate, and by the time the New Republic was founded, they had the most advanced starfighters ever seen in the galaxy, by far. The X-wing for example, was such a massive leap in starfighter technology that the whole company that made it jumped ship to the Rebels to give them an edge over the Empire.

Also keep in mind that the Star Wars universe is very capitalistic in how it works, and they've always been portrayed as very hungry for new inventions and technology (yes, even in TotJ). While it's entirely possible that technology on a galactic scale regressed over the 3000 years between the KOTOR MMORPG and the movies, there is absolutely nothing in Star Wars lore to support this, and I find it very hard to believe.

No, the simple answer to this conundrum is this: Bioware is afraid of making casual Star Wars fans feel detached from the setting, so they're bending it (breaking it, in my opinion) to bring it closer to what people will recognize, while at the same time adding stuff they think is "hip" and "cool", like jedi armor (I mean, wtf is that all about? What is it supposed to protect them against? Rocks and pebbles from the peasants?).

[edit to add] here's the timeline they're using.  it looks like it's 300 years after the first KotOR game.

Alright, and 311 years after TotJ. Still doesn't explain how they made such a massive leap in technology in a relatively small amount of time (for Star Wars), then in the next 3000 years or so not only didn't progress any more, but actually regressed in technology. And they invented the Star Destroyer 3000 years before its first model actually saw the light of day. And TIE Fighters, a ship class that was created because of Palpatine's demand for cheap starfighters.

The setting they chose to place this game in is rich enough as it is. Why do they have to be revisionists? Do they really have so little faith in themselves?

btw, I think Tales of the Jedi take place further back the Knights of the Old Republic era, which is what this one seems to be focusing on.

There's overlap, actually. I know at least one of the TotJ books takes place about 10 years before KOTOR. Compare that to both being about 3000-4000 years before the movies. If there was THAT dramatic technological advancement in 10 years, what the flying fuck were they doing for the next thousands of years?

OK, wtf? That video managed to completely turn me off for now. The time period this game takes place in has been well documented stylistically through the Tales of the Jedi comics, but Bioware seems to ignore every single thing just so they won't scare away people not familiar with the period. And what's with the TIE-fighters and Star Destroyers? Those ships were designed around the time the Old Republic collapsed. And the technology, the technology... The setting at the time felt ancient. Civilizations on planets were almost medieval in style, even on Coruscant, with actual technology being almost religious in the way it's treated (see the Mandalorian battle armor, which was a status symbol worn by their greatest leader). Space ships were the biggest clue that this was a space-faring galaxy, but even those were primitive (it would often take weeks of travel to move between planets, needing many stops with heavy manual calculations on the way, unless you paid a hefty premium for an explored, "safe" route). Yet here we see a civilization at a HIGHER technological level than we've seen in the movies (even the Jedi wear advanced battle armor). Hello? Could someone please rein in the artists for this project?

Argh, as a Star Wars geek, this was NOT what I needed to see to give me confidence in the game.

The goatee isn't a new thing for Guybrush. Remember Monkey Island 2? People kept making fun of his goatee there. In fact, certain elements of the trailer to Tales of Monkey Island makes it look like this might be set to the Monkey Island 2 period since Guybrush has a goatee and LeChuck is still a zombie.

I've played this game quite a bit this weekend and now feel ready to give my impressions:

The Bad:
------------

* The graphics are outdated. They look like the first games from this generation, and not even the good ones at that. Compare this to games like Assassin's Creed, and inFAMOUS ends up lacking.
* The animations are possibly the worst I've seen in a AAA-game this generation. They are absolutely atrocious. Everyone moves like robots. There's no acceleration to movement at all. Poses are laughably bad. Facial animation reminds me of Canadians in South Park.
* As soon as you round a corner, if there's any enemy in the city who can draw a straight line to your location without going through a wall (and sometimes they're not even that picky), he will fire at you (and probably hit), even if he's a mile away. There's not even half a second of delay. They see and recognize you immediately and fire upon you at the same split second. This is not fun.
* Enemies will fire at you ALL THE TIME. You'll even get attacked by groups of enemies in supposedly "safe" areas, on completely cleared islands. There's also no way for you to avoid their shots, and since they fire at you from above most of the time, even getting behind cover isn't likely to help much. When it comes to being fired upon in games, there's a good rule of thumb: Always give the player the option to avoid being hit. Either have enemy shots move slow enough that they can be dodged (like the rockets), or make it so that you can move fast or erratic to make enemies miss. For most enemy attacks in the game, the shots are undodgeable, and they'll hit you even if you're zooming along at incredible speed. This is very, very annoying.
* Enemies attack ALL THE TIME. You don't get a moment's rest. I've had missions I ended up abandoning because wave after wave of enemies would come out of a nearby dark zone to attack me. As soon as one massive wave was down, another would come. I never got the chance to actually try the mission, so I had to abandon it until I could bring electricity back to the dark zone. Actually entering one of these zones is tedious. I had hoped to be able to carefully fight my way through them, conserving my power until I needed it the most. Instead I'm under constant attack by respawning enemies, which means that the only option that makes sense is to run like hell to your objective. Not fun.
* Voice acting is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad.
* The NPCs are uninteresting at best. The writing is shoddy and isn't helped by the voice acting.
* The "magnetic" movement of your character is wonky. It mostly works fine, but just try to land on the floor when there are other objects nearby! Also, attempting to jump onto a ladder or other thin, climbable object is incredibly freaking hard. Even if you hit it straight on, you'll most likely slide right past it. This has often sent me flying head first into pools of water and is extremely frustrating. Why couldn't they have made ladders high-priority targets for your magnetism?


The Good:
-------------

* Despite all its flaws, the game is surprisingly fun. I like open-world games. I can't quite put my finger on why it's fun, it just is.
* Generous checkpoints. They've done this absolutely right. Whenever I die, I don't lose much progress. You even get multiple checkpoints through missions, which means that you don't have to replay the entire mission most of the times. This reduces the annoyance factor from many of the negative aspects of the game. If the checkpoints were as poorly placed as in most other games, I would probably toss away inFAMOUS in disgust. Kudos!
* Earning XP and choosing powers is fun. It's too easy to buy everything, but it still adds a little spice to the formula.
* Using electricity to travel at high speed is fun.

Overall I like the game, but it's no classic. It's definitely worth playing, but there are some really strange pieces of game design in here.

Edit: Forgot one bad thing

The biggest bottleneck on the consoles is their amazingly low amount of RAM. I mean, on the PS3 you've only got about 256 MB of RAM to work with, with another 256 MB that I don't really know how works. On the 360 you've got 512 MB (in theory, which is far from reality). Now, let's assume that a PC's OS uses 1 GB of RAM, to be a bit excessive. That still means most modern PCs have between 1 and 3 GB free RAM for games, plus 512 MB or more on their graphics cards.

The sharp textures we're used to in PC games won't ever become a reality on the current generation of consoles, I'm afraid. I'm still curious about how Crysis 2 will deal with it, but I strongly suggest that the console versions will have considerable pop-up and won't look as good as the first Crysis.

I know you specified that you want a freeware app, but I don't have much experience with those. The freeware cartography apps I've seen haven't been all that impressive, creating only the most basic of maps or being incredibly complex to use.

What I use these days is Campaign Cartographer 3. It's really come a long way since its first two versions, and you can easily make maps that can rival those found in commercial RPG books. Here's the map I made for a D&D campaign I'm currently running, for example.

The problem with Campaign Cartographer is that it's somewhat expensive, so it's probably not what you're looking for. If you're concerned about the quality of the finished work though, you should give it a look.

You could try the Fencer trilogy by K. J. Parker. It seems to be a lesser known series (she's got more fantasy books out than just these, so there's more to go on), but it's very enjoyable and dark like hell. Like A Song of Ice and Fire, there's no black and white, only shades of grey. You'll particularly enjoy these books if you're even moderately interested in the crafting of medieval weaponry and armor.

The first book is called Colours in the Steel. The second is Belly of the Bow, and the third (and final) is The Proof House.

Edit: Just to be clear about the genre, these books are very low-fantasy. There aren't any elves or dwarves, there are no monsters, and magic is so limited and unpredictable that its power mostly comes from the myths built up around those who practice it.

I might be able to answer these questions about your Nemesis, but then I'd have to kill you (stupid NDA).

It's okay, you can tell us. We don't mind if you kill Lockdown.

I think the basic mistake most of us do with MMORPGs that ruins them for us is that we think we want to play them "all the time". I've been a subscriber to LOTRO for almost 2 years now, but I haven't played it all that time. I usually start out getting hooked, playing it for a few months, and then I grow tired of it. Instead of forcing myself to play, I just put the game aside. A few more months later, I pick it up again and find myself having lots of fun once again.

In other words, be more casual in how you approach MMORPGs. You're clearly not a hardcore player (for these kinds of games, anyhow), so don't force yourself to be. If you find yourself picking up tons of MMORPGs and leaving them behind, try going back to the first ones again (if you enjoyed them in the first place, that is). You might be surprised to rediscover the magic that hooked you initially.

with Heavy Rain it looks as though the QTE for this game doesn't look as though they are gonna be the main thing(see that guy getting out of the car crusher in Heavy rain)on the screen this time round,much smaller action buttons(triangle etc)..hopefully i wont miss the action this time round

You can see the QTE icons moving around on the screen, either around your character for more generic stuff like dialogue, or on top of the items the QTE will make you interact with. This coordination between GUI and the game should make it much easier to see what's going on, since your eyes will be forced to look at the important areas of the screen.

Or at least I think that's the idea. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in action.

Can't wait can't wait can't wait!

Just wonderinf if you have played any of the previous team ico games ? Ico and SotC are also in this dreamy kind of world, it fits the games very well... Much better than a grown up man would.

Nope, never owned a PS2. I got the impression from screenshots that Shadow of the Colossus featured an adult (though a young one) as the protagonist though.

The same time when western devs will stop using macho bald guys that swears a lot.

I don't like that either, but at least an overly macho guy should have some of the stuff needed to approach and survive dangerous situtations. A kid wouldn't.

The creature looks fantastic, but when will Japanese game developers stop putting in 8-year old kids as the main characters? It rips me straight out of the illusion they are trying to create.

This is "low-fantasy" at its highest..eh... :-D

I've had some big discussions with various people over this. I agree that it's low-fantasy, but it would be even more appropriate to call it dark fantasy. Some people seem to insist that it's high-fantasy since it contains magic, dragons (well, sort of), and so on, but that would be missing the role of those aspects in the world (using magic is dangerous and is likely to get you lynched by an angry mob. Dragons are almost extinct.).

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a great RPG system and setting. As long as you don't go into it expecting D&D, you'll love it. It's more about surviving in a hostile of cosmic horrors than about venturing into dungeons and finding treasure. If you try the latter, you're likely to end up in an asylum with a couple of missing limbs (and potentially a couple of extra ones brought on by mutation) and some kind of strange madness.

The Warhammer world is a world in which humanity WILL lose in the end. It's just a question of how long they can hold out first.

oh well so,is Sayid headed for a Mass Grave then?

No, the person in that mass grave was Horace. He was killed during the Purge, and all the bodies from that were dumped into a mass grave. We haven't seen any additional bodies with Horace's name on them, so we have no way of knowing what will happen to Sayid yet.

The screen has only gone white in Lost during time travel. Juliette could very well survive.

Lol, I don't see that cartoon's relevance to the discussion, but it sure reminds me of some of the battles in this game. 

Yes, I know these things. I've been trying to hint at this for a few posts now, but please stop talking to me like I'm new to the game. I've been playing this since one month after the original game launched and have followed the dev feedback about new game systems long before they've been implemented on the live servers. I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful, but in this case it's wasted. Don't take it the wrong way though, I'm not annoyed or anything, just trying to steer the discussion somewhere more constructive.

Yeah, I have room for a gem, but I'd rather save that slot until I get a level 5 or 6 gem to use on it. At the moment I haven't got any gems above level 2, I think, which just isn't good enough to even consider using as a temporary buff. I want the freedom to add a more powerful gem in there without losing one I've already placed. Relics are hard enough to build up to a suitable level as it is.

I finally found a legendary weapon worth using!



It started out with 4 very useful legacies right away, and the potential to reach level 40, which is nice indeed for a 3rd Age weapon. It's too bad that it didn't have any gold legacies (only silver), but after getting to level 20, I already have two of those anyway. At the time this screenshot was taken, I hadn't even fought using the weapon. All I had done was to apply item xp I had saved up, which brought it straight to level 26.

The DPS is extremely good on this one compared to what I was using before. I went from struggling to take down enemies to cutting them down like butter. Ah, power!

Of course I know that, but the legendary weapons are also heavily reliant on their minimum level. A weapon with a minimum level of 51 or 53 just isn't going to be able to match quest reward weapons at level 59 (the DPS in particular is very bad in comparison, even when upgraded to its max). I haven't had much luck with Captain halberds so far, so I'm actually much better off using regular weapons until I actually find something decent to use. Hopefully I'll be able to locate a 2nd Age halberd with good stats, but I'm not holding my breath.

Nice coincidence. I hit level 60 this weekend too. The last two levels were spent entirely in Lothlorien, and I still have lots of stuff to do there. I'm almost starting to look forward to heading back into Moria to kick the collective asses of anything that threatened me there before.

Interestingly, I don't own a single legendary weapon at this point. I just haven't found anything I felt was good enough to focus on, and my old weapons both became outdated and were melted down. I now have about 230 000 item xp waiting for my next weapon.

Vista won't run Freedom Force? Oh no, that's one I always meant to get back to!  I wonder if the virtual XP mode in 7 would run it.

Probably not. The Virtual XP mode isn't meant for games.

I would love to see L&D for the PS3, but I seriously doubt that this rumor is even remotely true. Microsoft paid for the development of the expansion, which gave them exclusivity. I don't think there even would have been an expansion if MS hadn't stepped in.

Hit my first glitch with Win 7.  I've been unable to get City of Heroes to run in any way, shape or form.  That's the only glitch I have found so far.  I'm going to try and re-install CoH and see if that fixes it.  (Note that I did an upgrade, and not a fresh install.)

I wouldn't call that a glitch with Win 7, as it's most likely some kind of assumption City of Heroes makes in its code for Vista that no longer applies to Win 7. The devs will probably fix it soon enough.

In related news, LOTRO runs perfectly on Win 7 x64. I can't say the same about Vista x86, where it would crash all the time.

Windows 7 didn't install drivers for you automatically? And are you sure you're installing correct drivers for your OS version (you can't use 32-bit drivers in a 64-bit OS, for example).

Windows 7 is also supposed to be the last Windows OS with a 32-bit version. From there on, you'll only get 64-bit. You might as well go all the way now and get it over with.

I'm really happy about Win7 x64, after having run it on my laptop since tuesday. No crashes, no bugs, no problems at all. It's been a perfectly smooth experience, and the only game I've run so far, LOTRO, runs better than it did on Vista.

Okay, this episode and the last felt like filler for the big finish. I really hope Olivia goes down by the end of the season and that Aaron shoots her. A lot. Then walks away and saves Jack Bauer before disappearing into the sunrise.

I'm wondering if it wasn't Aaron who actually hired the killer or did the killing himself. It would be somewhat out of character for him, but so is the stuff with Tony right now.

I've heard you can use the same key for 3 different computers, so you should be able to use it. On the other hand, the keys are free, so there's no reason not to get another one.

Just out of curiosity, how long should someone play a game to find the fun?  Shouldn't a game be fun (or interesting) within a few minutes of playing? 

If that was the requirement, the first two Fallout games would be among the worst games ever.

Is there any good reason for me NOT to try Windows 7 (other than having to reinstall XP in March at the earliest)?

Yes. You won't be able to go back to XP after trying Windows 7 for yourself. You may consider that a drawback.

Doesn't seem to support 3D acceleration. Without that, it is not that useful for gamers to run games that are incompatible with Vista/Windows 7.

Which is why it isn't even in the Home version of Windows 7. It's not meant for ordinary consumers, it's meant for businesses that need to be able to use their old software that might not be directly Windows 7 compatible.

It's kind of funny to see 360 owners being all mad about this after all the times PS3-owners have had to suffer because of Microsoft buying up exclusivity for game after game. I think buying exclusivity is a stupid thing no matter which direction it goes, but getting all up in arms about this shows a lack of perspective regarding the treatment MS gives players.

I installed Windows 7 x64 yesterday, and it seems to run smoothly so far. Can't wait to get home from work and play around with it some more.

There are some things that have changed a lot from Vista, such as the newly reimagined Taskbar (it can sort of be described as a combination between the old Taskbar and the Quick Launch bar) and the way the Control Panel works. Now if only I can figure out how to force it to use HDMI for audio when available (and only then), I'll be set.

Kagath, the two versions are the 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions. If you've got more than 2 GB RAM in your computer, download the 64-bit version. Otherwise you might want to stick with the other one.

I wonder how long it will take them to crack that.

I don't see why they'd want to. The full OS will be available long before that.

Arrr, matey, there be pirates that shant wish to part with the doubloons said purchase would force them to release from their coinpurse.

Yeah, but they are going to crack the full version, not the RC which isn't going to be updated any more at that point.

I wonder how long it will take them to crack that.

I don't see why they'd want to. The full OS will be available long before that.

I'm seriously considering replacing my Vista install tomorrow with Windows 7, dual boot be damned! I just need to confirm that there are working drivers for my laptop so that I can get all my hardware working on the 64-bit version. Might as well make the jump to 64-bit now. Microsoft says Windows 7 will be their last OS with 32-bit support.