Tendo City

That is to say, Weltall, I now have Silent Hill 1. Honestly, so far I like it much better than SH2. If this game turns out to be very good, I will give the rest of the series another chance.

ABF, I have The Longest Journey and Planescape: Torment. Actually, I couldn't find the second one except in a bundle with a game called Soulbringer. I have only JUST started Planescape, but it seems pretty promising. The main character isn't a stereotypical badarse as his appearence just SCREAMS. He's just a confused zombie from the looks of it right now. I shall now see if Gabe... Tycho... whoever the original RPG fan of Penny Arcade is... is someone I agree with in his statement "...but I will say now that the best game EVER is Planescape: Torment, glad to lay that out there...".

Now, my mom has currently confiscated Longest Journey at this point (she's been stuck for days on a single puzzle it seems), so I think I will focus totally on Silent Hill as she has expressed an interest in playing a survival horror game and she likes psychological stuff more than pure physical danger, so she'll likely steal Silent Hill away from me next time I see her... Or maybe I should stop telling her about every little thing I get...

Oh, and I also now have Halo 2, in a metal box. Thanks to my brother as well as a ridiculous number of my friend's strange obsession, I was more or less DRAGGED to one of the odd conventions around Tulsa. Specifically, I was at one of the malls here, with a total of two stores selling the game the place was more or less packed. (Glad it wasn't a BIG mall :D.) Indeed, a certain Penny Arcade really DID grab the experience. It seemed like a frickin' pep rally it did. One side was constantly shouting at volumes that drowned out my MP3 player (at NOTHING I might add, nothing was even happening, they just cheered randomly and en mass), and another section appeared to be full of Halo cheerleaders or something. Fortunatly, no one was in costume. Last thing I need to see is someone cutting off their hair to get that Cortona look JUST right (only to find out upon getting the game that a HOLOGRAM seems to have grown her hair out in this game).

<img src="http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2004/20041108l.jpg">

So anyway, the game itself. Soon as I get home, I SLEEP. I'm just glad I had brought my gameboy to that spectacle.

I wake up to start up the game. I play the campaign and proceed to get pretty enthralled by the MUCH improved story. The first one's story really was just a standard "an evil enemy planet is on the way to crush your evil not enemy planet, because they don't like you for an undisclosed reason, only there is a one ring that is evil and must be destroyed and then ZOMBIES". Seriously, those who haven't played Halo 1, that IS the story exactly. Oh, and the aliens with their energy shields and plasma rifles are NO MATCH for the might of the human wielded shotgun :D.

The second one's story actually explains pretty much everything to the point where the first one's depth is pretty much made to exist VIA this game. There's actually a real STORY to it that, well, is interesting. It's got all the religious undertones of FFX actually, so if you happen to be a Catholic living in the era of the holy wars, you MIGHT be offended by the alien representation of you. Also, you are a heretic. Just accept that and burn for it. They don't really mention WHY the aliens got all mad at the humans honestly (I still think that they were friends during that first meeting but then the aliens heard a George Carlin comedy routine and the hatred began).

The Master Chief (aka, the demon) still has a pretty much terrible and uninteresting personality... The OTHER character though, you'll see, really has something going on the personal story side of things. (Actually, in this weird transripts of what are apparently transmissions, I get the impression that there's a significant other in the Master Chief's life, possibly someone he fights for I guess, but Solid Snake he is NOT. His real name, John, is still a lot better than that really over the top almost Engrish name he goes by in combat...

The single player ALMOST fixes the MAJOR problem Halo 1 had. Halo 1, you repeated the same parts of a stage over and over until you were pretty much sick of it and just wanted to turn the system off (and I did pretty often out of sheer boredom). When I say an area repeats itself, I mean pretty much the entire structual layout of a room and the tunnels leading from it to the next are just copied and pasted with a couple different enemies here and there over and over. The worst example was a snow level where you went from one constantly repeating area type to ANOTHER constantly repeating area type. Then, to add insult to injury, when you finally get out of that level, you later return to that very SAME level, only BACKWARDS! OH JOY! I nearly threw my controller upon realizing NOTHING had changed except enemy placement! At least I managed to steal a banshee from an enemy normally programmed to jump into it from WAY far away (killing it with a well tossed grenade and DASHING there before another can get inside was VERY satisfying) so I could just fly to the way points of the level and get it all over with.

Anyway, Halo 2 still has SOME repetition, but it only did that a total of 4 times that I can remember, and the repetition lasted a LOT shorter. Generally, just when I was thinking "wait, this is just repeating itself again, like Halo 1!" the repetition would end.

Other than that, they actually did a pretty good job with single player. I kinda played it more for the story though, honestly I still consider objective based games to be far more fun, but this was enjoyable at the least. Actually, Halo 1's last level was the most fun with a REAL objective of using 4 grenades inside 4 vents and then a 7 minute or so escape run before da boom. Nothing like that here though... But, it does have bosses, and they are well done bosses.

Multiplayer however is where I have pretty much become obsessed. Not nearly as many weapons, and while very customizable, not as much so as Perfect Dark was (except in a few ways), but it really does contend with PD at this point in the multiplayer department. No simulants or bots, but who needs them? Humans are more fun anyway (not that adding bots wouldn't be appreciated by me, and hey maybe a later upgrade can add them). Plenty of game modes, and enough customizing of game rules to let you play pretty much any variation of the basic gametypes as you want. You still can't customize down to the level of specific weapon slots (still Goldeneye styled "weapon sets" you have to choose from, but there are enough of them to give you pretty much what you want, for now anyway. Vehicles can now be destroyed, and the rocket launcher can now actually target and track vehicles (not people though) with the rockets. It's fun to watch some banshee driver whirl around in horror as a missile chases them to the ends of the ringworld...

The levels are all pretty fun too. Two are remakes of the two favorites of Halo 1, but honestly, I hope a new download gives ALL the original levels. None of the new levels are really all that well done for a game of "rockets" or "shotguns" like in Halo 1 (Prisoner was always the best Rockets level, and Longest was always the best shotguns level). Either bring those to Halo 2 outright, or specially design a few close quarters levels for the game.

Health is different now. First off, the HUD no longer displays physical health. I'm not sure how that works now, but it only displays shield status. I think there is less physical health anyway, since you can now only take a VERY small number of hits when the shields are gone (this can be adjusted in the game settings though if you don't like that, except display). Also, there is NO medpac item in the game, at all. If you get physically hurt, you stay that way, so again, shields pretty much ARE your life. Just like the first, you always have shields (unless you use options to turn them off), and they recharge over time if you can find a hiding place. Now they recharge, once the recharge starts anyway, a LOT faster. So, once it starts you can pretty much rush out right then and it'll be full by the time you get in a battle... usually...

There are new weapons as well. The sword is pretty much the best melee weapon ever designed for a FPS. Namely, when that target cursor turns red, when you are within a few meters of the enemy, attack and you will automatically DASH straight to the enemy and cut them down. This is VERY effective, and the sword is currently considered to actually be overpowered because of this. It's now better than the shotgun for close range, since you can safely engage the dash and strike move just outside the shotgun's instant kill range. It is also great for stealth, if you sneak around and see someone below you, just target and DIVE at them with the special attack. Oh, and as many are finding out thanks to, well, your's truly, the sword dash lets you actually FLY at the enemy :D. Even if they are a level above you, if you jump and the height of your jump gets you close enough for the cursor to change red, just slice and boom, you DASH STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR and they die, then I hear them scream over the headset "what the hell?". The pistol has been totally nerfed. No longer does it have a 2X zoom function, and it is a lot weaker, so no 3 hit kills for good head shots. AT this point, rather than being one of the MOST used weapons as in the first, it has been delegated to the realm of the least used weapon, still pretty much useless in this game, the covenent weapon with the charge shot... The mauler wanna-be basically, except unlike the mauler it sucks. However, I have noticed one new weapon, the carbine, actually does pretty much the same thing as the pistol, and has essentially replaced it. They added a grenade launcher, but it's a bit underpowered considering it's a frickin' grenade launcher. Hopefully later they will beef it up. They added a covenant sniper rifle, but really it doesn't stand out that much. Aside from no reloads (but very quick overheating), there's really not much to seperate. Certainly at this point no one really cares which one they are using since they only have to fire slightly differently.

Now, you can finally have MORE than two teams. Unfortunalty, the one place where I really wanted that functionality, capture the flag, isn't one of the gametypes that allows this. This is due to map design mind you, just like in PD where team numbers are limited to 4 in that gametype, but still 3 or 4 team capture the flag REALLY has a LOT going for it.

There is a new territory gametype. It's like king of the hill, only instead of a single territory, there are as many as like... I think 8 or so. Also, once you claim one, it STAYS on your team even if you leave until someone else claims it, and the more you have, the faster your time fills up. It's actually pretty hectic.

<img src="http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2004/20041110l.jpg">

I have already met all three of these people... The second was me... I get in the warthog with the bomb for a run on the enemy base, only to find the driver is driving DIRECTLY UP A FRICKIN' WALL. Apparently this person lost all sense of direction for a moment before finally reorienting and taking us straight into a rocket that WOULD have missed us because the user wasn't familiar with lock-on yet. The last describes pretty much all capture/bombing run gametypes thanks to a new rule (which can be turned off). Namely, when enabled this rule prevents anyone who is holding the bomb or flag from driving a vehicle or operating the weapons on one. They can and will only be the passanger while two others do the previous things. Well, in theory, in practice there's the driver and the bomb holder and the gun is... well look at that third panel.

There's more to say about the incricasies of it, but suffise it to say the game is very VERY fun and I've basically been obsessed.

Now for the REST of multiplayer. The matchmaking. Bungie did an almost perfect job here. Namely, like other recent XBox titles, this is Live "aware", which means in single player you can suddenly get an invite from another player which will politely show up in the corner while you battle. You can even check your friends list whenever you pause the game. The one bit of bad programming is, if for whatever reason, you get disconnected from the live service while playing single player, the GAME WILL SUDDENLY PAUSE AND TELL YOU THAT HAPPENED, and THEN it will quit back to the title screen! I mean, what the heck? It did that JUST before a checkpoint too and it was so frickin' annoying :D. Anyway, hopefully a later update will pretty much just put up a little icon in the corner out of the way to tell you that and LET YOU KEEP PLAYING. It sucks to finally be winning a certain part and suddenly have the system quit on you due to something that has no bearing on what you are doing. Oh yes, the multiplayer part has basically infiltrated the entire option menu. Even if you select split screen mode, you will still need to select a primary ID to "sign in" under for some reason, even though you are actually signing out of live. And the screen still presents a friends menu, even though it doesn't work in split screen anyway :D. In Live, it tricks you. You can go into options and change the mode from custom to matchmaking to whatever, and you can do just that, but then I see the option to switch to co-op, and I"m thinking cool, I can play co-op campaign over the internet. Nope, the second you try it the game tells you you can't do that. Why present the option I ask? The game just sits there because it doesn't have voice recognition.

Anyway, you can matchmake randomly just like in Warcraft 3. One button uses the previous settings you last used, and the other lets you specify a few things. You can only specify the BASIC type though, nothing specific, but there's a reason for that. These random matchups are actually the ladder system they have in the game. They are the only ranked games though. They basically keep it controlled like that for that reason. So, you can select "one on one", "team skirmish", and a bunch of others which have a few randomly selected gametype presets that it will use when it finds a match and gets enough people. Each basic type has it's own ladder. Your current overall rank is just the highest rank number you have in the various games (not cumulative, just the highest rank you have). Currently, I'm rank 5 overall thanks to my rank 5 in one on one. You rank up by beating a certain needed number of people IN A ROW. At first, just one will do. To get to level 5, I needed two wins in a row. Later it'll actually get TOUGH though, with like 10 or so wins in a row. Also, it always strives to match you up with people in your skill level (equal rank on that ladder). Or, failing that, just the closest it can find. Yep, just like WC3.

Oh yeah, might as well say it if it's not clear, yes this game is upgradable with new content and outright patches. In fact, the second I signed on I had to download an update to the game. I reallly have no idea what it did, probably just a few bug fixes. Seems MS may have went ahead and let companies release bug fixes for their games over Live.

The other way to play is custom game. Unlike every other game out there, no room selection is possible. Instead, it's people selection. You have to invite people INTO the custom game. So far, that's a pretty easy thing to do. Just select from the friends list or recently played list. In fact, I've felt VERY linked to just about everyone thanks to this Live system. Custom games are, by default, "open", meaning anyone can pop in. That is, if you select a friend or recent play, if they are in an open game, you can just join them outright. Thanks to this, games fill up fast so I always leave mine open. Also, you can take any of these parties you have built up and go into the matchmaker. To prevent cheating on the ladders, ALL people in your parties will be on YOUR team. Anyway, I was playing against my brother when suddenly one of my friends just randomly showed up IN the game. This is a real nice community experience. Kill kill kill, wait a sec, who are you? Oh, you are YOU! Hey there! Note this is for free for all, in a team based thing, to keep sides even, someone joining has to wait to switch out with someone, and again, you can always close it if you don't want that. I do think they should have a partial option though, so like, let's say you want people to be able to join into the room, but not the game itself in play. Right now, it's all or none. In fact, if they don't "hide" themselves with that option, you can pretty much see exactly what your friends are doing. It's relaxing when playing single player during some frustrating part when you can take a look and see some friend is also playing single player, and you can see what level they are on and if they are going co-op :D. Did I mention the whole Live setup really gives you a sense of community? It's not really clear until you actually experience it yourself though. It's just a really good setup.

Clans are also here. You can only be a member of one at a time, to prevent every single individual from having their own clan (so far that hasn't worked :D). The member limit is 100. You can assign various abilities to each member. That's about it for them. Each character can have a color alteration specific to their profile (but this is overridden by team colors in team games, for obvious reasons), and also an emblem emblazened on their shoulders. The emblem has a decent level of customization. I have a simplistic version of the one that looks like the Metroid Screw Attack icon. They allow a little artistic flair to keep everyone from looking the same. Oh and, before you think about it, ALL the colors stand out completly...

About the headset. Well, it's a headset. In the rooms, you just talk to whoever. You can tell if someone has the headset by a little icon, so that way you don't end up talking to someone who can't ever respond. In the games, there are two ways. Press the white button and you use the walkie talkie. It'll let you talk until it detects silence for about a second. The walkie talkie will let you communicate with your entire team in team play, and every single player in free for all. The other way is proximity. If you are within hearing distance, everything you say can be heard by that person. This includes using the walkie talkie. Keep that in mind if you are sneaking around and want to inform someone of that. You may want to wisper to people you are standing next to (volume is determined by proximity with this method). Oh, there is voice masking for the one or two peopel out there who have a privacy issue, or just don't like the sound of their own voice :D. It only has one mode, but honestly the special kid's toy styled voice masks of other games always sucked anyway. The one mode this has is not annoying in the least and so far I have yet to be annoyed by the sound of it. It's like "just one of the humans" sorta weird monotone voice thing, that's all.

Overall, Halo 2 is certainly something I do NOT consider a mistake to buy.

Someone: What an odd statement...

DJ: Huh, yeah you're right... What I mean is the single player, while pretty fun and with a good story, still really isn't enough to make this a must buy by any means (this means you ABF), but the multplayer, as of now, is just so very rich and just plain fun that it alone IS worth buying the game ((this means pretty much everyone who's ever enjoyed a good "frag fest" as the children call it these days).

Yes, it has it's problems, but I'm pretty confident all my littler wishes will be answered in updates and content drops. One big concern is multiplayer music. Honestly, Halo and Halo 2, whatever else you may say, have some of the BEST FPS music I've ever heard, especially the second. Some even compaires with some of the better RPG music I love. Certainly not the usual junk you hear in FPS games. To have multiplayer battles totally silent on the music front in light of this is a crime really. They didn't even add in custom soundtrack option, and so at this point I STILL don't have a single XBox game that uses that feature. It's not like that option would require sending the music over the net for others to listen to, it'd be a personal setting. Hopefully this too is something they can add in a later update.

Anyway, I started off saying I got the games Weltall and ABF said are "must haves" since their tastes and my own seem to be pretty similar, and suddenly went into a full review of Halo 2... Wow...

Anyway, that's that. Now then, I'm going to bed...

Your mom likes Silent Hill?

You have the coolest mom ever.

Silent Hill 1 is, strictly speaking in terms of gameplay, more fun than SH1. Definitely scarier, by a good stretch. But SH2's storyline is just... too good for words, and it definitely makes up for the relative lack of challenge.

In any case, I hope you enjoy it. After all, as much as I love SH2, I never would have even looked at it if not for this gem.

Cool, one of my all-time favorites and (imo) the best adventure game of the last five years... :)

And yeah, The Nameless One might make you think of that when you look at him but he quite definitely isn't like that. That is, unless you want him to be like that; the game will certainly let you be a stupid warrior if you want... it's probably not as fun that way, but it'll let you.

"Soulbringer"? Huh? Haven't heard of that one... what, was it one of those Interplay dual-case titles that come with just a CD case? I've seen those before... the one I know of is Septerra Core/Sanitarium (both quite good games, though Septerra Core has major sound issues on my PC and I can only wish that I had Sanitarium (a quite good top-down adventure game)...), but it'd stand to reason that there would be more. Eh, whatever that game is, it doesn't matter much really given that the other game is Torment. :)

Torment's manual wasn't really all that special, so all you really miss are the box (nice box, I think) and, probably, the nice three-fold paper cd holder...

Oh yeah, and is it the 2-CD version or the 3-CD version? The 3-CD one has a patch you see, while the 2-CD one is prepatched. You probably have the 2-CD one. If so, be happy, because the 3-CD one requires either disk switching (like BG) or you to get the game to full install without a built-in full install option... easy enough if you know what you're doing, but a little bit harder than having an option for it. ... even with no disk switching actually I might full install just to cut down on the frequent load times...


Torment... such a fantastic game. As soon as I started playing it (beyond half an hour or something) I said "what have I been doing for the past three years (while we had owned it and I hadn't played it)???" because of how great it was. I ignored the slowdown issues (that is, the game would memory leak or something and periodically slow down to the point of freezing and require a restart, very annoying in battles!) and some related CD issues (a good part of why I learned how to do a full install, it helped some with those problems) without much annoyance because of how great the game is. If I had to say a flaw it'd simply be that the game is not very hard at all. But given that the game isn't about being hard, that's not a flaw really... if you want hard D&D combat play Icewind Dale, not Torment, after all. But you sacrifice all but the semblances of a story. It's interesting, really, to see a team go from one extreme to the other with those two games... hard to believe the same people made both of them... not to say IWD is bad, as it is quite adaquate at doing what it set out to do, but in comparison... well there really is no comparison. Hmm, would a better flaw be the lack of weapon and item variety? ... nah, that's not very relevant either really... and darnit, even if it doesn't have many upgrades using teeth as a weapon is just plain cool!

It's not the best game ever, but it's almost certainly #3 after two certain Blizzard RTSes. It does have the most developed and supported (background, world detail, etc) and probably the best story of any game ever though. I know it obliterates Warcraft III story-wise...

As I imply it's not a perfect game... I just liked it enough to ignore the flaws and combat/item selection decisions. They aren't so big that they ruin anything, so as long as you like the game style they made with the game they don't matter much at all. However, between that and the massive volume of text (100,000 lines! That's LINES. Some games these days inflate that number by counting words or something like that, don't let it fool you...) I can certainly see how people who are impatient or like D&D best for its combat would not like the game much. I mean, the combat is easy, it barely has a penalty for dying as your main character comes back to life and has several resurrect spells so he can bring back the rest of the party, you end up having a lot of melee combat because of a very limited number of PCs with ranged weapons and the very close camera that restricts range, etc... no, this is not a D&D combat showcase. It works, and is entertaining enough to be fun, certainly (and since I love D&D I definitely enjoyed the combat), but it won't fool anyone for a combat-focused title.

But for the rest of us... well you know my opinion. I'd say more (about the good side of the game) if it was possible, but with this game I don't want to give away any spoilers so I will not. It's nearly impossible to talk about how this game is good in anything beyond quite general terms and not give things away.

When Gamespy did their D&D 10th Anniversary Week features several months back they had an article about Torment... said something about how it was better to get one game like Torment and then no more than to get no Torment at all. And they are absolutely right. There hasn't been a game like it before or since but just the fact that it exists just about makes up for how nothing else is quite like it.


Here's a nice tool... most of the modern Interplay RPGs use ACM music (Fallout 1/2, BG1/2, IWD 1/2, PT). They're kept in a folder in the game directory. I have a ACM to WAV converter, but there is also this (easier really) choice: a Winamp ACM plugin. This page has both.

http://return0.pisem.net/audio.html

Oh, and before their website died Interplay had been distributing free the MP3 soundtracks for Fallout 1, BG1, BG2, PT, and a few other games (inc. BGDA). They are dead now though so I don't know where to find most of those on the web, but the PST soundtrack is available here. Quite good, I must say...

http://www.dungeony.cz/tormentcz/indexs.htm

I wonder if when I find DJ playing Halo 2 online she'll have that stupid voice mask on like she did last time...

Let's see if you still think it has a decent story by the time you get to the end of the game.

Halo 2 is an utter disappoitment. OB1, if you felt cheated by Fable for leaving out a lot of features without ever telling us, wait until you play H2.

It's essentially 50% the game it was supposed to be. If it weren't for the fact that it's all spoilers I'd go into much more detail. Either the game was incredibly rushed (perhaps because they focussed too much on multiplayer) or M$ demanded that they simply not finish the game so that Halo 3 could be a nice XBox2 launch title.

Having said all that, I'm off to go play it again. :)

I was super-hyped about Fable from the beginning, but I never had very high hope for Halo 2 so I don't think I'll be dissapointed. :D I'm expecting another rushed single-player mode but terrific multi.

Co-op is still pretty fun though. :)

What about online multi?

I haven't had the chance to play that yet.

I'll be having a LAN sometime in the next week or so, which is kinda.. close. So I could post impressions of that if you still want them.

My first impression of Halo 2 is that it's more of the same, meaning co-op is a lot of fun, but the single player is more of the boring stuff that turned me off to playing the first one by myself. I admit though that I was impressed by the first few levels, excluding the level where you're on the spaceship.

One thing that really bothers me about Halo 2 is how the textures in the cutscenes take about a second longer to load than everything else. Pathetic. Other than that, though, the graphics are very good.

Um actually PH, I beat it before I even made this thread... Don't assume so much. And yes, the whole "to be continued" thing IS frickin' annoying, just as they got me really interested in the story.

Stupid Halo... play Torment! :)

Hey I beat the game before I even got Torment!

Anyway, yeah I'm playing it. I actually realized I hadn't even started a game file in the other game, Soulbringer. Playing that, it seems promising as well actually. It's a 3D game with all the visual flair of a Playstation game, pixelated textures and all, but it seems pretty fun so far. I'll go back to the classic 2D thing first though.

Short game, then?

Quote:Bungie's somewhat improved level design this time around wasn't exactly an improvement, other than aesthetics. As the gameplay was still as repetitious as ever. It was just the exact same battles happening in different scenary. Also they added far too many "hold this area until we say it's ok to continue" parts to the game.

Exactly, it's pretty much Halo 1 all over again and that's not a good thing. It's too confined, the enviroments are too repetitious, and you fight the same bad guys in every level. I just don't see why people are giving it such high scores.

I can understand good reviews for mutli, but the single-player mode sounds almost as bad as the first game's. I have no idea why it's getting such great reviews, just like I was baffled with Halo 1's scores.

But then again I think that most FPSs are horribly over-rated. I'm still in shock over Doom 3's amazing scores. The game deserved a 6/10.

Maybe a lot of reviewers are hesitant to give it low scores because they're afraid of reader/viewer backlash given it's immense popularity.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/review.html

Half-Life 2, 9.2 from Gamespot.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/566/566202p1.html

9.7 at IGN.

Oh, and exactly as I said, when you install the game you have to register it via Steam.

That sucks. But I can still borrow my friend's copy, right? Or do they do something asinine like let you install it on just one computer.

I'm not sure...

But what if you don't have an internet connection? Then what are you supposed to do when you OWN it, bring it home, and it refuses to work?

Right, if you don't have an internet connection you cannot install the game.

That's incredibly retarded. Steam is a terrific idea that I really hope becomes successful, but if you buy the hard copy you shouldn't have to use Steam!

It's a new level of the attempts to stop piracy. CD-Keys work well, until people get keys from keygens... you can restrict this if they go to multiplay, but in single... well this is just going farther with it. Of course the game will be cracked and pirated, but it makes it a little bit harder and makes people take a bit more effort to do it. It's inconvenient, especially if it only lets you install it on one computer (which would be a truly horrible decision for lots of legitimate reasons!), but I can see why they do it...

Steam is a great idea that's going to fail because of how they're handling it.

Quote:Right, if you don't have an internet connection you cannot install the game.

Not exactly the smartest idea I've ever heard. If you get a new computer or a new harddrive or any number of other things you'll have to go through the trouble of getting your copy unregistered and then re-registering it.

Exactly, which is why, for example, XP Pro is bought by the home user above Home Edition.

Seriously, what is up with this? You don't punish people that obey the law for the actions of the people who break it! I believe PA once commented on this, but making games totally unusable without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops is going to make people WANT to crack it. I'll likely end up cracking the game myself (if I had any idea where to find a nice crack, but I'm sure you folks will tell me, or I'll google it), even though I'll legally own it, and that'll just be so I can use it as I wish! Key generators? Wow, how do they figure out the encoding used by the games to do that? Must have some code crackers or something... Wouldn't they need a high number of real codes just to do it? Where do they get those to begin with? That's a scary thought... I still hope some jerk doesn't randomly get a code for MY game and get ME kicked off Battle.net or something because they were all like "I want to play the game but I don't have the money, so instead of being a decent human being and just going without, realizing it's just a game, I'll just STEAL it".

Seriously, buying games as downloads is cool (except sometimes I like having a nice hard copy of the game that I can stare at), but if this is what we have to deal with...

I mean, as a matter of course I'll take my games over to my friends and install it on their machines just to show it off. Not like there's any harm, I'm still being legal as I'm not playing the copy I have on my own machine at the same time as I'm playing the one I installed on their machine. It's just a common thing. For example, I've installed You Don't Know Jack volume 4 (the best of the series if you ask me, in that it's the funniest) on ALL my friend's machines and so I'll occasionally bring the actual disks with me so we can all play a game. If that game used this system, I'd have to drag my entire PC with me just to play this game. I don't do that with CONSOLE games, so why would I want to do that with an entire PC? Really, us legal users just get punished for the actions of the idiot pirates... *calls cops*

Cops: Ah jeez when will you people learn to take the law into your own hands?

So? (about what the thread was originally going to be about) (If GR can bring back old threads, so can I!)

As long as you can connect to steam right after you install a game, you can play offline as long as you like. Its not that bad, but it does have some drawbacks.

Yeah, yeah, but I want to know how far DJ got into TLJ and PS:T... :)

Okay, having actually played Half-Life 2 I've decided that Steam isn't really that bad. You can have it installed only more than one computer, you just have to put in your username and password again everytime you use a different computer. Now that I have DSL the hassle of connecting so I can play is gone. The only problem is if you're using a borrowed version you can't be on at the same time as they are, other than that no problem.

What if you don't have a net connection? What then?

Anyway, as for TLG... I just got that game back a while ago from my mom, so um, I'm not very far into it...

Quote:What if you don't have a net connection? What then?

Well then you don't get to play.

Steam is great because it marks the beginning of mainstream digital delivery which could change the face of gaming forever (seriously, that's not hyperbole).... but I agree with DJ that having to have an internet connection to play HL2 is retarded.

Quote:Anyway, as for TLG... I just got that game back a while ago from my mom, so um, I'm not very far into it...

TLJ. :) Good story it tells, if you last through the sometimes very long (overly long perhaps at times) conversations and don't mind the very conventional gameplay... but for a conventional (non-Lucasarts (:D)) adventure game it's one of the better ones, definitely. How far did you get? And how about Torment, that's the better of the two... TLJ is really good, but Torment is truly great.

Nuts, that post didn't get posted for some reason...

Well I've been busy lately so I haven't been playing many games actually. I have a lot of RPGs to catch up on, GOOD ones. I'll say I really want to get back into Planescape though. Just getting out of that crypt at the start revealed enough story about that eternally party forming and then utterly arse kicked into amnesia fellow you play as. That's about the only bit I know of him so far. That, and there's some ghostly woman who he once loved. Who knows how many he's met like that in past eons? Oh well, anyway I have a lot of stuff to work out while in "the hive". When I finally start playing, it's off to find the thief who stole my stuff. Nice enough, I can be the guy who just wants to find my stuff instead of the guy who's all "HE STEAL! ME SMASH! BLAAAARGHH!". I don't need to be a bad arse in the least! In fact, the way I've been talking I'm the naive nice guy.

Well anyway yeah needing the net connetion to play when it is a physical requirement is fine. I understand that for like, multiplayer gaming. But here, it's just for some security measure. I get why the PA guys would crack games they legally own now.

I will say being able to buy games and just download them is nice and good. Ya know, Bioware has released huge scenarios for Neverwinter that you have to buy. You buy and then download them. I've heard lots of complaints about their confirmation scheme though... Really I feel for the companies doing this, but it is a big annoyance. Anyway, I'm not buying those content packages :D. The single player campaigns included with Neverwinter and it's expansions just aren't that fun to play single player. In fact, everything you do is like boredom the way they did it. It's like a robot analyzed the basic concepts of what makes a game good and did it in a purely robotic fassion. It's TECHNICALLY got what it takes, but pulled off in such a sterile and uninteresting fasion that it sucks. Multiplayer is the entire reason I play the game, and fan made scenario packs, and that's the way it'll stay.

Quote:Well I've been busy lately so I haven't been playing many games actually. I have a lot of RPGs to catch up on, GOOD ones. I'll say I really want to get back into Planescape though. Just getting out of that crypt at the start revealed enough story about that eternally party forming and then utterly arse kicked into amnesia fellow you play as. That's about the only bit I know of him so far. That, and there's some ghostly woman who he once loved. Who knows how many he's met like that in past eons? Oh well, anyway I have a lot of stuff to work out while in "the hive". When I finally start playing, it's off to find the thief who stole my stuff. Nice enough, I can be the guy who just wants to find my stuff instead of the guy who's all "HE STEAL! ME SMASH! BLAAAARGHH!". I don't need to be a bad arse in the least! In fact, the way I've been talking I'm the naive nice guy.

You're right at the beginning then... you can spend a lot of time in the hive if you wish, depending... it's also the most non-linear part of the game. Once you know what you're DOING it gets more linear, but at the start, you know nothing, so all you've got is sidequests for a while... but it's really interesting with how the story is told. Just remember, have a character with good intelligence and wisdom scores (really important if you want the better dialog options!) if you want to be able to be an intelligent, combat-avoiding character as opposed to 'Me Smash'. :)

When I first played the game I went through part of the Mortuary, and liked it, but then for some reason didn't continue for several years... and then regretted it when I finally got around to playing the game. It's really worth it.

If I end up waiting TOO long I'll just restart the game since, as you said and as I could tell, I am right at the start of the game. That'll refresh my memory.

As it stands, my whims have told me to start rebuilding my lost PS2 save files. I'm starting off with Megaman Collectiony thing.

It'd take a couple of hours to replay what you've done, but if you want to go ahead... what really matters is that you play the game. Don't put it off forever.

Not forever, but like, forHOWever long it takes for me to start playing my RPGs again.

Play it!

Really, it's worth it...