This is the latest in this nonsensical ongoing request to force FM receivers into everything. What a dumb decision. As always, Penny Arcade puts it rather elegantly.
As much as I lament when someone like Sony or whoever drops backwards compatibility features, at no point in any of my complaints do I suggest it shouldn't be legal for them to drop that support. I'd never support any sort of lawsuit forcing legacy compatibility.
In other news, I'd love to have that HDTV/Puppet Theater combo. That thing looks sweet.
(Continuing from my post in the 'games I got' thread...)
So I played three or four missions of SC2 yesterday. My cousin (we were visiting them this weekend) had it, so I played a few levels of the single player campaign. It's pretty much the same as the first SC, but with a few new units and 3d graphics. Not exactly pushing any major new ideas, unfortunately... I liked that WC1, WC2, and WC3 were each significantly different, Blizzard sequels felt like real sequels and not just add-ons. SC2 feels more like just a graphical overhaul.
I mean, because SC was the best game ever SC2 is great of course, but they could have pushed a bit more. I'm sure that they didn't because they didn't want to mess with what made the first one such a popular e-sport game, but still, somehow it makes it feel a little less.
Oh well, that's complaining about something really great. The real valid complaints are about the horrible restrictions and privacy invasions in the online mode and mapmaking... still and obvious must-buy though, despite how horrible that is. Does not buying it day one show Actiblizz my unhappiness about that stuff? :)
A little while ago there must have been a Window's patch that downloaded automatically, because the next time I went to shut off the computer it said "Install Updates and Shut down."
Ok--fair enough.
But, now every time I go to shut it off, it says the same thing.
-Towns seem to have more randomized events [a guy ran out of an alley and attacked a member of a local gang on one occasion]
-Melee weapons also have a secondary attack
-There was an item called "antivenom]
-More variety of weapons, I think there were three different kinds of shotguns in my inventory at the start of the demo
-Each town has a different opinion of you [I killed some people and eventually got shunned by the whole town]
-Factions play a bigger role, I killed a gang member and a bunch of his friends came out of a building and killed me
-Each gun has an iron sight
-Using the boxing gloves to attack someone will eventually knock them down [from fatigue damage], where you can then shoot them up at your leisure
Brink
-Four classes that have fully customizable appearance [medic, soldier, engineer, operative/spy]
-Soldier can deploy explosives and give out extra ammo
-Medic can heal and issue revive kits [when you "die", you character falls down and you can wait to be revived or respawn in the next respawn wave]
-Engineer can deploy turrets and do construction objectives
-Operative can hack and take on the likeness of a fallen enemy
-All classes can be changed at will in the spawn room
-Completing objectives, killing enemies and so on gives you experiences that you can use to get more weapons and customization options
-Levels are pretty large and complex, rounds are objective-based and can last 20-30 minutes
-SMART system works really well, it allows you to jump over obstacles, grab on to ledge and pull yourself up, slide along the ground and other things like that
Hunted: The Demon's Forge
-At E3 people referred to this as Gears of Warcraft and I think the name is apt
-Two player co-op with a male warrior and a female archer
-New weapons can be picked up in the levels, along with other items like potions and extra arrows
-Combat is hack-and-slash, or shoot-and-kill [depending on which character you play as]
-There are various magical spells that the characters can use
-Certain things in each level require to characters to work together
-Kind of reminds me of Gauntlet [or maybe Hexen]
Rage
The good:
-Graphics are really good
-Animation is really smooth
-Combat looks fluid and different enemies will come at you in different ways [some guys are acrobatic and will use the environment to swing around and hit you]
-Dead City looks AMAZING, graphics and artistically. The boss battle there is insane, and the part where the demo cuts out at this segments is even more insane.
-The game finally has a solid release date
The bad:
-Still 13 months away
Two Worlds II
-Deeper character customization [wasn't show off in the demo though]
-More generic wildlife [the savanna in the demo had leopards, ostriches, and rhinos]
-Spells are created through cards [combine fire card with missile cards creates fireball spell, but there are also secondary effects that can be added on]
-Weapons and armor are upgradeable [stackable system is replaced with the ability to break down armor and weapons into their key components for use in upgraded existing weapons and armor]
-Animations looks much smoother, big improvements over the original
-Several different varieties of travel exist [one is a sailboat that you can actually sail yourself, as in controlling the sail and rudder]
-Main storyline is 20-30 hours, but there are tons of sidequests
-Multiplayer is revamped and much deeper [the multiplayer actually covers the seven years between the original game and its sequel]
-Herbs and misc. animal items can be combined to create different potions, each combination will result in a recipe that will show you how to make it again [think this was in the original]
-No skill trees, all individual skills are available to add points to depending on how you want to play.
-Armor sets can be tied to a single button, making it much easier to switch between ranged, close-range, and magical focuses
-Didn't get to see dialog and voice acting in action, but considering how much everything else has been improved I would be very surprised if this didn't get fixed as well
-Combat feels much deeper with a variety of different attacks depending on how your character is moving
The picture says it all I think, not that anyone should be surprised because that kind of chart (the one on the right) is exactly the same kind of thing the Bush II tax cuts looked like, just extended.
![[Image: GR2010081106717_thumb_454x592_23659.gif]](http://images2.dailykos.com/images/user/6685/GR2010081106717_thumb_454x592_23659.gif)