PS Forgot about NV but I haven't finished it so I'll let you know what I think about that later if you want.

I'd be interested to see your opinion. NV isn't quite as open-ended as FO1 but it's pretty damn close. It also has tons more content, an area where FO1 fell a bit short. I really can't think of any other RPG that offers the player as many meaningful choices as NV does while providing compelling and well-developed characters and lore.

Jerykk wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 05:34:

To make a long story short, I'd go: Risen, Dark Messiah then possibly a tie between New Vegas and DX3. Obviously none of those are actually RPG's but they all tried to do what they set out to do, or are at lease *able* to .

Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be a good RPG? To me, a game that lets me play it the way I want to play it and have the world react in a meaningful fashion. New Vegas accomplished this. You could fight, sneak or talk your way through most of the game. You don't even have to fire a gun if you don't want to. Many of the quests had branching paths and ambiguous moral choices as well and the locales and characters were very well developed.

What IS an RPG, loaded question and different for everyone. For me I like exploration, choices and consequenses, character stats and inventory management with half decent combat and challenge. Other people prefer story. Pick any three of those and I'll probably like it.

As to my favourite RPG, I'll have to go with Fallout 1 or Gothic 2 NoTR. I played 'Dungeon Master' when it first came out on the Atari ST and loved it but am not sure if I could slog through it again. Both have choices and consequesces, okay/mediocre combat (although both very different), great exploration and differing character systems. I think of G2 as more of an action/adventure with half decent, but light character stats. F1 really has most of what I like. To me story isn't a big deal as neither are that great but I'm playing a game, not reading a book.

I'm assuming you never play as a stealthy or diplomatic character? That may be why our opinions vary. I generally try to avoid combat whenever possible. I played through DX3 as a stealth game. I played through FO:NV as a diplomat. Hell, I didn't even wear any armor and I was playing on the highest difficulty in hardcore mode. What about SS2 did you like so much? I'm pretty certain it wasn't the combat, as that was downright terrible. Bioshock's combat was definitely an improvement. For me, SS2 was great when played as survival horror game. The RPG elements were pretty trivial in that respect.

I purposedly played DX HR department as a shooter because I assumed it was going to be a dumbed down console game. I never bound a key to the third person cover thing, purposefully nerfed my character not to take radar or health enhancements and only took shooter stuff (like balanced weapon or whatever). I also got rid of the quest compass and arrows pointing out everything on the screen. I still had a gazillion points at the end. I liked the story, the exploration was so-sol. I think that's because of the small levels, they were designed weird but good enough. I liked the main and side quests.

Even though I built my char as a shooter guy, I still 'stealthed' through it without having those augs. Generally most encounters were 3-6 guys and on 'Dues Ex' mode they were all tough throuhout the whole game, for me. After many hours, I figured out how to do 'take-downs' which made it a bit easier so my MO became sneaking up behind one or two of the guys, dragging their bodies away, possibly sniping one of the others and going head on for the rest. I can't remember a game in recent memory when I had to reload so often.

Honestly, I think because of the options to turn off the console stuff, the story (I read every email I can find) and the super challenging combat, I think it's the best modern game of the last five years. But I still don't think of it as an RPG. The augs became pointless after awhile, (for my build) and it was more of an adventure with story and mostly an FPS.

As to Bioshock, I don't really want to talk about it, I thought it was fun for quite a few hours, loved the atmosphere and the story (did Doom3 start this business of background through emails?) but is ultimately a piece of shit. It failed as an FPS and an RPG. I never finished it, the story petered out and the combat became a chore and the 'augs' became pointless. Opinions differ.

As to SS2, I think as you said, I liked the survival/horror thing. And I love hard science fiction, and it was difficult for me at the time. Plus the inventory management was there with lots of stats even if some of them were useless, I didn't know it at the time. I'm not really sure why I like it better than DX1, I just do. I think it started the trend of mixing an FPS with RPG elements that instead of becoming popular has become worse.

I guess I'll just add that Dark Messiah tacked on the RPG elements but left it at that, it was a hacknslash FPS. And that's why it worked. It was a fun game with good level design, combat encounters and challenge. Bioshock wasn't. Their RPG elements ended up becoming boring and trivial without having the combat or even encounter design to make up for it.

And to finally shut-up, I'll say that DXHR is probably my favourite modern game made in the last five years or so. It's not 'fucking awesome' but I played all the way through and really liked it, mostly because it was challenging and to me simply 'fun'. Still not an RPG though.

PS Forgot about NV but I haven't finished it so I'll let you know what I think about that later if you want.

This comment was edited on Dec 29, 2011, 04:44.

Meanwhile, Origin still won't take my Visa card so I can't even buy the bloody game.

Fibrocyte wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 11:45:

Steele Johnson wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 11:15:
There's more to do in Skyrim than this game. Why would I pay a monthly sub? Doh!

No... no there's not.

That really depends on a persons definition of content. Some very defensive people posting about their favorite game.

Steele Johnson wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 11:15:
There's more to do in Skyrim than this game. Why would I pay a monthly sub? Doh!

No... no there's not.

The quests and story were the actual driving elements that kept me playing, and not the levels/experience/etc. that WoW hooked on you

This is what I like about the game so far, I don't feel like I need to kill 40 rats to progress in the game, the leveling is almost unnoticeable.

I do agree that the game is virtually a single player game that "can be" an online cooperative game, just the same as Guild Wars is/was. I DO like that though, there are times that I only have an hour or so to nerd out so it works great for me and I can usually do a quest or two and feel like I accomplished something. With games like EQ (1) one hour did almost nothing.

I did my first Flash Point with two other players on Saturday night and had a BLAST. So the game is definitely more fun when you do some coop.

I plan on doing at least 3 stories - Good, Bad, Neutral.

When GW2 comes out I will jump on that as I totally enjoyed GW (1) and I want to support online cooperatives that DO NOT charge a monthly sub.

I think that SWTOR is a very good game, but no, I don't think it should have a monthly fee, or maybe $4.99 a month, but $13 is to much when Guild Wars was $0 a month and virtually the same game.

There's more to do in Skyrim than this game. Why would I pay a monthly sub? Doh!

Creston wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 10:43:

Verno wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 08:49:
Am I blind or are there no actual sales figures in there?

It's called "throwing up a lot of smoke to hide the (possibly ugly) truth."

Creston

It's called marketing, actually. They have no ugly truth to hide.

Verno wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 08:49:
Am I blind or are there no actual sales figures in there?

It's called "throwing up a lot of smoke to hide the (possibly ugly) truth."

Creston

Jerykk wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 05:34:
Many of the quests had branching paths and ambiguous moral choices as well and the locales and characters were very well developed.

I was telling someone about this yesterday, actually. I consider NV a true RPG because you play a role and because you make decisions with consequences. In fact, you can't avoid consequences. And the consequences aren't always obvious. Often you're not sure if you're making the good choice or the evil choice, the right choice or the wrong choice. In many cases there is no good or evil, right or wrong. But you still need to make a choice.

Oblivion had no choices, Fallout 3 had a few but they tended to just change your reward and the few exceptions had giant neon signs that made both the goodness or evilness of the decision, as well as the consequences, easy to determine. Just to use those two as comparisons.

Fibrocyte wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 09:57:

KilrathiAce wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 06:52:
Star Wars: World of Warcraft...yep we all know there is massive market for people who just love mindless grind for hours and hours...throw in star wars stuff and bam. I am glad this is not available on steam for once EA made me proud on that. Keep these annoying mmos off steam.

Mis-post due to Blue's primitive website design.

KilrathiAce wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 06:52:
Star Wars: World of Warcraft...yep we all know there is massive market for people who just love mindless grind for hours and hours...throw in star wars stuff and bam. I am glad this is not available on steam for once EA made me proud on that. Keep these annoying mmos off steam.

You're the kind of girl who goes to a party and gets jealous of all the other, prettier girls there, aren't you?

CreamyBlood wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 03:05:
I've never understood the idea that by placing earphones over your TWO ears you're going to get 'Surround Sound'. Yes, it has a micro-woofer and displaced a centimeter back and a tweeter a few millimeters ahead. They're still covering your ears.

its a psychoacoustic algorithim... meaning, it tricks your brain into thinking its "surround sound" .. and anyone who's worked with audio on a professional level usually hates the shit, including me

it sounds like ass IMO.. it fucks with the phasing in a nasty way

Am I blind or are there no actual sales figures in there?

Theo wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 05:26:

CannibalBob wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 04:19:
Sounds really cool! Of course, Guild Wars will still have its (improved) story system, unlike World of Warcraft which had absolutely no story.

I am no wow Fan boy and stoped playing a bunch of time ago, but this is wrong. each wow zone has a story (especially the newer ones), its just that no-body bothers to read them because they are 2 busy grinding rat tails.

Well, Wow's storytelling only got good with the expansions, vanilla WOW was not very much.

I agree about Guild Wars 2 - I want to see what they do too.

SWTOR might be the fastest rising MMO in history, but it might also be the biggest crater later on. Getting the game rags to give you wonderful reviews just means giving them some advertising money, that whole thing it totally broken. The gamers will decide for themselves, and we'll see.

Star Wars: World of Warcraft...yep we all know there is massive market for people who just love mindless grind for hours and hours...throw in star wars stuff and bam. I am glad this is not available on steam for once EA made me proud on that. Keep these annoying mmos off steam.

There seems to be an important stat missing, although I guess that number would only make sense about a month from now. Of course Im talking about the number of players who have extended their subscription past the first month.

To make a long story short, I'd go: Risen, Dark Messiah then possibly a tie between New Vegas and DX3. Obviously none of those are actually RPG's but they all tried to do what they set out to do, or are at lease *able* to .

Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be a good RPG? To me, a game that lets me play it the way I want to play it and have the world react in a meaningful fashion. New Vegas accomplished this. You could fight, sneak or talk your way through most of the game. You don't even have to fire a gun if you don't want to. Many of the quests had branching paths and ambiguous moral choices as well and the locales and characters were very well developed.

I'm assuming you never play as a stealthy or diplomatic character? That may be why our opinions vary. I generally try to avoid combat whenever possible. I played through DX3 as a stealth game. I played through FO:NV as a diplomat. Hell, I didn't even wear any armor and I was playing on the highest difficulty in hardcore mode. What about SS2 did you like so much? I'm pretty certain it wasn't the combat, as that was downright terrible. Bioshock's combat was definitely an improvement. For me, SS2 was great when played as survival horror game. The RPG elements were pretty trivial in that respect.

CannibalBob wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 04:19:
Sounds really cool! Of course, Guild Wars will still have its (improved) story system, unlike World of Warcraft which had absolutely no story.

I am no wow Fan boy and stoped playing a bunch of time ago, but this is wrong. each wow zone has a story (especially the newer ones), its just that no-body bothers to read them because they are 2 busy grinding rat tails.

CannibalBob wrote on Dec 28, 2011, 04:19:
I did not subscribe because it did indeed feel very much like a single-player experience. This game probably would've been a lot better as a non-MMO multiplayer game (ie you can play it with a few friends or online folks). This game doesn't seem to try anything new in the MMORPG gameplay department, aside from adding a meaningful story and quests. I don't think that's enough, sadly.

Did you try playing the game with other people? Believe it or not, that'll eliminate the single-player feeling unless you're only doing space battles.