So, what're you playing?

[Ingmar]

We're well into aesthetic opinion territory here but I don't think KOTOR looks anywhere near as bad as Morrowind.

[WindupAtheist]

Before/after comparison from the Morrowind Better Bodies mod.


Look at the original Bosmer, second from the left on the top. What the fuck, I mean seriously.

[Sheepherder]

Heh, beta Morrowind screenshots.  Terrible.

Though, at least that version had Vivec open to the sky, and without those goddamn silly buildings.

Also, yes, what the fuck indeed.  I'm glad the art in Oblivion was passable except for the derpy facegen presets.

[Sky]

If I were a game developer, I'd be knocking down the doors of whoever did the face tech for Mafia 2 (or even the original). Going from Mafia 2 to a Bethsoft engine game (F:NV) was shockingly bad.

Better technology exists. License it, ffs.

[apocrypha]

OK God of War 3 may be the most infuriating game I've ever played.

Big fight, no idea what's going on, die a couple of times, finally beat it then camera angle changes mid-run-up to a jump and therefore the direction mapping of the stick changes too and you die falling off a fucking bridge into a river. Do it all again.

[trias_e]

TBH, I can't even comprehend how anyone could call KOTOR a better looking game than Morrowind.  It's not even close.  KOTOR ages much worse than Morrowind.

As far as what I'm playing...Starcraft 2 is still fun.  Season 2 is coming soon, and as it correspondes with spring break I am trying desperately to get into master's league before the ladder reset.  Probably isn't going to happen.  Also going to a live regional tournament tomorrow.  Will get rocked by the high master's utah players (believe it or not, there are 4 that are 3700+ around here), but who knows, I might sneak a win or two in.

Game is fun, but I can't sneak the feeling that we are all wainting fot HOTS.  SC -> BW...SC2 -> HOTS?

[WindupAtheist]

Morrowind is a brown world full of disfigured marionettes. There's this one Redguard on the dock in Ebonheart that got me to shut the game off. His head didn't look like a bad rendering of a face, it looked like a good rendering of a block of wood with a grimacing face crudely drawn on it by some sort of savage. Horrible looking game. KOTOR just looks dated but inoffensive.

Anyway I tracked down and isolated the Daggerfall bug that was fucking up my saves, a bug apparently never before documented in all the years the game has been out, so I'm going back to that. Yeah, never take out a bank loan in Alik'r Desert and then let it default, or else your game will corrupt in such a way as to cause hundreds of dudes to spawn when you sleep and crash the game.

[Ironwood]

Bank loans.  Damn.  That game had everything.

[Azazel]

KOTOR also benefits by being 3rd person rather than 1st person - the models are smaller and the detail isn't an issue. In TES games, with the first-person perspective, the shittastic models are right there in your face.

Not that I personally think KOTOR looks bad anyway. I did stop playing Morrowwind pretty quickly after starting it though, and that was back in the day. I remember people on EQ raving about it, and it was indeed kinda sorta like a single-player EverQuest. But let's face it, that's not exactly a good thing...


Started playing around with Brutal Legend, which I picked up. Starts with awesomeness. Then is good, after awhile becoming tedious and much less awesome. The one-liners delivered by JB are pretty good, but not quite enough to sustain the game. I'm not even up to the RTS mode yet, either.

Despite not yet being as far as Yahtzee into the game, this does sum up how I'm feeling so far. Especially with the whole sandbox "run around and collect things" pain in the arse aspect.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1044-Brutal-Legend

[cironian]

Not that I personally think KOTOR looks bad anyway.

Same here. I think the more "cartoony" texture style of KOTOR helps my mind paint in the blanks in a way that doesn't work so well for Morrowind. Although I would be the first to admit that the KOTOR inventory screen is a giant pain in the ass. But that part's not because of the game's age. That inventory was bad even for its time.

[Sheepherder]

Morrowind is a brown world full of disfigured marionettes. There's this one Redguard on the dock in Ebonheart that got me to shut the game off. His head didn't look like a bad rendering of a face, it looked like a good rendering of a block of wood with a grimacing face crudely drawn on it by some sort of savage. Horrible looking game. KOTOR just looks dated but inoffensive.

 

Anyway I tracked down and isolated the Daggerfall bug that was fucking up my saves, a bug apparently never before documented in all the years the game has been out, so I'm going back to that.

I found like three or four undocumented ones in the TES IV Construction Set back in January.  Apparently when you kill (knock unconscious) an actor with the Essential flag enabled, the OnHit/OnHitWith/OnMagicEffectHit conditions don't reset, so anything in those blocks will be ran for perpetuity.  In my case, I also subsequently discovered that inadvertently calling EvaluatePackage every frame on an actor just regaining consciousness causes them to lie on the ground, conscious but capable of little more than speaking and blinking.  Which put a serious damper on my attempt to efficiently make the scripted NPC perform specific behaviors when struck by a friendly.

[WindupAtheist]

KOTOR also benefits by being 3rd person rather than 1st person - the models are smaller and the detail isn't an issue. In TES games, with the first-person perspective, the shittastic models are right there in your face.

Yeah but on the other hand, you could play Morrowind third-person easily enough, and you did spend a lot of time in KOTOR looking at close-ups of characters while listening to and selecting dialogue.

 

THAT'S HIM! FUCK! Bad art is just bad art regardless of technical sophistication. The block-people in Minecraft are infinitely easier to look at. Anyone who still wants to have a Morrowind versus KOTOR graphics debate can compare that to this and get back to me.

[Nightblade]

Dragon Age 2 or: How Korean MMO animations make it into a mainstream RPG.

Replaying FFT for the 900th time, still trying to figure out how these guys thought the animation slowdowns during battle were acceptable on the PSP version.

[tgr]

WUA: Graphics snob.

Honestly, he doesn't phase me much at all, about the only thing I thought was "oh god, he looks sad."

[Lantyssa]

I never saw him, though maybe the Better Faces mod took care of it.  I really liked the dark elves once it was installed, and even pieced together a faerie race using those textures.

[Sheepherder]

Honestly, he doesn't phase me much at all, about the only thing I thought was "oh god, he looks sad."

If you look closely, you'll notice a gap between his ear and his head where you can see the statue behind him.

[Vision]

I just played through the first God Of War, which was surprisingly good. Normally I expect hack and slash to be solely gameplay centered, but they tied the ending of the first game up nicely. Trying to get in GoW2 before they release the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus two pack.

[Merusk]

Ico/Shadow of the Colossus two pack.

Wait, what?  Excellent.  

Feh.. Amazon still doesn't have a release date, though the articles I found all expect it in the next few months. Odd.
http://www.amazon.com/ICO-Shadow-Colossus-Collection-Playstation-3/dp/B002I0J5FG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1300630216&sr=8-1

[Sjofn]

I forgot how pretty Bastilla is!

[jakonovski]

Finished Killzone 3 today. It was a bit of a mixed bag. The gunplay is supremely enjoyable, as are the gorgeous environments, but the story is half-done and there are incredibly stupid rail shooter episodes scattered throughout the game. Luckily the multiplayer keeps delivering.

Now I'm torn between Bioshock 2 and Vanquish. Then there's Beyond Good & Evil HD and Stacking. Choices!

[Sky]

Divinity 2, even though I really shouldn't be :)

Liking it so far, a bit rough on the gpu but real purty. I was a big fan of the original, though I never played the second one.

After dealing with a lying vendor names Noryfundis I ran into a crazy guy with an axe named Eugene. Awesome, especially telling him to be careful.

[WindupAtheist]

I forgot how pretty Bastilla is!

Mix in that spankalicious English accent and "prissy preacher's daughter secretly yearning to be bad" demeanor and she's infinitlely more yummy than any giant-tittied box cover whore that's ever been shoveled out there by a marketing department.

[Paelos]

I'm playing Nehrim, the Oblivion mod. It's cool and hard so far.

I hate cave trolls!

[tgr]

I forgot how pretty Bastilla is!

Mix in that spankalicious English accent and "prissy preacher's daughter secretly yearning to be bad" demeanor and she's infinitlely more yummy than any giant-tittied box cover whore that's ever been shoveled out there by a marketing department.

I definitely couldn't help but select the conversational options that made her sputter indignantly. Ahh, the memories. I should fire that up sometime after I get both mining and blacksmithing up to 50 in wurm, just to tease her.

Anyone tried out KOTOR2 with the content restoration mods?

[Stormwaltz]

Over this weekend I've played LotRO, DDO, STO, GW, and Puzzle Quest.

I think I need help.

[Minvaren]

Anyone tried out KOTOR2 with the content restoration mods?

Working on it - about to hit Telos, no real difference seen so far.  My understanding is that the majority of it is Droid World and Malachor stuff near the end.

Getting Kreia's friendship dialogs to open is such a PITA.  I've played through this game so many times and only ever gotten about 2 "in" with a cutscene as a reward before she got ticked at me.  Then again, I tend to be a goody-goody...

[Vision]

Ico/Shadow of the Colossus two pack.

Wait, what?  Excellent.  

Feh.. Amazon still doesn't have a release date, though the articles I found all expect it in the next few months. Odd.
http://www.amazon.com/ICO-Shadow-Colossus-Collection-Playstation-3/dp/B002I0J5FG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1300630216&sr=8-1

When I got my GOW pack the "gamestop guy" finally told me I could expect Ico/SotC to come out in early april after trying to hardsell me for 5 min on their platinum membership crap. If he was wrong, Ill be both disappointed and enraged.

[Chimpy]

I was going through a box of stuff and found my Starcraft CD. So I decided to play that.

It takes quite a bit of finagling to get working in Win 7.

[Ingmar]

My recollection with Kreia is she will yell at you no matter *what* you do, good or bad, it is how you react to being yelled at by her that determines what she thinks of you.

[Reg]

I played KOTOR2 with the content restoration when it first came out so hopefully it runs a little smoother now. But it was definitely worth playing.  The restored quest with the HK47 factory alone made it worthwhile.

[Rasix]

I was having a bad day on Saturday, so I bought Dragon Age 2 to cheer me up, even though I had mentally committed to waiting for a Steam sale for it.  I like it well enough so far.  Sarcasta-Lady_Hawke's voice acting is really well done for the most part.  I'll have to wait until DudeHawke playthrough to go all high and mighty.  I like that, at least early on, you seem to be making some actual interesting decisions, despite the fact that I assume they're mostly cosmetic at this point (we'll see, won't we?). 

I'm not quite sold on the encounter design.   Waves and waves of baddies is a dumb schtick to repeat.  Combat is a bit hard to follow at the moment, but I'm sure that'll get better with practice.

Taking a DIKU break as a result.  My playtime in Rift will lessen, but I see no reason to unsub at the moment as I'm still enjoying it.

[Shrike]

Shit. I'm clinging to gaming at the moment. If it weren't for the 360, I might actually have to go outside and do car maintenance or...yardwork. Can't have that.

Anyway, basically down to an hour or so a day of WoW, so it hardly counts. Lot of PC backlog on Steam, but mostly FPSs, and I'm not really in the mood for them. When the Arrival drops, I'll have to pick that up to finish PC ME2, but after that it's a dry well until summer and Duke4ever and WH40K: Spacemarine (assuming it doesn't suck). Probably will get Rage on the PC if/when it ever hits the virtual shelves. Still planning another PC technological terror this summer, but beginning to wonder if that money might be better spent elsewhere. Hopefully, Rage will justify the jump to 2560x1600 and all the jack that entails.

The 360 is my lifeline right now. Working on another FO:NV playthrough. Independent NV this time around--maybe. DA2. Loving this game. So far my goody-goody (sorta) Garrett Hawke is having a grand time. I don't know if what I've done is on rails or not, but it's  enough at times, I have to wonder. Fun. When I get around to really moving snarky LadyHawke forward, we'll see how much those choices really matter. Merrill is proof that elves >> all else in fantasy. Biweekly drunken Borderlands runs are still active. Also, finishing up my ninth ME2 playthrough in view of the pending arrival of The Arrival. Enough there to keep me going for at least a week to explore every possible permutation of the last ME2 DLC.

[Jeff Kelly]

I have a carving for something fun that isn't a first or third person shooter or an RPG. After playing through Fallout 3 and NV, Uncharted 2 and both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 my thirst for those kinds of games is quenched at the moment.

Buying a Wii just to play Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country seems a bit excessive though. The big black hole on both the PS3 and 360, decent platformers.

I'm also very much in love with the 360's controller so I can bring myself less and less to play games on the PS3 even though I could potentially play GoW 1 through 3. So I'm stumped as to what to play next and currently waiting for the next ME2 DLC to hit.

[jakonovski]

Having called in sick because of flu, I spent the whole day beating Bioshock 2. It was pretty good but curiously it had the same fault as the original. The end game was too long by at least an hour. I kept wishing for the end, but it just wouldn't come.

[Sjofn]

I was having a bad day on Saturday, so I bought Dragon Age 2 to cheer me up, even though I had mentally committed to waiting for a Steam sale for it.  I like it well enough so far.  Sarcasta-Lady_Hawke's voice acting is really well done for the most part.  I'll have to wait until DudeHawke playthrough to go all high and mighty.  I like that, at least early on, you seem to be making some actual interesting decisions, despite the fact that I assume they're mostly cosmetic at this point (we'll see, won't we?). 

I'm not quite sold on the encounter design.   Waves and waves of baddies is a dumb schtick to repeat.  Combat is a bit hard to follow at the moment, but I'm sure that'll get better with practice.

Hit R to target the closest enemy. This made my life a whole lot easier, especially as a melee person. The waves thing is overused like whoa, though, yeah.