Be Excellent To Each Other

And probably the best RPG since 2004. It's that good. So far i haven't encountered a single flaw and i'm already quite far. And it's, except for crysis and possibly Bioshock, the best looking game also.

Colour me interested.

What happened in 2004?

Hmm, it only has a metascore of 79/100..?
What's so good about it?

It is reportedly far, far better on PC than 360, due to a dodgy port.

Soured me somewhat and so didn't partake.

79% is the PC version. 360 version has 58% on metacritic.

Vampire:Bloodlines




Eurogamer gave it 4 and Gamespot 7, so there are some fucktards ruining the score. Like all good music, good games aren't consensual.

Basically the game is what Gothic 2 but better in everything. The combat is still awesome but a bit more accessible. It's still very challenging but not impossible (in g2 the difficulty curve was all wrong) like G2. The world may be small for modern standards but still miles better than the copy/paste or sandbox games. Every dungeon and cave is interesting and don't feel the same as the others.

There is no good and evil, just different points of views. The quests are intricate with many different outcomes and consequences, many not so obvious. The maps are great. It's not automapping like in most games, but people give you maps for the different and you can buy better ones and such, and they really look nice and antique and do a lot for immersion.

And it's gorgeous. The jungle employs all the same sort of trickery like Crysis, but runs lot better. Sometimes the bloom is still to much, but not annoying like in Oblivion.

The Eurogamer was supposed to be for both formats. Since they are so different in quality, just shows how Eurogamer turned to crap.

Still, there don't seem to be many people who are quite as impressed as you.

most people at rockpapershotgun and rpgcodex.net seem quite impressed. It's not like i guide myself from the reviews of mainstream sites and i don't buy games magazines.

1,000 words saved, right there.


I did kind of like the sound of it from the rps articles the other week, though.

Considering RuySan hates everything under the sun, this strikes me as high praise indeed. But then Ruy is a Wrongy Mc Wronghead about half the stuff he says is shit so idk

rpgcodex hates everything because everything has been shit. Nothing wrong with that.

MOHH OMLO

RuySan hates fish and chips.

Therefore Risen is gashmoid.

I've been tempted by the 17.99 prices knocking around for the xbox version. I sat through Two Worlds, so it can't be that bad.

It's £17.99 already?

Got to be shite then, no?

I'll wait for the sub-tenner prices I think. I like me a bit of pixie questing.

Doesn't this translate to "I played a really, really shit game all the way through, so clearly it's a good idea to play a game that is merely quite shit all the way through as well"?

Yes. Yes it does.

This game is better each time i play it. This morning i was doing a quest where i had to slay some legendary monster. It was pitch dark and i had to take a torch with me. Before i got to the place i met a hunter which was also searching for the beast, so we went together. I had to thread very carefully and look for any beasts and animals at a distance. If suddenly bump against one pack of black wolves i'm dead. My fellow hunter starts to get scared and says something wrong was in the right path. So that's where we go. There are terrifying screams and grunts and the torchlight only lets us illuminate few steps ahead. Suddenly the hunter is atacked by an huge ashbeast which came out of nowhere. I shot arrow after arrow against the darkness, but the health bar at the top says i got a few shots right. Suddenly i see the beast coming against me and that's it. If i get this shot right, he's dead, if i don't, one hit and i'm dead. I got it. And he looked lovely as he fell.

And i never found my fellow hunter body.

Dimrill, don't ever compare this game to Two Worlds, never.

Whore Oblivion then you schmuck.

got to the 3rd chapter. And unlike Gothic 2, its still awesome. The game visuals are really stunning. I've never seen any better use of lighting, sometimes i just lit torches to see the shadows dancing on the caves walls.

Your words please me RuySan. I'm sure I would like it, I mean its Pixie Quest 2.0, right?

I think I'll pick this up cheap once I've got through The Shivering Isles.

Well yeah, that too.

I think Borderlands is going on my Cwissy Pwezzy list tbh.

YOU BUY NOW.

I can't! I shouldn't... got loads of stuff to finish and don't want to be buying this side of Christmas.

Well... I could ditch Dark Sector, Chronic Commando and whatever else towards it I guess.

...

...

Keep in mind that playing on the x360 is like playing on the pc with the settings on low, or so the reviews say. Some games are still pretty on low, Risen i don't know. Still, the game on the pc is very well optimized. I'm playing on 1680*1050 with everything maxed out and my graphic card is a 3 year old 8800gt. Runs very smooth. I don't think i could go back to Oblivion and it's horrible grass appearing in front of my eyes.

And i don't remember any game where the ranged combat is so awesome.

If it's just the appearance rather than the gameplay taking the hit then that's fine by me.

Any screen shots to compare?

http://i33.tinypic.com/rtkd3t.jpg

to be honest, the xbox360 picture seems almost like a PS1 game. But the pc screenshot also doesn't do the game justice, it's much better in motion.

Eurogamer did another review "correcting" the 1st one, but it's still moronic:

"Most obviously, there's a definite benefit to the visuals. Even with settings at maximum it's not going to be the prettiest game around, but simply by eliminating the horribly distracting pop-up and enormous diagonal lines tearing through the distant scenery, the gameworld is easier to immerse yourself in. Draw distance is also improved, and it no longer feels like you're wandering through a half-finished virtual reality countryside."

WTF?

"Menus are still rather bland and ugly, but something as simple as the ability to drag and drop items from inventory spaces to equipment slots streamlines what had become a cumbersome obstacle on the 360"

Menus are very elegant and pretty. I know this is just a personal opinion, but i don't remember anyone arguaing against the horrible ones of unmodded Oblivion and Fallout 3 that required hundreds of clicks to achieve anything

"it's never as engaging as it needs to be to sustain the length of a full RPG."

Again, for me this is the best combat of any action-RPG, maybe exception made for some rogue-likes like Diablo 2 and Divine Divinity. I don't remember also anyone complaining against the stupid combat of Oblivion.

"ith expressive voices, while their unnaturally twitchy animation heightens their cheap appearance. Still, Oblivion had some of the worst faces in gaming history and went on to captivate millions, so it's hardly fair to dwell on such surface hiccups."

okay then

"Adequate rather than inspired, Risen doesn't even match up to the polish and narrative depth of The Witcher, now two years old, so releasing it only weeks before BioWare's Dragon Age is bordering on suicidal."

The Witcher was unbelievable shit. Combat was quick-time events and the quests were just FedEx stuff. Yes, it was pretty and polished, but so is Risen.

Gaming journalism really is becoming worse and worse each day. The once glorious Eurogamer is now on the same level as IGN.

It's not at all fair to level this just at Risen, so I won't. But when will someone release an rpg type game where you don't have magical numbers hovering in the air telling you precisely when someone's going to cark it? Extra points off if identical creatures have different resistances or health levels. It would be terrifically involving if you, say, had a couple of injured state animations for the things you fought, and could only tell when one was going down by its change in posture or speed, or tactics. Say you've knackered someone's leg - they limp, or lean on the other. A badly wounded animal pulls itself back and retreats, or huddles up immobile, slashing if you get too close but not attacking. It'd work best with a game where stabbing someone or shooting them in the face will actually seriously fuck them up, of course, rather than having one arrow in the eye shave off 3% of their health bar.

That way the situation you described would have been twice as tense. You could have killed it outright or scared it off, but you wouldn't know unless you went to help/loot your wee friend.

Also, RPG set in colonial India, please. Loads of exploring, loads of politics, loads of varied characters and clashing religions and legends to lean on. IT WOULD NOT HAVE ELVES IN BY THE WAY.

Be more realistic, games!


Be less realistic, games!

This is also a skill based game, not only stat based. So if you hit or not the enemy is dependant on the player skill, not the character. So a shot to the head is a shot to the head and you actually do see the arrows stuck where you hit after the creatures is down. As for the bar showing the enemy's health, i'm all for maximum customization in games, so they should offer an option to not show it, yes.

Pfft. RPGs are all about the numbers. You kill things so you can get weapons with better numbers so you can do more numbers to bad things. The bigger the numbers, the happier you are. Numbers are awesomeness. Numbers tell me how awesome I am. I am the Number God, and all beasties myriad and weird will run quaking in fear from the onslaught of my numbers.

Numbers.

Wow. They both look utter toss.

This is true of almost every pastime, including sex, work, exercise, food and beer. If your numbers improve, you're having more fun. It's an immutable TRUFAX of life.

Still happy with my 0 cocks in my mouth thanks, Kissyfur.

I said improve, not "go up". Clearly your decrease from 659 to 0 was an improvement by any objective measure. Those poor, poor men.

I mean drastically different. As in, you come across an Inevitable Rat, and hit it with a stick. It takes seven hits to die. Another Inevitable Rat appears an hour or so later, is exactly the same, but because it is a level 3 Inevitable Rat, takes twenty five hits to die. And you don't know which is which until you start hitting them.

And it's not really about realism, but about making fights interesting, not just glorified number-grinding. It's just... somebody please do something differently, you know?

Yes, but you have no empirical evidence to suggest you wouldn't be happier with +1

Are you trying to seduce me?

Is it working?

Well, I know if I get my feet under the table he could do me cheap portrait.

I done a boudoir picture for you, Z

"Crack me open and dip your little soldier in"