Raff

Yeah it is, I've checked that. Memories of Halo 2's 50hz map downloader still keep me awake at night.

Maybe it'll be like the 128mb MP3 player I bought in 2002 which had chinese menus by default until you changed them to English by way of a map in the instruction manual.

If I buy a new PS3 and connect it via hdmi to dvi cable to my monitor, will I get a picture straight out of the box or do I need to change some idiotic output setting? I always come across these types of pitfalls. I don't have easy access to a television.

-The BBC and mainstream media in general will continue to portray Tomb Raider as some kind of relevant video game landmark and British cultural icon in various excruciating, poorly researched television programmes. -The split in the subscription MMORPG industry between companies that sustain themselves through box sales of single player games masquerading as MMOs and companies that embrace the true potential and appeal of the genre becomes more widely recognised.

One of the reasons I love Darkfall so much is that the world is so full of unnecessary little places to explore. It's a huge square open world with no loading screens, and not an inch of it was built with any specific 'content' in mind. They just built a big place that's fun to explore. There's no scripting to accommodate, no reason to funnel players towards anything. You just come across some strange looking building in the middle of nowhere, kill whatever (if anything) is prowling around, find your way in, maybe there's some other monster inside and probably a chest of some kind. Rarely a huge material reward, just being there in this unique location is rewarding enough, in the context of always being potentially under threat from attack by another player and losing everything you've not banked.

360 with Saturn D-pad and Gamecube right-thumb buttons.

Shenmue was released in Japan 10 years ago today.

I'm playing this. Just lost a load of progress due to the classic dodgy power connection problem inside my DC. (http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/sega/dc-reset.htm)

The expansion adds a 4th L20 playfield to go with the new race, but after that it's all for level cap characters. All PvE content, nothing in the expansion specifically adds anything PvP related. The last big patch made gear and stats in general much more important. They got the balance about right in mid levels but at level cap the difference between full T2 and non-raid gear is pretty big. I don't know exactly how bad a problem it is because when I left Demonologists and necros were still so overpowered after that patch that you couldn't really judge anything else. The combat system is really refreshing after coming from an EQ clone, but it has some big problems. -Its a massive hack and constantly breaks and has to be fixed. The animation system, damage calculation and the mechanics of the feats are just ludicrously complicated and prone to bugs and imbalance. -There's TOO MUCH room for player skill. Some of the control setups people in my guild use are just insane, the kind of people who just sort of merge with the entire keyboard while mere mortals have to leave quite a few abilities in very inconvenient places because there are just so many. The expansion adds more. Then there's all the optional micromanagement that 99% of people don't have thinking space or fingers for in PvP, like directional shields. It's pretty insane and kills pvp for a lot of people. -The default interface is not compatible with endgame PvP, EVERYONE uses custom ones and nothing has been changed with the UI for over a year. Add to that the fact that the whole system is a cavalcade of compromises against what it was intended to be like and it loses its magic after a while. And there's still no mounted combat.

I stand by my opinion that the launch content problems were vastly exaggerated by people trying to play the game in a very specific way. Sure, maybe if all you did was level up in a totally linear fashion through the 'content', there may well have been 'gaps' before they added Ymir's Pass and revamped a couple of early dungeons. I never found these because all the other stuff I did along the way just messing around with the game. I don't think it was at all unreasonable for them to release with the amount of mid level content that they did, they didn't anticipate the amount of 'newschool' players just looking purely for a quest corridor game. The oddest part is that very little new content was actually added in many of the most moaned about 'gaps', they just made it a bit easier to find with some zone-connecting quests. People often still, through lack of initiative and will to explore for themselves, fail to notice that there are 3 parallel L20 starter play fields to choose from, and fail to notice the Nobel district, and ignore all dungeons and group quests and then whine on the forums about having to kill the same mobs more than once to make up for all the easy xp they've missed. That said, FC did eventually manage to destroy the game for me a few months ago and I definitely won't be going back. You've made the right decision going for a PvE server (although hykarnia has always been very quiet), because PvP in AoC is all but dead. Sieges are still broken (literally, zones crash), the second wave of pvp level exploiting was totally ignored rendering the entire system redundent, and although they are trying to sort out world pvp and move it away from quest areas, that process started in february and there are no results yet... Basically the PvP server populations are at an all-time low and the only people left playing are the guys who are happy with episodic 'content' additions. Just look at the expansion... Funcom were still mainly adding intermediate leveling content when they should have also been adding high level sandbox activities such as what is now being added to the border kingdoms at a ridiculously slow pace. The one launch endgame activity with potential longevity, sieges, is still broken to this day. They tried to bring back early quitters and ignored the remaining playerbase. They failed to get the quitters back and now the last dregs of the hardcore playerbase are leaving. The game suffered from painfully slow implementation and testing of features/content, and was driven into the ground by mind-blowingly poor prioritization of focus. There are other deep problems such as capping the respec cost at a mere 1G, forcing everyone to respec constantly to compete, ridiculous end-game controls and interface, and sham DX10 support that Funcom just never show any sign of addressing. They shout about DX10 (which barely works unless you're lucky by the way) for marketing but ignore all other boring aspects of vista and windows 7 such as needing to have an in-application v-sync control. I'll never be able to play a zoned, instanced MMO again after Darkfall anyway tbh.

I'm happy to pay the usual high-budget price for a game that's trying to fill an underpopulated niche (e.g. sandbox mmos) that I'm in the market for, even if it's produced on a smaller budget than a heavyweight PR smothered brute like Aion. Not sure about this game though. I've heard it's more of a faux-sandbox, whatever that means in practise. Definitely not interested enough or lacking in other games to play to want to try it in launch conditions. Plus I didn't know that there were no EU servers until I read it in this thread which is a big turn-off.

There was no Starforce on my UK version. In fact I'd not heard of any starforce pathologic connection until now.

I would buy this but the demo can't connect to 'EA Online', whatever that is...

Sad to hear it, huge shame. Hope you find something else soon. I wish more games would innovate on typical MMO combat as much you guys did. The rotating skill deck and refined buff/debuff system were really nice, and free-aim of course.

Wish I'd heard about that sooner.

Really REALLY nice new PvE content in that update. PvP balance is horrendous ('age of casters' like never before) but they'll calm it down in a week or two. Stats and item overhaul seems successful so far. Gem system is finally overhauled and de-nerfed after the memorable events of last year. Healing has been slowed down a fair bit due to everyone's HP going up but heal spells not changing, which keeps suicidal melee bufoons on a bit of a leash and allows me as a healer to be a bit more tactical not having to babysit individuals charging in without proper backup. And to pre-empt the inevitable: No the changes are nothing like NGE

Mallet, are you sure you have the whole client? That's what happens when you enter a zone that you don't have the data for and it starts downloading stuff in a slightly clumsy fashion. I think with the trial lets you just download tortage for a smaller initial download, there should be a way of downloading the rest somewhere. Stick to single player games then I reckon.

Very cool site!

This thread is a lost cause with all the misinformation ("totally changed the combat"), hyperbole and trolls with agendas. So all I'll says is: It's good actually. Almost everyone memorable in our guild who left for WoW and WO towards the end of last year came back in the last fornight. The 50 slot vent server was full on Sunday evening.

First Dreamcast game I played. My brother's mate had this and another game which was all dark and urban that I can't remember anything else about.

This is one of the best games ever made. It really is.

It was the same on 360 and they added the option. It's not a 'hack-job', it's just not how most people expect it to work.

Counterstrike with nice graphics.

It's got to the stage now where I don't think I've read a review in about 18 months. If I don't just know from my gut reaction whether I'm going to like a game, I can judge from a few posts on various forums (with knowledge of the 'type' of people that post there). The posts don't have to be positive, often you can tell a game is great by how much idiots hate it and how many vitriolic cunts traverse the internet day and night to flame it. What I look for in games journalism is people who introduce me to stuff that I won't otherwise hear about or would otherwise have overlooked. I want to read the opinions of people who have specific interests, unusual tastes and alternative takes on stuff. There's not nearly enough of this. The mainstream stuff just enters my brain naturally from skimming forums, news feeds and my friends. I read Stuff happening: VG24/7, Gamasutra Opinion: RPS And loads of blogs which update very rarely. RPS is being mentioned a lot, and they deserves it. They're enthusiastic, they often bring up games that I've never heard of that look really cool, they write well and they don't just follow the opinions of the average angry compensatory PC gaming twat.

I want a new Warcraft RTS. High-res 2D and with as much charm, simplicity and fun as Warcraft 2.