WrathOfDeadguy
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Posts posted by WrathOfDeadguy
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SHODAN, from the System Shock series...
...and Kefka, from FF6. First evil laugh ever featured in a video game.
Both are villains with massive egos and equally large inferiority complexes, but each is capable of subtle manipulation as well as overt action. You almost have to feel bad about defeating them in the end because they make such awesome adversaries.
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- System Shock 2
- Homeworld
- C&C 95
- Earthsiege 2
- Myst
- Riven
- Fallout
- Starsiege: Tribes
- Diablo II
- Half-Life
To name but a few of many. The 90s were very, very good years to be a gamer.
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For PC, the list is pretty short. I knocked Diablo 3 and Starcraft II off because I'm annoyed with Activision, and won't be buying them no matter how good they are.
1. TES V
2. Half-Life 2: Episode 3
3. Portal 2
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The quest is also glitched; Hoss & Co. will occasionally show up in the player's home and steal things out of containers (they'll show up in other places too, but their sticky fingers aren't as problematic if you're not at home). I lost a Fat Man, twenty mini-nukes, all my spare hunting and sniper rifles, ammo, a scoped .44, assorted healing items and some grenades... from a single visit. Greedy little twerps. :/
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The top picks, as I see them, for out-of-game audio:
1. Ace Combat series (from AC4 onward)
2. Halo (love it or hate it, the score kicks arse)
3. Mass Effect
4. Orange Box
5. System Shock 2
6. C&C (the first four games)
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In order of how well each soundtrack is used for atmospheric effect in-game:
1. System Shock 2
2. Halo
3. Mass Effect
4. Ace Combat
5. Portal
None of the above can be played with the music off without losing an essential part of the game, IMHO.
6. Half-Life 2 EP2 (sadly, EP2 still suffers from the loading zone music cutoff that every other Half-Life title has)
7. C&C (since you can change tracks at will)
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That's a damn shame... in the past, the PC ports have always been better than the console versions. :/
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GFWL is made of lose and fail; I absolutely concur with that assessment. I was scared to death that Fo3 was gonna require it instead of just having it as an option... I'm not sure what I would've done if it had. Every time Microsoft makes an online gaming service, it ends up sucking horribly- remember the Gaming Zone? I think that any future purchases of mine are going to be carefully researched; unless there is a way to play the game without using GFWL, I probably won't buy it.
As for the game itself... well, to each his (or her) own. Despite its popularity, GTA is a bit of a love-it or hate-it deal. I don't know how different GTA4 is, but most of the others suffered from a lot of polarizing issues (like the physics model, vehicle handling, or gunplay) that just rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way. I've enjoyed all of the GTA titles released for PC (never could adjust to Rockstar's console interfaces), but haven't gotten around to GTA4 yet. Is there a way (other than cracks) to make it work without GFWL? If there isn't, then that'll make my final decision... it isn't as if I don't have plenty of other games to play.
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Alas, I never went much past Riven... I played a bit of Exile, but never all the way through (I'd only played it on a friend's machine). It was around when that came out that I started drifting out of the genre, and I really didn't pick it back up again until I dug up my old CDs last year going through a bunch of stuff and found Myst and Riven collecting dust along with a bunch of other stuff from back in the '90s. I remember seeing a compilation pack in one of those big box stores a few months ago, but didn't have enough money to buy it at the time... might look it up one of these days. :)
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That bloody board with the marbles stands out in my mind. I don't know why, but that kicked my butt up one wall and down the other for a while before I got past it. I think my favorite one was the underwater railcar.
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I remember doing Riven, sans walkthrough, waaaay back in the day. I also remember having to leave the game and come back a number of times due to frustration, but thanks to a handy notebook and pen (unless you've got a photographic memory, the game is impossible without those) managed to work out the puzzles and eventually reached the ending. I also managed, completely by accident, to find one of the "whoops, you screwed up" endings by randomly punching in the code to a *certain* hatch before I was supposed to have discovered it, resulting in the Riven being destroyed along with everyone still living in it. The end scene (the proper one) is still among my favorites.
I wish I could find a one-disc version of the game, though- I still have my original copy (with the original cardboard case, no less), but I've long since lost my patience for "please insert disc 1/2/3/4/5" every time I move to a different area of the game world and haven't played through in ages because of that. I think I still have some of my old Myst/Riven notes lying around somewhere, though. Ah, for the days when game developers assumed that gamers could figure things out on their own. :)
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One of my AI survivors glitched playing through the first campaign- after calling the rescue chopper, he parked himself on top of a HVAC unit and refused to budge even after the chopper got there. I couldn't leave the chopper because it was being surrounded by Tanks, so I had to wait until a Smoker caused him to expire... by which time everyone but me was dead because only I had the presence of mind to stand on the opposite side of the chopper from all the bad nastiness. It was mildly annoying because I'd managed to get everyone through to that point unscathed- then lost all three of the others because one of them got stuck. Valve being Valve, I'm sure that sort of thing will be patched soon enough, and until then I can deal with it.
Other than that, I had a blast- but then again, I love pretty much any opportunity to commit zombicide. I also played and enjoyed Zombie Panic, but IMHO this captures the awesomeness of the zombie horde much, much better. I've already latched onto my two favorite weapons- the Hunting Rifle (modeled after the Ruger Mini-14, which I happen to own one of IRL) and the Pipe Bomb- but I'm fairly certain that the Pipe Bomb is destined to become one of almost everybody's favorite weapons; it's just too awesome not to.
One little detail I'm particularly fond of is reloading- it has bugged me for many, many years that reloading a partial magazine would cause the player character to chamber the weapon... not so here. Apparently somebody at Valve (possibly one of the people they absorbed from Turtle Rock) finally realized that, unless you've completely run dry, you still have a round in the chamber. The only time you'll see your character rack in a new round is when you actually empty the mag. That adds a nice touch of realism to the gunplay (despite the inherent unrealism of zombies, being able to take multiple bullets and not die, etc). Now if only they'd add in a ironsight-view for all of the non-scoped weapons, I'd be a very happy camper indeed.
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I tricked the Ant Queen into killing him. I followed him down to make sure that he was going to do what he said he was going to do- you never know with these mad scientist types; he'd already bred one batch of fire-breathing super ants and all it takes is a little bit of greed to twist science to evil ends... the Queen seemed offended by my presence, and Lesko got caught in between and killed by his own experiment. I put her out of her misery and chalked it down as a case of poetic justice.
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As long as it has a built-in Geiger counter and a radio, I'd buy it.
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No; the Enclave are more advanced. The Brotherhood was formed right after the Great War by an ex-Army officer and is dedicated to collecting and preserving advanced technology- but they haven't made all that many advances of their own in 200 years; they're mainly just using pre-war tech. It's tech that very few other people have access to, so it is incredibly advanced by comparison to almost everybody else, but it's all still two centuries out of date. The Enclave is a holdout of the old US Federal Government and has actually made some advancements of their own since the War- their power armor is an example; while the Brotherhood uses the T-51a and T-51b armors which were the US military's standard equipment at the time of the War, the Enclave developed an improved power armor (and kept improving it, resulting in the Tesla Armor) which became their standard issue. Their weapons and vehicles are significantly more advanced than the Brotherhood's, too.
Of course, the Enclave is dedicated to wiping out every impure (read: non-Enclave) human on Earth, while the Brotherhood adopts a more live-and-let-live approach (with the hope of one day aiding the return of civilization by preserving technologies which otherwise would have been lost and forgotten) unless a significant threat (like the Super Mutants or the Enclave) rears its head.
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No, Fawkes won't go with evil characters... but having him say "I can't go, it's your destiny" feels a bit flat for good characters, if he survives. Even though the game ends, which is fine- you don't have to take the last quest until you want to, after all- the plot hole needs to be filled by either the player being allowed to send Fawkes in or by Fawkes being killed before the final scene.
As for the kids in Lamplight, they mention nothing that would even suggest that the Enclave passed through. It's possible, of course- like I said, with a generous supply of Stealthboy units (the gates were already open, after all)- but you'd think that a bunch of extremely paranoid kids who get raided frequently would notice something, but they don't. Interestingly enough, if you go back into Vault 87 after escaping from the Enclave, you can gain access to the door through which the Enclave goons and Autumn entered the room where you were captured- it leads to the main entrance of the Vault. They could have just been hiding in there until you came back through with the GECK (knowing that you wouldn't risk the main entrance and all that radiation), I suppose.
Maybe I'm just over-thinking that part, seeing as how the player isn't supposed to go back to Vault 87 at all, but it is strange that it would be left incomplete and unexplainable (It'd have left fewer questions, I think, if Lamplight Caverns was just sealed off as a location after that quest for simplicity's sake, sealing off the town's sidequests and implying that the kids were either killed or run out). That and the Fawkes thing (which, to me, is somewhat less forgivable) make me wonder if some bits weren't rushed just a little at the end. I love the game to death; it's a fantastic game and I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone, but there are a few things that could use a bit of smoothing over through mods (or patches, which aren't as likely). Every game has it's flaws; I'd still vote Fallout 3 as GOTY anyway.
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The title says it all. Truthfully, it didn't even occur to me right away (mainly because Fawkes got killed by an artillery shell on the way back to Purity), but I got to thinking a few hours after beating the game and this is what I came up with.
1. During the Water of Life quest, two Enclave soldiers in power armor die from the radiation James released into the Purity control room. Later, Enclave soldiers in power armor enter Vault 87 through the main entrance, which is surrounded for quite some distance on all sides by intense radiation that kills the player in mere moments (even hopped up on Rad-X and wearing an Adv. Radiation Suit). This represents a discontinuity; the Enclave power armor has to be impervious to radiation or those soldiers couldn't have been in Vault 87 (unless they came through Lamplight instead, which is unlikely because they would've had to leave that way too and they'd have had to either been noticed by the kids or use Stealthboys for themselves and you). This could be easily remedied by replacing the two enclave soldiers in the Purity control room with the unarmored officers, and granting the Enclave Power Armor a very high radiation resistance (Autumn could've worn armor to enter Vault 87, and the player could've been put in some manner of protective device while leaving).
2. Fawkes, everybody's favorite Super Mutant, refuses to enter the control room at the end of the game despite being virtually immune to the effects of radiation (as demonstrated when he retrieved the GECK). Not only is that completely out of character for him (he's a good guy; he wouldn't have just let you die), but it just doesn't make sense. If you can order Lyons into the chamber (which, given #1, really only makes sense in light of the fact that she either forgot her helmet or just chose not to bring it), you should be able to do the same with Fawkes- who would, of course, survive. So, to correct this little problem, two possibilities exist:
A. Allow the player to send Fawkes into the control room if he survives the assault. Could be a lead-in for an unending game, as nobody important dies.
B. Have Fawkes die in a scripted sequence before reaching the control room. Either have a sniper pop his head off, a shell blow him to bits (what happened to me), or even have Autumn and his goons kill him. I would actually prefer it that way, because I found the ending to be quite satisfactory otherwise. He gets a heroic death, and so do you (that is, if you don't decide to let Lyons cook herself instead like a naughty little self-preservationist).
Thoughts?
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Bethesda seems to be pretty good at working consequences and nagging doubts into being a little goody two-shoes. I got a prominent character killed by turning in a bad guy, then found out I'd inadvertently orphaned a kid. Naturally, I caused the culprit to expire, but that didn't bring daddy back to life (got me some pretty good guns, though).
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My conscience got the better of me the first time I played the DB quest, and I spoke with Rufio before killing him- it made my fallen hero char feel a lot better about carving him into tiny bits. Didn't know about Claudius, though.
Most of the DB assassination targets deserve their fate- the pirate Captain has probably killed many innocents, Valen Dreth is pretty obviously a bad-natured SOB... the only ones that didn't seem to richly deserve death were the members of that one family later in the questline, and possibly Baenlin (sp?)- the guy you have to kill with the mounted animal head.
It is too bad about the DB just being a bunch of murderers, though... I'd rather have had an assassin's guild in the game that served some higher purpose than just murder for the sake of murder. As is, the contracts they accept are really just excuses to get paid for what they'd do for gits and shiggles anyway- that's why most of my chars never touch the DB quests (even a 'good' char could live with being an assassin if it served an actual cause, like ridding the world of evil people by any and all means or somesuch). The quests themselves are some of the most entertaining in the game, but the motivation for completing them is a little flat.
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1. System Shock 2
2. Starsiege: Tribes
2. Homeworld
2. Fallout & Fallout 2
It hurts to make a list that short, but if I had to pick a handful of games to keep and nothing else... I'd cry a lot because choosing would be torture. I've played a lot of games, and a lot of those games could claim to be the best game I've ever played for one reason or another at one time or another. I must list the rest (ranked):
3. Oblivion & Morrowind
3. C&C 95
3. Bioshock
3. System Shock, for actually having a story and complex objectives back in 1992... unlike *coughDOOMcough* some games.
3. Earthsiege II, my all-time favorite mechsim.
3. The Longest Journey
3. Mass Effect
3. KoToR
3. Riven
3. Half-Life 2
4. Starsiege, which owned my life for five years straight because it had The. Best. Community. Ever. Would still be a 3 or a 2 if it weren't dead as a doornail online.
4. Tribes 2 - which totally would have taken the place of its predecessor if it weren't for good 'ol "Unhandled Exception" and the officially sanctioned disaster that was Classic Mod. I'd probably still have given it a 2 or 3 if it hadn't gone and died after Vengeance came out.
4. Diablo I & II
4. Myst
4. Portal
4. Half-Life
5. C&C: Red Alert
5. GTA2, because top-down action never got any better.
5. GTA3, because it made sandbox mainstream and did it well.
Those are the games I'd really miss having if I ever lost and couldn't replace them. The ones which, from time to time, I feel an inexplicable urge to go and play again- and for which I will wrangle with my computer for long periods of time if they won't work when I try to do so. I could survive losing the entire rest of my collection, NES and N64 classics included, if I managed to hang onto everything listed above.
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Currently listening to...
- Seether ("Fake It," "Remedy," and "Rise Above This")
- Coldplay ("Violet Hill" and "Viva la Vida")
- Dire Straits ("Heavy Fuel," "Iron Hand," "Walk of Life")
- Apocalyptica ("Misconstruction," "Distraction," "Path")
- The Cruxshadows ("Winter Born")
- Disturbed ("Land of Confusion")
- Basil Poledouris (specifically the scores from Conan the Barbarian and Quigley Down Under)
- Ozzy Osbourne ("I Don't Wanna Stop," "Nightmare," "Black Rain")
- Metallica ("Enter Sandman," "Wherever I May Roam," "Nothing Else Matters")
- Kansas ("Carry on Wayward Son," "Fight Fire With Fire")
- KoRn ("Got the Life," "Hollow Life")
- Flogging Molly ("Drunken Lullabies," "Kelly's Song")
- Enya ("Adiemus," "Book of Days")
- Blue Oyster Cult ("Don't Fear the Reaper"- More Cowbell!)
- The Orange Box Soundtrack ("Sector Sweep," "Last Legs")
- Halo 3 OST ("This is the Hour," "One Final Effort")
- The Police ("Synchronicity I")
- The Verve ("Bittersweet Symphony")
- U2 ("I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For")
- Breaking Benjamin ("Breath")
- Evanescence ("Bring Me to Life," "Whisper")
- Puddle of Mudd ("Blurry")
- Blue Man Group ("Rods and Cones," "Shadows," "The Current," "White Rabbit")
- Ace Combat 4 OST ("Aquila," "Comona," "Emancipation")
- Ace Combat 5 OST ("Ghosts of Razgriz," "Naval Blockade," "First Flight")
- Ace Combat 0 OST ("Juggernaut," "Diapason," "Avalon," "Zero")
- Ace Combat 6 OST ("Liberation of Gracemeria," "Weapons of Mass Destruction")
- System Shock 2 Soundtrack (mainly the tracks from MedSci and the Shuttle Bays)
- Dr. Steel ("Back and Forth," "Planet X Marks the Spot," "Drop Da Bomb")
- Linkin Park ("Shadow of the Day," "Somewhere I Belong," "What I've Done")
- Ego Likeness ("Water to the Dead")
- Led Zeppelin ("Achilles' Last Stand")
- Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Higher Ground")
- Brainstorm ("Thunder Without Rain")
- Tchaikovski ("1812 Overture")
- Gustav Holst ("The Planets")
- Foo Fighters ("Let It Die")
- Kill Hannah ("Lips Like Morphine," "Rebel Yell" <-- awesome Billy Idol remake)
- Jimi Hendrix ("All Along the Watchtower")
...having eclectic tastes in music is wonderful- I've always been able to find something I'm in the mood for.
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No, I don't... except when I do.
Well played indeed. :)
The obvious question that would follow a topic like this would be: "Why do you agree with the majority?" In which case, I would have to answer "coincidence of opinion" as a majority is never right merely for being the majority.
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I'll be 22 tomorrow.
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Y'know, every damn time I think I'm close to completing my collection, somebody has to go and come out with something else that I can't pass up. This is all your fault Blizzard. You're as bad as Bethesda and Bioware and Rockstar and all the others. *shakes a fist in mock anger while quietly setting aside $60 for future use*
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The Cake, as a matter of fact, is a lie. Though we certainly are presented with evidence that a cake exists, the Cake- the one promised to poor Chel when she woke that fateful morning- is never produced. It is unimportant whether or not the Cake exists or not; GLaDOS lied about there being cake- Cake, at a specific place (the area following Test Chamber 19) and a specific time (after the conclusion of Test #19)- the promised delicious, moist piece of Cake was not delivered, therefore The Cake Is A Lie. ;)
What was the hardest quest in vanilla Oblivion?
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