WrathOfDeadguy

That's a new one... I know there's an issue with online accounts going offline and losing massive amounts of credits (and vice versa, it seems), but losing account validation and having to pay to get it reactivated? Is it Waypoint that you're talking about?

Back in mah day, netizens weren't shy about usin' long acronyms to express themselves! And it was typed ROTFL, because that's just how we rolled! ROFL wins because it can be chained with other acronyms for netspeak combo ownage! ROFLMAO! :ninja:

Second complaint about the credit system: I ran into an "offline credit cap," even while playing splitscreen firefight, and am also now frozen in place at Corporal. Apparently that cap does not apply to anyone but the player who also owns the console; my partner in crime made Sgt. and is still climbing. Switching player positions so that he was the host of the game didn't change anything; he still accrued credits and rank while I got nothing at all. Seems to be a very poorly implemented system... and I'm a little puzzled as to why there's an offline cap at all, especially if the only person it will affect is the one who actually bought the game, and not... oh, anybody else who plays on the console? What a silly restriction. :rolleyes:

Oh my yes... I was very pleased with what happened after the credits. It certainly beat the little cutscenes on the ends of all the other games. Jetpacks. I cut my shooter teeth on Starsiege: Tribes back in the day... without question, my favorite armor ability. I just wish it showed up more often in campaign mode. Armor abilities in general are a nice addition... they feel like they should have been there all along; the powerups in CE and 2 felt a bit silly, and the use-once equipment in Halo 3 didn't stick around long enough to be really useful; I hardly even noticed its absence in ODST. Armor abilities stay with you long enough for you to actually work them into your tactics and plan around their use rather than feeling the urgent need to save a particularly good item until you really, really need it (then end up not using it at all). The health system works well, IMO- a little touch of recovery, a little touch of permanent damage. Not much else to say there; it's well implemented and an improvement over the other games, combining a visual indication of how close you are to dying with a system that doesn't make every little dent require a health pack to fix. They did a good job of mixing up the missions... just when running and gunning starts to get a bit tired, there's a fun bit of flying- not anything approaching simulator quality flight controls, but the fighter handled smoothly and wasn't frustrating in the slightest. The only thing more it could have used was a radar display. I really had fun with that bit because it gave me a chance to fly around and examine the Frigate model up close- the UNSC frigates in Halo are some of my favorite sci-fi starship designs; it was cool to see one for more than a few seconds at a time in a cutscene. The big ships come across as much more impressive this time, bristling with smaller gun turrets and launchers- it was especially nice to see the Pillar of Autumn again with that greater level of detail. She didn't really look like a warship so much as a big box with engines the first time around; the new model is much more impressive to look at. Hunters... whoo boy did they ever get an upgrade. Their fuel rod guns from Halo:CE are back, and they're much more lethal than the plasma stream weapons they had in 2, 3, and ODST. They also got an armor upgrade; their vulnerable spots are much smaller and harder to hit. Explosives are no longer a shortcut around Hunters, either... unless you get lucky and plant a rocket in one of the soft spots, you'll waste more ammo trying than you would if you used regular weapons. Killing them actually makes you feel like you've accomplished something. Elites... yup, they got an upgrade too. The animations are better; they'll alternate between smacking you with their weapon and kicking you when you're in melee range. They actively evade when their shields are down and seem to be more aware of their surroundings- if there are other Covenant forces nearby, they'll try to regroup with their buddies and lure you into an ambush. Brutes... they could have been tougher. IMO they were about right in Halo 3 and ODST (except for the terrible idea of allowing the OHKO hammer chieftains temporary invulnerability). Halo 2's Brutes were just plain frustrating for how much damage they could soak up and not die; Reach's Brutes feel like pushovers. Jackals... is it just me or are there a lot more of these guys? I felt like I was killing more Jackals than Grunts... not a complaint; just different. Grunts... got more fun. They still die easy, but now if you plug them in the right spot on their breathing apparatus, it will ignite and send the body flying, then eventually explode- making Grunts useful as improvised grenades. They still do that grenade suicide bit, and it seems like they do it more frequently. The Flood... I still don't miss 'em. Nothing killed the mood quicker than a Flood level, especially back in Halo 2 when a slap on the back was a guaranteed one-hit death (I still don't get why melee is a one-hit kill on a power-armored super-soldier who can survive falls from space.). Good riddance to the little buggers, and those bloody multiforms from Halo 3, too. Vehicles... there are a few civilian vehicles that can be driven around in certain missions, like a pickup truck and a forklift. Not sure what the point of the forklift is, but the pickup works sort of like a slower, more stable Warthog minus the turret. The Falcon gunship is fun, although it is only flyable once- a few other times you ride in it and use the side guns to attack enemies on the way to your destination. The Sabre is fun as well, though I'm not quite sure why Noble Six didn't fly it back after the mission was accomplished (avoiding major spoilers there). As expected, the Scorpion only makes a brief appearance... it only shows up once, in fact, whereas every other game had at least two tank sections. Not complaining, though; Wraiths are still hijackable and the Sabre and Falcon sections provide plenty of vehicular action. Honestly, the Scorpion bit wasn't that great... the controls seem a bit more squirrely and the silly thing got hung up driving over a piece of Ghost fender. The new rocket Warthog... love it. Weapons... can I get a hell yeah for the Target Locator? It's the single most satisfying thing in the game. I think it only appears once or twice in singleplayer, but it is definitely not to be missed. The new grenade launcher is pretty handy, though the grenades don't always seem to explode when they hit an enemy. The Focus Rifle and Needle Rifle are pretty cool. The DMR and Magnum are pretty similar in function and role... DMR has tighter zoom and more ammo; Magnum is quicker (and back to its headshotarrific glory, though it isn't quite the monster it was in Halo:CE). The rocket launcher has homing ability again, so it's more or less the second coming of the Halo 2 tube. The armor parts purchasing system is... interesting. I have one gripe with it. You get the same amount of credits for completing the entire singleplayer campaign as you do from a single round in multiplayer. Seems like a bit of bias in favor of the multi crowd- wouldn't it make sense to award credits at the end of each level, or at least a larger sum at the end of the game? Seems like it would be pretty easy to farm credits with short multi rounds, too. Not a big issue, since the armor bits are purely cosmetic. While we're on armor, it is nice to be able to customize your campaign appearance. I understand not allowing that with the Master Chief, being that he's also the central character of the story, but since Noble Six is a pure player character it makes all the difference for immersion. It was also nice to hear N6 talk, unlike ODST's Rookie (the silent hero bit works when it is maintained throughout a series, but it felt odd in ODST since by then we'd already had three games with a main whose vocal chords were functional). Nice to see Bungie take a page from Bioware's book and provide voiceovers for both male and female player characters. Overall, I think Reach might well become my favorite of the series. I can't wait to try co-op.

Censorship is a cancer on the freedom of speech. Regulation is censorship; the tighter the regulations the more difficult it is to expose one's views and works to the public. As that difficulty increases, fewer people and companies will even bother to put the time, money, and effort into unraveling the red tape- stifling their speech as surely as an outright law against it. My opinion on this matter is, and has always been, that if a parent is careless and exposes their child to something that causes that child trauma, then they should bear the consequences- therapy, fines, bail money, or whatever. We have no need of a government or any other organization that presumes to inform us what is and isn't "acceptable" for any given age group, or for any part of any society whatsoever. A free person's rights stop where they meet those of another free person- not after, and definitely not before. Screw these feel-good nanny-state moral guardians. Screw them sideways with a rusty snow shovel. :wallbash:

From your wording, I was afraid for a minute that they were planning on making players pay for the cutscenes before they could see them in the game. That not being the case, I'd offer up the following question: How is this any different from game companies selling the soundtracks to their games? Or, for that matter, from the even older practice of selling movie soundtracks? I doubt I'd ever bother because there'd be a huge chunk of story missing from during the missions, but I just don't see how this is a sign of the End Times. What they're doing is offering the option of purchasing the cutscenes separately so that folks can watch them outside the game. Yeah, it's entirely possible to rip them out of the game files... but you can do that with soundtracks too. If there's something inherently wrong with selling content in this manner, the market has waited entirely too long to fight it- motion picture companies have been using that business model for soundtracks since the advent of the cassette tape. It's just as easy to compile and sell video game soundtracks... and that's been going on as long as videogames have had proper soundtracks to sell. Cutscenes are simply the next logical step. Just be glad game companies haven't started breaking up the meat of the games themselves into pieces and selling it as episodes! Oh... right. They have, haven't they? There's no point complaining about this one. The battle was lost before it began, and nobody spoke up when it mattered. I'll save my breath for fighting DRM.

I'd call this one a cult classic in the making. I have very little doubt that mainstream reviewers will largely ignore this game... they'll do reviews, but they won't be front page content. However, it just screams sleeper hit to me like nothing I've seen in a long time. It isn't just that it's turn-based, or that it's isometric... this one seems set up to nail that good 'ol Fallout feel squarely on the head, humor and all. Can't wait to take it for a spin. :cool:

Ooo, Simcity 2000... a lot of fun memories with that one. I had Simcopter, too, so I could build a city then fly around in it and occasionally blow it to pieces. Still remember most of the debug menu/cheat codes for 'em too. Calling down alien invasions and natural disasters on your troublesome population... very cathartic. :biggrin:

This thread or this thread might help, given that Vista and Win7 are very similar. Don't mind the odd colors. The easiest workaround is to just install the game on a different machine that is running XP or some other earlier version of Windows, then copy/paste the whole works to the desired computer- the game has no copy protection at all, and the installation is small enough to fit comfortably on a flash drive; this is one of those tricks that would never work with a newer title for obvious reasons. There's nothing questionable about doing so; the game originally shipped with two discs- one of which was labeled "buddy" because you were meant to hand the thing to a friend so they could install it too. The same trick can be used for Starsiege: Tribes, since the two games were released around the same time, by the same company, on the same engine. However, there may be patches and fixes which might be necessary in order to make either work properly under Vista or Win7. There are also other workarounds which I just won't mention because of the*ahem* questionable status of the Starsiege IP. There's some debate over what company really has the rights to Starsiege these days, especially since Sierra/Vivendi folded into Activision-Blizzard and cut off support for the whole series. I've heard some people say it's public domain, and I've heard others say that Garage Games (where most Dynamix employees went after the developer was shut down) acquired the IP rights- though what they'd do with them if they had them is uncertain as far as further development goes. I do know that Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 are out in the open; both were officially re-released as downloads free of charge around the time Tribes: Vengeance came out as a promotion for that ill-fated and ill-received final title in the series. Haven't the foggiest where to find either, though; haven't needed to look since I still have my old CDs.

When all else fails, ebay! :) $1.99 $3.99 $5.89 $5.99 Granted, none of those appear to include the manual or compendium... Amazon has a few for under $10, too. Seems that new-in-box copies of Starsiege are going for more than any other game in the series, but jewel case only and used copies aren't quite so expensive.

Sierra may have pulled the plug on Starsiege, but I'm happy to report that the Siegers themselves never did. There's still about 50 of us kicking around, and in the past year more and more old time players are coming back to check in and play for nostalgia's sake. We get some good games going, especially on weekends. It's the game that just refuses to die. :) The current master server is hosted by eye, who's paid for it through 2020... replace the old Dynamix/Sierra IPs in your master.cs file (C:\Dynamix\Starsiege\scripts) with these and you'll be able to see the server list: $Inet::Master1 = "IP:74.211.83.179:29000"; // eye's Master $Inet::Master2 = "IP:64.230.86.49:29000"; $Inet::Master3 = "IP:192.168.0.168:29000"; And the patches can be found here: http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches-Updates-Games/MetalTechUpdates.html ^^ Shameless plugging for a great old game. Join us! The universe had plenty of corners left to explore, even after 7 games (not counting the horror story that was Tribes:Vengeance) and one expansion... but there's no hope at all for a sequel or reboot. I'd also like to see more of the System Shock series, considering the gigantic bloody cliffhanger that 2 ended with. Fortunately, most of the best old games can still be found and played if you're willing to spend the time- and possibly money- to get them running. It's just too bad that they've faded into history.

The bottom line is that your eyes are as adaptive as your imagination is. If you're good at filling in the blanks from suggestion, then ancient and pixelated graphics won't bother you. If you're not, then you'll just get headaches trying- it doesn't mean that you aren't a 'true' gamer. It just lets those of us who enjoy the old-school classics put ourselves up on a pedestal so we can be elitist bastards at your expense. :thumbsup: While I love to look at shiny visuals as much as the next gamer, I actually find that filling in the bits older graphics left up to the imagination to enhance the experience of playing those older games. For example, I found System Shock 2 to be a much gloomier and spookier experience than its spiritual successor, Bioshock, precisely because the technology of the late 90s didn't allow for the detailed faces and bodies that the later game had. The enemies were nameless, faceless- which allowed the player to put faces and names to them, always wondering if you'd just killed the very person whose audio log you listened to a few minutes before. Despite improvements in graphics technology, mook-level enemies are still cloned; maybe there are five or six models instead of just one or two, but after a while you come to recognize their faces. You know they can't be anyone important to you, so there is no emotional investment in battling them. Even other games from the late 90s suffered from that effect; there were only a handful of security guard and scientist models in Half-Life, each of which was very recognizable, so you didn't really feel bad if one of them got blown away. Sometimes better graphics can outpace the technology to make the level of detail immersive- with detailed faces, you really need a randomized face generator in order to offer the same level of emotional investment. Even Fallout 3 and Oblivion, games which should be capable of that feat, still select their mooks from a pre-set list of faces; you could whack the same raider or bandit half a dozen times in an hour or two of play, maybe with a different haircut but the same face right down to their expression as they fall over dead. I'm not saying that developers should just not bother with the level of detail we've come to expect; what it has done is give NPCs life in a way they never could have had in older titles, to offer the player a greater level of emotional investment in their PC, close allies, and boss-level enemies who all get their own unique identities... but we should also be aware that there are things that are lost as technology improves.

Unfortunately, that'll only work for the PC version of the game; I've got the 360 release. Thanks anyway though; I'm sure someone will be able to use it. :/

I think I'd have to get a copy just to frame the sucker and mount it on the wall. Is it bad that part of me is hoping it'll just go back into development hell and be vaporware... well, forever? Otherwise the entire gaming world is gonna have to find a new running gag... :nuke:

More character customization would be a big plus- maybe a few different faces and torsos and arm/leg sets to swap around. No need for the sliders and buttons and knobs, but a few different options for each class would be nice, even if it's just a cosmetic thing (though having stats attached to different body part combinations would be pretty cool). Third person seconded; sometimes I just want to see my character running around. Also, an ending. An ending would be nice. :laugh:

Steam has had a very, very long time in gaming terms to get sorted out. It was absolutely terrible when it first released. I'm not overly fond of the new version, either- IMHO the last 'upgrade' before this one was just about spot on for functionality, but there are still major issues with the platform. Among other things, when run in offline mode for a long period of time Steam can occasionally decide that a game needs updating before you play it, even if it has no way of knowing whether or not there's an update available- this has the effect of making any affected game unplayable until you get online and check for updates. If you anticipate going a long time without internet access, Steam is definitely not ideal. Then there was that fiasco, either last year or the year before, where the entire service refused to work for several days in a row- during that time, if you happened to boot up Steam while your internet connection was active, it would fail to connect then refuse to connect again even if it was then used only in offline mode. This is because the offline mode option is not presented on startup unless the program has first checked and failed to find an active connection; there is still no way of simply starting the program in offline mode without running that check. So... yeah. I don't hate Steam. It is good for what it is; it is definitely the best digital distribution platform out there... but it is still not as good as it could be, and is still occasionally a pain in the posterior when playing singleplayer-only games thanks to its dependence on having an active internet connection (offline boot takes quite a bit longer), and there is still no way to start a game directly- even if you have a shortcut to a specific game on your desktop, when you click on it Steam will still load before the game does. On the other hand, anyone making Steam out to be the root of all evil are full of crap. The platform is pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to indie game developers, and larger developers often re-release classic titles for chump change... which saves nostalgia-freaks the trouble of hunting down either a hard copy in good condition or a malware-free torrent somewhere. Steam also has the virtue of not having ever torn the guts out of anyone's system for daring to uninstall it, and doesn't run any hidden processes even when the program itself isn't running. As far as DRM goes, that makes it pretty mild- again, not ideal, but better than most of the alternatives. It's also bloody unlikely to have a sudden critical existence failure and stop working overnight, so there's that too I suppose. I do miss the days of trading discs with friends so they could try 'em out, though. Things were definitely better before the copy protection revolution... :/

Ah... one of my hot-button issues. Apologies for the wall'o'text I'm about to vomit all over y'all. Unfortunately, I have to count myself among the current generation of disaffected youth. I was raised right, that's for sure, but of late I've become so disillusioned with the way the world works that it's bordering on open contempt. Here's why: Beginning around when I was hitting middle school, the System began to rely more on standardized testing than on the subjective grades given by teachers. While that solved some problems, it created many more to replace them- favoritism holds a lot less influence over grades and career field choice than it used to, but it also severely limits the teacher's in-classroom options for how to instruct, and also on how much content to include in the curriculum. By the time I got to high school, it had already reached a point where fully one third of every major class was spent not on teaching material, but on test preparation. Junior year was the worst, as students faced not only preparation for the SATs but also for the HSPAs, and this was also back when the ACTs were beginning to come into their own as a rival to the SAT. That's three major testing events, one required for graduation, one for college admission, and the third a huge bonus to one's chances of college admission. Keep in mind, that doesn't take into account the time spent in test prep for other, lesser exams which determined course grades- and this was before they went and added a third SAT section, and before the ACT became pretty much mandatory as well. All of this works out just fine and dandy for the majority of the population, mind you- every generation is dominated by linear thinkers, people who process thought and action in a highly structured fashion. This is not so great for us nonlinear thinkers, who get pretty much screwed because the system is now entirely dependent upon highly structured curriculums focusing on lecture/memorization techniques, leaving very little room for open-ended discussion formats and other alternative teaching styles that just work better for folks like me. I never took a single page of notes throughout high school, and it never harmed my ability to absorb information... but it did cost me 5% or even 10% of some grades because some joker of a bureaucrat decided to require that note-taking skills be included in the scoring system. Likewise with homework- I nearly failed several classes despite learning the material better than other students who got higher grades. The end result was that I had a very poor impression of the education system in general by the time I graduated. That's where I discovered another stumbling block- imposed debt load. While I had the good fortune of coming from a fairly well off family, many of my friends did not. As I understand it, this was a problem for previous generations... but never to such an extent as today. I know people who have more than fifty thousand in debt from loans because the cost of attending college- not because they're financially irresponsible, but because it is virtually impossible to not go into debt if your parents didn't set aside your tuition in advance... and it's even worse for lower middle class folks, whose parents might not have been able to save that much yet who are considered too well off to qualify for many of the scholarships and subsidies that folks below the poverty line have access to. These are good, hard working people who will be under a cloud of debt possibly for the next several decades, because they were convinced that the only way to get where they want in life is to get a college degree... which leads me to the third hurdle... ...credential value inflation. You may have heard it said before that a college degree is today what a high school degree was a few decades ago. It's true... but the amount of time, effort, and money that goes into it hasn't decreased to compensate. My generation has to work twice as hard under far more pressure because of the aforementioned debt load and the tendency of academics to be treated by the professional world as a competition. Lots of people work well under pressure. Lots of people don't. Also, the prospect of losing another four years to get to the same socioeconomic status just falls somewhere short of the bright, enlightened future of education and opportunity that is always touted on TV ads. The truth is not that shiny. In fact, the truth is pretty bloody dismal. Because of the aforementioned inflation of credentials, a college degree really is treated like a high school degree... but only by employers who require higher education. Other employers, service-oriented jobs, retail, and so forth, treat a college degree as overqualificiation. Out of all of my friends who graduated, precisely one is currently employed in a position related even peripherally to his degree. Nobody else was able to secure employment in their field because every single potential employer required experience in the field as a prerequisite for even entry-level jobs. To further compound the problem, because a college degree makes one overqualified for jobs which still require only a high school degree, many of those employers were put out of reach as well. The end result is a higher rate of unemployment as thousands upon thousands are spat out of the system every year with no prospect of finding gainful employment. I dropped out at the end of my junior year of college because of an illness in the family... and I've since decided not to go back because, frankly, my outlook is much better with only a high school degree. Since a college degree is treated by the 'higher' career fields as today's equivalent of a high school degree, it stands to reason that a graduate degree is today's equivalent of a college degree. Also true. Of my graduate friends, fully half of them (about a dozen people) have gone back to school in order to get their Masters or Doctorate, which further increases their debt load, in the hopes that a graduate degree will actually allow them to find a bloody job with which to pay it all off with. That's no guarantee, but at least it lets them defer payment of their college loans until they get their graduate degree. Hopefully, you've all begun to see the problem here. Now, I can't speak for the other side of the spectrum, where you'd find the folks whose greatest aspiration is gang life, but there is a damned good reason why my generation is so pissed off at those who came before us. We are not the ones who broke the system. We are the ones who are going to have to fix it... but we can only do that if we can make it through that severely broken system first- and every single year, the entire government, from the White House to the school boards, makes it harder and harder for each successive graduating class to clear the bureaucratic ad economic hurdles in our path. This is all, of course, just my experience and my observation. Perhaps there's someone else who'll post about how wonderfully the System worked for them and how they just graduated and got a great job doing exactly what they always wanted. There is a tendency, however, in the media- all forms of media- to ignore inconvenient problems with how our modern society works. You will always see loads of airtime dedicated to extolling the virtues of a great education (note that "education" has become a synonym of "credentials" and "money" in our lexicon)... remember that this is at least in some part because the people running all of the media giants all have such degrees, and in many cases are receiving very large sums of money from the institutions that offer them. All this crap about today's youth being disrespectful... I know all too well that a lot of today's youth lack respect for older generations because they've been so thoroughly screwed by them. Today's professional doesn't need a higher level of expertise in order to do his job... just an additional degree or two, amounting to years sunk into what is ultimately a mark in a checkbox. There are lots of other causes; nothing is ever as simple as a single issue, and I can't stand hearing how it's all because parents can't beat their kids, or because kids have too much access to shiny crap and don't spend enough time with their noses on the grindstone- those are peripheral causes at worst. Yes, it should be legal to spank Junior when he breaks the front window with his baseball, but Daddy's inability to whack him firmly on the bottom is not the reason why he felt the need to get piss drunk and stupid and wind up in jail. Acting out on that level occurs because of far deeper, more serious concerns when it occurs on such a widespread scale as what we're witnessing today. Far more important is the issue of motivation, and I'm sorry to say that it is terribly hard to feel motivated about "moving up in the world" when it takes twice as long and costs twice as much for what is ultimately the same result. Also of greater significance is the utter contempt with which young people in general are treated- we are routinely ignored as a voting population, overwhelmed by older folks with different agendas and a hell of a lot more resources to draw on. We are constantly blasted in the media for such idiotic things as preferring different forms of entertainment from the ones our parents had at our ages. We are used as lab rats for every new social experiment that comes down the pipe, burdened by restrictions on our financial and personal affairs, higher insurance premiums that we cannot afford to pay, effectively prohibited from doing many things which older people take for granted until we reach certain ages well after becoming legal adults, and routinely screwed and taken advantage of as a matter of policy by the very institutions which exist to prepare us for professional life. To add a little personal experience flavor to that last bit- I'm 24 years old. I cannot afford to pay my own health or car insurance because the rates are stupidly high- I am in excellent health, god shape, I have a perfect driving record, and absolutely zero run ins of any kind with any kind of authorities. My father, who has been in several accidents (none his fault, but accidents nonetheless), has severe and sometimes crippling back pain, an ulcer, and possible cardiac issues, has lower insurance premiums than I do. Why? Because premiums are primarily determined by a sorting algorithm dominated by the factors of age and level of education, not by individual risk factors. If it weren't for my father's generosity, I wouldn't be legally able to drive because I live in a state where it is illegal to not carry car insurance. I would also have trouble accessing medical services because many of them require insurance as well. And I'm still better off than most of my friends who did graduate from college. No, I do not believe my generation would do any better of a job running the show than the folks who are doing it now. I don't think anyone could fix the mess we're in at this point, short of a global nuclear war hitting the civilization reset button on the entire first world. However, don't be so quick to pin every problem related to today's youth on today's youth when much of it stems from a slow but steady shift in government and corporate policies that started many, many years ago. The worst of this crap isn't our fault, or the fault of our parents, and that's the plain truth of it.

I've finished every singleplayer game I own... but I haven't finished all of them without cheating. I make an honest try at it, but if I run into a mission or situation that I just can't clear without reaching controller-chucker levels of frustration, I cheat my way past the obstacle. That doesn't often happen; on the first run through a game I'm willing to spend quite a while trying over and over again, but I'm sorry to say I do not have the patience to just keep trying until I find a way that works. Here's the list: Doom 3: The flashlight mechanics just wound up being too much of an irritation- I had a mod installed by the time I hit the fifth level. I'm not a graphics angel, but what's the point of having battles in richly detailed environments when you can't see? Total darkness isn't scary, it's an impediment to having fun. GTA 3: I love the hell out of the game, but there are a few missions that force you to chase either insanely durable vehicles or be shot at by insane amounts of firepower that I just cannot enjoy because I'm switching vehicles every five seconds then spending the next five minutes trying to catch up to the quest target. That's what the tank code is there for, I guess... I always dump it over the seawall after the mission is over, but I can honestly say I'd have never beaten the game legit. That and leisurely exploration is pretty much impossible without either a tank or the Bulletproof Patriot since several of the gangs can kill cars faster than you can bail out of them. GTA:SA gets an honorable mention because, while I did beat it the first time legit, I never have since... I always spawn a jetpack for that damn train mission now. Super Mario Bros. 2: Beat the first and the third legit, but some parts of the second just got under my skin so bad I had to whip out the Game Genie. Starcraft (Zerg campaign): I'm terribad at rushing tactics; my MO in RTS games is turtling, and I vastly prefer small squads of more powerful units on the offense... the Swarm just didn't work out well for me. I wound up using an invulnerability code to breeze through the Zerg so I could get from the Terran to the Protoss without any headaches. I've always meant to go back and tough through, but just never got around to it. Morrowind: Shock! Horror! Yeah... ultimately, I just couldn't get used to the entirely too realistic running speed and used console commands to max it out. I didn't have the patience to spend more time traveling than doing stuff.

Okay, so they said ODST would be the last Halo. Same thing was originally said of Halo 2. Know why there will be another one? Because the games are still flying off the shelves. It's the same reason why Final Fantasy still hasn't 'ended'- the formula worked, and proved so wildly successful that the developers would have been idiots not to go ahead and do another... and another, and another. Remember that at the end of the day making games is business, and making games that always sell is great business. These people may or may not enjoy what they do, they may or may not be in it for the artistic expression... but they are all in it for the money. As long as the series continues to top the sales charts, expect more entries. Is this a "betrayal" of the fans? Give me a break. Only with a series as popular as Halo (or Final Fantasy) would fans of the series complain about getting more of it. This is absolutely ridiculous- if you want to play it, then play it. If you don't want to play it, then don't. Nobody is breaking down your front door with a team of Spartans and forcing you to buy the next title. If you really want the series to end, then do your part and just don't buy the bloody thing. As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed. The game will very likely be, as were all those before it, a fairly generic but high-quality Sci-Fi shooter. I don't expect it to be the greatest game of all time, nor do I expect it to be utter trash- Bungie has a reputation for releasing well-made games. Final judgment will be reserved until I've played it, but I have enough confidence in the developer to have pre-ordered Reach. I am by no means a Halo fanboy- these games are designed to appeal to the mainstream, and thus don't really stand out in any major way. Halo is neither innovative nor revolutionary, as many might claim. On the other hand, it is what it is- a solid, enjoyable experience with a universe that still has a wealth of stories left to tell (a twenty-five year war spanning dozens of worlds, and you say they've exhausted the possibilities? How about a game entirely from the Covenant perspective?). That it offers co-op doesn't hurt either. As long as the games continue to maintain that consistent level of quality, I'll keep buying them as money allows. What I don't think they should do is bring back the Master Chief. One trilogy is plenty for one set of characters; some fresh faces are needed. Reach seems to be providing exactly that, but if the next installment is a return to 'ol Johnny boy I'd consider that a bit lazy in the story department. I like the "six degrees of separation" angle that ODST took (even though it was rather on the short side), and that Reach seems to be taking. Separation being the key word there... the spotlight should be resting firmly on a new cast.

I think that the votes will come down pretty much along the usual "cheats are fine for singleplayer but not for multi." Most gamers generally agree that cheating against other players robs them of the value of their gaming experience, but that bots don't have voices and are therefore fair targets for god mode. Honestly, I hate exploit abusers far more than I do outright cheaters. Cheaters are at least easy to try and convict once you catch them; if somebody is found to be running an aimbot or damage hack then there's really no question that they were doing something wrong. Even if you don't know for sure, it's easy to test as long as you can find another player who you know isn't cheating to compare them with. Exploit abuse is far, far more insidious- you can never really know for sure that they're doing it on purpose unless they do it repeatedly, and even then you have to serve up proof unless you're a mod or admin. It's not as easy to test for, and a lot of the time even when you know someone is exploiting your only option is just to leave the server because you can't prove they were doing it. On top of that, they come back with that irritating "if it's in the game it's supposed to be there" crap, then complain two weeks later when the devs finally get around to patching their favorite crutch. Ugh.

I won't even bother with games that are guaranteed to get sequels, because... well, we all know they're getting sequels. Instead, howzabout some flights of fancy? System Shock series Metaltech/Earthsiege/Starsiege/Cyberstorm/Tribes universe (amazing that there can be so many releases in a universe and still a need for more) Homeworld series Battletech/Mechwarrior/MechCommander universe (since MW5 is currently in limbo) Jade Empire (don't try to tell me there weren't other places to go in that universe) Starlancer (got a 'sequel' in Freelancer, which skipped over the two never-quite-made-it games in between and thus left massive gaps in the timeline) Freespace series Dune universe Beyond Good & Evil (dammit, they even released a trailer for it!) The Longest Journey series (Dreamfall ended on the mother of all cliffhangers) Most of the above will never happen because the developers are either dead or have moved on to bigger things. Not that I mind BioWare focusing on Dragon Age and Mass Effect rather than pursuing a Jade Empire sequel, for example, but it'd still have been nice to see what direction it would have taken because the universe had so much potential. Battletech has so much source material by now that the need for more proper games (MechASSault doesn't count) is getting painful. Metaltech has three loosely connected eras which left plenty of room for many more installments in the hundreds of years of dead space between (instead, Dynamix got deep sixed). Dune never got the attention it deserved; despite being a huge influence on the development of RTS, the universe would have been better served by a series of RPGs. System Shock 2, well... Bioshock was great, but SS3 should have happened instead; SHODAN still needs to try and wipe out humanity again. Freespace 2 was just too good for the series to have met the end that it did- that it survived so much longer as a modding platform says something that somebody should have been listening to. BG&E is a no-brainer; that game was just good clean fun. TLJ was just starting to tie its loose ends together when Funcom's writers suckerpunched the entire main cast at the end of Dreamfall. Finally, Homeworld deserved much better than it got- Homeworld 2 more or less completely ignored Cataclysm, not to mention the established backstory of the original game- the writers simply didn't do their research, and the guy who wrote the first two games was nowhere in sight... an ignominious end for the first 3D RTS. Them's my picks.

I carry a lucky rock and a lucky coin. I feel like bad things tend to happen if I don't have them with me- it sounds pretty silly, even to me, but that's how it is. I used to have a second lucky rock, and a little nagging corner of my mind still thinks that it breaking was the reason for a particularly nasty streak of bad luck. Same for when my coin was stolen- I spent a number of years kicking myself over its loss until I found an identical replacement (same year, same mint, and I even went so far as to exactly reproduce the tiny indentations on the face- made by striking the edge of another coin). I feel compelled to do certain things in multiples of either five or four (which number depends on what it's being used for), and get a feeling of unease when I fail to do so. I used to be very particular about going to bed clean, but Real Life forced me to take showers earlier in the day so I had to get over that rather abruptly (it was never a problem on camping trips, oddly enough). I also refuse to finish games of solitaire unless the aces are ordered in a particular way. I consider it a bad omen if I get a song I hate stuck in my head. Anymore, I can't find the inspiration to write unless I undertake a little preparation ritual (usually consisting of a brief meditation, pouring myself a drink, lighting some incense, and listening to a few songs I associate with whatever project I'm working on) before sitting down to work. I can't get anything productive at all done if someone else is facing me, even if they can't see what I'm doing- even if they're not looking at me in particular but rather in my general direction. I am so terrified of public speaking that I can't give a presentation to even a small group of people unless someone else is working with me... and just forget presenting anything I've written; I had an outright panic attack and nearly passed out last time I tried that. The list goes on and on... I even used to do my level best not to step on any sidewalk cracks, though I've been over that one for years and years. I guess I have to call myself superstitious. :sweat:

I think I'd have to meet a special woman for a gamer-nongamer relationship to work for me... when one of your favorite hobbies is something that eats hours of time and commands your full attention while doing so, it kinda sucks when you can't share it with the most important person in your life. IMHO, anything which separates a couple because one of them hates doing it- or just doesn't care to- isn't good under most circumstances. It's a time-intensive activity which can make the uninterested party feel neglected and left out. I don't see that being very good for a budding relationship. I don't know that it'd be a deal-breaker, however; if she really were that special and we worked that well together, then it'd probably be fine. I know a few gamer-nongamer couples and they get along fine- they understand that each simply enjoys a few things that the other doesn't. I also know a few couples who wouldn't have even met if they weren't both gamers. I've also known one pair that broke up specifically because one couldn't stand the other's favorite pastime (it wasn't gaming, though). It's just another activity- if shared, it can strengthen a relationship, or it could break it apart... or not have much of an effect at all. It's different for everyone. I would just much rather spend my life with a woman I can shoot, camp, hike, dive, and co-op with, if she's out there. :)

If, on the day I die, I am satisfied with the sort of person I have been and the life that I have lived, that will be success. Until then I just can't see myself passing some arbitrary milestone along the way, shouting out "at last!" and suddenly being at peace with my existence. It can't possibly be that simple- I know several people who have reached and passed the goals they set for themselves in life, and if they're any happier for it I certainly can't tell the difference. Better to just live and let each experience be the measure of its own success, and let the verdict on life as a whole wait until the end of it.

Banning just one type of alcoholic drink, and the most popular one at that, is even sillier than banning alcohol altogether. As if Prohibition wasn't enough reason to believe it wouldn't work, we can clearly see today that banning any drug is an exercise in futility- we've been handily losing the War on Drugs for four decades and then some now, and we've got rampant gang violence and overcrowded prisons to show for it. The existing laws regarding alcohol are hard enough to enforce, and most people agree with them. We record history so we can learn from past mistakes, not repeat them.