14 thoughts on “…So. NOW what?”

  2. Well, the releases this week are Saint’s Row IV, a new Splinter Cell and the other X-Com game, if you want to wait until Tuesday to pick something up.

    But I’d recommend a different route. The current Humble Bundle is the Humble Origin Bundle. For about a $5 donation (which EA is sending to 5 charities), you get Dead Space 1 & 3, 3rd person sci-fi horror games of which the first is the better game, Mirror’s Edge, a wonderful 1st person parkour game, Crysis 2, a decent FPS game that’s a bit of a system hog even today, Burnout Paradise, one of the great racing games, and then a Sims 3 sampler plus Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor. I kinda liked the single player mode in each, but apparently I’m the sole person who plays those modes. Even if you toss most of those games out, $5 for Burnout, the Dead Spaces and Mirror’s Edge is a heck of a deal.

    But you might want to adjust how much of your money goes to each charity. Of the five charities listed, I have issues with four of them for reasons varying from being a bought and paid for arm of a political party to sustained mismanagement of their donations.

    1. RPGs, I guess. I’d LIKE more official-like DLC for Skyrim and Shadowrun Returns and, hell, a few more Mass Effect missions and maybe new campaigns for KOTOR and Jade Empire and I know, I’m getting old.

      1. Dragon Age: Origins is flawed, but good. (Play it on a computer. The port to console was much less than successful. The Artificial Intelligence, isn’t. And the classes aren’t balanced. Warriors are linear, wizards quadratic, and rogues just screwed.)
        That said, the setting is great. A lot of thought and effort obviously went into it.
        The underlying story is pretty good. The overall arc is predictable, but there are surprising moments.
        If you liked Baldur’s Gate or Planescape, you’ll like this one.
        .
        Alpha Protocol is another flawed but good RPG.
        Great setting, great story, great characters. It’s a spy game, so all characters have their own motives and secrets, and every choice you make has opportunity costs. You’ll have to play through at least 3x to get all the available information. There are some seriously nasty choices to make that are nearly on par with those Mass Effect threw at you.
        Flawed mechanics, lack of standardization in menu controls, “boss” fights that aren’t even remotely fair, and a glitch in the storytelling early on (much of the game is a series of flashbacks as your character is being cordially interrogated by the puppetmaster. You’ll catch up to realtime, and by then, you’ll know why you’re supposed to hate the puppetmaster. But this can be a bit confusing at first.)
        .
        If you enjoyed Dishonored, the DLCs The Knife of Dunwall and Witches of Brigmore are must-haves. They pull a Rashomon with what’s going on from Daud’s POV. He hasn’t just been sitting around, passively waiting for Corvo to come kill him. He’s also seeking redemption, of a sort.

  7. If you like KOTOR than you will like Star Wars The Old Republic. Unless you’re just not into MMO’s. It’s free to play but do admit that once you get to about level 20 you pretty much need to pony up to become a subscriber or at least invest in some cartel coins to become a preferred member. I also started playing D&D Neverwinter online and it’s pretty good so far. Only up to about level 7 though. Unlike the older D&D online you level up fairly quickly in this game. A friend of mine already has 3 level 60’s and he hasn’t had to spend one dime on it to get to max level. SWTOR is more like a WoW clone with a variety of abilities that fill up 2 action bars. So boss fights can become kinda hectic bouncing between attacking, healing, debuffing, and interrupts. Neverwinter is more like Guild Wars with just one action bar that uses 1-5 and Q,E,and R for a more twitch fighting style.

    1. It is the understanding in my household that I already have a MMO, which is known as “American politics.” We have agreed that my acquiring a second one is probably counterproductive. 🙂

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