An update on my HOMM 6 experience:  I won't be able to play anymore until next weekend, but I can tell you this:  I am NOT happy with how they've contracted the factions;-  now there's suddenly only four!  Four factions!!!!!   NOOOO.  Half the fun of these strategy games is exploring the different factions and their units and special abilities.  I can still live with only 4 resources, but only 4 factions?  

Let's hope they add some with an expansion, like they did with HOMM 5.

@ Fnord. Yes, sadly it does cut out some strategy re resources - also, now with some of the strongholds, the mines around it comes with the stronghold, so you can't terrorize your enemy so much by quickly stealing some of their mines with a hero that isn't strong enough to take on their stronghold.

Only 4 factions? HoMM 1 had 4 factions, all the later games have had at least 6, on launch. Reverting back to 4 just feels lazy.

But apparently Ubisoft never gave the game the funding it actually needed. The company behind the game (Black Hole) said that they were going to fix some of the issues that people complained about, but Ubisoft decided to pull the plug on them instead, so the company is no more

Anyway, I'm playing FlatOut (came with the latest Indie gala), finally using the driving wheel I bought last august, and I'm glad that I'm not diving into the deep end just yet, with a proper simulation game, because I have trouble staying on the road.

By the way, does anyone know if the power adapters that Logitech use for force feedback can be bought separately? My wheel was bought second hand, and it did not come with one (which probably explains why it was so cheap)

Originally Posted By Thaumaturge (8 APR 2012 8:12am)
 

I haven't managed to play Human Revolution yet; for one thing, my computer (recently resurrected thanks to a new (well, second-hand) hard drive and Ubuntu Linux) may very well not be up to it, for another lacks a disc drive (or access to a particularly fast internet connection; I imagine that the game is big), and finally I lack money... ^^;

 

*tries to not watch enviously as she plays*

Aw, I hope you get to play it soon. I already started my 2nd play-through. It's a good game, not terribly mind-blowing and not as good as DX1, but I found it very enjoyable. The dev team is new, however, and they are learning. The Missing Link showed MUCH tighter level design and better boss battle system. If they implemented better/more choices (as in, choices that can REALLY affect your game in different ways) and better written characters, it would've been a GOTY candidate in my book. I guess they wanted to play it safe, as it was their first game, and awake some DX nostalgia.

And yeah, the game is big. 8.5GB for the main game and 2GB for The Missing Link.

The bosses were actually created by an entirely different team, that is why they feel so different and out of place. 

And I actually found Human Revolution to be the better game.

*edit* Also, I take it that you are skipping Deus Ex 2?

Yeah, I know they outsorced the boss battles, they later admitted it was a mistake. I had no problems because I just spammed Typhoon, but yeah. They definitely improved it in The Missing Link, I think you can even get an achievement for silent boss takedown. Impossible in the original game.

Yup, skipping DX2. Everybody told me it's baaaaad.

DX3 better... how? I felt it was more streamlined, VA isn't that good, models look awful for such a recent game, conversation animation is twitchy, CG cut-scenes are awfully compressed with artifacts the size of a brick and, worst of all, I couldn't bring myself to give two cares about characters. The only one I liked was Malik. Pritchard was OK. I also liked Eliza, but she gets very little screen time - I expected more. Your choices don't really affect the game the way they did in DX1. Again, DX3 is good, but they played it too safe to make me think it's better than its 10 year old predecessor.

I suspect that had Deus Ex 2 been called anything else, it would have been called an alright but in no ways special game on release, and then been forgotten. It is not "that" bad, it just lacks the things that made Deus Ex 1 special. 

The issue I had with Deus Ex 1 was its stealth mechanics, it really could have done with some form of indicator of how well hidden you were, because the game was very sloppy with enemy detection. In some places I could sit in an air duct, in total darkness (where I could not even see the texture of the walls), and an enemy would spot me, in other places I could just sit in a poorly lit corner, and the enemies would walk right past me. This inconsistency was rather annoying, and ruined a lot of the stealth gameplay. The stealth gameplay in Deus Ex 3 was a lot more consistent, and as a result a lot more satisfying (I did an entire "no kills" run on my first playthrough, and every time I did something wrong, I felt that it was my fault, and not the games, unlike how it was in Deus Ex 1)

Also, at the half way point in Deus Ex 1 you get a balance breaking weapon. It becomes far too easy to use that as a crutch, and I had to force myself not to use it.

Also, I suspect that another reason for why my initial reaction towards Deus Ex 1 was that I compared it too much to System Shock 2, another game that Warren Spector helped create (that man is really one of the best game makers around). It has a similar CRPG-light system, but I thought it was better implemented in System Shock 2. It offered more variety and was overall a more satisfying experience. 

Hmm, I didn't experience that while sneaking, but at first I did wish for an indicator like one in Thief series. I still preferred DX1 for much better level design, discovering new patchways was somehow more fun. DX3's idea of a 'harder' level is 'put more enemies in one room' instead of 'work on design'. To me, it wasn't as adventurous.

Oh yeah, the weapon... I liked it because I prefer melee weapons (something I really missed in DX3 - and why couldn't we use Adam's wrist-knife?!) but yeah. DX3's DLCs broke balance too, imo, as I have all of them. The weapon packs add really strong weapons and in the bonus mission, you get a grenade launcher. Helped me with the last two bosses, but I felt guilty about using it XD

I haven't played System Shock games. Just youtubed SS2 and - want! Do I need to read up on SS1 before playing SS2? I'd play SS1 but uh DOS music and eye-bleeding graphics that would look awful on my screen. Maaaaybe if I get it to run on my NDS...

Originally Posted By Dona (12 APR 2012 12:21pm)

Hmm, I didn't experience that while sneaking, but at first I did wish for an indicator like one in Thief series. I still preferred DX1 for much better level design, discovering new patchways was somehow more fun. DX3's idea of a 'harder' level is 'put more enemies in one room' instead of 'work on design'. To me, it wasn't as adventurous.

 

Oh yeah, the weapon... I liked it because I prefer melee weapons (something I really missed in DX3 - and why couldn't we use Adam's wrist-knife?!) but yeah. DX3's DLCs broke balance too, imo, as I have all of them. The weapon packs add really strong weapons and in the bonus mission, you get a grenade launcher. Helped me with the last two bosses, but I felt guilty about using it XD

 

I haven't played System Shock games. Just youtubed SS2 and - want! Do I need to read up on SS1 before playing SS2? I'd play SS1 but uh DOS music and eye-bleeding graphics that would look awful on my screen. Maaaaybe if I get it to run on my NDS...

Even with no points put in melee, that weapon was by far the strongest weapon in the entire game, which during my first playthrough meant that I could just run in and hack away at the enemies, with little risk of dying.

I did not play Deus Ex: HR with any DLC, so I guess that prevent some of the balancing issues. And Adam's built in grenade thing (the one you get from using experience points) could take down all bosses but the last in no time (I did not have it during the first boss encounter, but by the end I had so much experience that I manages to get all but the most useless upgrades).

And you don't have to play System Shock 1 to understand System Shock 2. The game establishes itself pretty well early on, and you get to know all that you need to know about the backstory. Be warned though, it is not a cheap game. Due to its poor sales and current cult following, you'll probably have to spend roughly as much on a used copy of System Shock 2 as you would have to on a brand new game. I was lucky enough to find it in a bargain bin about 10 years ago, and that was also how I got my copy of System Shock 1 (CD version). Sadly my copy of SS2 is pink

*edit*

Also, in regards to the previous HoMM discussion, this is what one of the people from Black Hole had to say about it:

Hi Guys. Several months have passed since the release of Heroes 6, and because there are so many questions from you regarding BH which UBI seemingly ignores, I feel it's time that I give you some information.

I worked for Black Hole during the whole H6 development. For us, it was a dream project as we were real fans of the Heroes series, having played it since the original King's Bounty on Commodore 64. And I can tell you it was the UBI producers who didn't keep their deadlines, and that was what led to a total failure of the whole development. Back in 2008, during the contract negotiation process, UBI business decision makers didn't want to hear about making it into the contract that in case of any UBI delays there would be any penalty for UBI. This was a stupid decision of a business development boss (she said "UBI would never be late with any deliverables".... HAHAHA). And that led to an awkward situation where the whole development got snowed up... but the UBI producers kept telling Black Hole that "no worries, guys, there would be more time and budget, just do what we say". It was then that one faction, Academy had been removed from the content list, as well as many other things. And then, at half of the development, Romain suddenly quit, Erwan was removed from the project - he was "elevated" to the position of Might and Magic Brand Director, which meant his direct involvement in the development was over -, and BH was left there with the blame. Just an example, the final story script - which was UBI responsibility - was delivered to BH after 27 months... while originally there was 24 months for the whole development. No comment.

As for BH commitment, BH used up all its 6 months reserves just to be able to finish the project... this was more than 1 million Euros!!! And they (we) did this knowing it would never be payed back, as royalty would only be paid after 2M Heroes sold at full price. We all knew 2M copies would never be sold (neither at full price nor at reduced price), still we wanted to finish the project. During the last 10 months, our full team worked 24/7, without any chance for compensation... and because of this, we didn't have any resources to find other projects and make sure BH would survive after the release of Heroes 6. In the meantime, our new UBI producers kept telling that "the BH team is not working during the nights and weekends, and is not committed to the project at all...". I can only say, just ask any of the BH team members of their commitment...

As for the many bugs: Heroes 6 is a gigantic project, with 1.5-2 million lines in the source code. This is bigger than most RPGs. Such a project can only be finished with good quality if there are several years and a huge budget (i.e. Blizzard games), or if there is a strict design lock date after 7-9 months of the start of development... in case of Heroes, the UBI guys were adding new ideas and were changing existing features during the whole development, even at the last months, so it was simply impossible to make a stable game for release. Just see what they are now doing with patch 1.3 (BH is not involved in that at all btw.). They cannot release a simple patch with a few smaller fixes in time, they are already in a 2-3 weeks delay. This is because the code is extremely complex, and UBI does not have the team to overview it and make it work in time, even if the Limbic guys are really great (and no, they are not involved in the Heroes development from the project start, they joined like 20 months later).

Some examples of what BH added to the game at their own cost, just to make the game better:
- Town screen (we hate the current version, but it is still better then the "let's make a screen shot from the adventure map 3D town and use it as a town screen" that UBI wanted - we could have made a much better one, but didn't have money and time).
- Additional ingame cutscenes (I know cutscenes are not great, but again, we received the story after 27 months... we only had a couple months to make the cutscenes from scratch, and a very limited budget - and I think that the overall visual quality of the game proves to anyone that we could have made really great cutscenes if we had had the time and budget).
- 300 unique Combat Maps (there were 20 in the contract)
- 3D animated Main Menu (UBI wanted a simple still image)
- Additional NPCs
- Campaign Overview Map (Campaign Window)
- and many more........

And what were the UBI decisions:
- Less resources
- No fullscreen town screens
- Only five factions (as a consequence of the continuous delays of UBI deliverables)
- Creature pool
- and many more such "great" changes.........

This project cost Black Hole its existence... while UBI is making profit on Heroes 6.

And just some more thoughts: UBI EMEA were working with four 3rd party developers during the Heroes development:
- Capibara - They made the really good (and financially successful) Clash of Heroes. The are not working with UBI anymore.
- Eugene Systems - They made R.U.S.E. They are not working with UBI anymore.
- Black Hole - They made Heroes 6. They are not working with UBI anymore.
- Techland - They made a 47% game for UBI (Call of Juarez: The Cartel - http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-juarez-the-cartel) - They are still working with UBI EMEA on a big project.
We heard the UBI guys blame those developers (and Nival) many times... I guess BH was blamed the same way to those developers.

It is always the developer who is responsible...

Just some food for thought.... Thanks guys for reading.

Source

Ok, I just read through the Heroes 6 thing..  and do you know what frustrates me, - is if people focus on unneccessary embellishments.  Sure, cutscenes are cute, but who really cares about them - that's not what makes a game like this great!  If you're really into games like these, it's all about the strategy, not pretty pictures or even stories or anything like that..  in fact, I'm hardly ever bothered with campaigns at all (ok I loved the campaigns for Age of Mythology and for Rise of Nations - those campaigns had awesome stories; and of course the Warcraft one), but usually, for me, skirmish is the most fun and the best way to get to know all the details of a game like this.

So for me, to take away a complete faction, a bunch of resources, and then worry about stupid things like animation and more prettiness in the pictures is just plain stupid.  (Ok, having a nice town interface is nice - but they don't even really have nice detailed ones in Heroes 6 anyway)

..and what the crap kind of person cares about an animated UI, I ask you! If I wanted to watch movies, I'd watch a movie, I don't need it when I'm trying to play a game!

So how come games like Heroes 1, 2 and 3 could be made so awesome - gee, Heroes 3 is still one of my most preferred games, in spite of it's age...  (One does eventually get tired of the same units and the same "look" though)

Heroes 5 is awesome in design, but what I find lacking there is the dirge of skirmish maps and their high difficulty, which tended to discourage me from the the #5 version in general.  They could have mady a "facile" setting just so a beginner can get on top of it) ..but I have been thinking that since i have all the expansions for Heroes 5, perhaps i should try out the expansions and see how they go. 

Ubisoft used to be a pretty cool publisher in the past.  All I can think is that they must have hired some new idiots totally new to the field of gaming... ugh.

..and why waste money even starting a project  like Heroes 6 if you're not going to bother making a decently rounded off, finished product? 

It's like they're dooming their own project from the start.  Here, let's just throw the Heroes fans a few crumbs, to keep them out of our hair while we spend time and money to make more boring games like Assassin's Creed.

It makes me want to tear my hair out.  At least they seem to have a reasonable amount of skirmish maps, but did they really have to make them all so large with so many opponents?  In  the map I'm playing atm, I have something like 8 opponents, so when the UI gets it's turn, it must go through the motions of letting 8 players have a turn, which makes every AI turn take so long, that I've started occypying myself with other things while the AI to go through it's paces.  ..and it seems like you have only 20 save slots, otherwise it just eats up (without warning) some of your saves.

The game also sometimes freezes when the AI is doing it's turn. 

Well, boo.  I've decided to restart my current map.  (In Heroes 6)

In my previous map, I had too much gold and too little creatures,  (and reloaded an earlier save in that game to try and comepnsate) so in this map, I focussed on getting creatures and resources, most notably crystal which is always in short supply.   But now, I'm short on gold again..  argh!

After finishing Grimrock (best game I've played in a while), I tried my hands at Pathologic. Talk about strange game. While it looks like a free-roaming FPS on the surface, there is a whole lot more going on than just that, and thus far there has not been a lot of fighting. The setting is just odd. Odd in a slightly creepy way that is. Everything feels just a little bit off, like they hit an intentional uncanny valley (and I'm not talking about the way humans look). Also, much like in The Void (another game by the same company), things don't work exactly like you would expect them though, and I think this is intentional. 

I don't know if I'll have the patience for this game right now, and I have a bit of a CRPG itch anyway. 

*gasp* i tried a demo of Trine 2 today, what a beautiful game, the environments are astounding.

Visually it's as vibrant and detailed as The Witcher 2.

too bad it's a platformer because i really suck at those things. 

I should find someone to play it for me, so i can drool at the graphics

I enjoyed Trine 2 a lot. It's a fairly easy platformer, though. No really difficult jumps or nasty bosses, and a lot of physics puzzles. It's closer to Portal than to Donkey Kong.

Originally Posted By markornikov (15 APR 2012 10:49am)

*gasp* i tried a demo of Trine 2 today, what a beautiful game, the environments are astounding.

Visually it's as vibrant and detailed as The Witcher 2.

 

too bad it's a platformer because i really suck at those things. 

I should find someone to play it for me, so i can drool at the graphics

Hehehe - I sometimes do that..  especially with really intense platformer games like POP, Assassin's Creed and yes, Trine 1 - but!  Trine is not just a platformer, it's got little  puzzles built into the platforming which makes it more interesting.

I've decided to give the Might & Magic series yet another chance. I really liked Might & Magic 4-5 (World of Xeen), but 3 & 6 failed to impress me. Now I'm trying out 7, which I've heard has fixed some of the issues I had with 6. 

Originally Posted By walsh (15 APR 2012 5:41pm)

I enjoyed Trine 2 a lot. It's a fairly easy platformer, though. No really difficult jumps or nasty bosses, and a lot of physics puzzles. It's closer to Portal than to Donkey Kong.

It's the thief character that makes me bash my keyboard, I've never been good at roping.

That's why I never got very far into Trine 1

And I'm once again reminded of why I disliked M&M 6. I guess M&M 7 just started a bit better for me, but it, once again, falls into the same trap of long, drawn out combat against hordes of enemies. The combat in M&M 6 & 7 just does not feel very interesting to me.  I quite enjoyed M&M 4-5 (World of Xeen) though. 

Before TW2, I was playing Skyrim again, I added a lot of graphical mods that improve or add Depth of field, FXAA, Saturation, improved glaciers, trees, etc.

Now Skyrim looks a lot more vibrant and detailed. The game really needs more color, so i maxed out on saturation 

The only thing that's missing is an improved motion blur effect.

Originally Posted By markornikov (19 APR 2012 3:06am)

 

Now Skyrim looks a lot more vibrant and detailed. The game really needs more color, so i maxed out on saturation 

 

Absolutely.  I'm going to try that next time I play.  Some games actually allow you to play around with the colour schemes - I think Risen did that.

I'm finally playing MechWarrior 2: 31st century combat. Getting it to run properly was a bit of work (darn Win95 version), but now that it does, it runs like a charm, probably better than the DOS version would have on my computer. 

Playing my favourite strategy series again: The Settlers, the seventh installment this time.

Unlike 3-5 this one has the same magic the original settlers had 

Did they go back to not being able to directly controll your units? That was my main gripe with Settlers 3, I liked the hands off approach to things in Settlers 1 & 2. 

Originally Posted By Fnord (26 APR 2012 1:34pm)

Did they go back to not being able to directly controll your units? That was my main gripe with Settlers 3, I liked the hands off approach to things in Settlers 1 & 2. 

I forgot how that worked in settlers 3, but it's kinda like settlers 1&2.

You have generals that can attack a specific sector, but from the moment you select attack combat happens automatically.

The only thing you can do manually is build 3 different kinds of units (pikemen, marksmen, cannons) and build fortifications to defend your sectors.

The biggest difference with settlers 2 is that you cannot build fortresses yourself, their positions are fixed, at the start of the game they're all occupied by neutral forces.

There's one big problem with this game, it has an always-online drm protection. If internet connection is lost, the game pauses immediately. I don't mind about that, but I assume many do.

For those who love horrendous console ports, Binary Domain is the thing you're looking for.

Even the starting up menu is a technological marvel, absolutely no mouse control, you even have to press 'start' to access it.

All in-game controls are explained with X-Box symbols, so it's up to you to figure out the controls. I'm slightly disappointed that they allow you to change the key bindings with an external configuration program, they should've been fixed.

The game also runs fluently at a fixed 30fps.

My only major complaint towards the publishers is that they released a demo, that way they'll fail to lure pc players into buying this horrendous port 

I finally made some real progress in Advent rising, got thru the fall of the station and onto the world below, and now back into space, and thru the special abilities to the first shared mission with the aleins. It is quite fun visually, tho the graphcis are low quality, i guess because it was designed for 800 x 600 but fun none the lss.

Still have to get with the next mission in Mafia II, but got engrossed in Star Wars the old republic now up to level 32 and still in it, tho i am tired of the repeated grinding, it is turning out to be not as good a game as i had hoped, mosxt of it was designed for gamesr who like the standard MMO grind, and boss cycle, but to me it is boring, i want story and exploring but htey make you fight for every little bit of story over and over and over. I wont last long i think but some of the community have been helping me a lot, so i dont want to bail quite just yet.

otherwise, i have quite a few on hold, i put Mass Effect 2 away, it was too dark...the settings were nice but overall, it is a very dark game visually and it is spring here and i want to be sunny. I am thinking about Total War Shogun 2, may get that next. Skyrim i have a long way to go but again, it is a bit the same over and over, i have lost interest in the story really as the game itself is iffy on my system and  crashes or freezes fairly often, it was created at too high a graphics level for people with oridinary computers, which i was afraid would be the case. It is time developers stopped the endless reaching for the highest ssettings possible, and just made good games. Hope everyone is having a ncie spring.