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[C.A. Silbereisen]

Try Risen, it's very similar to Gothic 2 in style. I haven't played the third one but from what I hear it's the "odd one out" in the series.

Let's just forget Arcania even exists.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

See my edit

Yeah I'm really considering buying Risen now, the demo was already good.

I like how gothic 3 is straight forward, nothing overstay its welcome too long. Story and character are generic but are not treat as such (ie don't feel like dumb filler), line are paced correctly and end up quick, Everything is a sort of quest, you are always into action not watching an expository monologue or cinematics like we are now use to (hello mass effect, dragon age, morrorwind verbose chat). And the game is systemic and dynamic, whatever you think of you can generally do it, even if it's dumb the game have a consistent reaction to it, it feel great, wasn't able to break the game so far.

Also I like how the game is "streamline", the game is no nonsense. There is no attribute chain as we are use to, there is no "def" stat, the health stat is set directly, there is no "equip screen", the weapon you hold is the "equip" and the you only need to highlight armor or other piece of equipment. The inventory is automatically sort by category, so is quest by place (but you have a see all quest with a nice icon to spell where you get them from). Oh and place are always shown on a map with its icon. Sorting the adequate information is always at a glance away or at least one click away. Yet the world have a nice obscurity to it that reveal itself only with interaction (monster's strength and weakness, faction affiliations), just because understanding the system works great, it reward discovery and experimentation.

I'm intrigued by the progression system as there is no difference between attribute, stat and skill point, which is great for me as in most game they don't add anything but readability problem. I understand that for some people the optimization game and stat puzzle is the game, but I have yet to see a design where it's effectively useful and deep, generally because of a lack of readability of context to make them useful or a failure to promote actual choice (like stat >> HP >> skill point>> modifier >>> class >> equip >>> field >> buff effect >> cool down >> cast time >>> enemy's stat own chain  okay that's the worst case I could think of).

The skill and competence is straight forward, interaction and item are just locked away behind a stat lock, the trick is that competence need training which is tied to character. I know in risen trainer are locked by faction, I wonder if Gothic 3 do the same (having unique trainer by faction), it will had an interesting dynamic, because it bring the progression directly into the quest system (which is controlled by faction reputation). Competence themselves are required to interact with the world and open new interaction but while it doesn't seem to lock more than object so far (as in better version of the base object) it is tied to how you deal in the world, while there is plenty resource (wild plant) they became scare enough because you can't heal or revert from status magically, and they are a bit random and have low effect and huge startup time. Combat is dumb but you need a good resource pile to back it up just to survive, so it's more a game of preparation (so far).

I don't (yet because I bought them too) How it fare against previous game. But I'm pretty satisfied with Gothic 3 so far.

About the criticism they all seem to bog down to: "i see what they were trying to do, but unplayability (bugs that broke the game) make it not worth the effort". Now the game is patch it look very fine (beyond graphical glitch but I don't play for the graphism).

edit:
Did I mention there is no "wall of stupid decision" like in morrorwind before you start playing and getting a hint of what is really useful?

[C.A. Silbereisen]

Again I can't speak for Gothic 3, but in 1 and 2 the world and characters are anything BUT generic. It's really pretty far from your typical Tolkien ripoff. But idk, it could be the translation you're playing. As you probably know, Gothic is a German game. I'd even call it an archetypal German game, just like The Settlers and the Anno series etc. This is hard to put into words exactly but I feel the world, characters, dialog and story in Gothic are rooted in German culture and I could imagine that stuff getting lost in translation a bit (inb4 nazi jokes).

[Gimym JIMBERT]

It got troll ,orc and paladin, sure it sound generic at least to me lol, BUT I think it's more a matter of identification, I wasn't raise with so much fantasy until game, and I see similar pattern and tropes among them they have hard time shaking. But that's my perception, I might not qualify to judge the nuance. Dnd reference and nazi are as far remove to my culture too, as caraibean did not share a lot of the burden (or exposition as with dnd stuff, there is no dnd here). Now slavery is all over the place  That's our nazi's tales. Everything is ww2 in europe, everything is slavery/colonialism here. Being part of gaming culture obviously give me some edge, but i'm still an outsider onlooker.

Yep translation might have an impact, I was wondering, it's all in french, speech too.

[biomechanic]

Is there some sort of character reset event in Gothic 3? In 1 you start as a nobody but become overpowered near the end, so in 2 you get some sort of magical amnesia.
I've seen the beginning of G3 and (IIRC) it starts with the player easy killing orcs. Does that mean there are no beatdowns from thugs with wooden sticks or deaths by chicken in Gothic 3?

[C.A. Silbereisen]

well, let's say gothic uses generic building blocks in a non-generic way.

Dnd reference and nazi are as far remove to my culture too, as caraibean did not share a lot of the burden (or exposition as with dnd stuff, there is no dnd here).

lol i didn't mean there are nazi or ww2 references in gothic (at least not obvious ones afaik), just that the game was made by german devs for a german-speaking audience (austria and (part of) switzerland are culturally close enough to germany for the sake of this argument) and that's noticeable in its story, characters, world etc.

the "in before nazi jokes" was a reference to how everytime someone talks about "german culture" on the interweb, someone else makes a nazi joke of some kind.
 

[moi]

don't make such an anschluss over it bro

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Is there some sort of character reset event in Gothic 3? In 1 you start as a nobody but become overpowered near the end, so in 2 you get some sort of magical amnesia.
I've seen the beginning of G3 and (IIRC) it starts with the player easy killing orcs. Does that mean there are no beatdowns from thugs with wooden sticks or deaths by chicken in Gothic 3?

Wild boars kill you plenty, Actually even if you are overpowered Wild boars can still kill you plenty, at the same time I kill ogre plenty even if one blow kill me asap while I need thousand hit to bring them down. I can assure you it's avoidable with extra precaution, but damn it, the game is really merciless (the dumb stunlock help). You can't heal fast enough so "attack attack heal" strategy is not really viable. I like this sense of danger though, can be frustrating for other player but in this game, with the possibility it has, it does not bother me, there is plenty way to deal with a situation, you can improvise plenty, your prime enemy is how chaos can ramp up quickly, at least as far as I am (which is not that far). And no you start anew (all equipment are stolen at the beginning, and you are you need to be train again). This is no bioware.

[biomechanic]

Played a few hours of Frozen Synapse with a friend and I love it despite the occasional glitches and imperfect interface.
$4.38 well spent...

[saibot216]

I've never played the original Doom. So I got the shareware version. It's pretty cool

[SirNiko]

Picked up "Spyro - a hero's tail" for the PS2 while Gamestop was doing Buy Two Get Two. I was going to get Okami, but they only had the box. After seeing nothing else I wanted, I went ahead and grabbed it. The last Spyro game I played was the original on the PS1.

The level design is fun and varied. Each world has a different theme, and the individual subareas each have variations on that theme. There are a lot of little setpiece touches, like frozen fish in a lake, or little wagons that are each uniquely modeled so no two look alike. It plays out a lot like Banjo Kazooie, where you have a laundry list of collectables and you do varied challenges to get enough to unlock the next level. The design of the puzzles and minigames challenges are amusing. The NPCs are detailed, well animated, have very good voice acting, and have some amusing jokes.

The downside is that there are a lot of cut corners.

A lot of background elements in cut scenes have really lazy-looking model-clipping like chains on a drawbridge that simply teleport in place once it's open.

Spyro's weapons seem unbalanced. The lightning breath you get when you beat world 1 of 4 has the best range, is capable of breaking metal boxes, and stuns armor-clad foes so that you can approach them for a ram without risk. The supposed downside is that it takes longer to kill foes, but since they remain paralyzed while you zap them it doesn't matter except for rare situations where you're fighting multiple enemies at once. Spyro can also purchase bombs, but these are generally useless. They're finite, they're difficult to aim, and it's easier to just use lightning breath.

The shop seems like it was put in as an afterthought. Halfway through world 3 I had already purchased every item in the shop and was accumulating more gems than I could spend. One of the items is a temporary upgrade that doubles the number of gems you earn, which seems like an absolutely pointless investment. Shopping at any store except the one in the hub results in a 25% shipping fee, but you can pay 100 gems to teleport to the main shop. Any time you intend to buy more than 1,000 gems worth of goods you just teleport to the shop and make the buy, then teleport back. Rather than presenting an interesting choice it is simply inconvenient. You also must purchase and carry lockpicks to open treasure chests (and the rare door). Often times you will buy a 500 gem lockpick just to open a box and get 1,000 gems, which is terribly boring. This is made more annoying by the limited number of lockpicks you can carry. You can only carry 1 at the start, until you save up to buy a keyring for 3.

The biggest disappointment is the "Dark Gems". The back of the box promises that you will be able to cleanse the evil from the land and watch as the world is rebuilt. In the game you will encounter the Dark Gems across the levels, usually in a smashed up room or by a pile of purple goop. When the gem is destroyed, the goop will vanish, new passages may appear, or broken objects may be repaired. There was a lot of potential for Soul Blazer style level design where you navigate an obstacle course only to repair it with the destruction of the gem, leading to major changes to the level layout. Instead, the gem is almost always right next to the object it fixes, to the point that you'll often smash a gem before you even encounter the thing it fixes. There was a boat here that was missed by a mile.

Still, the game is fun to play. I really enjoy game design where the player is tempted with locked doors and inaccessible gizmos and then sent off to complete challenges to earn access, and A Hero's Tail has that in spades. If you're a huge fan of Banjo Kazooie you might consider grabbing it used, since it's dirt cheap and has a decent length.

[Guillaume]

Picking up 3D dot game heroes where I left it off almost a year ago because of lack of time, then forgot about it.
God that game is awesome.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Finally got GOTHIC 2 to work, I didn't get why people say the control are awful, non conventional sure (barely) but it took me only 5s to figure out everything. G2 and G3 are similar in everything (despite the revise fighting) except in scope which give G2 more intimacy and significantly change the feel of the game. G2 look more complex because it have less freedom and confront you with major divergent choice early on while G3 takes time to present faction and dilemma(mostly because it's so easy to go at a tangent and travel through the vast world, some may call g2 more focused). Risen is a major rip off of Gothic 2, they just swapped the names and terms  and call it a days. G1 is still crashing (a different one from the previous).

[PaleFox]

It's rather unfair to say Risen is a Gothic ripoff -- it was in fact made by the Gothic team after they got fired from Jowood when Gothic 3 sold poorly. It was Gothic 4 in all but name, and that's essentially how they sold it.

All later Gothic games, including the expansion to Gothic 3, were made in-house at Jowood by other people, and they suffer for it.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Yeah I totally know the case, It was only fun to see they didn't bother to recreate a new lore but totally "remade" Gothic 2. I say ripoff because G2 template is too obvious, it's more like a reboot.

However, gothic score very high with me right now. Every complain I had with Wrpg I played is address in those game and yet keep the cred.

[baconman]

Castlevania HD, now that it's been made available on PSN. Shiny gfx aside, this game is delightful, and having 8-bit Simon and the "Origins" level is freakin' sweet. Also, you have not lived until you've vaulted a hammer into the face of a third-castle-tall boss monster. That is such an immensely satisfying experience that nobody should go without.

[superflat]

Ico & Child Of Eden, until the mothership lands (Dark Souls UK release.)  Good week for non-indie games imo!

[baconman]

I'll give you guys two guesses what I've been playing today...

[Nitromatic]

Sorry for late reply!

For the Frog the Bell Tolls has been translated.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT YES

How did I miss that? I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for it.  

I found about the release on some random Youtube comment, so don't feel sad about it. I must say, I've been waiting for this too and now, finally, we can hear tale of the prince!
This game is really fun, though sometimes you might run out of certain items. Luckily enemies drop them! Sad, how we missed it for GB... Same thing happened with Mother 3, but that's a different thing!

After you complete it, listen to this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plvn9d7ewWA ; piano medley!

So THAT'S where Richard came from. I always felt guilty because he seemed important and I never could place a reference.

I wish he becomes more known, too! Didn't Link's Awakening had a easter egg of this game? You know, the one house?

I am sure Brawl had a reference, too... Hm!

[C.A. Silbereisen]

DARK SOULS

finally