You´re not going to work next week?


Edito: Up until now I have just played some instant action missions in MechWarrior 2:M but I thought it could be fun to play through the campaign so I started it up last night. Have just finished the training missions and now I guess I´ll be sent out to do some real combat.

I´m looking forward to when I can get better mechs. Advancing the character, or mech in this case, is always fun

This post has been edited by mirocu: Jun 29 2014, 05:10 PM

I've played BG I, BG II and Icewind Dale. I found BG I and Icewind Dale to be nice enough games. I spent several years engrossed in BG II though - fabulous game.

Actually I probably won't be going to work next week! I am in between jobs right now. Or more to the point, in between the companies I work for. Contracts expiring and going to other companies, that sort of thing. I am still keeping my same job, but doing it for a different company. I don't know when they will finish the background check and paperwork though. It might take until next week. So except for tomorrow, I will probably have the rest of the week off. Plenty of time for some old school D&D goodness!

I would start with regular Mechwarrior 2 first, before going to Mercenaries. Mercs was a lot more difficult, both in the missions themselves, and especially in the financal/equippage sides of the games.



I played a bit of Icewind 2 back in the day. I cannot get my old discs to work on my Windows 7 box though. Thankfully Gog.com takes care of all that, making sure old games run fine on modern systems. It will be nice to finally meet Imoen and Viconia, after years of hearing their voices in my Oblivion games!

Edit: And now I am downloading Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition from Steam, for the price of $5.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 29 2014, 07:27 PM

I am now playing Baldur's Gate 1. It is taking some getting used to the old school D&D rules again. I really hate all that memorizing spells business, and spell slots. Modern rpgs that use mana-based systems work so much simpler. It is very rule-heavy in general as well, and the using the interface can be very clunky. Something exacerbated by the lack of tool tips on most things, leaving me to wonder what one funny looking blob icon means compared to another.

But thankfully it is a Bioware game, and once you learn how to play one of their games, you pretty much know how they all work. Once I found where to customize the AI for each character, things started to flow much better. I have finished the Tutorial and am out into the world. Or at least the starting library/castle.

On the plus side, I finally got to meet those voices I have been hearing in for years in Oblivion thanks to Bruce Vayne's sound sets. Imoen! I practically made a fan girl sqee when she was first introduced in the tutorial.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 30 2014, 01:41 PM

SubRosa - Woot! I hope you like Minsc when you get to meet him. I'm with you in hating the 'have to memorize spells the night before' stuff.

Wow, Baldur's Gate! These are one of my favorite games, I spent many years playing only BG I and BG II, replaying them over and over.

I only have the Mercenaries game so I guess I´ll have to deal with whatever it throws at me

Btw what´s the major difference in gameplay compared to the regular MW2?

MW2 is easier. I think the AI is less accomplished in the enemy mechs, because they don't seem to hit you as often, or perhaps not hit you for as much damage. Or it might simply be that the mechs in MW2 are built tougher than the ones in Mercs. According to the game lore, that really is the case. The Clan Mechs were much better than the Inner Sphere ones.

In MW2 you also don't have to worry about buying spare parts, and paying for repairs after each mission. No matter how badly you get shot up, you have a brand spanking new mech the next mission. In Mercs, you only have what you own, and you have to buy parts in the starports, and fix them yourself.

In the multi-mission campaigns you cannot buy more parts between missions. So you need to make sure you have enough parts stocked up before you go on those. You can still make repairs after each mission, but if say you lose a medium laser, and don't have a replacement in your stores, you are stuck without it in your next mission.

Basically Mercs ups the challenge and complexity.


I did meet Minsc in the tutorial. I see you what you mean. He is a lot of fun! He is definitely on my list of people to recruit and keep, along with Imoen and Viconia.


I have never played either. But I always hear great things about these games. With the Enhanced Editions out now, and on sale from Steam, it seemed like the perfect time to try them.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 30 2014, 01:44 PM

The EE fixes some bugs that were never fixed before, and also adds new companions and areas to explore. You're in for a real treat, SubRosa, especially because you haven't played it before. Wish I could turn the time back and make myself clueless about Baldur's Gate.

Welcome to your new obsession! This is the one that has The Boy staying up all night doing math.

So far I've been content just strapping rockets onto a capsule and crashing them. Maybe eventually I'll try to do it right!




I also bought the Far Cry pack and I have to say FC3 Blood Dragon has been immensely amusing. Reminds me of all the crappy cartoons I used to watch.

Today I am working from home. Which is another way of saying I spent the last two hours playing Baldur's Gate. My ranger Terra did all the little quests around Candlekeep, and watched dear old dad get whacked by the Big Bad on the road outside of town. But I got to meet up with Imoen afteward, so it was ok. Besides, the wise old mentor always get killed at the start of these things. So I was not surprised. It has been a lot of fun wandering around the map with Ims. She is quite useful with that bow of hers, and I just love her voice. Though I do wonder why she keeps calling Terra a queer fella. I mean props to her figuring out the lesbian part. But fella? C'mon Ims, those bumps on Terra's chest are not extra storage space!

We met up with a couple of shady fellows in the dark named Montaron and Xzar, and joined up with them. I was a little uneasy about them, but they both got killed quickly enough! One got one-hit killed by a bandit archer from ambush. His death was how I knew battle had started. The second got it the same way, but from a Kobold. So now it is back to Imoen and Terra. They met up with an Ogre, and had to run for the map edge to escape. Perhaps not the most glorious start. But at the least the characters I care about are still alive!



Doing math? That's terrible! Isn't it illegal for a game to actually help you learn something?


The Kerbals are cute. And you get to blow stuff up!

Aren't the Far Cry games zombie games? You know, I have never played a single zombie game. I guess there are lot of them out too.

I tried playing BGII a while back, but "This person is busy" bug turned me off pretty fast.


Nope, they aren't zombie games. They are open world games with guns and vehicles.

The first game is pretty different from 2 and 3. In 1, you are a super soldier with the capability of using certain drugs to enhance your fighting capability, and you are escaping from tropical island facility where you were made. In 2 you are a merc in Africa going after a weapons dealer. In 3 you look like a party bro that gets kidnapped on spring break. 3 Blood Dragon puts you in a terrible 80's cartoon complete with one liners and era appropriate music.

Shows you how much I have kept up with games these past few years! I recall the cover of one of the games being a guy on a beach with half a severed head, and that just got me thinking zombies.

Yeah, I´ve been "working from home" too for the past year....

Far Cry is a pretty good shooter thoguh I haven´t played it in a few years now.

Yesterday Terra and her ever growing crew explorated around The Friendly Arm Inn and recruited Jaheria and Khalid. Moving farther east, they found Peldvale and recruited Viconia as well. She has the best armor class of anyone in my party! -1 now that I got her an enchanted buckler. She is pretty handy with a sling too, given her super dexterity. I am very glad I 'hired' her on to the team.

Jaheria OTOH is annoying me, and Khalid is having trouble staying alive. I think I am going to ditch those too soon. I need to get some more fighters, as most of my group is using ranged weapons (Terra is a Ranger/Archer, Imoen is using a bow, Viconia a sling). Plus I am getting tired of constantly hearing them whine about going south to Nashkel. We'll get there! There is just stuff to see on the way first.

I started to see a sore lacking in the mage area when I piled up a bunch of items I could not identify. So I went to the Larswood area looking for the new Drow mage the Enhanced Edition added. I could not find him anywhere, and when I looked him up on the wiki, I discovered that you have to be at least level 5 or so for him to appear. Doh!

After getting my fundament kicked by a wraith spider which no one in the party could hurt, I headed south to Beregost, and Imoen spent a lot of time robbing people's homes. That was fun until she found the house full of spiders! I did find the new Wild Mage Neera in town and recruited her. She identified all my stuff with a few rest periods in between. I am not sold on her though. For very squishy mage, she seems to want to close in to melee with her staff a lot, which seems like suicide to me. I would think she'd be better off with some kind of missile weapon to use in between spells.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 1 2014, 01:58 PM

SubRosa, I didn't spend nearly the time in BG I that I did in BG II but, as I recall the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion for BG I was quite fun as well.

I can't recall if it was the same in BG I and II, but I think it was - that is the sleep animation. It would simply fade to an appropriate little movie scene depending on where you slept - camp in the forest, in a dungeon or even a tavern with little rat that squeaked and ran under the bed. Something to watch for a few seconds while your character slept instead of an obtrusive hours count down box like TES has. I've always admired that extremely simple but elegant feature about the BG games.

Yes, I can vouch for TotSC, it's a very good expansion, I like it more than the other expansion which is called Durlag's tower IIRC. TotSC has an exciting story and is set on an island which is another big plus.

As Acadian, I also spent more time in BGII, I only played BG for the first time after many years of playing BGII. Regarding the sleep animation - it's just as you said, and even if our player character has sex with someone, the animation doesn't change. That goes for BGII, the relationships aren't available in BGI without mods.

This post has been edited by Lopov: Jul 1 2014, 07:54 PM

Argh!

Reading these latest posts has given me the itch to get back into Baldur's Gate...

And then on to BGII...

From what I read, the Enhanced Edition includes Tales of the Sword Coast. Plus an brand new area called the Black Pits. I am still slogging my way around Beregost and the Friendly Arm Inn. I did fire Jaheria and Khalid, and replaced them with Kagain. He has proven to be excellent muscle. With him in tow, Terra and crew went back to find those four wizards in Spider Wood and put them down. Not without losing Neera, but she was raised back in the temple at Friendly Arm Inn. I think that Wraith Spider is still crawling around that area, and that is the only thing left there.