Still playing NWN2, but been fairly busy with other things lately. I'm progressing ok, just got the permission to enter Blacklake district. I got me an agreable party of sorts, with the dwarven brawler (Khelgar), the fiery sorceress girl (Qara) and the tiefling rogue (Neeshka). They're not QUITE of the same alignment as me, but I sure as hell like their mindset and motivations better than those of the paladin or druid ho I met.

The tiefling girl I'd drop too, if she wasn't so damn useful for opening chests. She's utterly useless in a fight. But with NWN2 autmatically reducing any non-quest item into "broken items" when you try to bash open a lock, she's pretty necessary. The dwarf and sorceress do what I want them to do: dish out damage.

Character development-wise things have taken a turn for the hilarious: I started out as lawful evil because the Dwarven Defender prestige class only is accessible to lawful characters. After 7-8 levels of Fighter, I started taking Dwarven Defender levels...2 to be exact. When I next levelled up, the class was greyed out. Turns out I shifted to neutral evil. Already.

Not exactly surprising given my erh, playing style, but still. I was hoping I'd be able to put a few more levels in first. So...I took a peek at the other prestige classes, and Divine Champion and Frenzied Berserker are still open. Yeah, that's not really a choice. So I took another level as fighter to get the great cleave feat (prereq for Frenzied Berserker) and next lvl I'll be a Fighter/Dwarven Defender/Frenzied Berserker.

I am kinda pissed at the lack of evil NPC's tho...and the fact that you can't customize them for jack shit. For some reason they (NPC's) only allow you to pick one class and one only when they level up. Wtf? is this normal?

Kk, i've advanced quite a bit and am now past the trial and things are starting to unravel. Still not really a clue as to who is doing what and how, though, but it's clear that I'll have to split plenty more skulls along the way. I'm down with that.

I haven't noticed any bugs other than a rather annoying CTD when alt-tabbing the game from time to time, btw. Guess they took patching seriously.

Anyways: i've slipped into chaotic evil. And I'm probably just halfway the game. I also met some seriously cool NPC's, unlike all those freaking pansies that I met before. Some guy named Bishop, a chaotic evil ranger with no patro deity. I like his style a lot. I also got me the chick 'follower' you get, the descendant of the wizard you're looking for.

I pretty much skipped the trial because I thought it was a mockery of 'justice' and smacked the Luskan big guy's ass instead. And now I'm protecting some noble in his mansion from a horde of demons.

You know, I thought the game opened kinda slow and a little but dull, but things are really starting to heat up and getting epic. About time.

Bought Dead Space yesterday - it was only 20€ in retail. And I'm this close to buying the Penumbra gold edition (all three games) over steam...it looks awesome. Anyone play it?

Still on NWN2...but it's pissing me off because it made my pc crash hard two times in 2 hours, manual reboot and all. I can play L4D just fine so I'm pretty sure it's NWN2's problem and not my pc's.

NWN2 is very bad when it comes to integrity. If you enter a new area try to walk through instead of going back since it might screw up your game. And have many backup saves.

On Peltz' suggestion I save every 3 minutes now. But so far I haven't had any hard crashes anymore, just a game crash on exit - but whatever, right.

I've just uncovered the warlock Ammon Jerro in his lair, and Shandra died. I must say I'm really starting to dig the game...after a LOOOONG, somewhat tedious run-in it's finally gaining some epic momentum - and everything looks rather polished now, with in-depth dialogues, interesting characters and art. Let's hope the patches fixed the (from what I heard) bug-riddled finale.

My character has become virtually unstoppable - immune to mind control magic, extremely high AC, 300+ HP (and not nearly at the lvl cap), regenerating +4 HP every turn (!) and just generally kicking ass, partially with the help of the 'purification ritual' skills he gained. Only problem is that there are barely any decent dwarven waraxes in the game...so for now I'm stuck with a +1.

In a way, yesterday was the first time I was playing NWN2 and thinking 'wow this is cool I want to keep on playing'. The first part I more or less forced myself through.

Oh and I like the keep you get...totally turning it into a corrupt raider lair, whilst bleeding the surrounding farmers dry for every penny.

Finished the game...and I must say that my opinion of the game went up quite a bit towards the end, up until the ultra cheap voice over doing the outro.

Obviously I allied myself with the King of Shadows, and me and Bishop killed all our former "allies". Bishop is hawt, lub him. Me and him were basically thick as thieves during the entire game so I was SO glad when he showed up after I killed Garius and offered to help me kill the others. They went down pretty quickly, only Khelgar and Ammon Jerro are really hardcore. The others are pansies.

It's very noticeable that Obsidian pulled another "let's wrap it up quickly" KOTOR 2 at the end though. The dungeon or gauntlet thingie leading up to the actual final showdown with the King of Shadows was unreasonably hard, for one. I made it through well enough, but I suppose that has more to do with my character being a ridiculously though self-sufficient (regenerating 10 HP per turn) tank than anything else. If your character is a mage you're probably gonna get butt-fucked. And even after you kill 468549654416 powerful undead you get to face 3 reavers as a reward. Heh.

And the outro...dude, WTF? That was the poorest quality voice acting I've heard in a while. Even the storyboard sketches were poorly done. Man, compare that to the voice overs of BG2...world of difference.

Compare voices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbUsqNcUgI4 (skip to 5.30) NWN2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGDeO_Sj5Ao BG2

It's the good ending in the clip but nevermind that.

Is Mask of the Betrayer any good? If it's on the level of the last act of NWN 2 I'm definitely playing it. Such a shame that they rushed the ending in balancing and shit. I mean, what a way to cast a shadow on an otherwise very good game. Bah.

Started playing RA3...loving the campy humor and fluid gameplay so far. I mean seriously, I've got ships that can launch and parachute mind-controlled bears over rivers and walls. Awesome.

heh...I acquired a copy and played a couple levels, then uninstalled it. Just not my kind of game, but I can appreciate that other people have different tastes.

Euphemism Translator:

Something down your alley Ox.

http://www.spike.com/blog/7-shamelessly ... mPerPage=1

Since yer a fan of indie games i thought you might want to check this out.
http://www.dungeon-party.com/

Thanks for the link man I already know Dungeon Party, though I never tried it...the concept seems a bit all-or-nothing to me; either it works great or it bombs like there's no tomorrow. I might give it a spin later, and I'll let you know.

I think Max Payne 3 qualifes on your list. Winter 2009

Yeah, just noticed it earlier today. The bad news is that it isn't Remedy but Rockstar Vancouver who're developping the game. So I'm waiting for Remedy's Alan Wake a little more than on Max Payne (no matter how cool the first two MP games were).

Yea i was kinda bummed about that too. Im really keeping my fingers crossed for success of alan wake, especially since its developed by my good neighbours.