Cyber Rat

To show Walks-At-Dawn his gratitude, the Arch-Mage gave the Argorian a trinket to increase one's magical aptitude. The dark-scaled spell-thief is now debating whether losing his pride by wearing a tiara is worth the 20 extra Magicka.

Around 15 hours in according to my estimate. Better than Oblivion, that's for sure. Some random thoughts: Companion Quests were alright; Dungeons (under which I mean caves, crypts, ruins and so on) seem to be hand-made without using templates like Oblivion did, but I'd need to play more until I can make sure; Dark Brotherhood initiation mission and Thieves' Guild initiation missions are miles beyond anything in Oblivion or Morrowind; Animations still suck; Combat still sucks; UI sucks; NPCs still tell you their life stories without you even initiating conversation; I am having fun regardless.

No, that was the intention. It didn't really work in practice.

Not one hour in and I encountered M'aiq the Liar...

Bit too far in the future for me to decide whether I can take part. I'll let you know in December when I see what money I have left from my PC purchase. I'd certainly like to, just a matter of whether I'll be able to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFkVk7Sp28I Total Biscuit did a first impressions video.

A game over screen prompts you to try again, puts you at the start of the level and gives you 5 lives. Not much of a penalty.

I'm reading through Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo. It's quite engaging so far, although he uses his typical story progression, so kinda saw some things coming.

It's trickier to HD-ify Playstation 1 games. Same reason the Silent Hill HD collection won't have the first SH. Same reason Resident Evil HD contains only RE4 and Veronica, both for the PS2, but not RE 1-3.

Here are more detailed thoughts on the game: http://deltagamer.com/19913/review-sonic-generations

Technically.. Yes, I know Thanks again.

Bought: Skyrim, Bastion, Toki Tori and Voxatron.

Heh, yea, we all see how relevant Halo is now that it's not the Xbox's poster child Yea, that's how the whole game feels save for the Modern Sonic 06 level. The multiple paths are made in the same vein as the classic Sonic games. I'd even say it's more varied in the paths than the old games, which makes sense considering they have more memory to work with. It's neither on-rails, nor linear. They didn't. Example from Sonic 1: Marble Zone.

And, like I said on Steam, you are either lying or blind. The level design was good. It had more paths than the old Sonic games even. It rewarded good performance and mistakes didn't always result in death, but rather new paths. That's not even close to the definition of on-rails. So yes, you are wrong.

I'm curious why you seem convinced that somehow a character's relevance/the quality of their games is related to whether or not the publisher owns the platform. I'm not trying to be argumentative, I actually would like to know what you base that on. It's just the impression I got. People seem to be more involved with a franchise the more a franchise is one of the platform's "faces". All the Uncharted review score drama going around that got me thinking. People are so adamant to defend something platform-specific that it creates hype and, in turn, seems to create a specific atmosphere. Uncharted, Gears of War, Sonic while Sega still made consoles, Mario, Zelda, the point of those franchises, in addition to being entertainment, is pushing forward the system they're on. The moment Mario or Zelda were to start being available on PC, PS and Xbox, I think it would be a step down from the "relevant" category and people wouldn't care that much for the games. tl;dr: I'm basing it on buyer's remorse and publisher hype. Sega has no motivation to hype Sonic games now beyond being Sonic games, and it was a mascot made to promote a console. It'll never reach such a level of relevance again, in my opinion, unless it creates some serious revolution in the platformer genre. @Johnny: it wasn't meant to be venomous. Like I said on Steam, sorry if it came across like that, but I honestly don't agree with most of what you said (and I didn't say that the platform bug was ok). And just because it's an opinion doesn't mean you can't be wrong.

Here you go Johnny: The level sections you are talking about boil down to trademark layouts usually at the start of the level. For example, the first bit of Green Hill Zone until you pass the two bridges with robot piranhas with Classic Sonic. After that, the levels are completely different. The BGMs are remixed songs, which makes sense considering it's revisiting old levels, while the only songs copied verbatim are the unlockable ones, which are selectable. As for sound effects, damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they had changed it, people would complain how old Sonic's jump never sounded like that. Actually, there's an ability that lets you stop in your tracks. Otherwise, the only instance I found that happening is when Classic Sonic bugged out on slopes. It didn't happen that often, but enough for me to notice. I don't know it's because you haven't gotten that far or because you're bad at the game, but the level design is such that when you time it right, it does achieve fluidity. However, the physics are completely different, and I found myself running more than rolling compared to Sonic 1-3. Whether that was intentional or not, I don't know. It's neither good, nor bad, it's just different. You played three levels, right? Aside from Sonic and Knuckles, even the classic games had piss easy starts. And we were kids back then. How many games do we have under our belt now? The later levels actually require you to pay attention, but like any good time-based game (since, when you've finished everything, it becomes a time trial game), it rewards you for good performance, rather than making you pause every single moment. The level design is excellent. Yep, there's bugs. I didn't encounter falling through platforms, but I had some targeting issues with modern Sonic and some slope issues with classic Sonic. However, Sonic games were always big budget and they always had bugs, so if this is to prove how it's worse than the classic titles, it's kinda silly because games like Sonic 3 had way too many bugs. More than here. It was like Sonic Team's trademark. So, when you played Resident Evil 1 (if you did), did you play 2 and 3? Because there's no reason to play those over the original, according to this statement. Because you have 3 levels from Classic Sonic's era, and everything else is from different games. IE, you have stuff like City Escape or Rooftop Run in a pure 2D layout made for Classic Sonic styled gameplay. That's not in the original games. If you don't care about levels, then just replay Emerald Hill on Sonic 2 to infinity? I mean, it's all the same game. Heck, just play Super Mario Bros. I played Sonic Heroes and this is a blatant lie. A complete and utter lie. I haven't played Sonic 06 (thankfully), but I know how unplayable that thing was, and I would surely have noticed that in Generations. Starting levels are easy. Later on, you can't really abuse the boost button and have to actually 1) conserve it; 2) time it well. Again, it's the kind of game where you're rewarded for playing well, and the starting levels are easy. I think they'll never get Modern Sonic handling right, but nigh-unplayable? No, it had some issues, a few which caused me to fall to my death, but it's not unplayable considering there's no real penalty in dying. On-rails though would imply there was only one way you could go. There are multiple routes. Far more than in old Sonic games. Honestly, I think you went in with some expectations that Generations would attempt to imitate the old games with Classic Sonic. I went in expecting the most godawful disappointment of the year, but I didn't know what to expect from the gameplay. It was pretty obvious that this whole game is a tribute to the franchise, not an attempt to imitate the old titles. I think you completely misinterpreted it and just went with the "Let me compare it with Sonic 2 and 3, and if it's not better, it's awful." From that perspective, yes, it's awful. But with all the bloody insane re-releases of the old games, why would they make them again verbatim? It's not an amazing game or return to glory. There are a ton of reasons why a return to glory won't happen. Sonic was a key franchise, a console mascot and a platformer, which was the same back then as today's shooters. Just the descent from console mascot to company mascot is enough to never put him back there. Heck, if Nintendo went the Sega route and only made games, I guarantee you people would stop holding Zelda and Mario in such high regard. They would soon become highly irrelevant. But it's a very good. The level design is amazing and it has some kinks, but one thing it doesn't try is imitate the Classic games. If that's not obvious to anyone who played it, then I don't really know what to say. But yea, I'm glad you didn't write a review of Generations for PXOD, Johnny, because you're way off the mark and talking complete nonsense. It's like Yahtzee's "review" of Mortal Kombat.

You can unlock Sonic music and then play it on any challenge or stage. Not sure whether it's every song ever, but I know there's stuff like Sonic Boom, Sonic 2 Special Stage, Emerald Hill...

Finished it. I'll have a review up after impressions settle in, but here are some preliminary thoughts: A lot of work went into the level design and it shows. There's a very good balance between static and scripted elements, you aren't punished when you make a mistake, but rather, you jump on a new, lower path. If you fail multiple times, you'll eventually reach the "bottom" of the level after which it's death. In general, getting speed isn't a problem, but making the jumps is important. The levels are very fluid. I think the game shined especially in the Modern Rooftop Run level, as I everything went extremely smooth until I made a mistake and pretty much ruined my momentum. Both Classic and Modern Sonic are alright, but, as expected, Modern Sonic still has handling issues. I had a lot of pitfall deaths for some stupid reasons, like lock on deciding the enemy I was going towards wasn't fun anymore and stops targetting it. Story is alright. Nothing amazing, nothing awful. The "big reveal" was quite nice. It takes a 4-5 hours to beat the main game, but I wouldn't be surprised if the challenges would rack it up to 10. There's just that many of it. Oh, and you can unlock old Sonic music and play it in any level. That's an excellent touch. All in all, it's not the return to glory. I don't think the "return to glory" will ever happen unless Sega gets into the console market again. But it's a very good platformer. As someone who has despised everything after and including Sonic Heroes, I can recommend it. So, you've pretty much only played Half-Life 1 your whole life and never any other game I'm sorry, but the way you made it sound is quite overboard in negativity.

Just finished Sonic Generations. I am in shock. It is actually good...

Try verifying the files or something? Kovach and I played earlier and all worked well.

Playing on the PvP EU server on the villain side for Circe. Character name is "Dark Matinee"