toxicitizen

I'd agree with this, except I do know that some people managed to hack items onto the closed battle.net system in Diablo II despite that not letting you transfer characters back and forth (which Open Battle.Net did let you). I'd rather there was a way to play it offline, but I can also see why they'd want to take extra precautions with letting people have local access to as little of the code as possible. Not that I buy that this is their entire and only reason for it, mind. Pretty much this. I mean, it's not like I don't get where you're coming from, Ethan. I just don't believe for one second that it's as simple as them just not wanting to allow it.

It's mostly because of the real money auction house, actually. Diablo II is completely broken and unbalanced online because of cheating and item duping. With actual money in play, item duping would seriously fuck that up. It would seem like a no-brainer to have an option to create an entirely offline character, though. But I'm not sure if there's a shared stash that allows you to transfer items between your characters. If there is, then that's probably why it's not an option. Yeah, that makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I'm not sure how you got that from what I said. All I was meant was that I'm not taking a "it's not a problem for me so I don't care" position. I genuinely don't feel like it's that big of a deal. Sure, if and when I'm prevented from playing because either my internet died or the servers are down, it's going to suck. But I'm not a fucking baby, I'll just go play something else in the meantime. I could be wrong here, but I think you get better loot drops when playing coop. Camera is fixed, you can't zoom in or rotate it. That kinda sucks but the game looks amazing otherwise.

Sure doesn't feel crippled to me when I'm playing it. It's not like you wouldn't be constantly connected anyway. And bear in mind that my motherboard's network adapter sometimes goes into fits where it won't hold a connection for more than 5-10 mins at a time, so it's not like I'm not at risk of being prevented from playing at some point. But it still doesn't feel like that big of a deal to me. I'm curious why you feel like the reasoning behind it is a cop-out, though.

The reasoning they gave for that design decision makes sense to me. Besides, thinking of the game as a single-player title is disregarding the fact that it's obviously more geared towards online coop. It's not an ideal situation but I understand why it's there and I don't mind putting up with it. And it's not like circumventing the whole thing is hard either. The game is guaranteed to get cracked sooner or later, so when it does just get a pirated copy for when you want to play offline. Problem solved.

No, but that's kind of irrelevant here. Besides, most people buy COD solely for the multiplayer, so it's not like it makes that big of a difference.

I wouldn't call it a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. We're about 12 hours in and I managed to log in right away when I got my copy this afternoon. Servers are down for maintenance now, but I played for about 4 hours straight without a single issue. It was inevitable that there would be server problems at the very start with a game as big as this but they managed to make it playable pretty quickly. This was nowhere near as bad as say Black Ops, which worked fine for me after a couple of days but was unplayable for weeks for a lot of people.

Did you have anything registered to it? I imagine it was an old account that dated from before Battle.net 2.0? It sure as hell wouldn't be right for them to delete an account with say StarCraft 2 and a bunch of WoW expansions registered to it, regardless of account activity.

FLD#1974

If you've downloaded the installer already, it should be unlocked now. So, let's get some last minute discussion going here! Those getting it tomorrow or tonight: what will be your first character? Demon Hunter was the one I was most interested in to begin with and I'd long figured I'd use it for my first run. But now I'm having last minute doubts. I'm hesitating between demon hunter, wizard and barbarian. I played through the beta with four of the five classes (no interest whatsoever in the witch doctor) and while I thought the monk was pretty boring, barbarian and wizard were both tons of fun. It was particularly satisfying as the barbarian to cleave through a crowd of enemies with a claymore and have the game inform me I'd just killed 7 enemies in a single swing.

This actually made me feel a bit better, though. http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne3/comics Some of it still feels a bit off, but it's actually co-written by Houser and Lake. Can't wait for the next issue.

Pretty much this. Even when copying code, you'll understand what you're doing infinitely more just by typing it out yourself instead of copy pasting. But as someone just starting to learn, I find that I learned the most when I was left to my own devices and had to make something work without any specific instructions. I've collected a bunch of ressources, some better than others. Since you mentioned learning Python, this might be of interest. http://ocw.mit.edu/c...ming-fall-2008/ It's not a course on Python but rather an introduction to programming/computer science that uses Python. I've only watched the first two lectures because I've other stuff I'm working on at the moment, but I'm planning on getting back to it over the course of the summer. It's basically a whole semester's worth of material: video lectures, problem sets,quizzes and tests. Also, this is kinda basic but still amazing, imho. www.codecademy.com Basically a game-ified programming tutorial. It's JavaScript (though they recently added some HTML and CSS lessons) but really it's great for just learning basic concepts and understanding how they work and practicing them. Stuff like syntax, operators, functions and loops and such. It was actually good practice for a class I taking doing this winter, which was in C and Java. If you like these I could probably find a few more links for you. I bookmarked a whole bunch of stuff when I was in resources gathering mode a couple months back.

Let's be honest, the scripts were hardly GTA and RDR's strongest points. ... But they were far from the weakest? The scripts in those games are still amazing. The overall stories are often questionable, because they're so epic and expansive, but the actual dialogue and meaning behind the dialogue is always great. I'm still pretty confident that Houser, after examining MP1 and 2's script heavily, will be able to pull off a good Max Payne tone. It won't be Sam Lake, obviously, but it shouldn't be far off. It's mostly a pity that it's doing all of this through so much cutscene... In-game cutscenes were always very basic scene-setters in Max Payne, the comics did the brunt of dialogue. If they've changed that... From what I understand, they did they change that. And that's kind of missing the point, isn't it? The stories certainly weren't what I'd call weak in previous Rockstar games but they weren't as tight and focused as the Max Payne ones were. I don't know, I hate knocking it before experiencing it. But based on previous Rockstar games I just can't help feeling very pessimistic about his ability to recapture what made the first two games special for me. Part of it is due to Alan Wake having the exact same effect on me. It made me realize how central Lake's writing was to my love of Max Payne. The gameplay was great (and actually still holds up to this day, imo) but the story was where it truly shined. Rockstar games are pretty much the opposite.

Exactly why I was worried the story wouldn't have the right tone :/ Let's be honest, the scripts were hardly GTA and RDR's strongest points. But you had me worried there, Maritan. What you described is unfortunate but is far from a deal-breaker for me. I'm certainly not going to cancel my pre-order over that. I figured the experience would be drastically different so I was kind of prepared for something like this.

Torchlight. A few days ago, my clicking finger was getting restless waiting for Diablo 3 so I figured it was time to get back to it. I'd first started playing it after finishing Diablo 2 last winter but I ended up rage quitting it about halfway through after wiping my fifth weapon trying to enchant it. The enchanting failure rates in this game are beyond retarded! Wasting gold by having the enchanting do nothing is one thing. But fucking wiping the item of all its magical properties? That is so fucking infuriating! Like, throw-your-fucking-monitor-at-the-wall infuriating! But yeah, other than that I loved the game. There's still some stuff to do like the infinite dungeon and side-quests but I beat the story's final boss but sadly I don't think I'll be able to justify getting back to it what with Diablo 3 this week and Torchlight II later this summer. I'm now really tempted to pre-order the latter on Steam, actually.

It's the calm before the storm, man! I've got the installer downloaded and sitting on my desktop and tuesday can't come quickly enough. I'm hoping ebgames will send my copy early so that I'll get it on monday and be able to play when the servers go live at midnight but I think that's pretty fucking unlikely edit: just had a look at my bank account and my card was charged today! there is hope yet!

Calling it now. The bears are with the Templars!

Well, that new gameplay trailer was pretty awesome. For some reason, the part where he actually went through a building instead of climbing it kinda blew my mind a little lol It's a pretty minor addition but while playing the game I never really went "man, sure would be cool if that window were open and I could go through that room", so it kinda surprised me on the spot.

Came to post exactly this but you beat me to it so I'm using a bigger pic Glad this only took a few months. Can't wait! Pre-orders get 10% off but if you own the original you get 25%.

I used to feel the same way but then HD remakes came into play and people started posting replays of old games and whatnot so I figured fuck it, let's just roll with it. A game completion is a game completion so whatever. Do you mean Pit Boss? If so, I don't know if you want to figure it out on your own or what so I'll spoiler it

Wait, almost sounds like you're saying BTTF was worse than Jurassic Park? I haven't played JP but I heard it's fucking awful and what I played of BTTF was fun. It's not a great game but it's awesome for a BTTF fan like me. I really need to play the whole thing, though.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. It's shorter than I remembered. Took me about 2 hours less than the original and I went through it much quicker than I'd planned. Story is weaker than the first one's but the gunplay is way better so that kinda makes up for it. I'd say May 29th and Max Payne 3 seem far away, but I'm pretty sure in 10 days I'll be too busy to even remember I'm looking forward to it.