TheMightyEthan

http://www.gameblurb.net/featured/versus-dragon-age-2-demo-screenshot-comparison/ Let the flame wars begin! Personally I think that overall the 360 shots look better, with better lighting and detail, but the PS3 doesn't have as much aliasing.

Why didn't you get portal when it was free?

In an Unreal Engine game? What a dick move.

It's definitely a deterrent for me. Might pick it up when they release an Ultimate Edition, or if it goes cheap on a Steam sale over like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I take this back. In the best tradition of gaming, despite all my naysaying I would still preorder this if not for the fact that you can't get the preorder bonus DLC anymore, so I feel like I'm getting screwed out of content.

OMG THAT IS TOTALLY GOING TO BE MY CHARACTER'S NAME!

That was EXACTLY what I thought. The combat style was my favorite thing about DA:O (thought I liked basically everything about it), so I was pleasantly surprised by how little the combat changed after all the "action oriented" hype. I don't like the new animations though. While they're higher fidelity, they're too fast and over the top. This kind of generalization about "console gamers" irks me. Until recently I was primarily a console game (I've recently relapsed back into PC), and I very much preferred everything about DA:O over what they've done in DA2. Based on the demo, I would pay probably around $30 for DA2. If DA:O had been like this then I probably would have liked it okay, but I wouldn't have loved it like I did, and as is DA2 is just a big step backward in every way that matters (to me).

Yeah, I think the whole thing is supposed to look subtly like a Japanese painting.

I imagine it has something to do with the fact that Bioware has been making a big deal about how drastically different, more "action oriented" and "streamlined", the gameplay is. Could be wrong though. Why would you use a gamepad on the PC version, though? For a game like this, wouldn't a keyboard and mouse feel infinitely more natural? I mean, in my opinion this is a game better enjoyed on the PC so I get why you would go for that version, but if you'd rather use a gamepad than a keyboard, then you probably should stick with the console version. At least that way the interface will have been designed around the gamepad. Console versions don't support auto attack, which is a deal-breaker. It means combat is A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-X-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A etc. It's just ridiculously tedious to sit there and hit one button over and over and over. Also, many multiplatform releases auto-detect you using a 360 pad and automatically adopt the 360-type interface to account for that. However, after making my initial post I found the "auto attack nearest enemy" button, which is the main feature I wanted out of the gamepad control style, so I'm good now.

You don't get to arrange your army in the first tutorial battle, but you do in the later ones.

Which is different from capitalism how exactly? Or a free market or whatever. But I stick with capitalism, not only because it allows for Recettear references, but there's always a very Marxist - in the social science sense, not in the political movement or cultural manifesto sense - look at things. That, somewhere out there, there's an actual absolute value for a video game that represents an accurate and specific return on investment based upon the specific material apportionments that went into the creation of the game, and that's the real price. And, lo and behold, that appropriate price is almost invariably what price people were paying, rather than what people are asking now. All true. This, however, is one of the most asinine characterizations of the argument I've ever read.

Yeah, the combat is not as bad as I expected; it's a little too over the top, but I could live with it. I also don't like the new art direction, but again, I could live with it. What really kills it for me is that they completely nerfed the companion inventory system and made the "morality" system so much more obvious, combined with the fact that so much of the other stuff is "I don't like it, but I could live with it." Basically, they crapped up (whether mildly in the case of combat, or severely in the case of inventory) everything I liked about DA:O, without adding anything in to make up for it.

So... How do we get in on the limited beta?

Yeah, auto-attack makes it SO MUCH better on PC. Too bad it won't let me use my 360 pad with it though. (Please don't kill me, PC peeps)

I had to use several health potions during the ogre fight, if that's what you're talking about, but it didn't actually kill me, or really even threaten to once I'd cleared out all the little guys. Also the ogre isn't the end.

I've used Gamefly before, and yeah it's basically Netflix for games. Thing is it only works for console games, and I imagine most of the time when people refer to "pirating to demo" they're referring to PC. Yeah, on console "pirating to demo" doesn't really work as an argument cause you can rent games, whether in a brick and mortar store or from a service like Gamefly, but on PC if they don't release a demo then your only option to try it out is to pirate it (or hope you have a friend who bought it).

I'm still working on the PC download, but at least on the 360 version there was nothing hard in the demo (on Normal difficulty, and it wouldn't let you change it).

Has anyone's download actually finished? Mine's slowed down to 60 kB/s, still has 4 hours remaining. *Edit* - There's a torrent up now, I'll see if I have better luck with that.

Well apparently the way they're tracking the 1,000,000 thing isn't even from downloads on their site, it's counting people who log into their EA account while playing the demo. So it doesn't matter where you download it, as long as you sign in to your EA account when you play it.

Actually, the problem I was running into was that I couldn't get the download started at all cause the servers were getting hit so hard. Once I finally got it started I've been sustaining around 350 kB/s.

Ethan! DA2 on a console? But why! Pee-Seeeee. Because the PC demo wasn't up yet. Trying to download the PC one now, but running into the same problems as Vargras. This is why for shit like this you should use a torrent network for distribution.

So, first impressions from the DA2 360 demo: lack of auto-attack actually makes the combat more tedious, not less so.

Yes, some pirated copies are lost sales, no one is arguing with that. I was arguing with the assertion that every pirated copy is a lost sale (I know you didn't actually say that. You keep getting back to the "I'm not owed anything" argument, and I honestly don't understand what point you're trying to make. Of course you're not owed anything by a developer or publisher. So what? If you're not depriving them of a sale, what does that matter? Also, you're assuming that when someone pirates a game they then never buy that game. That's a faulty assumption. I know plenty of people who pirate a game when it's new, either because they can't afford it or are unsure if it's going to be good enough for the asking price, and then later buy it once they can afford it, or after they learn that it is good.

But if you honestly can't afford it, and so you pirate it, how is that hurting anyone? The developer/publisher wouldn't have gotten your money anyway, because you can't afford it. What difference does it make?

I certainly don't. It just looks so cluttered. I tend to use my computer desktop the same way I use my actual desk's top: temporary storage for things that I'm using. So like if I'm extracting an install file from an RAR, I'll extract it to the desktop, run it, then delete it (keeping the original RAR). Or I'll create new desktop folders for files I'm only going to be using temporarily (like images I'm going to be using in photoshop), then delete the folders when I'm done. The only thing that stays on my desktop permanently is the recycle bin.