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To have some use for the skillpoints I maximized alchemy. Cleaning out that dungeon gave me enough ingredients to make a permanent +75 vitality potion. I had 25 vitality and 1000 HP before I took it, and now I have 90 vitality and 6500 hp. So I boosted my survivability by 650% just for cleaning out one dungeon

Two worlds has somewhat funny scaling of the enemies. On the southern part of the map you will encounter standard wolves next to enemies that can do 4-5000 damage per hit... I've not played with the latest few patches though so there might have been some rebalancing.
 
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Two worlds has somewhat funny scaling of the enemies. On the southern part of the map you will encounter standard wolves next to enemies that can do 4-5000 damage per hit... I've not played with the latest few patches though so there might have been some rebalancing.

Enemies like Ogre's and Demon's still kill me in 1 hit so I just make sure they never reach me. Im playing 1.7, which also adds bonus content to the game (that I have not had time to check up on yet, I do not even know what the patch added). Still, the game is extremely solid and have not crashed even once since I started to play. The savefiles works, the monsters works, there are almost no clipping errors and monsters getting stuck like you see in other games... so I believe the patch did it's job.
 
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Two worlds has somewhat funny scaling of the enemies. On the southern part of the map you will encounter standard wolves next to enemies that can do 4-5000 damage per hit... I've not played with the latest few patches though so there might have been some rebalancing.

It depends on what you expect to which style of game-play a game should belong to.

In a normal town, for example, you can encounter on the streets people with high intelligence next to low intellugence, with low income next to higher income, managers next to workers.

Why should this be different in a world where creatures just spread randomly ?
 
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Getting very addicted to WoW... (although, not as much as BG2). MotB is completely forgotten at this stage :D Also started new game for Pokemon Yellow and Pinball.
 
It depends on what you expect to which style of game-play a game should belong to.

In a normal town, for example, you can encounter on the streets people with high intelligence next to low intellugence, with low income next to higher income, managers next to workers.

Why should this be different in a world where creatures just spread randomly ?

I generally think the placement of creatures make sense (the dangerous creatures are in places where it would be logical to expect them). It's just that Two Worlds use a rather extreme "power scale", where certain enemies literally do 1000 times more damage than others, and where the player character also will see a 1000-fold increase of his damage output over the course of the game, and the developers still didnt manage to make the game particularly challenging.

Regarding the similarity with the real world I'd say that realism doesnt always make for the best gameplay. The wolves and other weak critters in the south may make the gameworld look more realistic but killing hundreds of them in 1 hit doesnt add much to the gameplay or enjoyment.

In the devs defense I must say that it is very hard to tune the difficulty level of an RPG properly. On one extreme you have over the top explosions in player and monster power (Might and Magic and to some extent Two Worlds, though it's mainly the player who grows too powerful in Two Worlds), on the other extensive level scaling which also has it's share of problems;)
 
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Sigh... I swear I'll try to find out if Morrowind plus expansions will run under Linux. But I'll wait for our return from this camping site - net is pretty slow around here.
 
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I hear Morrowind works on WINE now.

I'm playing Stalker at the moment.
 
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Two Worlds. I have now whiped about 95% of the map. I have like 2-3 places left to visit and I need to pick up an item I left alone earlier on. Gothic 3 was actually more well-designed in both gameplay and balance. I'm beating hordes of opponents without taking damage. Like Zaleukos said, there are 2 strengths: the monsters falling from one empowered fireball and the ones falling from 10 empowered fireballs and instakill you, but since they cannot strike on distance they can't hit me. The monsters in between are missing and the AI is horrible.

Far south I have found more monstertypes in a tiny area than the rest of the game together...

Alchemy is so unbalanced it's not even funny. My HP went from 1500 to 27000 in a few hours. My strength from 35 to 450. It takes 15p to master fire. The other ~60 felt meaningless to distribute because there's nothing else a mage really needs. Maybe picklock.

Despite running 1.7, many quests are broken and cannot be finished.
 
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The broken quests are weird, I didnt have more than one in 1.5. Since this is the wrong place for spoilers you could PM me if you havent verified them with the walkthrough.

I actually think there is plenty of variation in monster scale, the problem is mostly that the players power goes through the roof quite early making anything at the lower end of the monster scale killable in one hit. The devs should have implemented some sort of diminishing returns formula for damage output. The AI is bog standard for actions RPGs (e g pretty dumb:p).
 
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I have verified them with walkthrough. I'm on vacation now and will be back tomorrow. I can give you a list then.
 
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Well, I have planned it for awhile...

Bought a Playstation 3 and a Pockat Playstation today, along with Metal Gear Solid 4, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core.
 
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It is too bad Goozex doesn't have EU operations ... any good game trading sites there? You could do well for some PSP games if the deals were right.
 
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I never thought about it before. It was only recently I started to buy consoles and when I did I knew beforehand what games I were going to play and I bought all of them new.

I wanted to play MGS4, but I want to finish MGS:portable Ops first. Unfortunally I ordered MGS:portable Ops along with Silent Hill:Origins online so they wont arrive until next week. So I started to play Condemned 2: Bloodshot. I loved the first game on PC and it's still one of the most creepiest games I played. I also tried FFVII:Crisis Core, but I might not have the chance to play it this summer.
 
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Condemned 2: Bloodshot. This is a first-person beat-em-up survival horror game.

Even as a horror fan who consume everything and get effected by almost nothing, the first Condemned was one of the creepiest games I played and I still remember liking it alot. It's the only game recently which made me forced to summon courage before playing another level. Part of it's sucess is to avoid feeding you with firearms (unlike a game like Undying). You have to deal with both berserking drug addicts and zombies by engaging in hand-to-hand combat. Everything can become a weapon; lead pipe, wooden plank, locker door etc. When you do not have a good sucess to 1-hit-kill firearms each opponent feels more dangerous and lethal. It's also a game that did almost everything right when it come to building suspense. The bad part with Condemned was the ending which felt like a letdown.

Anyway, when Condemned 2 was announced, along with a promise to explain the ending of Condemned 1, I knew I was going to play that too. Unfortunally it never came on PC. It was not the reason why I bought a PS3 (that would be MGS4), but it added to the motivation to buy that console and it became the first game I played on that particular machine.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot gives me mixed feelings though. The Hand to Hand combat was the gameplay feature that was Condemned 1's key selling point, while I enjoyed the first because of it's atmosphere and horror. The Hand to Hand combat is seriously improved in the sequel. I really had to learn how to block and how to execute combos to be able to survive. There are also far more "tools" that can be used, including a toilet seat. The CSI stuff in which you must investigate crimescenes for clues is also a step up.

However, the atmosphere and story seems to have taken a step down. Brief appearences of the main villain kept the first game's story to feel urgent and important. Even at level five in C2 the main character is treated as someone who is requested to go on a mission (when he would rather want to stay home drinking), so the character seem to lack a good motivation to care or even try to solve the mission. C2 also fails to build suspense. There's a tool often used in theese kind of games in which you encounter no opponents for awhile, but you are still given the feeling that "someone is out there", and you get hints about this from time to time by strange noises etc but you still do not see anything. A great example is the marine level in AvP2 in which an entire level is built like that. This was frequently used in Condemned that really messed with your head, but C2 fails to do the same.

Another problem is that I am forced to play a first-person game with a joypad, which feels like trying to move around with a sharp object stuck up your behind. Also, the second level was too dark so I found myself having problems to see where I was going, which was annoying to say at least.

Somehow playing this kind of game on console just isn't the same as playing it on my PC, with a mouse to aim with, with my 22" monitor close enough to cover my field of vision and my 7.1 speakers surrounding me. If I can avoid FPS games on consoles in the future I will.
 
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Hope you will post about MGS4, I really want your opinion on that. At least I respect anyone's opinion on RPGWatch more than any reviewer ( even if they happen to love KOTOR :p )
 
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Hope you will post about MGS4, I really want your opinion on that. At least I respect anyone's opinion on RPGWatch more than any reviewer ( even if they happen to love KOTOR :p )

Well, I have only installed the game and done the tutorial since I want to play MGS: Portable Ops before getting serious with MGS4.

And if you know me, you know I go more on story and atmosphere than gameplay. Even if the MGS-series are famous for their stealth gameplay, they are more like interactive movies than games. Their main selling point is their deep and complex storylines and how they deliver them. Each part have dealt with deep philosophical questions and play with your emotions. MGS4 is ofcourse not a letdown in that department. MGS dealt with genetics, MGS2 dealt with postmodernism, MGS3 dealt with duty to your country. Getting old, tired, feeling your health fade and thinking about giving up seems to be some of the topics in MGS4. While the installation was going on the game begun to give you health instructions/warnings, while an aging Solid Snake can be seen in the background chainsmoking four cigarettes.

What I can say so far is that it's one of the most beautiful games I have seen, well on par with Mass Effect and Crysis if not beyond that. Not only when it comes to graphics, but in artistry, the cinematics, the music etc.

The game also deals with a dystopian vision of a future where war have became routine, a "well oiled machine".
The introduction makes a homage to Fallout. David Haytan (Solid Snake) makes an imitation of Ron Perlman's "war never changes" monologue, but in a similar raspy and tired voice he states over and over again that "war... has changed".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQgu0WhhQN4 (that video is not pre-rendered, the whole game looks like that).

It was really difficult to put down the controller... Before I even realized what I was doing I was through the whole tutorial (which is basically a part of the intro).
 
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sounds great. I do think I will have to get a PS3 for this game. Anyway make sure to update after you finish portable ops and starts to play it past the intro :)
 
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Sound nice, any chance it would come to PC?

If you mean Condemned 2, I do not know. Monolith have been a PC developer for all their games except C2.

If you mean MGS4 I say highly unlikely. MGS3 was PS2 exclusive (but works fine in pcsx2). Considering the key role MGS4 have in keeping Playstation 3 and Sony alive, I believe they would sooner assassinate Hideo Kojima than allowing MGS4 to be released on another platform. The salerate of PS3 consoles exploded since the release of the game and it was difficult for me to get hold of since the console was sold out all over Sweden. Not to mention it's a game that takes advantage of the blue-ray format. Blue-ray games will probably not appear on PC anytime soon.
 
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