DBaron

For me its a lot of little things that add up over time and suck the enjoyment out of it. These observations were taken from playing as Italy in 1.2 1. The AI is not very good, for the most part each country does their own thing regardless of whether or not they are in an alliance. For example greece and romania had formed an alliance, but in name only. I attacked Romania and Greece did nothing. Rep Spain was in the allies, and didn't move at all to help France until after France was defeated. Had spain decided to send some divisions to help out in southern france it would have made it much harder for me. Playing as France in 1.1 Germany couldn't care less about what happens to Italy, until you show up on their borders, which made for an easy game as France. Playing as poland in 1.1 I fought for 8 months and none of the rest of the allies even bothered to do anything to help me. (1/2 the world was in the allies including the USA). Britian did some strategic bombing, USA just built division after division, Finland sent me one division, and France was struggling for its life after getting mauled by Italy (common problem in 1.1). There is no real way to co-ordinate their activities, so its a free for all. 2. The intelligence system isn't very good, and currently I am stuck with unkillable spies disrupting my research. Very frustrating. 3. Playing as Italy I cannot declare war on Iraq which has brought my middle east campaign to a halt. 4. Also, Italy gets robbed by the Vichy event. I lost all my gains in Southern France thanks to it. I was pushing on Paris when it fired. I had to declare war on the Vichy government to get some of them back, but one lone german tank division made a bee line for Marsielle and grabbed it for Germany before I could, splitting my empire in two. Since there is no way to trade provinces (that I know of), it makes managing my empire that much harder (supplies, moving troops back and forth, etc). Things like that which keep adding up making it either a headache to play, or just not fun.

I wouldn't touch it until next year at least. Currently it's at patch 1.2 and it has a long way to go. Maybe after the new year people might get some decent mods out, or they might be able to patch it into something that is playable, but until then save your money. I wish I would never have bought it.

Are you referring to "Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific " by Eric Bergerud?

That was a roller coaster of a game. I didn't think the wings were gonna win that game after Anaheim scored to tie it up in the third. Despite all the wings efforts, Anaheim kept coming back, and it seemed that all the breaks were going their way. But wings finally caught a break with cleary's goal, and that was it. Ducks couldn't do anything after that. Now I hope the wings have something left for Chicago after that exhausting series.

Tonight was a crazy night for hockey. Both games were outstanding, but the chicago game was insane. Multiple lead changes, each team comes back from behind, the star forwards for each team showed up, and Luongo of all people lets in 7! goals. If this keeps up people are going to be talking about these playoffs for a long long time.

I think the ducks have one more period's worth of decent hockey left in them. If they can jump out to a lead then they might have a chance, but I doubt it.

Boston down 2-1, Wings down 2-1, Chicago down 2-1, and Pittsburgh down 2-1. This sucks. All the teams I thought would be up are losing. I think Detroit and Chicago have the best chances of coming back, and I hope Pittsburgh - Wash goes to seven, but whoever wins I don't care. I would'nt cry if Carolina bumped Boston either. The wiznewski injury is really going to hurt Anaheim, if not now, then definetly in the long run, as he has been playing so good for them. I like Detroit's chances in the next two games, and by then Raf and Draper should hopefully be available. Oh, and goodbye Phoenix.

Second round should be awesome. Ducks and Wings, Pens and Caps. So far this year's playoffs have been epic.

Sharks are done. I can see them getting one more at home, but they have no chance of winning the next 3 in a row, not against that ducks team. What a terrible performance last night. It's a pity because if my team doesn't make it, I was sorting of hoping for a sharks boston finals as a consolation prize. Not gonna happen now.

Ha sharks suck. At least philly showed up today.

I was surprised that no one made a thread until after the playoffs started. This years first round match ups are almost perfect. Could be one of the best playoffs in awhile.

Goalies....

You can play the game offline, steam still needs to be running though.

Steam isn't that bad. Not that it doesn't have its flaws, because it certainly does, but for the most part I find it to be useful. I have been using it on and off since its inception back in 2002-2003. It's far better than some of the other options developers use, for example the debacle that was spore. I think in the Jutland thread there were some complaints about activation as well. I like it because it's easy way easier to keep track of games, and to purchase them. I currently have about 20 games that I have purchased through steam that are not installed at any one time. Most of these are valve games that are bundled together (i.e. Half life 2, + CS source, + endless other valve games), but I have several third party titles as well. When I feel like playing through Half life 2 again, I simply re download it, and when I am done, just uninstall it. I don't have to keep track of discs, and steam will bring it up to date for me, so I don't have to go running off to the internet to look for patches, and try to figure which is the most recent patch, or what order I need to patch the game, etc. Same for the silent hunter series. For comparison, I wanted to replay Diablo 2, but since I have lost my expansion disc case, I can't enter the CD number, and I don't feel like paying for a replacement key. This is not a problem when I use steam. Transferring a game from one pc to the next is fairly easy, just install steam and redownload everything that you want. I've done this several times, with no problems. AFAIK there are no restrictions on how many times you install or uninstall. I think the downside is that you are tied to one machine. My biggest complaint is customer service. I bought the silent hunter gold pack, and while SH III runs fine, and is easy to mod, SH IV with the expansion has never run right when I let steam download it the way it wants to. The steam forum for SH IV offers no official solutions, mostly frustrated users coming up with work arounds. Also Hearts of Iron 2, which is playable fine when you download it, you can't install the 1.3 beta patch from paradox. You need to hunt around to find a patch that will work with the steam version. I am about to go pick up ETW tommarrow. It requiring steam to run doesn't bother me at all, since I am so used to using it.

I hear some skipping in the audio when the video finally manages to launch, but by then I don't have any patience for watching it, and push the usual suspect buttons until it stops and I get to the game menu. I did change some graphics settings, but it still took a long time for them to implement and I had to restart the training scenario. I know I have a pretty marginal system (by the games standard anyway), but it's still the biggest hang up for me. Thats good to know that it was scripted, I was wondering if that was the case. I didn't really see any option to change the difficulty, but with the long loading times, I didn't have much tolerance to go back and look for them either. I think for now I may pre-order it, and then wait a few to days for the reviews to come in before I actually purchase it outright. Thanks for the response.

I have a few questions regarding the demo. I haven't played any of the total war games before. I am tempted to buy it because I have seen some deals with Rome Total War being included, and have heard generally good things about the series. 1) Does anyone else have problems with the loading times? I takes me a good 10 minutes to get from launching the game to actually get into the battle (after going through the various menu choices), and then once the battle is over I get another long loading screen. My specs are slightly above minumum (3.0 pentium D processer, 2 GB ram, 3850 512 MB AGP graphics card). I can live with long loading times to get in and out of a game (i.e. SH III with GWX 3.0), but if it takes this long to load up every battle then I will pass. 2) Battle of Brandywine Creek seemed kinda easy. I move my troops to the west crossing, and while the AI did try to harrass me with some long range riflemen and several other units, the bulk of his army stayed put. Then I just split my army up and marched down the two valleys between the hill, with the cavalry and cannons in the middle on the hill, and easily defeated the Americans. I really didn't pay any attention to the various strengths of my army, and even managed to get my general killed, but it didn't make any difference. I was expecting a bigger challange. Is this typical for the total war series AI? Thanks, DBaron

on the PC you have to enable the console and put in 'tfc' (free camera) and 'tm' to turn off the HUD.

I am playing as a general wasteland explorer, who is proficient with guns. I don't sneak, or use melee, lasers or heavy weapons. This has been my expierence with combat so far On the plus side it it way better than the previous incarnations of FO. No more waiting for 15 various rats and pigrats to take their turn, so you can take your 1 turn, and watch Vic and Sulik shoot each other. Plus you always knew where all the opponents were, which is not the case in FO3. VATS gets better as your get more perks that specialize in it. At earlier levels I used it mainly for close quarters, since my chance to hit anything long to medium range using it sucked. Now that I have better skills, and more perks for VATS, I use a combination of VATS and realtime. In realtime, playing as a FPS, FO3 is not that good. In fact is is pretty bad. The humans and animals move around alot, and some can take quite a few shots to put down. The guns are not terrible accurate either, so its hard (for me anyway) to kill things at long ranges. Plus the long range weapons have very small clip sizes. This tends to lead to long fights any time I am facing well armed opponents. You can go through suprising large amounts of ammunition and stimpacks quite rapidly. I am constantly being forced to fall back from advancing raiders/supermutants to reload, and always to have to keep my on eye on my surroundings, and my ammuntion levels. Or could be that I just suck. Ironically the robots are far easier to kill than the raiders or supermutants because they move so slowly and lasers don't do that much damage. One thing that is really annoying is exploding cars. This isn't that much a problem in the wastelands, but in the city there a tons of them, and they explode constantly. It really sucks when a stack of them go off next to you. The AI is a mixed bag. Sometimes they do really stupid things, other times they will try and flank you. There have been plenty of times that I have been so focused on that raider with the rocket launcher, that I never see the one with the combat shotty flank me. For the most part the armed opponets will advance slowly, while the melee characters will rush you immeadiately (and sometimes throw a grenade if they have one). Keep in mind, that combat is heavily dependants on your location. In the countryside there is plenty of space to move around in, its easier to spot the opponents because there is less backgroud clutter, and more melee orientated opponents so VATS is more beneficial. In DC proper, there are armed opponents everywhere, so combat occurs at medium to long ranges, and you always have to be sure you not standing next to a car that could blow up at any second. Downtown DC is one gun fight after the next, and its hard to avoid combat.

Played this all weekend. So far it has proven to be a very good game.

I sort of agree with your statement that we are getting more for our money then ever before. The last console I bought was a gamecube new, and after the first year I hardly played it. Towards the end of its lifecycle I picked it up again, once there was quite a few quality used titles out for it. I have over 40 games for it (most bought used) and in the end I still feel I got my moneys worth, as the kids sometimes play it, and the games I have for it, I or my kids, will be able to play on a wii, assuming I can find one for sale. If it wasn't for the wii and the fact that it still works as good as new after what (7 or 8 years) then I would say I didn't get my moneys worth. However, an Xbox 360, with all its hardware failures I would disagree with. With the price cuts upcoming for the Xbox maybe I will get one, but only if I know that RROD issues have been resolved. The PS3 remains way to pricey, with confusing configurations, I don't care for blu-ray, and many of its exclusives have gone over to the xbox. Where I got real value for my money was not in consoles or pc, but in my DS. I've put way more hours of gameplay on that than either the pc or my seldom used gamecube. The games are cheaper (especially used), with a wide range of genres to choose from, and thanks to the touch screen and dual screen, unique games, or new takes on old styles of games.

I just ate at Haab's. It wasn't anything special, but then again I'm no food critic. For Ann Arbor you can check out this site http://www.arborweb.com/ And you just missed the Art Fair.

CMC Colonization Fallout 3 Diablo 3 NWN 2: Storms of Zehir Etrain Odyssey II (need to buy) Puzzle Quest: Galatrix

Just to be sure...no splitting means that if the author of a campagian deems the ME to be company size, then I am stuck using the whole company throughout the campaign. I couldn't leave one platoon behind after a battle, and continue attacking with other two?

Apologies if this has been asked before, but how will weather be handled during the course of a campaign? Will it just vary from day to day randomly, or will there be some sort of weather system in place?

The way I understand is each quadrant in 2x2 tile square has a victory flag for it. So on the corresponding cmbb map, you can only have 1 victory flag now? Or can you still have several large and small victory flags?