eugimon

seriously, where's the freaking photo gallery on the yf-21???

nice find, thanks for the pics! Fighter mode is looking super sweet. graham, we've seen the TV spot and a magazine scan. can you give us the goods yet?

my prediction was august of 2008 back in the old vf-11 speculation thread and like Dante74 I'm doubtful they'll hit their april release date unless. But if yamato does pull off 2 brand new designs back to back... I don't know what to say... really shows their growth as a company and it's bad news for my wallet.

yeah... I was making the "ha ha"

wow, yf-21 followed immediately by the vf-11??? that's crazy, and here I predicted we wouldn't have it till august or so. Happy to be wrong!

Maybe Bale lost a bet or somthing. That's what I'm thinking. Hell, I like dumb popcorn movies but even I can't stand McG.

I have to say, one thing I'm really enjoying about the direction in ME is that it takes a page from the Firefly/BSG playbook and it "shoots" scenes as if there was a real camera and cameraman... a big step towards selling this as an interactive movie.

oooh, the last time we saw a valk firing off so many guns in fighter mode, it was an animation error

yay you. we have quite a few people here who are well off, we also have people here who are in school or starting out in their careers. No need to turn a fun little thread like this into a pissing match and there's no need to start a political flame war over this either.

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news07/071121g.php apparantly Christian Bale has signed on to this as John conner. don't know what to think now. I think Bale does some good work, and he seems to pick interesting roles...

the fight's aren't *totally* different. you can still chose to pause the battle at anytime to issue commands, change weapons, use your special abilities (if you got'em), but it is real time... so if you want to shoot the bad guy, you have to aim and shoot, not just click the "shoot bad guy" button. But yeah, this is the first RPG in a long time that really grabbed my attention and I'm liking the story and characters. It's pretty standard sci-fi stuff. A lot of it will be familiar to anyone who's read the uplift series, or watch star trek, babylon 5 or Stargate. But it's still pretty well done all the same.

yup yup. If babies weren't so full of crazy durability, we'd never learn how to walk. It's crazy how many times they'll try to walk or run and fall flat on their face and just get up and try again.

yeah, the basic gameplay is the same. There's just a ton of refinements. During dialogue trees, you pick the tone or emotional context of the response, rather than the literal response so the dialogue is more interesting and fresh since you don't know exactly what your character will say. And the battle mechanics are better. It's not like KOTOR where you could basically wade in with your lightsaber and single handidly win. Each class has distinct strengths and weaknesses and you'll need your squadmates for their various battle proficiencies and not just as medics and locksmiths.

I think Mass Effect is worth it, despite its flaws. Well, let me re-phrase that. If you're going to play it like a shooter and run from one encounter to the next, the load times can be annoying. The battle encounters are also pretty short, so don't expect long drawn out fights requiring a great deal of FPS skills. The battles are fun though, plenty of running and ducking and the sticky cover spots work pretty well and the fight mechanics are fun all the same. And if you're stopping to talk to the people/crew in each area, then you won't notice the load times because they'll be insignificant compared to the sheer amount of time you'll spending going through the dialogue and story that you'll get from the characters. Most of the voice actors performances are pretty good and the facial/emtoive system really does work pretty well and does give a more believable emotional depth to scenes. As for replay value, i think it's pretty high. the various classes are pretty distinct, and there doesn't appear to be an all powerful uber class like the Jedi in the SW games. And there's plenty of ingame and character appropriate reasons to play your character as either either good or amoral (I know amoral isn't the opposite of good, but there doesn't seem to be an "evil evil" moral path). The game also blurs the lines, can you be honest, thrifty and law abidding and still be a bigot? Is there a good reason to be a bigot? Stuff like that, it's fun to chew it out with characters over their beliefs because they'll have pretty decent reasons *why* they think the way they do. I haven't encountered any 2 dimensional cut outs, even among the not quite good characters. My main gripe with the game, is the placement of the gernade button. It's the BACK button of all things and it's still a pain for me to use the gernades without hesitation during a fire fight.

the UN Spacy emblems (the little white kites).

Yeah, i really appreciate how you simplified Dobber's scheme yet still maintained the overall look and feel. I think it looks great, if yamato gives us a paint app that approaches that level of work, I'll be very happy.

it looks like they hide pretty damn well in the commercial, but I'm interested in an eyewitness account as well.

I agree that this game could have greatly benefited from a HDD install. This is one area where I think the PS3 has the right idea. I'm on a newer 360 and I haven't had the dramatic FPS drops or 3-5 second texture loads yet... even some of the more complex area seem to load pretty smoothly. I certainly didn't experience death from old age in the elevator that I've heard some people complain about. I guess I should mention that my 360 hasn't crashed (yet) because of this game like I've read as well.

I thought that was funnier than the penny-arcade nit pick gags.

WOW!!!

at least put the kites on, for godsakesman! And yeah, I do like the panel lining on the MP SS. It's nice and clean and I wouldn't mind somthing of that level of quality on my yammies.

well, now that you've already panel lined it, isn't it time to sticker it up?

in a perfect world, i'd pick up this one as well... but with the yf-21 coming out, I just need to prioritize. *shrug*

I just squirrel away money. I figure I'll be buying three or four a year at least so I just figure our finances accordingly.