Archangel3371 said:

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is getting excellent reviews. I may have to consider picking this game up.

i can't wait to play it but since i'm only interested in the single player campaign I will have to wait until the price I pay reflects that ie about half the price of a new game

eggmiester said:

robio said:

I don't think a console version of Diablo 3 is necessarily a bad thing. Sure the PS1 port was bad, but that was a different time. There were some very good hack and slash games on consoles in recent years, and I think that if Blizzard was handling the console version themselves it would turn out just fine.

different time did blizzard stopped becoming  a money grubbing company that doesn't care about players? no never mind of coarse not they did give up on games to focus on a mmo game that to this date take up 80% of there effort to keep it going and"fresh"

Different time as in there was still too much of a difference in "horse power" between consoles and PC's. It's not nearly what it is today and you can take a game from a PC and put it on a console without sacrificing much, if anything, in quality.

robio said:

Different time as in there was still too much of a difference in "horse power" between consoles and PC's. It's not nearly what it is today and you can take a game from a PC and put it on a console without sacrificing much, if anything, in quality.

Eh, there really wasn't that much difference at the time, with 3D acceleration itself being fairly new. Quake and Mario 64 were out in the same year for example. If you find original Quake videos it certainly didn't look very superior then (but might do so now, with graphical modifications and crisp high resolution rendering). Ocarina of Time came close to Quake II's release. Tomb Raider was a 3D marvel across all systems, showcasing the new 3D chips on PCs, and consoles like the PS1 and Saturn. Quake even got a Saturn port, as did other 3D marvels of the era. There were plenty console games matching up to such titles as well, like Exhumed/Powerslave.

Blizzard's games are always quite low end anyway. They never really showcased what PC hardware is capable of.

What stats did they take off? How are the skills less RPG-like? How is the combat more action oriented when it was all real time action already? All I saw is that they've added actual variety to it, having players use multiple skills in sequence to be effective in combat (similar to WoW even, but more real time I guess), rather than just one primary and a secondary skill set to right click. That's a good thing for me, and not necessarily (more) un-RPG (than the whole series). I use lots of different skills playing actual RPGs like IWD and BG2, more than in Diablo 1 and 2 which had way too simplified "hold click and hammer the potion hotkey" mechanics which bored me.

robio said:

Diablo 3 Coming to Consoles

This is an interesting development.  Half the reason I've been thinking about getting a new gaming PC was for Diablo 3.  If it's coming out for and HD system that reason suddenly becomes significantly less compelling. Must wait for further details.

I think they'd be nuts not to bring it out to the HD consoles.

aspro said:

Archangel3371 said:

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is getting excellent reviews. I may have to consider picking this game up.

They did something different with this one right?

darthhomer said:

Good god, that Bizarre story is depressing. Sure, part of the industry after winding down from production...but the whole studio? LAME.

Yeah, it's terrible news.  They shoudl have stuck with driving games.  It only took Black to convince Criterion to stick to what they know.

I only read the Eurogamer review.  they basically said that the single player campaign is excellent, greatly varied and very satisfying.  i think perhaps the major difference is that you train and employ assassin's other than yourself to off targets.  other than that it sounded very similar to no 2 with a few new concepts and with developing some of the ones which appeared in 2 (like the town building) a bit further.  The review barely touched upon the multiplayer and if i'm not mistaken it may have even suggested that they felt it might get old fast.  so it doesn't seem like they did anything drastically different but they built incrementally on what foundation they had with the first 2 games.

Really want to play this.  I think ACII was the best time I had gaming this year.

lordandrew said:

I am now accepting nominations in the category of Best Developer Fucked Over By Activision.

That's gonna be a pretty close competition.

SteelAttack said:

Ew! Money! How gross! Companies should survive only on "thank you" notes by fans.

And really, there are companies out there far more deserving of that "they don't care about players!" description. I'm not saying Blizzard is without flaws, but come on.

And what's with the made-up stats and percentages?  

+1 to you good sir.

SteelAttack said:

lordandrew said:

I am now accepting nominations in the category of Best Developer Fucked Over By Activision.

That's gonna be a pretty close competition.

I mix up which one have been fucked by Acitivsion and which have been fucked by Micorosoft and EA.

Ensemble (MS)

Pandemic & Westwood (EA)

Bizarre Creations (Activision)

Does Rare count? Or is that suicide?

eggmiester said:

in america we don't even send thank you notes more of just say about damn time now give me my game. and made up percentages are the best, but just look at blizzards  track record lately, once wow came out for 5 years they did nothing but wow ignoring the fans wants then finally  released starcraft 2  12 years after the first game and after  a year of talkng about it,  and diablo 3 is coming out 9 years after diablo 2 and its still nearly a year away and it was first announced  in 08, blizzard is now starting to care about non wow players but not as much as wow.

I think you're being unfair. Let me elaborate:

• Even before WoW, their release schedule was anything but abundant. They largely depended on Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, practically since Orcs and Humans and onwards, and considering the importance of these franchises, it's understandable that each iteration of those franchises would have been preceded by exceedingly long development periods where Blizzard would playtest, iterate and polish those games to a mirror finish. Nothing rushed, they practically coined the term "It'll be done when it's done". I mean, WC3 came 7 years after Tides of Darkness, and that was before WoW entered the equation.

• They struck gold with WoW. But with the phenomenal, unexpected success of their MMO, it's only logical they had to reallocate resources (people, money, time) into what was quickly evolving into a juggernaut. That definitely had a negative impact in the development cycles of their other franchises. So it's not as they neglected their other games in favor of WoW, it's that they had to put everything on hold to focus on their top priority at the moment, which was building solid foundations for WoW. It was also a smart business decision, as time has showed us.

• Of course, in time, they found themselves with enough money and resources to buff their development teams and resume work on SC2 and Diablo3, which would explain their abnormally long development cycles. You have to pick up your battles. Blizzard chose to focus all their attention, for a few years, into WoW, and their bet paid off handsomely. It's most likely, also, that a lot of WoW money has been used to fund SC2 and D3 development, so in the end, it all worked out alright.