RAbbi_74

I found Iggy just as soon as I hit the submit button. Good times. Oh yeah, Gran Turismo 2 was the sole reason I favored Playstation all these years over Xbox. Not that it matters now, as I have no kidneys to spare in exchange for a next gen console. Speaking of scummy stuff in-game... Did anyone here get the awful-looking NFT helmet in Breakpoint? Like, even if they're not my most-hated video game company out there, UbiSoft is definitely a close second place at worst in the "Most Tone Deaf Publisher or Developer" category. Let's take a moment to appreciate their idiocy... - Rainbow Six: They follow up the sensational success of R6:Siege with that R6:Extraction nonsense. Who asked for it? Nobody. Who thinks it's flaming poo in a paper bag? Everybody. - Splinter Cell: Haven't had a new title since I could still run a few miles without losing feeling in my feet. (That's a LONG time, BTW.) Plenty of small tie-ins with GR, but we haven't had a new game with playable 4th Echelon SIGINT ninja in how many years? Next game is coming, but it's years away yet by any reasonable estimate. - The Division: PTS for the new TD2 game mode is mixed-bag, and the constant disconnects are NOT a good look. Not much hope for the supposedly forthcoming new content. And Heartland is the one-off BR that nobody asked for. No TD3 on the horizon, though it's a safe bet it's coming eventually. - Ghost Recon: After all the crap that Breakpoint got for screwing up what worked so well in Wildlands, along comes Ubi doubling down with Frontline (another BR, because there aren't enough of those out there yet) and NFTs (No ######ing Thanks). Not a single PvE campaign coming in the next few years at least. NOT ONLY do I insist that the Tom Clancy's name ought never be developed by any studio other than RSE, but I now doubt that anyone developing those games under UbiSoft can succeed. That success would have to come IN SPITE OF the publisher, because Ubi is incapable of identifying what made a game great and capitalizing on it in the next. They can't. They won't. I wonder what MicroProse is up to these days...

Well, not withstanding that rant... (How do you block another user here again?) Yeah, Ubi's in bad shape. IMO they're still mid-pack in the hatred race, a distant third behind Activision-Blizzard (2nd) and EA (WAY out in front after Anthem and the "surprise mechanics" argument). They got a pass because Wildlands was in many ways the successor that OGR deserved, delivered a decade and a half later. It was imperfect, sure. It had its problems. But I gotta tell ya, I loved it. Breakpoint improved on some parts of that (while tossing some of them aside, and attempting to graft on a sort of Destiny copycat loot system that no one asked for). It's like watching the decade-and-a-half-ago drama play out all over again, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised to see an indestructible helicopter pop up in Frontline. Or some nod to Carlos Ontiveros. Man, I really was not kind to GRAW at all. I bet Ubi blamed Grin for that relative failure. There's probably your big issue over in France, man, if I had to point at one thing that needs to change. Ubi's never going to learn to take responsibility for screwing up the Tom Clancy's games by trying to chase trends (rather than stick to the things that made their games awesome in the first place), and so they're going to keep looking for ways to fit the square pegs (TC's games) into round holes ("I WANT A MOVIE DEAL AND I WANT IT NOW!!" -UbiShaft, probably). Did that sound dirty? It did, didn't it? I'ma put myself in timeout. Peace!

I kinda like @ZJJ's suggestion of a reunion deal. A lot has changed in the last 14/15 years. Would be nice to catch up.

It's technically neither, but that attack helicopter I saw at the one Unidad base was a Cobra. Some variant of the AH-1 Cobra, the grandpappy of American attack helicopters and one of only two pure attack helicopters to ever serve in the US so far. What it is not in any imaginable way, shape, or form, is a F###ING APACHE. Source: Spent 12 of my 22 years in the US Army working specifically on AH-64 APACHE attack helicopters, first the AH-64A for 3 years, and then the AH-64D. Look, I could even get some player mixing it up and thinking the MH6 knockoffs are actually OH-58 knockoffs. Weedeaters look like weedeaters, you know? But Apaches and Cobras do not look at all alike, if you're paying any attention whatsoever. FAQs: - "But RAbbi, it has that thingy on top the spinny thingy, so it must be an Apache--isn't that what that means?" NO. Do pushups. First, the AH-64A Apache never had that, just a small ADS on top of the big spinny thingy. Second, while the AH-64D and AH-64E *can* have that, it's not necessary to have that. When the AH-64D was first fielding to the US Army, about 3/8 of them actually fielded the Longbow Fire Control Radar (FCR) system. - "But RAbbi, isn't it just a game and therefore irrelevant detail to an obvious work of fiction?" NO. Do flutter kicks, numbnuts. Tom Clancy himself is rolling over in his grave at the suggestion that such an oversight was committed in his name. Attention to detail was a huge theme in all of TC's work. The details had to be so right, that people who spent a career doing it for real could think that he did too if they didn't know better. A SF soldier mistaking a Cobra for an Apache is pretty much unthinkable. It's not even that they're trained on aircraft recognition (maybe, maybe not--I don't know), but that they're not the type to call a helicopter a Cobra or Apache unless they KNOW it is, and would otherwise stick to what they DO know: "It's a helicopter." - "Aren't you being a bit picky here?" NO. Laps, go! You don't stop until it make ME puke, crackhead! Lack of attention to detail is, despite whatever statistics you may have read, the single biggest contributor to the deaths of otherwise decent men in combat. More than hygiene, more than that the enemy was apparently just pretty good at what he did, etc. This isn't Call of Battlefield, god dammit. This is not ArmA. This is video gaming's pinnacle of give-a-damn about reality and realistic scenarios. Hey, remember in 2008 when Russia invaded parts of Georgia to protect pro-Russian rebels in South Ossetia? Did that sound familiar at all? Cuz that was the scenario in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, to within a couple months. Are the people who mix up Apache and Cobra attack helicopters really gonna nail that sort of prediction? No, they are not. KEEP RUNNING TIL I PUKE!

RSE as a developer for the PC version would be good news (no offense, GRIN). Y'all have fun when this comes out!

Signed.

Good point. While I can do a FAR better job myself, I need a like item with which to work. No such critter exists for the Alien Blaster. Maybe I'll spare Moira. But that leaves me wondering how to slaughter the REST of Underworld without alienating her... Decisions, decisions... Sooner or later I'll run out of ammo for the blaster, and THEN she may well be done for... And that Three Dog HATES me right now. I feel like that guy in the XFL (back of jersey: 'HE HATE ME')...

I was just on my way to find out, too. Interesting sidebar- Moira Brown will still give you the quest and tasks for the Wasteland Survival Guide even after you blow-up Megaton. She may well be the ONE person in the Capitol Wasteland who thinks it's COOL to get turned into a ghoul... I'm gonna help her with the book, if only for the perks, and then kill her anyway. Dart gun v.2 to the head, beeotch!

Is that the dame I met in the first town, in the bar? Funny enough, that's when I started kicking myself about the caps. Yup. When first you enter Moriarty's Saloon, she's the one with Gob messing with the radio. Let's just say that the 120 caps doesn't ONLY buy you a room for the night, but some 'company' as well... Luckily, the game was made with kids in mind as well, and doesn't go into any detail at all... On a lighter note, I finally got to drink the sap at Oasis and meet Harold/Bob/whoever. Good stuff. I now have skin like tree bark. That, along with the after-effects of Moira Brown's radiation sickness experiment, leave me wondering what OTHER character mutations are out there... And I found another interesting spot just West of there, on the very Northern edge of the map. Not a fast-travel location, but still interesting. Some good loot there. And just west of THAT, another dead lone wastelander with an interesting note... Wonder who Marko is... And I wonder- after I find Dad, can I kill-off Three Dog? I'm gonna try that, since he's talking even MORE smack on me on the air now...

I think I am gaming too much. Seriously, at first I read the above as "Al Gore has now outlawed the use of COD5 flame throwers." Hehehe... They emit Carbon Monoxide and stuff... They're bad, m'kay?

OOOOHHHHHHHHH! Drool Factor Ten! I haven't found any of those yet, except maybe for the repeater. Did get the Victory Rifle (sniper rifle + 1,000,000,000,000 coolness), Ol' Painless (cool doublebarrel shotgun, I think), the Terrible Shotgun (most badassed combat shotgun in the CW, yo!), and something else I'm sure. The silenced 10mm pistol is weak, sure, but it's great for some Sam Fisher moments, especially once you level-up to where you can get a headshot once in a while. Sneak attacks are ALWAYS critical, after all! The dart gun is teh seks, though. All the homemade weapons rock my soxx! I'm a shishkebob-weilding fool in those dark underground tunnels full of ghouls. And the rock-it launcher! Killing with ashtrays and paperweights and scorched pre-war books is TOO fun! Haven't ever messed with the console yet. Been tempted, though... @Rocky: Set aside 120 caps for Nova. You won't regret it...

Ah, the old compromise- give up some control for the relative safety of console (read: virus-free) gaming! I've got no problem with that. My personal preference in game controls, in most cases, is the keyboard/trackball setup. Hence I game on PC. Butyou do have a very good point there- console gaming is, for the time being, much safer. On the other hand, you just KNOW there's some overweight 12 year-old in his bedroom right now trying to write a trojan horse for XboX Live or something. It's only a matter of time... Pink diamonds... Must... revive... GRAWtrix... undead... helicopter................... <scurries off to laptop to retrieve... something....>

HAHAHAHAHAHA... Ha... No, not one of those. Screenie to follow shortly... http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c100/jay.../aliencraft.jpg You'll notice just to the left of what appears to be the cockpit, you can more or less make out the disgusting-green-head-in-a-fish-bowl alien. Well, part of him and his space suit, anyhow. The radiation there at the craft is HIGH, but not nearly as HIGH as what's nearby... And there you'll find the alien blaster with +/- 100 rounds of ammo. TRUST ME, it's the bomb-pimp-dizzniggity gun for that final raid on Project Purity- somehow, the Enclave soldiers just can't seem to withstand it's might! A must for any serious wanderer of the Capitol Wasteland...

Actually, there are quite a few console gamers here. We do sometimes tend to get a little too wrapped-up in the PC-specific versions of these games, though.

I envy your optimism. I do not envy the blow you'll get when GR4 is released. Well, "worse" is subjective of course. GR was a different beast, all tactical and realism. All subsequent titles have become increasingly action-arcade oriented. GRAW1 for the console was, by all accounts, a great game. GRAW1 for PC was not. It was developed entirely separately, specifically to cater to the tastes of the PC audience. As such it failed completely: It lacked the realism and non-linear tacticalness of the original. GRAW2 for PC was a markedly better game, clearly showing the developer GRIN learning from their mistakes and improving on their product. It wasn't a bad game. But it was still not the realism-oriented, non-linear tactical game that GR1 was. Personally, I've become convinced that Ubisoft simply can't produce a worthy hardcore tactical-realism first person shooter even if they try. That doesn't mean that they can't make good games as such. But I'm not looking for "games as such". Respectfully krise madsen Quite well said. @BamBam38- maybe you're right, in at least one sense. Bugs aside, GRAW and GRAW2 were NOT bad games. Of course, they were completely unplayable for at least a few folks, and the bugs were annoying enough for most of us. Initially, the responsibility for that falls on the developers, but when the money faucet runs dry for them to fix the game, all eyes rightfully turn back to the publisher. GRAW ended at v1.35, as I recall, and while that included many new features specifically requested by this bunch here at GRnet, it was not at all a polished, finished product. From the grenade-launcher bug to the rate-of-fire bug to the missing texture in John Doe's Hellhole (I THINK that's the name of that MP-only map), and on to some far more serious problems like the lack of a decent anti-cheat, GRAW was a diamond very much in the rough. And one needs merely check the tech support thread for GRAW2 to see how unfinished a product that one is. I mean, over a year later we STILL can't get a fix to the missile-launcher bug in that level with the dam and the two helicopters. I know nothing of the console versions, granted. I've played neither (aside form a few minutes at a BestBuy store with GRAW for XboX360) and could therefore offer no intelligent assessment (some would argue I've never offered anything intelligent anyhow... ) of those games. For all I know, they were the ultimate in gaming. But I only play ONE game on console, and it's got nothing at all to do with guns... But the biggest problem is what GRAW/GRAW2 did NOT deliver, relative to their namesake- a solid open, tactical shooter. To this day, the [Ghost Recon] (with expansions IT and DS) has never been matched, in my humble opinion. It is (not was) a benchmark for many of us; a benchmark which has been all but abandoned for greater profit and flashier graphics. This is truly the PC player's problem, and clearly not a big issue for the console players. The difference between [GR] and GRAW for PC was night-and-day. And along with the disappointing recent releases in it's sister franchise, Rainbow Six (Lockdown, Vegas and Vegas II all failing to hold up to the standard of Raven Shield or any previous installment), this indicates a direction for Ubisoft, the publisher of the whole Tom Clancy universe. It's not a direction that we fans of [GR] and oldskool R6 are happy with. It's a direction that sacrifices the feeling of realism, tactics, and teamwork, for a flashy, Hollywood, hero-centered game experience which we fled when first we turned to [GR]. Damn the man! FISTS IN THE AIR! I still play [GR] to this day, and I'll never touch another Ubisoft title again, so help me...