JasonM

Just finished the mission "The Real World"

THEY BLEW UP THE EARTH! AHHH! THOSE MONSTERS!

....did I just hear something about Johnny Gat?!

Srar, I know there is a point of no return for the main storyline, but that is way late into the game (but after you are done, you get to go back into the simulation)

I think he knows, but I think he is like me that he wants to wrap everything up before the end so that the game is completely done content-wise.

We have this coming in the mail. I have never played a Splinter Cell game before. Whats the difficulty like?

Truly depends on your playstyle. If you want to go full-stealth and don't even disturb the guards, it can border on downright hatred of the game when one guy doesn't stop looking at the area you need to go through... In broad day light.

That being said, if you loosen the chains and go stealth + knockouts/kills the game is much more forgiving because you can just roam around and lure people to you before snatching them around the corner.

Do note though, you can go combat but on the higher difficulties you are going to get a royal asskicking by the mooks. They throw nades and they can swarm you quick because your cover isn't a 100% bullet stopper. And your armor isn't going to soak up a lot of damage. It still pays to be patient and try to pick people off, and with the mark&execute stuff it's very badass to grab someone and then use his own gun to mow down his friends.

I'll pick it up whenever I get around to buying a PS3. Nice to hear that the game's not trying to railroad you into the action-movie kill-'em-all mindset as much as I was fearing.

Well there are a few bits that are nigh-impossible/impossible to completely ghost. But even then you can always rely on smacking people in the face, tazing them or throwing a noisemaker. Aside from those, most maps give you free reign in stealthing or assaulting your way through. Even though there tend to be 2 paths, and not the total openness of the old Chaos Theory map, like that one bank mission <3

So, anybody got this game?

Well I do, and I got to say... Ubisoft did a better job than I had expected with this game.
What I expected, was more of Splinter Cell: Conviction, with Sam Fisher pretty much going Jason Bourne on every bitch until he ran out of bitches to Bourne.

Instead they did the sensible thing, and they actually took the best of both worlds by giving you the easy and fluffed up ''Jason Bourne'' style where you go through every man/woman/dog on your way and just murderize anyone.

Or you can go old-school and actually sneak your way through every map, trying to avoid every guard and at best take them out non-lethally and hide them somewhere they can't be found.

Basically you can choose yourself what you do, and the game gives you experience points dependant on your style.

Do you sneak around and avoid guards and only use non-lethal stealth takedowns? Then you get points in the ''Stealth'' category that levels you up further to those things.

Do you want a bit of both, where you sneak around and just cut everyone's throat but do try to take it silently, then you get points in the ''Panther'' category, which is basically a mix between stealth and action...

Of course if you want to go in and leave a trail of dead bodies in your wake, you get points in the ''Combat'' category.

Every tree has it's own pro's and con's, and both Combat and Stealth looks interesting in doing a playthrough with it.

The stealth has it's up and down's, it's not as great as Chaos Theory, and most of the time you feel like you are ''hiding'' in light conditions anyone could easily spot you in. And sometimes it's infuriating how the game almost forces you to at least go with takedowns or use a stun gun on your enemies, if not plain kill em. And coming from the old school Chaos Theory ''No spot, no takedowns, no bodies'' style of playing, it can get a little annoying knowing that the only way you can continue is by busting a few heads. It's not gamebreaking, but it's certainly not great when you are a real ''old-school'' Splinter Cell fan.

Also adding, both Sam Fisher and Grim have gotten new voice actors, and neither are for the better. Ironside was pretty much impossible to replace, but they didn't really do a good job at it either, going with a very generic and also very young sounding VA, someone that really doesn't sound as gruff or as calloused as the original Sam Fisher. And it almost feels jarring when his voice sounds about the same age as his young-adult daughter. The thing that probably annoys me the most about this new VA, is that he sounds completely devoid of any emotion when talking. Early on something gets mentioned about his daughter being kidnapped and he sounds extremely unattached to something that should get him riled up.

And of course, knowing Grim from all those Splinter Cell games, the change in her voice is easier to take but it's still very generic and very cookie cutter.

Adding to that cast, you got the perky and flippant tech-nerd that provides the comic relief of the group, and the by-the-numbers field partner who provides overwatch and gives tactical information. And finally you got a returning customer from Conviction whom I will not name, but he is voiced by the same guy that did Adam Jensen... And hearing his voice is really jarring because his voice is already ingrained into my skull as Jensen...

And the final thing about voice actors, Carlo Rota (Miles O'Brian from 24. LMOTP) voices the big-bad of this game, and I for one love the choice because he has a great voice.

I haven't gotten far yet in the story, having only played the opening mission and the 1st real mission of the game. But all in all it sounds like an interesting albeit by the numbers action story.

The main mission are supplemented with side missions ranging from old school ''Plant bugs somewhere without getting spotted'' to ''Hold off something waves for the exfil to arrive''. None of the side missions force you to do things one way, but they do offer you bonuses like keeping the completely undisturbed (no KO's, no contact) during the stealthy mission, something that adds a lot of challenge because the side-mission maps are pretty dang tiny with plenty of mooks to ruin your shit. The majority of those side-missions are co-op capable too, for whoever is so inclined in doing so.

Finally there is the spies vs. mercs PvP mode, I haven't played it yet because I am focused on the story and maybe just maybe I will try it out once I am done with the story.

All in all, this game is certainly the best iteration since Chaos Theory. The stealth isn't as intuitive and smooth as in that game, but it caters to the best of both worlds giving stealth buffs and action buffs plenty of love. Some stuff like the semi-forced action bits are a put off, because I for one want to do 100% ghost runs like in the old games, but this game is MUCH more fun than Conviction was.

Since this has gone on for quite a bit and I have said a lot, I guess a completely relative score would be in order... And from what I have done and played, I give it a good 8.5

Anyways, enough of my rambling. If other people have it, post in here and talk about it and such.

Too bad you will all bite a bullet when I rip both of you off doing nothing at all.

Does it carry anything from your saves over?

Pretty sure the only thing that gets carried over is your character, if you so choose.

Your Vice President is pretty awesome too.

MOTHAFUCKING KEITH DAVID

The more I see more and more stuff being announced by Rockstar, the more I think ''How on earth can all this be true''. Because really this sounds too good to be true, but knowing Rockstar this is truth.

Man, my expectations are way too high right now.

Well the best way to deal with gavelkind is get rid of gavelkind.

Two ways to do it.

1: Conquer all the religious centers and reform (or whatever its called) your religion, it will make it organised and give you the option to choose any kind of sucession law.

2: Second way which is completely unviking-like is to try to change your religion to one of the more organised kinds. Marry to a catholic/muslim/orthodox wife and have her tutor the kids, there is a change your kid will take over her faith. (and culture)

At this point I think Updated Match Engine is the FM equivalent of Updated Kits and Players in Fifa

Basically the same idea with ''More realistic Transfers''.

And I really hope the ''tactical overhaul'' will actually give us something better to work with. And with better I mean having more freedom in general on how I want to place my players rather than be forced to stick to predefined grid places.

If I want to have 10 centrebacks, they should fucking give me the option!

Millions of gold and buy every single holy army in existence + mercenary band. Hope your massive gigantic money sucking deathstack doesn't attrition down to death until you get to the actual battle.

Basically, that's the point of their 158K deathstack, just let them chase a 100 man unit across the lands and let them wittle down to a manageable number.

I pretty much do the same, except for when I am building an Empire. Then I will at least keep 1 family member in each ''kingdom'' part as respect Kings under my main family members empire. It's not the best way to go around doing things, but I want to make sure my family is as strong as possible and having 3-4 Kings and an emperor to boot in your dynasty, your prestige goes into overdrive.

That's just fucking ridiculous, but I am sure some rich idiot will waste his cash on it anyways.

Also, fiddled around with the character creator a bit last night and like with SR3 I was a bit underwhelmed by the choice of clothing. I can't really place it but it's just random shit for randomness sake and there isn't a lot of ''normal stuff'' in there to pick.

I still hold preference to the clothing and the like from SR1 and 2, that just looked better in general for me. It could also be part because of the different art direction of the past two games.

But of course I will play the hell out of the game regardless.

I forget the specifics, but I remember one of my games of this back in the day, I was the King of Ireland, and I married the Queen of Scotland... so my kid ended up being heir to both, so when I died and became my son, should I feel bad that I plotted sucessfully to have my mother murdered, so I would have her throne asap?

I am tempted to reinstall this, I haven't installed since getting my new PC, but I have over 100 hrs played and I still suck. >.<

How do you get them to marry you?!

Usually they refuse because they are too high in the line of succession or something.

Female Queens (where?) notoriously badly coded in CK2. You can/could easily marry your King off to a Queen without any heirs, and because they don't secure the Queendom by changing crown laws they pretty much hand you their Queendom over to you.

I am sure it was changed with patches and nerfed quite a bit giving Queen's a whole less reason to marry to other King's, but I am sure you can still screw yourself into owning the world... Especially if you are an Emperor.

Yeah, the newer expansions of CK2 really ramped up the backstabbery of the AI, they really try to catch you with your pants down and you need to fight smarter when you are surrounded by powerful foes.

Of course, the easiest way to fix your problem is pimp out one of your daughters into England's family.

When I'm looting Ireland, it's saying I am getting 0 gold. Anyone know the reason for this?

A: Have you enabled ''looting'' in your army, it's a thing that I forget to do a lot forcing me to sail right back home to disembark them in home territory just to sail them back with Looting on.

B: Have you reached your looting cap in the province, every province has one and some are higher than others. Basically it's the fort protecting a part of the stash. When your looting sign next to your stack is colored red, it's time to move to a new province.

C: Finally, your ship (only your ship) needs to reach a home province for the money (and prestige) to be put in your coffers. So make sure you do that too, everything is stashed in there first. To add to that, your looting maximum is dependant on the amount of ships you have in the stack. 1 ship = 10 gold 2 = 20 10 = 100 etc.

If done right, you can earn a fuck tonne of money as a minor count and kickstart your province development (or finance wars). I consistently earn around 100 gold per looting run, and there is no cap on the amount of times you can loot.

Just as a tip, loot 'n' run is the only tactic that is smart, once you see a stack move in on your looters just hop back into your ship and go somewhere else. So unless you have a deathstack (which you wont as a count), just go guerilla viking.

Racist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPxwoxzVYls

It's a Norse reason for war, basically you can attack any other Norse ruler and take all their titles.

Hmm...I couldn't do that, I still had to fabricate claims. Maybe it was because I was someones vassal?

Pretty sure that shouldn't be a problem. I am a vassal and I could still declare war on my neighbours for subjugation. You need to pick the ''become king'' ambition, then you get the chances to wreck shit with your neighbours.

Speaking of wrecking shit, I absolutely love trolling around Ireland looting the shit out of the small counties as they are too busy to stab each other to death, and quickly GTFO'ing when they realise I have taken all their gold. Just had a nice looting run getting me 60 gold. Great way to finance my war buildings

And basically what you need to do is get the ambition ''become king of insert kingdom'', that gives you free game to attack your neighbours to be able to form that Kingdom.

It's still a bitch though, and it's best to build up your forces. Because with Gavelkind you get fucked up the bum when you got multiple kids and they all get a slice of the demesne pie.

Bought Old Gods, Republic, and Sword of Islam for $8.72.

Should I bother with Legacy of Rome/Sunset Invasion?

Maybe and no.

LoR adds some interesting stuff like mending the schism (Orthodox/Catholicism become the one true faith, the other a heresy) and some other Byzantine stuff. But compared to other DLC's it's pretty light on content.

Sunset Invasion is stupid, don't get it.

Ugh, I wish they would sell a version without the music packs or Sunset Invasion.

I would love to get CK2 legit, but I sure as hell don't want to pay for music that I will have muted anyways. And only cherrypicking the DLC will cost me more than the collection >_>

When disease breaks out, is there anything you can do really? Or what happens happens?

I am not sure, but I guess you could call up your levy and have your leader command them in a province that doesn't have an outbreak. Wouldn't help the rest of the courtiers though.

Hmm....I think I'll give Poland a shot

You aren't the first to say this, and this concerns me greatly

I feel bad for laughing at this.

Since seemingly everybody here and their mothers have started off and first learned to play CKII as Ireland, where's another good place to start? It's just the pseudo-hipster in me asking....

Poland is a decent romp to learn stuff. You start out reasonably powerful with pagans to the north, a possible ally in the HRE to the west, and Hungary to the south and also bunch of orthodox dukes and kings to the east.

If you can marry your way into an alliance with Hungary/HRE or just a duke like Bohemia, then you are in a very strong position to own the baltic in 1-2 generations. The pagans can be a boon if they gang up on you, but with friends in your corner it shouldn't be a problem.

And also there is future !!FUN!! when either Sweden or Denmark start to expand into Finland and the Baltic themselves, with 2-3 nations trying to vy for those baltic lands it can get very interesting. And of course the prospects that if the orthodox lands fail to stop hordes, they might end up at your doorstep.

Poland has a steeper-ish learning curve than Ireland, but it gets you into action quicker and also teaches you the more intricate parts of being a King and having Dukes and Counts under you.

If you don't like the idea of Poland, you can always go with either of the Spanish Kings, with the added bonus that the western Kings are all family and if either of them dies without kids (including yours), your lands grow a lot. I had a game where Leon and Galicia had tragic ''accidents'' causing their kings to die, and as a result my Castille made up the entire north of spain. And that made subdueing the muslim factions much easier as a whole.

More interesting options for Duchies/Kingdoms are:

Duchy of Apulia (You start out as a Normandian duke in the south of france, Pure italians and the pope to the north and Muslims in Sicily and in North Africa. You have a huge family, many of them ambitious. But if you can play your cards right, you can become the King of Sicily and become a dominant Southern European power. Sometimes Tuscany manages to split from the HRE too, giving you a big juicy target to the north that you can take to form Empire of Italia.

Kingdom of Sweden (You start out in a reasonable place, you are in a civil war with one of the dukes, but you can subdue him with ease. Denmark to the south is the most aggressive trying to get your lands, but they together with Norway start in a war against England, and they almost never win that war so you got time to establish yourselves. Like Poland, there are pagans to the north and east and after you conquer North Sweden you can focus on taking the fight to the Fins. Eventually you are big enough to take on Norway and Denmark to form the Empire of Scandinavia)

Kingdom of England (This is the very first starting date version, the one where you take Harold Godwinson and defend against three aggressors. Denmark/Norway and of course William the Bastard wants your lands and this is a nice challenge and a good lesson in defensive warfare. If you manage to fight off all three attackers, you are in a very strong position and you can get an alliance with the likes of HRE/France to keep the Scandinavian usurpers away for the future. If you survive, you can quickly build your lands by gobbling up Wales and Ireland, and then waiting for Scotland to blow up so that you can pick them apart too. Empire of Brittania is yours for the taking, and this is a nice revisionist history of having Harold avoid getting an arrow to the kn-eye.)

Edit: And one final thing you might be able to try is to find a mod (or do it yourself) that removes the Holy Roman Emperor. That makes all the lands underneath their own duchies/counts, and that opens up the entirety of central europe for a massive clusterfuck of warring between German/Dutch/Bohemian/Italian lords wanting to kill each other and become the strongest man out there. Trust me, it's not everyones cup of tea but it's a whole lot more interesting than that massive grey blob.

King of France is a little kid and starts surrounded by a bunch of scheming siblings, right?

Yup, and you got both England/William, Duke of Aquitaine and also the HRE to keep away from ruining your shit.

Yeah, they've made a pretty big deal about Gat being back. Also half the voice actors they've revealed have voiced bad guys from previous games. Neil Patrick Harris for example.

I am very happy to have Gat back, and I really hope he gets the spotlight like he got in 1 and 2. Quite frankly, 3 lacked the charm of the previous ones also partly due to Gat's general psychotic insanity and his Honey Badger mentality. He also gave the most emotional part of 2 when Aisha got offed and Gat got stabbed into the hospital.

Saints Row 3 lacked that real ''friend'' for the hero and the likes of Shaundie and Pierce are just ''those guys who follow the hero'' and not guys who are on level terms with the hero. And the cameos diluted their roles even more to just general secondary characters.

So hopefully Gat can regain his thunder in 4, because I fucking love Johnny Gat.