I apologize to interrupt the politics but this is important. And Open Thread.

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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41 Responses

  1. Plinko says:

    Wait, so Steam doesn’t give it to you fully patched?
    That’s crazy, a huge selling point for Steam is that they keep your game up to date automagically.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Plinko says:

      Steam gives it to you fully patched with the *OFFICIAL* patches. That brings you to version 1.2.

      The Fan Patches bring you up to 7.8.

      It should be noted that the company disbanded (or went bankrupt or something) and the people who made the game went on to keep patching it and unlocking and finding certain things. So the “official” patches could not keep being made after the company went away… even though the “fan” patches are made by the folks who worked for the company.

      You’ll have to turn automatic updates off for this game and just patch it yourself. (It’s worth it!)Report

  2. Ian M. says:

    This is truly one of the great games of the last decade and Jaybird is dead on about the patches. Fan patches extracted tons of content, opened some quests, stabilized the crashing, etc… So buy it and patch the crap out of it and then enjoy.Report

  3. Alan Scott says:

    So, I’m kinda a white-wolf hater. Will I still enjoy it?Report

    • A Teacher in reply to Alan Scott says:

      It kind of depends on why you hate WW.

      The game is HEAVILY steeped in the VtM lore and includes all of the major players and antagonists from the paper/pencil game. As far as RPG’s go it’s a little linear, but it does provide multiple ways to accomplish your ends depending on what kind of character you want to build.

      For $5…. it’s almost worth trying even if you hate it after an hour. I mean.. that’s less than a Starbucks coffee.Report

  4. James K says:

    That’s good enough for me to buy it. Who knows when I’ll get round to playing it, but oh well.Report

  5. Mike says:

    That game’s only remotely worth it if you get all the “unofficial” patches to repair the missing quests, borked shit, and stuff that made the game unplayable in the original troika iteration. The old Activision patches barely patched anything at all.

    Steam won’t allow 3rd party patches, so you’re shit outta luck on it. Their version is a fucking ripoff.Report

  6. John Howard Griffin says:

    This is the best computer RPG that I have ever played

    I’m so sorry to hear that you have never played any of these games, Jaybird, each of which is much better than Vampire:Bloodlines:

    Wizardry
    Ultima
    Final Fantasy
    Elder Scrolls
    Fallout
    Deus Ex
    WOW
    Dragon Warrior
    KOTOR
    Chrono Trigger
    Legend of Zelda
    Baldur’s Gate
    Kingdom Hearts
    Secret of Mana
    Breath of Fire
    Star Ocean
    Dragon Quest
    Starflight
    Legend of Dragoon
    Super Mario RPG
    Xenogears
    Pokemon
    Diablo
    Might and Magic
    or any of the old Goldbox AD&D seriesReport

    • I will be back shortly to discuss these.Report

    • Wizardry and Ultima are both games whose reach exceeded their grasp. Ultima didn’t become awesome until IV. Wizardry was a great inspiration but not a great game in itself.

      Final Fantasy is the quintessential JRPG. VII is the quintessential Final Fantasy (why didn’t they use a pheonix down???). The gameplay is front and center rather than the story (seriously, the story gets a little… weird and that’s not even talking about X or XIV).

      Elder Scrolls has the most amazing character creation and an absolutely jawdropping next 3 or 4 hours. After that, it’s bigger and badder versions of those next 3 or 4 hours. Oblivion fixed some (but not all) issues with how the game progressed (the levelling system was bullcrap though) and I hope that Skyrim incorporates much of what they learned from…

      Fallout is an absolutely amazing RPG. You are right. This one deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Bloodlines. Fallout 2 kinda sucked, though. 3 caught the environment of 1 but it wasn’t until New Vegas that they finally made a game as good as Fallout. Good point on this one.

      I’ll be back later. (Maribou and I are going to Denver today)Report

      • Kimmi in reply to Jaybird says:

        TN: it’s not “phoenix down” in japanese. it’s “angel’s feather”. but they couldn’t put “angel” in an American video game. I think phoenix down works better, though.Report

      • wsn in reply to Jaybird says:

        Did you ever write that PS:T recommendation post? Because saying there is a better cRPG than PS:T is mighty big talk.Report

      • John Howard Griffin in reply to Jaybird says:

        Fair points, all. Just didn’t think Bloodlines qualifies as “BEST RPG EVAH!” One of the better RPGS? Sure. YMMV.

        Forgot many, though.

        Rogue
        Darklands
        Betrayal at Krondor
        Dungeon Hack (a great roguelike)
        Shadow of Yserbius
        Lands of Lore
        Albion
        System Shock (cheating a little, its FPS/RPG, but I always thought of it as an RPG)
        The Sims (yeah, it’s hard to categorize, but it might qualify as RPG-like)
        Castlevania: SOTN (one of my favs, great music and atmosphere)
        Suikoden
        Grandia (especially the second one)
        Neverwinter Nights
        Island of Kesmai (anyone besides me remember this one?)
        Fairytale Adventure
        Sentinel Worlds
        Planescape: Torment
        Realms of Arkania
        Gothic
        Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

        I’ll stop there, or I’ll be here all night. Take your time, Jaybird. I’ll respond after you have a chance to respond to (or ignore) my list.Report

    • In the process of writing a comment in response to the rest of this and halfway through the cat erased it.

      I will come back later.Report

    • No love for the original Bard’s Tale series? Those were *huge* for me.Report

  7. Boegiboe says:

    OK, I bought it. It better be frickin awesome. (I LARPed the Masquerade back in the day, btw.)Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Boegiboe says:

      Dude. It *IS* frickin’ awesome.

      If you need help patching, lemme know. My email is all over Mindless Diversions. (If I’m not in pocket tonight, it’s because I’m at gaming night.)Report

    • Plinko in reply to Boegiboe says:

      Swank, I had friends that ran a massive seven year campaign of The Masquerade that ended a year or two ago. I could never get into LARPing myself.Report

      • Boegiboe in reply to Plinko says:

        My brother and his best friend ran the game. About 50 people played it on and off, with a core of about 20 folks. One of the players owned an old-fashioned movie theater in our tiny town and let us have total control of it for playing. Hiding behind velvet curtains plotting against Brujah; suddenly faced with an 8th-gen Nosferatu in the balcony. I once had to impersonate Nicole Kidman to get some mages off my trail, because they kept dropping engine blocks on my head otherwise (I guess they could materialize metal or something? Never did understand that…). GOD it was awesome!

        Made the local paper eventually. Ah, the memories will last my whole life. (Thanks bro, if you’re reading this!)Report

  8. John Howard Griffin says:

    I prefer mobygames for reviews and ratings, but since you used Metacritic in your post, here are the ratings I could find for the games I listed.

    Not an appeal to authority, but at least it gives us a point for comparison. Highest rating listed for franchise games, though not all games in a franchise were on Metacritic. Couldn’t find ratings for most of the older games.

    85 – Wizardry 8
    74 – Ultima: Age of Shadows
    94 – Final Fantasy IX
    94 – Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
    93 – Fallout 3
    90 – Deus Ex
    90 – WOW
    78 – Dragon Warrior VII
    94 – KOTOR
    92 – Chrono Trigger
    99 – Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
    95 – Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn
    87 – Kingdom Hearts II
    80 – Secret of Mana
    83 – Breath of Fire IV
    80 – Star Ocean (Till the End of Time and Second Story)
    89 – Dragon Quest VIII: Journey to the Cursed King
    ?? – Starflight
    74 – Legend of Dragoon
    ?? – Super Mario RPG
    84 – Xenogears
    87 – Pokemon (White, Black, SoulSilver, HeartGold)
    94 – Diablo
    ?? – Might and Magic
    ?? – Goldbox AD&D series
    ?? – Rogue
    ?? – Darklands
    ?? – Betrayal at Krondor
    ?? – Dungeon Hack
    ?? – Shadow of Yserbius
    ?? – Lands of Lore
    ?? – Albion
    92 – System Shock 2
    92 – The Sims
    93 – Castlevania: SOTN
    86 – Suikoden III
    90 – Grandia II
    91 – Neverwinter Nights
    ?? – Island of Kesmai
    ?? – Fairytale Adventure
    ?? – Sentinel Worlds
    91 – Planescape: Torment
    ?? – Realms of Arkania
    81 – Gothic
    91 – Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
    88 – Sid Meier’s Pirates
    ?? – WC PrivateerReport

    • John Howard Griffin in reply to John Howard Griffin says:

      Also, I finally read your review and noticed that you went from saying this in your review:

      Easily the best computer adaptation of a tabletop role playing game that I’ve ever experienced.

      to saying this in the above post:

      This is the best computer RPG that I have ever played…

      That seems quite a leap. To me, anyway.

      I think what you say in your review is more accurate (though, one could argue that the early AD&D games might be better).

      And, how could I have forgotten Shadowrun?!

      Speaking of which:

      Uplink: Hacker EliteReport