Regarding the second bossfight: Spoiler There is a way to use the environment against her, but the thing is that a) it also damages you unless you're very careful and b) it seems like you still need to do damage yourself.
First a bit about my perspective. I haven't seriously played a Madden game in about 5 years, so when I reference stuff from old games I have no idea when they got rid of it. Gameplay: The gameplay in general is pretty good and true to what JJ said. Physics, particularly with running and breaking tackles, are fairly realistic. You also can't just air the ball out, throwing bombs the entire game as they are harder to catch. I find defense to be kind of boring though. First, I miss the old days where you could move you coverage up and shift your linebackers and linemen. Next, I usually play as a linebacker or nosetackle. It seems to get kind of boring because it is very difficult to disengage from your blocker. I miss being able to make me defender do a swim or spin move when he was engaged. At least it gave me something to do. Finally, the easy playcalling system is hit and miss. You can choose from a "Gameplan" play or be "Aggressive" or "Conservative." One time on defense, it gave me the same play for all three. And I would like to know if I am running this play from the shotgun or under center at least. Most of this is minor though and I am engaged and entertained as I play a game. JJ is also right about the menu navigation. Awful. Not NHL awful, but still pretty annoying and usually making me have to do an extra step. The final part of the game that left me with a definite impression, loading times. Good lord, are they long at times.
Does anyone have any recommendations about how to draft well in Madden? Is it standard for anyone past the second round to be about as useful as shit-scented deodorant?
You can game the ratings system if you can find guys that have absurdly low scores in certain categories but decent scores in others that average out to a shitty overall rating. I haven't played in years, so I don't know what the categories even are anymore, but I remember fast, quick, stupid-as-shit players being a decent value.
Picked up Deus Ex and I'm loving it. I'm at the first boss and have been going the Pacifist route, but realized today that I killed some guards during the intro. Does anyone know if those kills count against me? If they do, I'm murdering everyone from now on.
According to this guide they do count against that achievement. Fourth paragraph down. Quick google search sends up a few other places saying the same thing.
Word is that Deus Ex is going to be $35 at Toys R Us from September 11-17. I still have a $15 gift card too. $20 for what I hear is a great game. Awesome.
It's pretty awesome for me, though buggy and at times repetitive. I'd say you really have to be into zombie material to stick with it. It's pretty much Fallout on a tropical island resort and (so far) all melee combat. The girl at the game store said the game that has launched isn't a completed product, and that a massive patch is what will fix the small fuck ups. I, for one, never tire of chopping off zombie limbs, kicking them down stairs just to see them run back at me (then do it again), or making a bat with nails sticking out of it then bashing in a zombie skull. Non-zombie enthusiasts, however, will likely want to skip this one.
While I'm being depressed that League of Legends servers are online. I have to echo the fact that something about Madden is fun as hell now. I started a franchise, played the pre-season and had a great time. Also, don't know who is still playing Mortal Kombat, but about 2-3 weeks ago, they released a combo pack with all the new fighters. Freddy Krueger is fun as fuck. All of them are slightly overpowered, but fun as shit. Just based on this trailer and the IGN review, I might look at this game because its new in the mix. The trailer of this game made me emotional.
First four games with Xin Zhao were mostly positive. I'm still pretty clueless with champs abilities but 1v1 late game XV can take on almost anyone. E -> R-> Q-> W-> in rapid succession kills squishy characters in under 3 seconds. Despite playing as an overaggressive bitch I got far more kills than I normally do. However, my teams blew chunks, really badly. Pretty frustrating.
Wii U reported to be in development Hell. http://www.industrygamers.com/news/wii-u-hardware-in-development-hell---report/
Love this game so far. I was (am) a huge fan of Borderlands and to me they hit the nail on the head in terms of inviting enough RPG elements and an awesome first person zombie slaughter game. Here's a couple quick points that stand out for me. 1. The other reply was right, game is super glitchy. Co-op is a mess, and even if you're lucky enough to get your friends in your game avoid driving vehicles/loading new map screens. It tends to freeze everyone but the host. 2. Weapon system is actually pretty good. I thought I'd be annoyed by weapons "breaking" over time, but if you stick to stuff your character excels in it's not really that bad. 3. The saving feature in the game has a mind of it's own. As of right now, there is no way to save manually and you're completely at the mercy of the auto save, which, besides the typical "save after a mission is done" routine, tends to just randomly save when it feels like it. The other day I finished some random exploration and was done, but had to run around almost in circles for 10 mins until the autosave kicked in. Not the end of the world, but an inconvenience. 4. The story itself is well done, and the missions never get really boring or repetitive. I dont know much about the Fall Out Comparison since I never played the game, but compared to Borderlands it's pretty much the same, except that so far the "get me some number of provisions" is usually a lot number (3 cans, 4 waters) as opposed to BL's "get me 100 cores" blah blah... 5. The enemies level up with you. I thought I'd be able to level up, then go back to starting areas and clear out hoards for achievements/fun, not the case. When you get stronger so do they. In co-op the game kind of compensates by giving you a mix of diff level enemies or just uses the lower leveled persons enemies. All of those (and some more) aside, everyone I know that bought this game is really into it. Def try it out, IMO best thing to come out in a while until Arkham City hopefully trumps it.
Civilization V is 75% off in Steam until 10AM Monday. Not a huge RTS fan but this deal is too good to pass up.
Civ 5 is turn based, not real time. I've been playing it off and on for the last few months. Fun game. There's lots of DLC for the game but you have to buy it all, scenario and new civilization packs.
Civ 5 probably has more enjoyable combat due to the hex-grid system, but overall I think it was a major step down after the brilliant Civ 4. The religion system probably could have been implemented better, but I felt that Civ V kinda threw the baby out with the bathwater because the management elements really got stripped down to a ridiculous degree. Personally, I would recommend purchasing Civ 4 if you haven't played it, playing it vanilla, then acquiring a few of the incredible mods people have made over the years. There's this one mod called Fall From Heaven 2 based on a dark fantasy setting that's very professionally done - it's fucking excellent, no question about it. I might be biased here however, because I felt that Civ V was the weakest entry in the series that I played (I played all the Civ games since Civ II).