KOTOR 2

With a lot of games I want to play on the horizon, but none for at least 2 months, I was looking for something to do. Then I remembered that I never played KOTOR 2, despite really enjoying the original and looking forward to SWTOR. Since the game is now six years old, I figured it would be pretty easy and cheap to get my hands on a copy.

Well, it turns out that it is impossible to get a (legal) digital copy of the game. Steam, Origin, Amazon, Direct2Drive, none of them have a digital copy. So my plan for a quick download and play last weekend was bashed. But the hard copy of the game was only $16 on Amazon, so I used some gift card money and ordered it. Game arrived last night.

It has actually been quite awhile since I’ve installed a game from a CD or needed a CD in the computer in order to play a game. Last few games I’ve bought I’ve gotten over Steam or Amazon download. Even when I got some discs (Civ 5) it’s still run through Steam. So I started the installation process and I get some kind of weird error message. It won’t go away, but the game does it’s installation in the back ground just fine, so I ignore it. I got to the point where it asked me to install disc 4. But there was no disc 4. There were three discs stacked on top of each other (great way to prevent scratches that way). After an embarrassing amount of time, I found disc 4 in a sleeve hidden behind the manual.

I load up the game and am quickly reminded that the game is six years old. Graphics are pretty poor in comparison, and the screen resolution options are fairly limited. But it runs, which is important. I go through the tutorial mission with T3 and start my character on the space station. Then I discover, every time combat ends, my character doesn’t respond to keyboard commands to move. He’s stuck. I have to load a saved game after every combat.

With some internet browsing, I learn that if you enable “V-synch” in the options it should fix this. It appeared to work and I was able to make some progress. Still haven’t escaped the mining station but I’m moving along.

With all of the technical problems I had I’m not ready to declare any opinions on the game play. The story is reminiscent of the first one, though my character just appears to have a mysterious past and doesn’t know how he got on the Ebon Hawk, not complete memory loss. We’ll see where that goes. HK seems to be a protocol droid and I’m guessing has programmed the mining droids to Kill All Humans.

After playing the pen and paper SWRPG, the game style makes more sense to me than it did before. I’m also not wasting skills/feats in anything that isn’t useful for a Jedi character. Still need to decide if I want to be a dark side or light side. I usually go good, but being evil is fun too.

This should prove an adequate distraction (baring any more tech problems) until the LOTRO expansion comes out.