SteveThaiBinh

I've enjoyed the Winter Olympics a lot this past fortnight, despite the UK winning only one silver medal and not really threatening for many more. The aerial skiing last night has to be the most entertaining event so far.

What happened to the site?

Me for one. The quickslots made up for it, though. Absolutely. Why force gamers to use one particular control system just because it's the one the developer likes best? The whole thing should be as customisable as possible, with pre-designed 'control system packages' aimed at giving new users a selection of accessible routes into the game.

Great. Now I can find out about NWN2 without having to go onto the Bioware forums.

No kidding. I just wanted him to admit it. Still happening in Ireland... Just taking the children to school became a danger there because the other "religion" would happily kill the kids. <_< The Ardoyne school protests were quite unusual in their intensity, even for Northern Ireland. People who've seen thirty-odd years of the Troubles were shocked by this. However, even something as extreme as this doesn't inevitably escalate into ever-wider conflict, and I hope this is the case in Iraq as well.

You mean the entire board are members of your gang unless we formally opt out? This is worse than a trade union! You'll be sending out demands for membership dues next.

Your information page says you only joined two days ago. How would you know what Meta's usual style is?

My town is supporting Canada in the Women's bobsleigh, because one of the racers, Helen Upperton, is the granddaughter of our former mayor.

And then crash after a long sequence, just before you have the chance to save - like Fable crashed as I was leaving the Arena.

Absolutely. Or there are the times, as with Malak for the first time in Kotor 1, when you're pretty much beating the crap out of him and yet he's allowed to escape certain death only because he's an important NPC. This isn't hugely annoying, but it just happens to be annoying me right now, so I'll share: pausing on the inventory screens in BG1 and BG2. In BG1 the action doesn't pause if you have the inventory up. It was annoying to begin with, and they made such a fuss over it, with big red warning messages everywhere. However, after a few hours, I got used to it - it encouraged me to think and prepare before battles, and moreover when I arrived in town, inevitably at the wrong end of the map, I could set my party walking off to the shop, bring up the inventory screen, and re-organise my stuff ready for selling while my party was on its way. Just as I was beginning to appreciate this system, my character progresses to BG2 and now the inventory screen pauses the game. So why was it so important in BG1? Why persuade me to like a feature only to snatch it away?

They're doing quite well in the team ski-jumping today, though I don't know what kind of drugs would be helpful for that. I wonder if the Italian police have in mind a specific drug that post-competition testing can't find yet.

The opera sequence near the end of Gabriel Knight 2. It has everything - comedy, tragedy, tension, music, juggling: Gabriel's attempts at juggling are hilarious and pathetic, given what's happening to him. The reaction shots off Grace's face as she watches him fall apart on stage and desperately tries to hold the plan together, watching the bad guy sitting in the audience next to the police chief, laughing and unaware of what's about to happen - there are too many triumphs in this sequence to list them all. An absolute classic.

I moved to Japan and had my hands full with other things: work, learning the language and so on. It was a huge and abrupt change of lifestyle, and I found I didn't miss gaming at all - until much later...

Wow. Hence the Gothic 3 love. My story's just like Mkreku's, except the break was shorter ('96 to '01) and the game that got me back into gaming was Arcanum. No pretty sequels for me.

Well, that made me laugh.

The suspense is killing me!

I think you're funny, but I'm easily pleased.

Wholly modless.

I bought a pack with Fallouts 1, 2 and Tactics, but I wasn't impressed with Fallout 1 at all, and I couldn't even finish it because I hit a bug. I'll probably have a go at Fallout 2 just before Fallout 3 is released. I'm now finally onto Baldur's Gate 2. I decided not to take my paladin from BG1, because I always play RPGs as a paladin first time and it's time for a change. So I took a cleric through BG1 and now she's ready to begin BG2.

The linearity of the main quest in Arcanum didn't cause any problems for me because the story was strong and because there were lots of opportunities to depart from the main quest and go off exploring on your own. It was a reasonable balance, and one that worked, I think. There was a good lead-up to Arronax, and I can't see why you object to the plot twist so much. I was stunned to be having a calm conversation with the great Arronax and have all my preconceptions dashed. It's not often a plot twist in an RPG genuinely surprises me, but this one did. Mystery, red herrings and wild goose chases are fun, and I cared a great deal about what happened to the Black Mountain clan. Wandering through their empty caves, speaking to the mad dwarf at the end, expecting to find them on the Isle of Despair (that would have been dull) only to learn that they had disappeared entirely... Well, each to his own, but I'd call that pretty strong storytelling. Virgil's well-designed backstory explains well why he was so easily influenced by you, even to the point of reverting to a complete git when you take the evil path. That the game encompasses both NPCs who hold to their alignment when you displease them and an NPC who is malleable and shifts his alignment to match yours is a point in its favour, I think. And Virgil's character was no less interesting for it. It's good to have a character who resists telling you his lifestory and just says 'I don't want to talk about it'. It makes it more interesting when you do finally learn the truth.

I think that to see it you need to have decent skill at observation or inspection or whatever it was that allows you to notice things. I never found out how to solve the candles properly, but if you just pull them randomly the correct answer will appear fairly quickly.

I remember the Fable designer promised a kind of life-history journal that told of your accomplishments, and they had to explain about not implementing that. Was there more? The game was pretty good as it was, nothing spectacular but good.

No doubt they, Atari, Take Two and all the others will soon go broke, leaving only EA to publish games. SimKotor, anyone?

Don't worry, so long as there are fireballs and other paths to flaming death, Gabs will be fine.