SteveThaiBinh

A sudden flurry of movies suggests I'm approaching the end of Baldur's Gate. is apparently through the next door. Wish me luck!

Probably contains spoilers, but not so much if you've read the rest of this thread. Barely a spoiler, but some people may not want to know anything at all:

That's not Berlitz's advertising slogan, though it's close to their employee relations policy.

Yes, that's what they're supposed to do, and what I suppose soldiers do across Iraq every day without attracting media attention. I appreciate that serving in Iraq is a nightmare, but what about all the soldiers who do their job without abusing local civilians? If the conditions were as bad as they say, that's important for understanding why this happened and how it can be avoided in future, but it's never an excuse for the individual soldiers involved. They must be prosecuted. When we're discussing local cultural norms, it's important to distinguish between what's common and what's right. It may be very common for Iraqi police or soldiers to beat their prisoners, but that doesn't mean that the majority of Iraqi people would see that as acceptable behaviour any more than they would see the actions of these soldiers as OK. Though I have little knowledge of the military and am happy to be corrected, my guess would be that if local cultural norms are to be taken into account by foreign troops, they would be incorporated when the rules of engagement are drawn up, not at the level of an individual soldier deciding to beat someone up because he thinks the locals would do the same. Palestinian kids throw rocks at Israeli soldiers. If you're going to accept local norms of corporal punishment, you have to accept local norms of protest.

The video starts with a crowd of young males dispersing to the sound of an occasional gunshot - it seems they'd been throwing rocks at a British army compound and the soldiers were firing warning shots to make them stop. As the crowd is running off, a wave of a dozen or so British soldiers come out and chase after it. There's some editing of the film, because next we see British soldiers leading/pulling three rioters in through the door of the compound and pushing them down onto the ground in the yard. At this point the commentary starts: "Oh yes, oh yes, you're gonna get it, naughty little boys" as the soldiers start beating and kicking the rioters as they lie on the ground. This continues for about a minute or so, with the commentator getting more excited and using more expletives (which are bleeped out). The violence seems to tail off as a larger group of soldiers return through the gate and see what's happening, but no-one appears to be directly intervening to stop what's happening. I listened to an former soldier discussing the video yesterday - up until the rioters are brought into the yard, this was all standard tactics, apparently. You disperse a crowd of rioters, then send in a wave of troops to try and catch the ringleaders and bring them in. It's only the violent attacks on the (now helpless) rioters that are objectionable. The BBC says it got the video - up until just before the abuse started - two years ago and broadcast it together with an interview with the guy who shot it. He's apparently been arrested or questioned by the police already. They showed their version, and there was a soundtrack - Wagner, I think.

I remember there were news stories about India and Pakistan, but I think I must have skimmed over most of it.

Sorry. I remember a summer Olympics a while ago when I heard that US TV was showing the whole thing as though it were live, but delayed several hours to get peaktime viewing. Is that what's happening? If so, we might need to hold off talking about results until a while after they happen.

Not proven. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The latest research suggests no evidence of a link between any health issues and using a mobile phone. However, the British government still advises against overuse, especially by children, because of the wider lack of long-term research. My mobile phone's been switched off for the last three months, so hopefully anyone who somehow managed to get my number will have given up by now. :ph34r:

The US team lost its second match to Finland, 3-4. GB, on the other hand, won both of its opening matches. "

If they're searching for a lead designer on these forums, we're in deep trouble.

It might mean they've signed this new project that was rumoured. Is this position actually new, though? A lot of those jobs have been advertised for months, I think.

Usually your real name has already been taken as a username, unless you combine it with something weird that no-one's ever heard of.

Deworm!

Of course . I remember it played the William Tell overture before the start of each race, when you were impatient to get started. My favourite was Space Armada (a straight Space Invaders rip-off). The only other sports game we had was baseball which was challenging for me to play as, being a Brit, I'd never seen the real thing. I can still hear it saying/singing 'Yer Out!'.

Good review. It was a really good game, and I'm looking forward to whatever Quantic Dream does next, though there's no news about that yet. I hated hated hated the Simon Says actions sequences. I do appreciate that for many gamers it would add to the sense of involvement, but I found these sequences very difficult to complete, even on the easy setting. The problem was that I had to focus my entire attention on trying to get the key presses right and couldn't watch what was happening in the game. The result was that although I felt happy to have got through them, I had no idea how the character had managed this. I would have preferred to have the choice of turning off the Simon Says controls and just play the game as a straight adventure. Failing that, I would have like to go back and watch the action sequence as a video once I'd 'passed' it - I think you can do that for one or two sequences, but not all. I loved the graphics and especially the animation as a result of the motion capture, which I hope will eventually see standards raised in other games which seek to have convincing NPCs. I also thought the story created an excellent atmosphere in the early and middle stages of the game, though the latter stages disappointed.

I like lots of sports - the downhill skiing, the icedancing, the luge. I suppose I grew up watching the bobsleigh because it was often the only sport where Britain had semi-decent competitors and therefore the only sport the commentators didn't ridicule constantly. I would have thought the speed-skating would have attracted the same crowd that like motorcycle racing, as both have pretty spectacular crashes. It's also great that we can get the Olympics live on broadband.

Thanks.

Whatever happened to The Divide? (I think that's what it was called. )

I'm hoping they'll try to recapture the mainstream for quality gaming. I guess we'll find out in a year or two.

We eradicated smallpox, and we're doing pretty well against polio (we would have eradicated it already if it weren't for all the stupid wars everywhere). We did OK against SARS, too, despite some initial stumbles. I know development workers who are unhappy that HIV/AIDS research and treatment are diverting funding from other important health issues, particularly malaria, in the developing world. I don't think that research into transplants is the best use of money to benefit the greatest number of people, though.

Maybe it's not an action RPG. Maybe they're just calling it an action RPG to increase sales. PNJ is being called an action RPG, but I'm hoping that Obsidian is incapable of creating what I would call an action RPG.

There's nothing wrong with the people at E3 awarding prizes to games they think look good or show promise, and I guess a lot of the games there are unfinished. So long as no-one mistakes this for an award for a finished game based upon the actual playing experience, it's fine.

Good to see he's back, after his brief stay at a secret 're-education' facility. :ph34r: I'm sure all his posts will be on-message from now on. Not many good fan-sites in English, sadly.

I always thought football was lacking something. I never knew that Bedknobs and Broomsticks had been adapted as a game, though.

Thank you, that's all as clear as mud. So far, I give my characters good weapons and armour and they mostly kill the monsters, give or take a few reloads, while I'm having fun with the mage spells. So long as that remains the case, I've no problem with THACO.