SteveThaiBinh

It only works when you make a normal attack, not 'Master Flurry', 'Critical Strike' or anything like that, plus you need to have a clear line to the thing you're attacking. It's easy to miss, because by the time you get your lightsaber, you also tend to have some special attack feats and not to use the normal attack. Try this and see if it works.

Ah yes, Derren Brown - marginally preferable to David Blaine. The old hidden camera shows didn't take themselves so seriously, and were more fun. This guy is ever so slightly too full of himself.

They should bring back the combat from NWN, where the characters dance around each other and only occasionally get round to making an attack. I thought it was hilarious. The next step is to have them attack in time with the music. More generally, turn-based like Kotor 2 works fine for me, because I don't need to use two hands, aim or keep clicking at things. If they want to try something different, you should have the option of choosing between two systems according to your taste. You could do this with Arcanum, although apparently it wasn't highly thought of, but I wonder if it will become a wider trend to attract different kinds of gamers to the same product.

I think so. If a new game were aimed at the original XBox and released late 2006 (at the earliest), using the same old engine, the graphics would be substandard and the game wouldn't sell well. It wouldn't be a wise move on the part of the developer or LucasArts.

What he said. If I refused to buy from any company that has ever been in any way associated with a game that wasn't top notch, I'd have a different hobby. And probably a cheaper one at that.

There's a useful list of some fairly recent academic literature on the subject of video game violence and its effects on players: http://www.game-culture.com/journals.html#vio Unfortunately, the articles themselves aren't easily available, unless it's through a university. The 1998 Dill & Dill review of other articles was very interesting - they think that the balance is in favour of their being a link between video game violence and violent actions, but want more research (of course). The abstract gives a decent summary: ABSTRACT. The popularity of video games, especially violent video games, has eached phenomenal proportions. The theoretical line of reasoning that hypothesizes a causal relationship between violent video-game play and aggression draws on the very large literature on media violence effects. Additionally, there are theoretical reasons to believe that video game effects should be stronger than movie or television violence effects. This paper outlines what is known about the relationship between violent video-game playing and aggression. The available literature on virtual reality effects on aggression is discussed as well. The preponderance of the evidence from the existing literature suggests that exposure to video-game violence increases aggressive behavior and other aggression-related phenomena. However, the paucity of empirical data, coupled with a variety of methodological problems and inconsistencies in these data, clearly demonstrate the need for additional research. (Copyright 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd)

As a humanist (atheist), it was a sobering feeling to walk around a former Jesuit church in Lithuania which had been stripped of its artwork and treasures by the Soviet authorities and remade as a "People's Museum of Atheism" or somesuch. Fundamentalist atheism is as disturbing as any other kind. To quote (near enough) Joyce Grenfell: "He was an extreme agnostic, than which there are few things more bigoted".

Democracy is fairly easy to get off the ground - all you need is reasonably free and fair elections. Liberal democracy takes longer, because you need to get the courts and civil society all working well. There are a great many illiberal democracies in the world today, but the question is, are they moving (albeit slowly) toward becoming full liberal democracies, or are they stuck in the transition, or are they heading towards becoming something else? Time will tell. The US system has a million checks and balances to protect minority rights, with the result that the elected leaders can't accomplish what they promised, and the electorate is disillusioned. The UK system has hardly any checks and balances, with the result that the elected leaders become arrogant and do whatever they like, and the electorate is disillusioned. Is there any country that handles this problem better?

I usually find a combination of grenades and Kreia's force powers works well enough. If I remember rightly, my own character's 'disable droid' was usually resisted.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> I heard a documentary about this on the BBC World Service, maybe a year ago? I hope I remember some of this right: they'd discovered a completely new force (to go along with gravity, the strong force etc.) that they were calling 'springy space', and it meant that where there was empty space, this force was pushing matter on either side of it apart. This was causing an acceleration in the expansion of the universe that hadn't been expected, and meant there was no way the universe would slow its expansion, contract and have a 'big crunch'. I hope I didn't imagine this! They seemed to be making a really big thing of it.

Well, not quite in those words, no, but from Obsidian's point of view, if LucasArts has blocked this, then the sooner they release this information, the sooner the hue and cry will explode and die down, and the sooner the whole thing is put behind them. Obsidian, why has the media patch not been released?

But surely they would have told us about this. LucasArts would have told Obsidian and Obsidian would have posted an announcement on these boards or on the main page. They wouldn't just let weeks past and then make a casual mention of it having been abandoned, buried on page 14 of some obscure thread. Would they?

Whatever happened to springy space?

I had a similar problem, partly because the graphics aren't so easy on the eye, but I also had trouble getting into it because I'm no longer used to having to think when I play a new RPG, to search hard or decide for myself what I should be doing. Modern games have made me soft: I recently replayed Ultima 6 and there's no way I would have the patience to figure all that out for the first time now. Still, you've inspired me to try again, maybe this weekend I'll give it a shot.

Does that bother you? It shouldn't. The Bush administration's foreign policy has been a disaster and is widely discredited, so of course any international forum like this one will have many critics. But Bush has already lost the argument: the world no longer looks to the US for leadership, and the opposition to any future wars of aggression will be stronger and more successful. The world will be a more peaceful place a a result, and that of course benefits the US and you.

The worst thing about the referendum results is that it means Blair will go later rather than sooner. The treaty is dead, long live the next treaty!

Possibly he was trying to avoid appearing weak. Possibly he had so surrounded himself with toadying yes-men that he really didn't understand the situation. Possibly he was consumed with irrational paranoia to the point of being unable to understand anything. Who knows? Maintaining now that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is no better than claiming that the US moon landings were faked. Well, if he had done this, and made a deal with them, and used the shadowy network to move them here, and disguised them there, and so on and so on. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was not a threat to the US. The war was illegal.

There weren't any WMDs.

If we had done things the way the majority of the UN security council wanted, the weapons inspectors would have concluded that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and there would have been no war. The UN talks, it negotiates, it builds relationships and gives everyone a forum where they can let off steam. It's not perfect, but that's because it's the product of its disparate member states. If it fails to sanction a US war of aggression, that's to the UN's credit.

I liked Atton's backstory, plus I usually end up caring more about the characters I meet early on (Kotor 1 was the same).

If the people of the world Threw down their guns From the biggest of them To the very smallest ones There would be far less danger Of a stranger Shooting someone else. My suggestion is that soldiers And sailors too Should all be armed with pop-guns Then they couldn't do The damage that they do at present And life would be more pleasant. (Roland Milk/Beachcomber)

It's not a good idea to link development aid with efforts to reduce terrorism. Where it's been tried (Mindanao is a good example), it's usually failed. In Palestine, for example, support for terrorism arises less from poverty than from the perception of injustice, of belonging to a community that has been oppressed or mistreated. If the US spent more time pushing for diplomatic and peaceful solutions to conflicts in Palestine, Mindanao, Kashmir and others, that would do more to reduce support for terrorism. Sadly, it cannot do so now, as the Iraq war has destroyed what moral authority the US had. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

The game doesn't explain itself very clearly, either as a deliberate attempt to be subtle, or because it was rushed. It's worth playing again for sure - I understood a lot more after the second time through (and I had finished my first time in four days straight). Then I came onto these boards and got all confused again...

If there's a second Hitch-Hikers movie, I hope we get to see the cow that tries to persuade restaurant-goers to eat it. Do you think the Terentateks would go for Quorn?

Probably not, I suppose, unless it becomes 'trendy'. There's nothing to stop people reading printed pornography on buses and trains now, but you very rarely see this (although I don't live in London, so that might be different). People are too embarassed, and so they should be! :D