SteveThaiBinh

The gold for hypocrisy goes to the BBC.

Lucky old you. I get it lots. It is controllable, and the NPC project makes Tutu worthwhile, but read the save game instructions on how to avoid the bug carefully and do it every time you enter Beregost, even if you've never had the bug before. For me, the NPCs make the game, so the NPC project is definitely recommended. I'm a big fan of Finch, and Indira's okay, too.

I'm still waiting to see The Revenge of Girara.

I'm also enthusiastic about the setting, which seems underexploited in RPGs until now. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was also very refreshing, and really deserves a sequel. I'm also looking out for a historical RPG (without magic - Rise of the Argonauts doesn't count), but I don't see one on the horizon.

Because teddy bears are always on-topic.

Myron? Sure, why not?

I've been watching the Olympics on TV all day. Some very entertaining judo, some swimming heats, some hockey. There should have been canoeing, but that's been rained off. Does anyone know anything about wrestling? I was watching the wrestling, and it really is very bizarre. They seem to flap at each other for a minute, then the clock stops and the referee goes and pulls a ball out of a black bag. Then one of the wrestlers gets down on his hands and knees, and the other wrestler moves towards him as though he's going to lock his arms around him, but the first wrestler dodges away to the sides. They then repeat this manoeuvre twice. Then they start wrestling properly again. I'm very confused. Is it a kind of performance art?

In case anyone's unsure what Wals is refering to: Alexander Litvinenko (amongst others). I dearly wish that Russia weren't going down the path that it is, but people seriously need to wake up about this threat.

No, it's not. You need to phrase the thing in terms of "Contact LucasArts or Securom tech support and follow their advice.", and just leave it at that.

Just to be absolutely clear: If you contact LucasArts or Securom and they give you a link to download a file, that's fine. However, any other use of a so-called No-CD crack is unacceptable, as is discussion of it here. I appreciate that there's a debate to be had on this issue, but please also appreciate that this is not the place to do it - go to a public forum. If there are any more posts about using such files, or links to their sources, I'll have to lock this thread.

It's very impressive. I suppose it will mostly be used in shooters to show bland emotions on the faces of one-dimensional characters as they plod through cliched storylines. What a waste! Is Laura Bow 3 too much to hope for?

This is ridiculous, and smacks of Brit-bashing. Imagine if the organisers of the London 2012 opening ceremony were to have a fake pretty girl miming because a government member had decreed the real singer 'not pretty enough'. There would be a public outcry from the British people, and rightly so. In fact, the member of government would almost certainly lose his/her job. So we're not supposed to hold the Chinese government to the same standard? Whether or not this fake singing incident is indicative of wider problems in China, whether or not it's being exploited by China-bashers, it remains a shoddy thing to have done. Who tells a little girl that she's not pretty enough to sing for her country?

I suppose someone must be working on a fourth edition CRPG - why would WotC not want that? The question is, if not Obsidian, then who?

It's all too good to be true.

I don't read magazine reviews, only on-line ones, and I assume that they've played all the way through unless otherwise stated. Naive perhaps?

We're led to believe that a majority of people who buy any game won't finish it, so perhaps it is valid for reviewers to do the same (provided they declare in the review that they haven't finished it, of course).

That's exactly the problem with the Caesar games, though. It's fun and challenging at the start as you plan out the city and deal with early threats, but then the city starts running itself and stops posing serious challenges, and then it's just a matter of fulfilling the requirements to end this particular chapter, then you start the next city from square one. If I play NWN2+MotB I know I'm creating a character that I'll still be with 40-50 hours later. Reset to zero after six hours won't hold my interest at all.

*sigh* I can't watch or listen to anything via the BBC - even Radio 5, which I can usually get over the internet, is blocked to non-UK users. Still, I do get a South African satellite sports channel, which seems to have Australian commentators for some reason, but they carry a lot of judo and swimming. Britain is doing amazingly well - nothing compared to the superpowers, of course, but two gold medals at this stage has to be unprecedented surely?

I don't think Russia can succeed at regime change. Any democratically-elected Georgian government now is going to be even more anti-Russian than before. I don't think a Russian puppet in Tbilisi is an option either - it would poison relations between Russia and the west even more than Chechnya did, because Russia has crossed an internationally-recognised border this time, and also because it would put the oil pipeline under Russian control. I guess Russia will agree a ceasefire once it's finished scaring the crap out of the world, and South Ossetia will become (remain?) de-facto independent/part of Russia. No change, except that everyone will understand that it will never again be part of Georgia proper. As far as I'm aware, the current Georgian government is indeed democratically elected. Weren't there OSCE observers there during the last elections?

We do? I don't think I do. What happened? Welcome to the forums, by the way. I hope they've been watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - if, as we've been led to believe, we're getting 'enhanced' realism, then wire-fu is the way to go.

I've just been playing through Caesar IV, another of Tilted Mill's games. I really enjoyed it, but I must say I got tired of starting a new city again and again. I remember thinking I would much rather take a single city through a long period, dealing with various troubles and world events. Perhaps this will be a step towards this? In any case, I'm definitely getting this.

Fallout 1 - I'm waiting to play it just before Fallout 3 comes out. Fallout 2 - I'm waiting until I've played Fallout 1 before I play it. Rome: Total War - I'm working on that now. X2 - just too complicated, and the main storyline didn't grab my attention. Gothic 3 - Still waiting for that megapatch.

FYI: The South Ossetians' point of view, in (I presume) their own words: http://www.cominf.org/english/ The BBC site on South Ossetia claims its president doesn't want independence, he wants South Ossetia to join the Russian Federation. I did wonder about this, because as North Ossetia is part of Russia you would normally expect Russia to oppose South Ossetian independence (lest the North Ossetians start demanding it too. ).

I've had one or two lucid dreams, but very briefly because usually I've been so surprised, I've woken up. It's like you're watching a movie, and then suddenly you realise that you're controlling the camera.

Thread pruned. A little research on the internet reveals that downloading and installing a no-CD crack is illegal, even for software that you own legally. This is because it violates the EULA - when you click to install the game, you agree to its copy-protection system. Until and unless the publisher releases an official patch which deactivates the copy protection (as Bioware did with NWN1, for example), you are bound to keep their copy protection or uninstall the game.