SteveThaiBinh

Animalympics on Youtube! (w00t) "And now, live via satellite, Animalympics; the five rings of the paw print, symbol of world peace through animal athletics; presented by ZOO, the network that brings out the beast in sports." ) The Truman Show is definitely worth watching again. It's Jim Carrey's best film, in my opinion, but he didn't get the best line:

I have bubble bobble somewhere. A modern PC remake, that is - never played the original. My favourite game for the C64 was probably the adventure game Eureka! Even though I never completed any of the five segments, they were really well done. I also have good memories of The Hobbit. Thanks to these games, I will always be an adventure junkie. :D

Ahh, yes. Sex with dead people. That was... unexpected. Coming in 2007: Fahrenheit for the Wii.

That does sound like a lot of fun. ) Playing all the way through the Arena quest then have it crash to desktop during the following cutscene was less fun. :'( Despite the imperfections of Fable, and I honestly doubt I'll ever reinstall it, I'm keeping an open mind about Fable 2, and will give it a try if I hear halfway decent things about it.

Is that the only difference? You wouldn't have thought that would take long to implement. At least they seem committed to slowly, slowly fixing all this stuff.

Out of interest, has a computer beaten a reigning world champion since then? Has there even been an attempt? Or did the world lose interest? Were Deep Blue's moves fast in order to psych Kasparov out or just to stay within the time limit?

Classical. Late Romantic to early twentieth-century: Stravinsky, Sibelius, Elgar, but Nielsen above all. And opera, of course. Lately, also R.E.M.

Weebles! ) *sings* Weebles wobble but they don't fall down! And lego, of course, although I mostly used the lego to make things for the weebles to sit in. I also remember the loneliness of owning a C64 in the Amiga era. And I kept very very quiet about my BBC-B. That was the kind of computer that schools had. :">

Thanks. ) It's been quieter and relatively safer here in Saudi Arabia, say the expats who've lived here a long time, because all the troublemakers have crossed the border to join the 'struggle' in Iraq. The Saudi government is building a massive wall along their Iraq border (or say they plan to, at least) because they're terrified that when the situation in Iraq is finished, however it plays out, experienced guerrilla terrorists will flood back across the border and create merry hell. Egypt and others are scared, too. This is one of the more frightening aspects of the whole thing. Everyone's desperately trying to achieve a 'win' in Iraq, with little thought to how even the best-case scenario 'win' for Iraq is deeply problematic for the stability of the region.

Speaking of Arcanum, did they ever produce a Virgil romance mod? Seems to me I heard something about one being worked upon, but nothing afterwards. Not that it's to everyone's tastes, of course, but I was always rather annoyed that my male character could romance someone, but female characters couldn't.

Definitely. BG1, though it kept the levels low, had all those books to raise stats. Possibly too many, and I don't think this new game would need so many, but in BG1 I always go out of my way to get hold of them. It just seems more important than items. I don't suppose raising attributes is quite so important in 3.5 rules, but something along similar lines would be cool.

It's a really interesting question. I read a game designer years ago who said that the problem with his game wasn't getting the AI to be challenging enough, but that it was often far too good for the player and had to be reigned back. I really wish I could remember which game it was he was talking about. You so often hear reviews complaining about poor AI. Which games are generally thought by gamers to have unusually good AI? I've heard this said of Galactic Civlizations - which others?

I've been watching All My Children, an American daytime soap. It just happens to be on every day as I'm getting ready to go to work. It's absolutely fascinating. You hear about US daytime soaps in the UK, and you see parodies of them from time to time, but you don't often get to see them for real, or at least I didn't when I lived there. It's bad. It's really really bad, but it's wonderful and completely hypnotic at the same time. You could waste away your whole life watching this stuff. Everything looks so fake; that must be deliberate, surely. And the expressions, and the close-ups... And the plots! These two women have had their babies switched at birth, another one faked a marriage and a pregnancy until her fake pregancy costume was ripped from her in court - who writes this stuff? OK, getting on to stuff I actually like rather than find morbidly fascinating: 1. Doctor Who 2. Stargate SG-1/Atlantis 3. Veronica Mars Mostly I watch movies these days.

Well, countries that have signed the UN charter have agreed to the conditions for a legal war that Walsingham referred to. Isn't that legally binding? I don't think the UN has sole authority over deciding whether or not those conditions were met, though its voice should carry weight. In the absence of a formal court that we can take the US and UK to in order to test the legality of the war under those conditions, I think a conensus among international lawyers is the best we can manage. The system isn't perfect - far from it. I'm surprised to hear you say that. Most supporters of the war that I know believe there are legal and illegal wars, but that the invasion of Iraq was a legal war. Expert international lawyers are on BBC World endlessly arguing about whether the war was legal or not, implicitly acknowledging that wars can be legal or illegal. What's caused you to come to the conclusion that there are no illegal wars? I still don't know what these extra troops are going to be doing in Iraq. They're what, a 20% increase in US strength, or something like that? It's hard to see how that would transform that situation.

Aren't they the people who brought us that wonderful NWN2 review?

I really liked Crying Freeman too, though I only saw it after the live action version, and only the first two of the series. Not sure how many there were in total. Anyway, I thought it was quite a nice premise and rather romantic in its way. Best Anime? Nintama Rantarou, obviously. There's also Gegegenokitaro, which you'll never forget if you've walked down Sakaiminato high street, as the whole town is bedecked with the guy and his friends and I think the theme tune plays round the clock. Plus ... rats, I can never remember the name, the one with the maths teacher with the demonic hand... I quite liked Anpanman, too, but never really got Doraemon. More young middle-class Saudi adults are familiar with One Piece than is probably good for them or the country, but given my very kiddie selection, I'm in no position to talk. As for movies, I'm a huge Tonari no Totoro fan, though Majou no Takkyuubin (I forget the English title) and Spirited Away get a look in.

Recast, recast, recast. And that goes for Indiana Jones, too. Leave the May to December romances to serious films. Han: The Series? I thought George was working on another Star Wars TV series. Although, having two at the same time would distract him so he couldn't interfere much in either one by, say, trying to direct or write dialogue... :ph34r: I'd watch it.

Thank you, that was very entertaining.

Nah, fake posters are so last year...

You'll need to link me to a site about the Mystary (is that right?) engine so I know what that entails...

OK, so Bush was on TV last night talking about a 'surge', and of course I switched my brain off defensively, as you do, but I think he mentioned something about how these new troops will succeed where other troops have failed because they will be doing something different. Did anyone catch what that different thing was? And, indeed, why they haven't been doing it before...

After a few thousand years, it would be difficult to motivate yourself to go out and meet these brief mortals with their little life spans. It would be terribly isolating, unless there were other immortals about. Even the deepest, most meaningful relationship with a mortal would be, in relative terms, no more than a one night stand to you.

Low levels and slow levelling-up improve the gaming experience for me. Levelling-up should be an event to be savoured rather than, as with NWN2 and its gang of NPCs, a chore to be dreaded. I think the decisions you make when levelling up count for me if you know you're going to be at that level for a while, and having your decisions count for something is always good.

It's like having a store loyalty card! Come on Obsidian, how can we cash in our points for posting here? I think 2000+ posts should get me a free NWN2 premium module at least... Yes, so long as they're not reviewing adventure games, which they tend to mark down for having difficult puzzles and lots of dialogue.

Hmmm... laughably pointless yet expensive hi-tech spy effort, more inspired by James Bond than reality, leading to much public scandal/ridicule and no possibility of gathering useful information, eh? This has British 'Intelligence' written all over it. Almost as daft as the Moscow spy rock.