SteveThaiBinh

Please translation <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Please no diagram. :ph34r:

Has the swearing in of the new senators actually happened yet? It'd be interesting to know what actually happened in this case...

I imagine the author would come round to your house, point a gun at your head, and force you to play through again only properly this time.

I saw Mystery Men on TV a few nights ago. I'd never even heard of it before. It may be the first thing with Ben Stiller in that I actually liked, although I didn't particularly like him, but I thought William H. Macy was awesome as usual. Oh, and I think Tonari no Totoro is probably the best children's movie ever made, although Mononokehime was good, too.

A. I think when he loses everything, 'Jink' (if that is his real name) is going to go ape and try to rob the casino with his little bow and arrow, and that'd be too entertaining not to try.

Bethesda's attempt at crazy fun in the Oblivion world should be interesting to see. I wonder how it will compare with the Malkavians in VtM:B. I never played through a full game as a Malkavian, though I'm sure I'll get round to it eventually, but there were some decent laughs there. Not that any RPG could ever compete with the humour of Quest for Glory, of course. Indeed.

I played a lot of the Fighting Fantasy series, and I still have the odd nightmare that references one of the horrible ways you could die in these books. Great stuff! The Sorcery! series was great (as I'm a sucker for epic stories) as it was four books that you carried the same character through each book.

Nothing unusual to report. Memory was two of these, I think. I have no idea how hot my chipset runs, though if you tell me how to find out, I'm happy to let you know. It's running with a single nVidia graphics card at the moment - I wanted an SLI motherboard so I could upgrade more easily next year. I think the graphics are phenomenal, but I don't know how much of that owes to the motherboard or what the nVidia chipset does. I basically went to Novatech and said I wanted a Core 2 Duo processor and an SLI motherboard that would take it, and this is what they gave me.

Ooh, I hate that! Syberia was like that - it didn't have the words 'to be continued', but it did stop right in the middle of the adventure. Shan't be buying that, then. Until part three comes out, at least.

Usually light side. I enjoy playing dark side too, especially when you can do really nasty things, not just behaving like a petty thief or spoiled child.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..." (John Donne, Meditation XVII) "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member." (Groucho Marx) "All men are fools, and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got." (Glenda Jackson on Morecambe and Wise.)

Happy New Year and Happy Eid al-Adha.

I'm playing NWN2 again. I think this is my sixth consecutive time through. When I eventually have had enough, I'll still have Gothic 3 unopened on the shelf and two episodes of Sam & Max to download. I wonder if that will last me until Jade Empire comes out on PC...

My mistake. Activision then. I think it's hard to say whether a game is selling well, even if you have sales figures (which I don't think we do for NWN2, yet). 'Well' has to be defined in terms of the publisher's expectations, and who can say what they were?

I have this, with a Core 2 Duo processor. So far it's been absolutely fine, although it would be nice if it had another PCI slot.

I've read it (Mein Kampf). It's a lot duller than you'd think. Or perhaps it's exactly as dull as you'd think. The sections on propaganda were interesting and disturbing, as he's quite open about his techniques for manipulating public opinion, if I remember rightly. You'd think that reading it would have innoculated people against his propaganda, but apparently not. I believe it was required reading under the Third Reich.

I don't mean strikes in the sense of having produced bad games, on the part of either Troika or Obsidian. Both Arcanum and VtM:B were really enjoyable and interesting games. Plus I love NWN2 - this must be my fifth or sixth time through since I got it. :D I really meant the perception that they couldn't release games in good, finished condition. ToEE was really buggy, VtM:B had a game-stopping bug on many systems and stuttered badly on systems that should have been able to handle it easily. Kotor 2 had bugs and glitches even on its console version, and a rushed ending that made the game seem incomplete. NWN2 has plenty of bugs, too, and there are similar complaints on the bioware forums about crashes and bugs and that the game demands a more powerful system than seems justified by the graphics. It's all in all of the reviews. I'm not saying that everything I've just said is completely true, let alone fair in my opinion, I'm saying that I think the perception is out there that Obsidian have released two incomplete games in a row, and the failure to release complete, polished games was part of what did for Troika.

That would have been really good - if you'd been off doing the Dark Brotherhood quests and suddenly one day it was announced that somebody else had saved the world behind your back. ) I downloaded one of these priced mods - can't remember which one, not the horse armour definitely - but I wasn't impressed. I think I'll wait a year or two and buy the whole lot at a discount next time I install the game. Are there any more expansions in the pipeline?

We're having a real Truddi Chase moment. I'd vote for C. Melee characters are normally recommended for your first play through.

I suppose if publishers feel they can get a decent product elsewhere, it's fair enough that they'd abandon a creative but 'difficult' developer like Troika. I've always thought of creativity as more fragile and more scarce than business sense, and I don't think it's so easy to find another developer who can create atmosphere as good as VtM:B, for example - that really could have been as big a hit as Kotor. So it's a shame that Atari couldn't knuckle down and do what needed to be done to help Troika release their game in good condition - that would have been the win-win scenario. If you are a publisher, the quality of the game that you release is ultimately your responsibity, of course, though I do understand that Atari had their own money problems. With Troika it really was a case of 'three strikes and you're out', and Obsidian only have one strike left, which is not so good. Does SEGA have money worries? It might be better if more developers got into producing smaller expansion packs or premium modules for products that have already sold well. If the business model works, that is...I would have bought a Troika-produced premium mod for NWN or Oblivion. I might even have bought Dungeon Siege 2 in order to play a Troika-produced expansion pack. That sort of thing.

I'll lurk less and post more. I'll learn how to create mods for NWN2 and write one. I'll improve my Arabic. I'll try to sleep longer and better each night, and not stay up so late playing NWN2. They don't have to be SMART as well, do they?

I'm curious. Has this worked for you before?

It's a very nice scar, Eddo. Thank you for sharing. Alas, all my scars are emotional.

Just a suggestion, but have you tried loading up Windows in safe mode. I did this once to force a monitor into a lower resolution for an old game, though I think that was WinMe.

I liked the video . The world seems alive and attractive, although we may just have seen the best bits. The settlements seem smaller with more people, and that will be a relief after Oblivion's empty world. The gestures are a bit odd-looking at first, but I imagine you get used to them, and it's better than having everybody stand around like lumps. I hope it works on non-spectacular systems. I don't think I've ever thrown away a game. I still have King's Quest I on floppy somewhere. I wonder if it still works.