deganawida

That...actually looks a lot better than ME1. I noticed a number of new combat options (Haymaker, Storm), a new weapon, what looked to be a good grenade launcher on the assault rifle, NPC companions calling out where enemies were, enemies which slowly advanced while firing rather than charging, and NPCs that seemed, at first blush, more interesting than the primarily-bland NPCs of ME1. I wonder if it is worth slogging through ME1 again, though, in order to have an end save. I beat the game once, and tried again earlier in the week to go through it, but there were so many boneheaded design decisions and elements that I just could not do it without a reason. Finally, who's the Asari with Shepard? Any new romances for Shepard?

Well, Atari's been having financial problems, and has had problems with Hasbro. They may be in a similar situation to Interplay circa 2003, in that they may not be able to make new D&D IPs, but can continue to use existing IPs. That said, Turbine created a crap MMO, and I am glad that another attempt is being made at a D&D MMO.

Saggy boobs (as my wife made a point of telling me). I guess that low-grav didn't help.

So Maria Caliban talked nonsense then? So it's an OOOstrylian that tries too hard speaking like a French? Great! Claudia Black is an Australian from Sydney, famous for her role in Farscape, who provides the voice of Morrigan in Bioware's Dragon Age. I have no clue who the French lady is.

I just noticed your signature and the last sentence has passive sentence structure. "A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small." In active sentence structure, it would be, ' A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where petty morality would not bind the scientist, where the small would not constrain the great.' American style guides tend to demonize the passive voice, and I thought it was a good example of how passive voice can create stronger sentences than the active voice. Passive voice can turn a rather banal sentence into poetry, if utilized right. I have never understood why so many American institutions are against it. It's a tool in the trade, so use it.

Well, it's definitely David Eddings, because they keep recycling the same exact story with the same beats, just in different worlds with different characters

What? Do you mean taken or taken? I think she means the Violence video. At 53 seconds you see the PC kinda hugging her from behind but not taking her, unless its in another trailer. Oh, my. That was...unexpected, especially in a video called "Violence".

What? Do you mean taken or taken?

I pretty much agree with Kotaku on this one. Bioware seems to have no understanding of the various sub-genres of fantasy. Their tale, focusing as it does on the Darkspawn and their origin of daring to enter what had been forbidden to man by the Maker, is firmly in the high-fantasy camp. Calling it "dark heroic fantasy" because people die, there's no flat-out proof of a deity, and there's blood everywhere is just plain wrong.

Actually, there's a lot of speculation that next year's campaign setting will be Dark Sun. The proponents of this seem to have made a compelling argument for it.

Too late

Di, IGN has a review up today for it. Here's the link. Don't know if it helps, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

Mass Effect, which I picked up last week on Direct2Drive for $20. Had been avoiding it do to DRM. So far, I enjoy. Has typical Bio bloated "dialogues" (they're really monologues with little player input), too many joinable NPCs that don't really bring anything to the table character-wise or ability-wise (IMO), and silly moments (like how I apparently schtuped the Consort hard enough to make her arm fall off). However, the cinematic presentation is very good, the story, while predictable, is done well, and I am enjoying playing it. Only reached Noveria so far, but having a blast. Wife is enjoying it, too (though I'm never going to hear the end of the arm falling off bit), which is a plus.

Wow, quite the persecution complex you got going there, Rhomal. Back to the discussion at hand, I'm not particularly bothered by the lack of a human commoner origin. It seems as though the nobility of Fereldan is more like the nobility of the Vikings and the Celts, in that the nobility had very real responsibilities to the common people and could lose their positions if they failed in their responsibilities. This makes it more believable that a noble would leave his manor and quest to destroy a threat, rather than conscript serfs to do it for him, thereby avoiding one of the common mistakes of fantasy writers (the scifi equivalent is Captain Kirk syndrome, where it's the officers who do everything).

New trailer up at Gamespot. Looks better than the old one. Also has the first shot of a dragon.

If you can zoom out a fair bit then it shouldn't look so bad. It's no worse than Neverwinter Nights 2, right? I can put up with bad animations and graphics if the story is good. Well, I'd argue that the animations are worse than NWN2's. Look at how slowly they swing their weapons; my 87-year-old grandmother moves faster than that. NWN2's characters actually had the characters swing their weapons decently, and they did more dodging, blocking, and parrying. Watching this video, I kept wondering if Alistair had some sort of nervous twich, but then I realized that it was his shield bash. Seriously? You tap the guy with your shield without bracing your arm and putting your weight behind it, and you expect me to believe that's enough to knock the guy down? Good grief. Was this the game where the devs went out in the parking lot with nerf bats and trash can lids to get a feel for "real combat"? I guess that this delay is a good thing; maybe they can speed up some of those animations. On another point, can someone enlighten me on the whole JE-reference made? I didn't even leave the tutorial area for JE, because I found the combat boring and had a pretty good idea of how the story was going (why does Bioware seem to like surprise bad guys?). This whole "makes JE seem tame" thing has me lost.

Controls aren't really a concern for me, unless it's an action-oriented game, in which case I pretty much have to play it on consoles.

That's essentially my problem, as well. I spoiled myself a few months back and got an Alienware laptop (after spending all day fixing computers, building one is the LAST thing that I want to do when I get home, so I purchase my home systems). I was really looking forward to playing Dragon Age on it. Unfortunately, with a simultaneous release, I am not so sure that I'll actually get it for the PC. It's a minor pain hooking up my laptop to the widescreen, whereas my PS3 is constantly hooked up to it. My wife loves to watch me play RPGs (and RTS games, too; weird), so she prefers me playing games on the PS3 as opposed to the laptop. It's not so much that I have to get it on PS3 (or that I'm being forced to), but the opportunity cost for waiting for the PS3 cost (6 months of extra time on the PC) is much lower now.

Dragon Age: Origins has been delayed to later in 2009 in order to coincide with console releases (see fourth post down by Chris Priestly). Bummer Was a) looking forward to it and b) wanting something to play on my computer as opposed to my PS3.

Yep, tried it in Task Manager and Process Explorer (SysInternals rocks). Nothing new comes up except IEXPLORE.EXE, which is in our policy. We're all stumped.

Does anyone know what executables are called when launching a hyperlink from a Word 2007 document? Our computers are running in a managed environment (Windows XP with Group Policy "Run Only Allowed Programs" enabled via Novell ZenWorks), and none of us in the office can identify what EXE is being triggered when a normal user CTRL-Clicks a hyperlink in an Office 2007 document. This has only become a problem since we went from Office 2003 to 2007. Basic Info OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2/SP3 Management Utility: Novell ZenWorks 10 Office Version: 2007 Browser: Internet Explorer 7 I've found some info that suggests that IEXPLORE.EXE be added to the allowed programs, as it is different from iexplore.exe, but that has not fixed the problem. I can't find anything other than exporting registry settings from an older computer at the Microsoft Knowledge Database, and Google doesn't turn up much. Any help you can give would be most appreciated.

Oh, man, that would rock. I came up with something similar last year, but my idea was an MMO. It'd have to be AO, as my idea would have the PCs smoking cigarettes and drinking shots of whiskey in order to restore health (or "moxy", as my idea went).

Rise of the Argonauts (PS3) Don't know why the professionals reviewed it so poorly. I read Rosjberg's review at Gamespot, and it seemed a better review. Have spent almost 3 hours playing it so far, and only just got done with . So many of the professional reviewers seemed to think that the game was less than 10 hours in length. Not sure how they got that, as if this pattern holds out, the game will end up closer to 20 hours for me. It's enjoyable. I understand the lack of a minimap, as Liquid seems to have taken a minimalistic approach vis a vis UI, and I have noticed that the characters are too often too stiff in conversations (though I love it when Jason raises his eyebrows at someone). Still, I'm having fun, and that's all that matters right now.

Rise of the Argonauts, Alpha Protocol, Dragon Age: Origins, Darksiders, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ghostbusters.