LadyCrimson

I'm not for censorship & as written I don't agree with CA's 2005 law to criminalize such sales. I do, however, think the ESRB needs a better system of ratings (for that matter, so do the movies) that better reflect current social trends of the day. Such things aren't static & the boards need to re-evaluate/change ratings systems (to apply to new releases after said change) more frequently then they do, imo. As long as there are parents tools to help them block out what they don't want their kids playing, I don't see an issue beyond that. I mean, if parents of relatively young children are that worried, don't buy them an Xbox/tv & keep the child's PC in a public viewable room blah blah. That's up to the parent. I wouldn't be adverse to having better, much more descriptive content 'warnings' in larger text on the front of the box & game disc. I don't think that would be "bad" and at least parents can't then say they were "unaware" of what the game contained because it was unclear what "Violence & Blood Gore" actually meant.

I pay no attention to the "metacritic score' but I do like it as a page to get a lot of review links. Trying to swallow my aversion to Steam long enough to force myself to install it & buy the game. 'Cause I'd like to play the game.

This is one of those games where feel I'm no better off buying a hard copy vs. direct Steam purchase. If I finally install Steam again, the game better be friggin' awesome.

Comments: ---Nice presentation, good job guys. ---Love the spiders/combat moves & graphic/engine. ---I like/prefer the "story event" concept (vs too many full cutscenes). ---"And I died, great." Idle Questions: ---Is treasure mostly in containers & bosses? Part of keeping the action flowing? I have no issue w/it...just curious. Can't remember if that was announced in one of the many long threads already, if it was, sorry. ---What kind of PC rig were you using for the demo? Misc: ---Can I get one of those Obsidian logo t-shirts somewhere?

Just had to say - that cartoon pic is hilarious...and too true.

Had a nice evening with mom, hanging out on the couch watching the Phillies game & eating take out from Max's. She can be pretty cool sometimes, my mom. Didn't watch today's 49er's game, but reading the recaps/seeing highlights...geez...the 49er's haven't done this badly since I was...um...11? And the Smith/Singletary public squabbling was embarrassing to see. *shakes head*

Beginning to think this old house (50's) needs a complete rewiring. It hasn't been a major issue even with all the pc's/cable-tv but now and then HD channels stop coming in or the 'net seems to die briefly. Weak/leaking signals perhaps. Since not a frequent occurrence could live with it but when it does happen it can be bloody annoying. There's even a few visible knob and tube wires (black cloth covering) in the garage. (edit)P.S. - Some work has already been done on the house by others (some 3prong/grounded outlets, the "panel") & no circuits ever trip from power use abuse, but still needs a total haul.

Iron Man2 - meh, not as good as the first, but did have fun/good action scenes & mayhem.

Runs very choppily on that rig. Wonder what the specs are. To be fair to Arcania, Gothic would look boring too shown like that. Still, considering the reviews it'll probably be ****. Not good enough for both playing & recording, apparently. Haha. Altho, there's also a lot of horizontal jerk (vs. lag-chop) that feels more like the too-fast mouse spin giving the sensation of missed frames. Couldn't understand a word, but the guy in the turtleneck is rather handsome. All the lines I've read about how it just gets worse after the demo-areas/few hours doesn't build confidence for me. The demo was enough to show me that it might be an ok romp on a rainy day, but I didn't find it very immersive - that "just one more quest/level" feeling - which prevents me from caring too much about getting it right away.

Yes, it could be the PSU but it could also be other hardware failure or related issues (including bad video drivers or RAM) or software/file corruption etc. issues. Unfortunately it's one of those "could be a whole lot of things" symptoms. Is there an error message at all, even if there's no time for you to read it? Could it be something as silly as, say, a too loose/wiggly power cord/outlet? If it keeps happening, the PSU's one of the easiest thing to try first to see if that fixes things -especially if it's an aging one anyway- before spending hours tweaking other stuff. Or take it to a shop. Disclaimer:I'm not a pc-tech expert.

Believe me, I'm not. I left the gal at the house, met the dude in the other house, followed him to the swamps, and am now pretty stuck. The enemies in that tutorial area were easier but in swamps/that farm area, bah. I have barely any gold, wielding the 15dmg sword from the house & am still in my bare feet. I can (sometimes) kill a single bird or porcupine but they almost always come in 3's. Luring one at a time hasn't worked yet. Single wolves, boars, & moths pretty much kill me. I even finally put the game on Easy...helped a tiny bit but not much. I suck.

Yes, it upgrades your current installation and keeps your Favorites/they should not be lost. (Firefox upgrades do this as well) .... If you're paranoid, you can back up your IE Favorites. IIRC Favorites in XP should be located in Documents and Settings\(username)\Favorites (probably be a gold star next to it...) ... From all I've read you should probably try IE7+all it's possible security updates first and see if that's "good enough" vs. jumping directly to IE8, which is reputedly more bloated and other things. Re:Firefox: Downloading/installing Firefox does not interfere with or replace your current installation of or ability to use/upgrade IE & you can switch between either browser whenever you want (or run them both at the same time). So it's easy to just install and try it for comparison. If you decide you don't like it you can just go into Add/Remove programs and remove FF. FF may ask you, upon install, if you want to make it your 'default browser'. This means that anything that wants to open in a browser, FF will be the program that auto-opens/loads it (instead of IE). If you don't want this, you can say no, or change it later in the options menus. To get your IE Favorites into FF, you'd open FF, click File then choose Import, and wallah they're in FF. The basic settings/options menu stuff in Firefox is fairly straightforward. More complex preference configuration requires altering the About:config entries, which can seem intimidating at first glance...but it's also something you don't need to mess with just to use Firefox so if it's too scary don't worry about it.

Heh....it could be a little more, but yeah....if it's a general type suit (or whatever they call it) you don't usually get much from it because there are soooo many people involved. I get a lot of notices in the mail re:such mass suits...I always toss them in the trash. But maybe Calax's suit is something a bit different. Edit:$700+ isn't too bad. Usually it's more like $20-30. heheh

Ah, it's the Unreal engine. Yeah that explains it. A lot of those fixes I don't like mucking with - not important enough to me to be worth the trouble. If it doesn't work 'out of the box' or with a simple ini. file tweak I tend to leave it alone. Also, a lot of those solutions (on other site pages too) don't seem to apply in Win7/patched (eg the files they name aren't there...) I haven't played that many hours (just a few) but I'm already frustrated with Risen. I don't mind difficult games where I die a lot more than, say, the almost-never-die of Diablo style games, but my having to quick save every few minutes and reload fights almost constantly, because my apparently lame combat/clicking/timing skillz aren't adequate, is plain annoying. It does seem like a good game, I'm not knocking that...but too emotionally frustrating for me. I like to feel like I have at least a chance of success without having to rely on save/reloading at a constant pace. Ah well. Maybe if I try it again later it won't bug me as much then. Sometimes that happens.

Max Payne - zzzzzzzz. A Perfect Getaway - predictable & often dull thriller, but I didn't quite see the twist coming, so that made it memorable for me. Not enough for me to actually recommend it, but hey if you're super bored at 2am.... (TV series) The new Hawaii-5-0. - not impressed with either lead actor and the rest is zzzzz. It's pretty to look at, however. Detroit 1-8-7 - Good enough to keep me watching for a while. The main draw is Michael Imperioli as Finch. He & his character are fascinating. Sh*t My Dad Says - About what you'd expect. The lead young male is terrible. Shatner, however, is often amusing & only reason to watch. They picked a really good time slot for it, too. The Event - Definitely a Lost+24 combo. Too much rapid time-shifting with too many chrs/plots but that seems to be slowing down a bit now. Could settle into something decent, or just be a convoluted, irritating mess. Blue Bloods - one of the better of the new cop shows, imo. Feels a bit old school in production, vs. the fast pace/editing of recent shows. I hope it finds a good audience in it's terrible time slot.

Risen. Seems fun. Graphics question: even on 16AA there are clear hard jaggies on edges in the near distance. It's not even 'blurred jaggies' like I might expect from AA. Cliff rock face, palm tree frond, someone's sword, house plank edges. I noticed this in the Gothic4 demo too. It's not that it makes the game look terrible or anything, but the thing is, if I turn the AA to x2 it doesn't look much worse than on 16x. In other words, is the AA doing much of anything at all? heh Is this just a game engine thing ala Borderlands or one of those picky card issues? (I use nvidia)

It would definitely, imo, represent a "clear step up."

Watching the last Boston ballgame of the season, which always makes me a little sad. And...Go Giants!

I'm finding the combat in Risen kind of awkward, altho it didn't take me too long to become used to it enough to not die as much. But I don't like it when games have combat moves where the animation doesn't stop even when the creature dies, so my chr. is still flailing away for a few seconds over a corpse. Other than that, so far so good. Might be a little more rpg (talk talk talk talk) than I like these days but that's not a fault of the game, just me. Like the openness and that night lasts a really long time (dark! it's dark!) and can't wait to start mining ore!

Crystal Castles - Pap Smear ...someone linked to of some kid dancing in a Tokyo subway station to this song and the dancing was so 'music wants to make you dance' cool that I ended up liked the song by association. Sampling their other stuff via their MySpace page.

Is it just me, or does that look like actor Ed Harris? Too glow-shiny! Can you turn it off in Risen? I think I've tried every in-game setting, still there. Not even 50 paces from the beach edge where I began and....I is Fail.

Heh, I just bought Risen from BestBuy, for much the same reason. It's one I've looked at on the shelf for a while now, but couldn't decide. Why not.

I used to run across that bridge 20-30 times a day for crafting/AH selling reasons. lol You're supposed to be able to fly in the old areas with the new, right? That's admittedly a nice thing, if so. And the underwater stuff sounded cool.

That's a fun one to goof with either vampires or Horned Reapers. My faves in the campaign these days are 11, 17 & 18. The final level is pretty good too.

I played WoW obsessively for a long time and I always admit it. It's a good game if you like such games & have the time to devote to it. But for me at least, there's zero interest in it at this point. I respect that they keep trying to "freshen up" the game all these years, but nothing's bringing me back. Thrill is gone, baby. Will also probably try Old Republic. Undecided about it, but worth trying. The screenies look good, at least. heh