Calax

Did somebody say Mr Sinister!? Other side of the door is Deadpool who's cutting loose in the bathroom after having held it for 2-3 days.

Egyptian military has dissolved their parliament and is working to build a separate government (which may or may not include a new constitution) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...parliament.html

Yeah, that's an interesting theory, mostly because not only are the IPs obviously owned by take-two, so are the studios. I'm sure that they are happily going to part with their two crown jewels and throw in the towel. Not. I suppose Acti could try to acquire take-two (which is publicly traded), but I kind of doubt that too. I think they were talking about the fact that there was a news story about Acti looking at Take Two... Uh, ok. I didn't see much of that in the article, but it does seem like a credible theory. After all, Kotickvision can't create, only acquire and destroy. ... Did you look at the title of the article and what the link says?

Ok, I would have put this in the old book thread but that's been pretty much removed from the board so... A few weeks ago I read the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. It piqued my interest after playing assassins creed two simply because it seemed like it was trying to cash in on the particular art design of the games. Anyway, the basic story is one of a kid who's from the lowest of the low rung of society, a homeless orphan in the capital of a fantasy land... but is part of a sort of kids guild (they don't go into it) led by an older kid who beats people up, and then if any of the boys step out of line he basically turns that boy into his victim... sexually. According to the author that's actually taken from his wifes social worker backround but still... Anyway, kid ends up being trained as a "wetboy" (who are basically magical assassins who never "miss") and becomes one of the best. It's a REALLY dark story and series of events in the books. It's biggest issue is that the book doesn't let off the gas to really give you a chance to breath. There's a TINY bit between the first two books but other than that there always is a sense of urgency in EVERYTHING the characters do. This really gets to be oppressive and made me actually end up forcing myself to put down the book so I didn't become too depressed and so that I could get a chance to catch my breath. And not only does he not let up off the gas, but he doesn't let up off the horrific things that keep happening which brings me to what ultimately led to my making this thread. At about the midpoint (well a little before) of the second book, the main characters of the book end up being manipulated by a woman from the "chantry" (Basically an all woman magic school/organization) into doing things for her... but she also kidnaps (effectively) the pseudo daughter of the Main character, and ends up setting in motion events that basically lead to him being forcefully telepathically connected to another person... permanently. Then the woman later practically forces the woman that she had link to him to go the chantry (where she took the daughter of the main character) and enrolls them both into the classes there. Now the sense of time in this book is a little wonky, but basically this starts to fade into the background. Now here's the issue... initially all this is brought up with suitable horror. Basically these two characters were manipulated into a form of psychic rape, and it's a woman doing it to a man (which is nice that it's not used for comedy). The two characters now are sharing each others thoughts, dreams, emotions, sensations, and the guy can't have anything remotely close to a loving relationship with the woman he loved BEFORE all this occurred because of the magic in this (I'll expand on the rings in a moment). BUT within a few chapters, it seems like any animosity that the characters should have felt towards the person who set them up for this basically disappears. They never really DO anything about this and the character actually becomes one of the people we're supposed to root for. This has just been bugging me and has kept me up all night tonight being really pissed off (don't know why this is affecting me such...). If I were the guy in question here, I'd have knocked out the woman who could force me to do things, then promptly went, grabbed the manipulative bitch, and basically made her watch while I took everything she knew and loved, and put it to the torch, then smashed her precious chantry brick by brick in front of her eyes before leaving her in the middle of the rubble unable to do anything. And somehow I'm expected to ROOT for her in the climax of the trilogy and expected to feel that the victims in this whole situation are actually having something good happen to them when they're basically conscripted into the school! I don't know why this pissed me off to the point of preventing me from sleeping but it has. And so this all makes sense: The psychic rape was basically allowed by a pair of ancient magical rings that are supposed to be used by a couple in love, the rings put a spell on both parties that makes it so that their minds are intertwined (to the point where they have lucid dreams about the other where they can have sex), and there's a spell placed on the guy that makes him do whatever the woman orders. And these aren't hand rings, these are rings put through the ear, and then they magically seal so that the only way to "divorce" is to literally rip it out of your ear.

I think it has to do with the START treaties. We give it to the Ruskies to show that we are in compliance with what has been ordered.

Now I skeered. is that like a geekasm?

I wasn't necessarily yelling at crytek, but at the PC publishers in general who seem to have decided that Demo's are just not worth it, or ONLY for multiplayer value as a beta.

Warhead was actually MUCH better optimized than the original. As to the pirate issue, I think some of that might go down if they actually started putting out highly public demos for their products rather than simply saying "Here's a 60 buck game, take our word and the word of those reviewers that it's good". Also, I think it was a newsweek article mentioned that sometimes the anti-piracy measures cause more piracy than they do prevent it. Of course they were referring mainly to books in the article but it carries over (they were talking about how blind people end up pirating what they already own simply so that they can actually read what they purchased by sending it through a text to speak system, rather than having to either have somebody else read it or purchase the 8 volume 20 lb braile version, because anti-piracy measures wouldn't allow the digital book to be "read" by text-to-speech.

Jean Reno is awesome, but Lance Henriksen's voice eats his voice for breakfast. Also, I am deeply in love with hurlshot. Why are all the good ones taken? ... Bring not a knife to a gunfight!

Yeah, that's an interesting theory, mostly because not only are the IPs obviously owned by take-two, so are the studios. I'm sure that they are happily going to part with their two crown jewels and throw in the towel. Not. I suppose Acti could try to acquire take-two (which is publicly traded), but I kind of doubt that too. I think they were talking about the fact that there was a news story about Acti looking at Take Two...

I don't know how you found this, but you are clearly a Wikileaks search genius! Thanks so much. Now I can try to figure out what all the fuss is about, and if we screwed the pooch again. Looks like a discussion between the Ruskies and the US over Strategic asset changes Specifically Sub Based Ballistic systems that are being given to the Brits, and the conversion of B1 bombers to non-nuclear capable machines. Davis Monthan AFB is specifically cited.

YAY! GOLD

... I think that this thread deserves to have this posted.

Define a bit more what you're asking for... if you're looking for something where you're driving the ship, there aren't that many (most of them that I can think of are named here...). The only other ones would be the Battlestations! series for consoles... pretty dumbed down but you're driving a friggin ship.

The technical term is "groundling". Can be modified with either "peasant" or "hoi polloi" Slowtrain, you have a near 5000 post-count and are a consistent voice of wisdom and reason on this forum yet you do not have a custom rank / title. This is a complete travesty, given some of the other crazies who have been so honoured. I might start a petition or something. Uh, Custom titles are given to those who've been mods before, or won a contest basically....

Eric Bana... mainly for his ridiculous acting abilities. Dolph Lungren for being an insanely smart action hero. And Jason David Frank for being able to whup your ass and then make you laugh while happily telling you about being an actor on a kids show. (Special props to David Yost, who's in a similar position as Frank, but isn't as funny or open... but the guy went for 4 years on said tv show as a gay man being harassed over it).

Also showed that the Flash is probably one of the most powerful people on the planet... but nobody thinks so because he doesn't want to be known for that.

True. But in ME it'd be REALLY tough to pull it off. I mean basically all space based combat is going to be Sub warfare and Mass Effect doesn't exactly have the right tone for Sub Warfare.

No.. it wasn't that they couldn't get home, it was that they had to be notified. The reapers are in darkspace (as in BEYOND THE GALACTIC RIM) and are currently in stasis (to conserve power given the only other source they'd have would be starlight and their internal fuel). The idea of the reapers is that one reaper stays hidden in the galaxy and wakes up every so often to check the standard tech level of sentient species, if they're at a specific point it triggers a pulse that causes the keepers to basically summon the other reapers to cull the galaxy and start the cycle over. As to the distances and tech thing... the only time we've seen a fight involving battleships has been the Citadel fight where most of what we saw was the ships being surprised and bum rushed. Although part of that is also dramatic license as most people wouldn't find two black dots sending light beams at each other very interesting. As to the "cultural individuality of tech", I think at some point in ME1 Soverign mentions that the Reapers specifically designed the Mass Effect Relay system to channel species along a very specific technological and Sociological lines so that they become dependent on the tech that the Reapers gave out. So Aesthetically things would probably be different, but in terms of mechanics they aren't to different. Basically it's how guns are now, you always know that one end goes bang and should be pointed at the enemy.

Started a game of Rome total war two days ago... And I fell into the "ONE MORE TURN" Civ trap. Played Scipii after asking Der "Which house!?" and he wanted me to fail against the elephants. It's late in the game now and there are very few powers remaining. Thrace, Macedon, Parthia, Brits and Pontus (At least I think it's Parthia still up... they might not be) other than the Roman houses. I control all of western africa, Spain, almost all the islands (Julii got the one they always get) and am starting to fight in Turkey against Pontus. Yes I'm playing vanilla and I'm happy to note that the Urban Cohort Chainsaw still works. Although in the initial parts of the fighting I got a bit frustrated at the fact that I'd fight three battles in the "off" turn and have a near useless Legion and end up reinforcing... the only locations that I owned that could produce the high level infantry I've been using were back in Carthage... so I ended up basically having a Legion in Pontus the entire time, it just rarely had the same troops for more than 6 turns. Finally I took a city that'd been traded and exterminated twice but it had the proper barracks so I've been using it to reinforce on site rather than having to keep a convoy going across the med. Of course I've also been parking myself on a bridge and having fun bleeding Pontic armies dry while waiting for a second/third Legion to arrive from Carthage to start taking more cities and cutting Pontus down a bit. Admittedly that'll take a while given they've got basically everything south-east of the Black Sea. But, once I do have their territories in my power, I can probably march on Rome and finish up the game. A few interesting/silly things happened that confused the HECK out of me. One started when I got sick of Cordoba deciding to riot every other turn so I pulled all my troops out and let them rebel... They turned up with a mish mash of units from all over (from Numidian to Hastati to greek phalanx...) and a family member. I got beaten back.. twice (although once I wasn't prepped for the units and the other time was a seige where I auto-battled and should have won) before finally backing off and building up a larger force taken from my always overly large garrisons in the area (there's usually between 4-600 men in every settlement because I'm neurotic about being attacked). During the buildup I had a diplomat show up and ask for a ceasefire against the rebels... HOW DOES THAT WORK!? The other thing that was strange was looking up from coordinating the logistics of invading another continent from Carthage and Spain and seeing that the Brutii (Who've been getting kicked all over Greece by the Macedonians) had managed to have a gladiator uprising in one of their cities ON THE ITALIAN PENINSULA! I promptly took outdated (pre-marian reform) units and had them "help" siege the city... then attack it using the Brutii's army to basically take the place in my name. And here's a screenshot of a fairly funny bridge battle I had (all the pontic units in shot are currently fleeing THROUGH MY LEGION)

Interesting thing is that the humans are more impatient for their place in the world than the Salarians but the Salarians are shortest lived.

I've always kind of liked the idea that instead of humans being a technologically backward and small civilization in the galactic scope, in ME their military (and, largely, tech) was on a par with the most powerful citadel races (and hence, the meteoric rise in galactic politics). I can somewhat understand that... but the issue for me is that Humans "first contact" war was initiated before they really had a good grasp of Mass Effect fields... and yet just about every tech in the game uses those fields (Shields divert weaponry, guns use ME fields to get things going, cars float on ME fields etc etc). And to have completely adapted that tech into everything so readily....

Michael Rosenbaum's portrayal of LL was the best thing about Smallville.(apart from Erica Durance) Kevin Spacey's portrayal was also quite funny. Agreed. FACTOID! In the Justice League cartoon show Michael Rosenbaum was the voice actor for the Flash. In one of the later episodes (JLU actually) He and Luthor swap brains.

http://kotaku.com/#!5756624/how-fox-ne...-games-so-wrong ... oye vey.

CoD2 was a bit of a phone in (not as much as MW2...) and was overall pretty boring. But they amped up the health regen to 11 and provided you enough cover and fire power that you could basically survive anything and any fight (as long as you didn't have somebody pop out of the celing and blow your brains out).