Calax

I just wanted to note I'm being specifically vague about the relationship she's jumping into because I don't want to spark a debate about something else.

it's a confusing ending to say the least.

I don't know, I agree I'm flying off the handle but I'm also trying to pull her out of a situation that I think will end up with her leading a life that she probably doesn't want. I'm pretty stable right now (thank you drugs), and I'm trying to lighten up on my weird protection complex. I'd probably end up trying to have her start living with a friend (female, who I'm actually trying to start to date from my class) rather than just out of my parents house. And yes, my reaction to all of this stuff does scare me in one way, but also gives me confidence in another. Scares me because I'm latching onto something that's as incorporeal as a ghost and not letting go even though parts of me are wrestling with other parts to do just that (and they're winning because I'm allowing myself to be distracted from this stuff). Another part is gaining confidence because it's making me feel better about the parenting skills I thought I'd never EVER find decided to appear. Ah hell, I'm still confused as ever about this whole situation but I'm also trying to straighten myself out.

Whoa man, throttle back. Way back. I know, one of the caveats to this is that I meet her before she comes over. Why does this sound eerily like a Nigerian Bank Scam? If she asks for money or your bank account details, call the cops right away. Don't follow her alone into dark alleys and always carry a cell phone with the police number pre-programmed on a hot dial thing. Something you don't realize is she didn't ask for me to turn into her overprotective big brother. I just latched on for a variety of reasons I don't think I can go into here very easily and made the offer because it seemed like her parents were neglecting that important facet of being a parent, Protecting the child from everything including the child's stupid stupid decisions.

Starcraft two:Wings of Liberty should be out by the end of the year. Alpha protocol too.

parts of it are parts aren't what we have here is the destruction of a good character for the uses in the video game environment.

agreed, but there is a limit on difficulty, after which a game becomes tedious and not very fun. ranting time!! There are two basic archetypes of players, those who see games as a challenge and enjoy difficult games, and those who see games as entertainment and just want to relax and have some fun. Between those two runs a stepless scale where each of us fit in, the position on the scale depending on mood and other circumstances. There is a tendency among the challenge players to look down upon those on the other side of the spectrum. Some dont even realise there are other types of players. I think that the players who enjoy challenge are in the minority. You don't see many games as unforgiving as in the old arcade days (or even now, like Ninja Gaiden)

I think I melee'd my way through the entire game. Used the signs sparingly (of course I wasn't on a harder difficulty)

Whoa man, throttle back. Way back. I know, one of the caveats to this is that I meet her before she comes over.

You should try Expert with Darkshape, me and either Ric0 or Phoenix (I think you've played with each of them). We slaughter expert. I don't think I've played with Phoenix yet, but I've played with the other two. I've got Zombicidal Maniac thanks to you guys. Cleared out Death Toll and Dead Air. You guys cleared those levels almost as fast as my advanced runs take. It's insane. I've tried expert with a couple groups of randoms since then, but I haven't had much luck finding a group that doesn't suck. That and an AI director that doesn't spawn a tank in the subway on No Mercy. Or a group that doesn't think it's funny to shoot the car at the end of that level as we all limp to the safe room. Well those three are actually brothers. The trick to tanks is shotguns, they pump out more damage per hit than any of the other weapons (on advanced that means that four guys with auto's in a closet can kill a tank in ONE full clip each). Most of the other weapons expend a much smaller portion of their damage per shot, or go through the target expending much less damage on the tank than they should.

You should try Expert with Darkshape, me and either Ric0 or Phoenix (I think you've played with each of them). We slaughter expert.

I think this might work, but they'd also probably start doing microtransactions for each movie downloaded (similar to Itunes). I think that the biggest thing in terms of movie and TV downloads is that often it's less of a hassle to download it in a night and keep it till you're hard drive is reformatted (or burn it to a DVD) than to go to the video store and rent it for 7 bucks for only seven days. If the movie companies brought down the rental prices you'd probably see more people using them. As it is people would prefer something like Netflix (and game wise, gamefly/gametap) so they can stay home and watch on a whim rather than go to a store to either buy the movie (which they might only watch this one time) or rent it at half the price of the purchase. Of course the movie industry would NEVER want to see their cash cow die (rental places and DVD purchases) nor would they want to cut revenue by dropping prices. I don't know if they'd be able to keep the same amount of overall profit in microtransactions for a lower prices (because I don't know how much the materials cost for the DVD/Blu-ray nor the box) but if they could they could probably cut the amount of piracy simply by having movies available for download for a smaller amount of money. On the TV side of things, I think that one of the bigger things that shoots TV shows in the foot is that not all of them are on DVD. Also people who don't catch things in the first run will often be unable to get that first season in chronological order so they'd have no clue what's going on (in stuff like heroes, Prison Break, 24) which is probably one of the reasons that they are pirated so much. Now TV is probably the least impacted by pirating from an economical stand point, because they don't earn NEARLY as much money selling the DVD sets as they due from ad revenue from the ratings. Basically their economic model isn't easily impacted as other media.

:x if you don't believe me, hit up snopes (I don't want to toe the forum guidelines because the article actually has a shot of the girl nude with her TITANIC belly).

I've been trying to convince the girl I mentioned earlier to hold off. She's in an interesting relationship where her "husband" is an older gentleman that's very much old fashioned (she has to wear dresses). Tonight I spent most of my psych class putting together a letter that I ultimately emailed with her (I've had about 20-30 back and fourth's with her since I first started talking to her) and offered her a room at my parents house (got their consent) if she should decide to leave that relationship, because her home life is a mess (from what I can pick up in her e-mails, she kinda glosses over it). Anyway the letter took me forty minutes to type and I accidentally sent the first 1/3 separate from the other bits. I'm hoping that she reads it and picks up knowledge from it (I basically told her my biggest fears about her situation, and tried to break down her psychology of why she's getting into this relationship etc), and makes a better decision (ie one that doesn't have her with a chance of being pregnant within a year of this date....). I also started yanking apart my own reasons for getting this parental/caring over her even though she's just a name on the internet right now. From what I can come up with, she reminds me a lot of myself when I first got out of high school. No direction, a fear of insecurity that adulthood (and living on your own) brings, don't know why you're taking classes at college other than "everyone's expected to"... that sort of thing, and I'm equating her getting into this relationship to my monumental screw up with the navy (however he fallout from her decision would be MUCH bigger than the one from mine, and her's is a larger commitment) that left me unable to get a security clearance and prospective employers with a reason not to hire me (mentally unstable). I don't know, if she did get out of this relationship and ended up living with me and my parents, I'm not sure what my relationship to her would be... protective older brother, father figure, boyfriend? I'm interested in seeing her succeed and find her own identity (which is why I think she's going into this relationship, because she's got an identity being given to her) and figure out exactly what she wants out of life. She wants kids, that much she made clear, but I think she wants kids, not because they're bundles of joy and happiness that continue the species (ie the reasons most people want kids) but rather because she wants the attention being pregnant and having a young child brings from those in society. Also I think that she's wanting that unconditional love from the child (which due to the situation she's entering she might not get it) to replace what she might not have had at home. The relationship is VERY complicated... and I'm still confused about what I'm trying to do, and what role I'm taking here. I don't even know why I'm posting this for you guys... probably a part of me wants to affirm that I'm correct in the actions I'm taking.

All user reviews are going to be bias. The Amazon.com reviews I found for one of my favorite books that I recently found (a cruel wind) had sharply divided reviews over all but more people found the good reviews to be the helpful than the later ones.

I always ended up using group style more than anything because later in the game you are always fighting armadas of enemies.

I was doing expert earlier on Blood Harvest, we did pretty well, only had two wipes (mainly where first one guy, then another and another would go down and the last one would be standing there trying to rescue his comrades while zombies wouldn't stop swarming to give the players ANY breathing room.

13 is technically the age of viability. Of course our bodies are biologically set for a short lifespan (I think anywhere between 30 and 40 was considered ancient when our bodies decided to evolve reproductively the way we did), and with the advent of modern technology and less agrarian societies the age at which we should breed gets older. ... ... And the youngest girl to ever have a kid was 5... just wanted to throw that out there.

They seemed to have tailored it pretty well to scam people, Had me thinking for a sec but I just made sure I checked the net before doing anything. Ta daa:

... According to my yahoo email, I've just won 850,000.00 pounds (or whatever that little L symbol is) from BMW. I'm wondering if it's a scam or not... it doesn't ask for credit card numbers or anything. Just full name, telephone number, address and other specifics that relate to my location. Yup, looks like it's a scam thats going on. Interesting take on how to get peoples money tho.

I can't find it now, but I saw a review a few years ago where it showed one of the girls stabbing the pro(an?)tagonist on a bed and a fountain of blood similar to what you might find in a MGS game spewing forth.

CD-key's are set up so that only one person with the CD-Key would be able to get online at a time. So if somebody else has your CD key it's probably going to end up with you unable to get online at peak hours.

wait wait wait, they're equating a game in which you enslave a family and then force them to become pleasure girls, that can end with them stabbing you in the chest with a butcher knife if you get them pregnant, to politics? DAMN.

Yeah, but I also think that her being a kid heightened the tension some what.

A "guess" is less than anecdotal evidence. What's your point? Well his point was that back in the day developers just had to learn to deal with the fact that their games were being pirated. Probably one of the most successful anti-piracy tools I've ever seen was the Starcraft multiplayer Spawn that you could put on any computer and then have that computer play with the main game. Well that and steam, mainly because they don't limit you to putting it on one computer or what have you.