Calax

I wasn't attempting to break it down by ethnicity. I was just surmising that the Arabic and Jewish groups would (if placed in a position where they had to defend their power against the other ethnic group) presumably vote down ethnic lines. I guess being an American means I'm to attached to the two party system to even consider that the parliament or what have you would have more than 2 or 3 factions vying for power within it.

And you'd rather silence the people you disagree with? Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just your gut feeling? Maybe your system in Britain is weird, but you only need a 50% majority to pass law here, which means nothing goes wibbly unless both the Opposition party and third parties are opposed to some plan, in which case it probably damn-well shouldn't pass! In america its a little bit of both. you only need 50% to pass a law, however if you face opposition from the head of state and thus have a veto on your law, you need a 2/3ds majority to force the law through. at least at the national level. Rubbish. If Israel didn't have proportional representation, the only groups that would become more powerful are the extremely hawkish ultra-right-wing parties. How does that lead to peace? I'm assuming that proportional Represnetation means that if theres 40% Jewish and 60% Islamic, then the seats on the council or congress or parliament will fall that way. Now looking at some census data from years ago the Jewish population is above the Islamic population by 2 to 1. How reliable those figures are I'm unsure because they come from the census which I don't believe accounts for illegals or non citizens. I would expect that the real figures for the islamic populations are MUCH higher.

Nope. I think they left that for the sequels to follow up on. In responce to Scepter: Not really. Personally I would love to see more info about the Geth, A race of machines that were created by the Quarians and ended up rebelling to the point where the Quarians no longer have a homeland, instead they live in a HUGE flotilla of patchwork ships. The backlash of the geth rebellion was so much that all AI research and programming was outlawed. Mass Effect instead has "Virtual Intelligence" interfaces that act more like a data terminal with a face. Honestly I think the story guys at Bioware went overboard in creating the universe of mass effect. Yhatzee touched on this in his review, but the guys designing the backround world had SO much detail in how things work. Including how Asarii reproduce (they join their nervous system with the creature they want to act as "father" and take a snapshot of the genetics and electrical systems... I think), How the Mass Effect occurs (basically it drops a GIANT mass infront of the ship and slingshots the vessel over it at incredible speed), how weapons work (the guns manufacture their own ammunition and then act as what we commonly refer to as gauss rifles), shields, ship drives, governmental bodies, the whole nine yards.

Would have added it to my previous post, but I was 60 seconds to late Started "A Fortress In Shadow", first two chapters have the start of a reformation in a Arabic styled nation, A boy "El Murid" (translated: The Disciple) starts preaching ideas that challenge the foundation of the current religion, In the second chapter this ends up with him being tossed out of the nation, only problem is that his followers promptly riot, deface a series of shrines, and El Murid's right hand man is a military genius. In Casting El Murid out the Nation ends up causing the very thing they didn't want to happen, the youthful generation rebels and converts. I know how this ends because it's a timeline prequel to "A Cruel Wind" but was published after that series. Three words "El Murid Wars". Cruel Wind and Fortress in Shadow are omnibusses that collect a series of books. Cruel Wind mainly has to deal with how the "Western" (European) world fights off invasions by Shinsan (an Idealistic version of Asia. Shinsan has the best infantry and some of the most powerful sorcerer generals). Somtimes my head starts to spin after reading about everything that happens. The Black Company series is by the same author.

Read the Black Company, It did what Song of Ice and Fire is doing 20 years ago.

Velvet assassin sounds like it's going to be similar to deus ex in that you don't have to kill everyone you come across.

After talking with a WoW guildie who is being forced to move to austin for business reasons (he's also involved in the gaming scene, primairly as a tester but he also does design work onstensably) They're apparently going to be asking testers "does this feel like star wars" over and over to the testers to make sure the feel is right. Also they are taking a mass effect-esque take on how the world will work, a huge heap of planets, parts of each on different servers so the thing doesn't collapse, and there will only be one game world/economy/"server". So no being separated from your friends because you were an idiot and rolled up on a central standard time server.

true, also any zombie will die from fire, in under a minute too

Advanced (my normal level) It was insane. I forgot to mention in the long hall leading to the safe room right before the terminal another tank got spawned for us. we managed to kill it with an incap but still, three tanks in one section (one of the tanks with a horde spawn at the same time) was INSANE!

I have learned several things about surviving a zombie apocalypse from left 4 dead. 1) don't make much noise, zombies are attracted to it 2)make sure you stick with friends because most of the other people who join up with you suck and often split up from the group 3)if you're headed for safety, screw the people behind you (every safehouse you enter in Left 4 dead, when you load the next area the door back the other way is blocked with furniture) 4)when a zombie makes a noise other than the standard "urrrrr" run like hell 5)when the apocalypse hits, alot of people will randomly leave well made pipebombs around.

Interesting thing about battletech is that some of the best books haven't been about the warring going on, more about the subterfuge, and power plays of the successor states.

/cry Me and Deadly nightshade were fighting our way through dead air when the admin of the server came on, spawned a tank, then another tank after we'd killed the first one and then things just went strait to hell. Finially admin shut down the server as we got to a safe room. Until admin screwed us we were doing quite well (if slow)

Is the special guy's left foot using your name as a foot base? It just seems to be floating there.

Did another left for dead game. Did some vs earlier today, and am now puzzleing out how I got the "Outbreak" achievement. Either a player/dev boomer puked on me, or I got puked on, pushed the guy back and then blew him up without him hitting the other members of my group. given I usually don't bash boomers (well maybe I did, it's hard to tell) I think it was a the former. I'll have to check in a friends only game.

He was German, he's in Munich. Said so earlier. He was doing that THE ENTIRE TIME! The very first map we were yelling at him to turn off the flashlight and he wouldn't do it. If my German were better maybe that would have had better luck. What was funniest about the guy is whenever he went down he'd start yelling "HELP ME, NOOBS!" I made my own share of mistakes in the game, of course. I startled a witch once because I didn't look around well enough before jumping into that field. And one of our failure times I jumped out of the house to try to rescue those two as they died when I should have just left them there. Hah! "HELP ME, NOOBS!" Sounds like the perfect time to put a bullet or two in him. Maybe next time he'll keep a better lookout. I just finished a game with Calax and Zombie Hunter (Deadly_Nightshade right?) that took us over 2 hours. We started out on expert, but dropped it down to Advanced after a couple failed attempts at the subway. We had a couple total party kills after that, but not many until we got to the finale where we died 3 or 4 times in a row. Mainly because we kept splitting up. "Guys! The closet!" "No! The little corner tower thingy!" "Damnit just pick a spot people!" *everyone goes their own way* Finally our 4th member quit out on us and somehow we did better without him. We made it through the first tank with no issues. By the time the second one arrived I was still being helped up by Calax. I quickly healed myself while the two of them fought the tank. Calax went down quickly because he was almost dead already and couldn't outrun the tank. Zombie was the next to be targeted, but I managed to run up behind the tank and crack him over the head with the butt of my assault rifle to lure him away before he could kill ZH. I helped up ZH, but I could see a hunter stalking me, I was sure that it was going to pounce before I could get ZH back on her (Zoey's) feet, but luckily it stayed away. I got boomered just after that happened. I'm not sure how ZH got up on the helipad, but I rifle butted my way to the end of the ramp and back up it with the green goo all over me. The helicopter came in to rescue us and I jumped in while ZH covered my escape. ZH actually went to jump into the copter but got literally snagged out of mid air by a smoker and was incapped before I could do anything so the copter took off with just me inside. Yeah, I knew the tank was going to get me, I had 1 hp left when it arrived and no pills. I was just hoping to do enough damage to let you guys make your escape.

special issue

Played some left 4 dead with Tale. we got our heads handed to us 2 times before managing to finish the finale, and even then Tale (the token black guy ironically) got left behind because he was taken down at the bottom of the rescue ramp. Of course that run didn't get off to a good start because we got hit with a smoker hunter and tank within about 2 minutes right outside the safe zone. We also had a eastern european newbie who would do stupid stuff like get way apart from the group, or leave the house during the finale. He also didn't shut off his light around a witch.

I would think that if women were in front line roles and not segregated from men, the army and marines would have to deal with the inevitable procreation after the soldiers get down from adrenalin highs. Heck I'm willing to bet that in the navy, despite regulations contrary, couples are formed and they rut like animals whenever they can steal a chance.

no, his theory is that the uncharted worlds were put in because a large sect of the RPG gamers enjoy running off to wherever and seeing if that place has loot regardless if there is a reason behind going there. As to the citadel and the level design/art direction tomfoolery, I think that the Citadel was an ok quest hub. If you knew how to do things you could do everything in one or two loops through the place. Could it have been compressed? probably. It did get overly large, and it seemed like the devs were trying to convey that what you were running around in was just a very small percentage of the actual station. Their attempt while valiant didn't come off so well because the size of the areas you had to run around in led to a lot of dead area. After going through the game several times, I noticed that almost every area within the citadel was actually used in various quests, but the problem is that half the area was only used on the first go, with the other half being right before you took off to Iilos, or on your second arrival.

Old town was built in 1848 ish. The freaking gold rush trail ended here. (actually highway 50 is the old trail.)

by that reasoning Saint's Row 2 should take the gold.

Most life creates and manipulates the warp to a degree. However in Humans there are blanks and pariahs, while effect wise they are the same thing (warp can't work on them) the Pariahs carry a gene that was put into the human genome by the C'tan. Orks also are very difficult to posses because of the way that their power works. If an ork were to get possesed it's most likely that he would be killed for being Unorky. And Orks also have a sort of shield that they put up when they go into a WAAAGH! alone an ork couldn't do much with the warp, but when in a WAAAGH! the Orks combined abilities allow them to manipulate the world (which is why "Red unz go fasta!" works). The Tau have so little connection to the warp they can't really be tainted by chaos. In fact they can't even use warp drives to enter the immaterium. any other questions:http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=51651 enjoy.

Because Darkshape and I were usually up ahead clearing out the next area? Although that moment with the witch was classic. "Don't go near the witch. Wait for her to calm down before you try to run past her..." "Whee!" *Shockwave startled the witch!* *Shockwave has been incapacitated!* That one match I had 33 friendly fire incidents while the rest of you had 10, 10 and 11. That one was particularly bad, even by my standards. I think that time and in our last run I got all the damage on the witch with my sniper rifle. (me and shape were using ventrilo to talk to eachother and when shock went down he said "good thing you were there" because I was the only one within shooting distance of the witch.) I did love Shapes headshot on a leaping hunter.