LostStraw

If Blizzard was an independant company you'd be right about them having more money than God.

Poor barbarian at the end of the gameplay vid Nice and gory though

Starcraft 2 and now Diablo 3

This is a short list since most of the games I'm looking foward to have already been mentioned. Demi God - http://www.demigodthegame.com/ X3: Terran Conflict - http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3_tc/info_en.php

I'm really not sure how the movie could even be considered close to defamation Am I remembering it wrong? And the guy eating only healthy meals from McDonalds -- I'm really not sure what that has to do with the movie either. From what I recall the movie was about eating junk food from McDonalds in excesive amounts to see what would happen (and the expected occured). I don't believe it ever claimed that McDonalds makes you fat. Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

Before I realized (yes I'm slow) that the renegade choices were always on the lower selection of the dialog wheel and the paragon choices the upper I couldn't figure out how my character was going to act from one conversation to the next because the summaries didn't match up to what I thought my character would do or say. I say bring on the lack of summaries

8800GT would be the best choice in terms of performance (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforc...mance/page3.asp). Since you have an SLI capable motherboard I don't see any incentive to favor the ATi card over the Nvidia ones. I currently use a 9600GT and haven't had any problems with it, drivers or otherwise. I'm running Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition. If I had more cash to spend I would have sprung for an 8800GT. My last video card was an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro which served me well for a long time .. but having no brand loyalty I didn't have a reason to stick with ATi this time around.

It was rated M by the ESRB. They gave her a top in the American version because they were aiming for a T rating (can't remember where I read the article) but it didn't work out. The PS2 version was rated T. I'm not sure what the difference is between it and the computer version.

Isn't that essentially what a trial is for -- to determine the action to be taken against the accused?. Notice how none of the charges include anything like murder or manslaughter but are charges such as accessing restricted computers and "cyber bullying." Even if there was no suicide the charges could still have been brought against her and the suicide should not determine whether she is guilty of the charges or not.

I find he makes many more hyperbolies than "reasoned and meaningful criticisims." When I first started watching I paid attention to his opinions on the games he reviewed -- until I actually played some of them. Now I only watch for the jokes.

Just finished up Final Fantasy 12. It's the first Final Fantasy game I've enjoyed playing since FF6 on the SNES. It gives me some hope that FF13 might turn out to be something that I like. It also has the best looking hair I've seen in a game yet -- amazing graphics for the antiquated PS2.

Doubtful. I don't know exactly how Bioware/EA 's EULA is written right now, but they can modify it to restrict sales. Novell (and I believe a few other companies) have had eBay pull down auctions of their second-hand software for years and years without being sued. How an EULA is worded is irrelevant in this regard. No company can deny First Sale doctrine. They can ask ebay to take things down and ebay can deny access to ebay's services at their discretion. Whether or not asking ebay to deny services is a violation is something that has not been tested. It's up to the courts though and according to Wikipedia there's still no clear winner when it comes to to the First-sale doctrine and computer software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine

From Wikipedia: "The medical establishment has generally acknowledged some shortcomings of BMI.[10] Because the BMI is dependent only upon net weight and height, it makes simplistic assumptions about distribution of muscle and bone mass, and thus may overestimate adiposity on those with more lean body mass (e.g. athletes) while underestimating adiposity on those with less lean body mass (e.g. the elderly). For example Lance Armstrong was classified as "overweight" when he competed in the 1993 Tour de France." The WiiFit is a jerk!

But spore has an online component in its gameplay -- there's actually a reason to want to connect to the internet to get the most out of it. I think it's one of the better ways to fight piracy, having a compelling online system that only registered uses can access (much like an MMO). I wont buy Mass Effect in boxed form knowing about the authentication but if it's offered on Steam I'd probably get it.

I'd much rather have violence in my games than sex and at least in the US video games aren't banned (poor Australia). Censorship only comes about because AO games would mean fewer sales -- one of the reasons being that large retailers refuse to carry anything above a M rating. It's a problem with the general American culture, not the ESRB rating system (the rating system simply reflects the culture and ideals). And there's no "quick fix" to change culture save some sort of mass invasion. Even if the ESRB were to start labeling AO games as M I think it would only serve to cause retailers to be selective about what M rated games they carry. Of course I could be wrong and the only reason retailers don't carry AO rated games is because of the social stigma attached to the words "Adults Only."

For those like me who are/were confused about who betelenut girls are, here is an explanation I found: "Betelnut is a mild stimulant chewed all over Asia. In Taiwan, it is uniquely sold from roadside stalls by scantily-clad girls ..."

Unreal Tournament 3 for the PS3 has mouse and keyboard support -- so for at least that console the controls seem to be limited by what the developers want to implement.

Remember, it's concept art. In another thread on the forum you'll find that it's mentioned in the Game Informer article that at least the face is customizable to some degree. We also have no idea what equipment the character will receive throughout the game, perhaps he'll be able to pick up and wear one of the weird 4 eye goggle suits pictured in the background.

Will the game even be in 3rd person? I'm definitely hyped about the concept, to bad the game is still so far from release. Edit: Just found out it is 3rd person, yay for me being blind

There is a very large distinction. Lending or giving a game to someone else is legal. Making a copy of a game and giving it to someone else is copyright infringement. Although with online distribution systems becoming more popular the lending of games may eventually become a thing of the past -- this is the thing I disagree most with about such distribution models, unfortunately it's probably a primary reason for publishers to like them.

But it created bad publicity because people are petty and stupid, not because of the DRM. The people who played illegitimate copies and complained are like people who complain that the handling on the car they just stole is ****ty. They're not in any position to demand smooth gameplay. They're not in any position to demand gameplay period. There's no indication in the rant (maybe there is elsewhere?) that people who actually owned copies had these problems. Think of it this way: How would you react if people went around denigrating MotB as nigh-unplayable because they only played the early builds of NWN2 proper? (which, incidentally, is something I've run into often outside these boards) That's obviously wrongheaded, and so is bitching about any game you haven't played. Unless you're suggesting that a way to reduce piracy is to remove DRM, which is at the same time both terribly novel and totally expected. We don't pirate games because they've got DRM, we pirate games because we want to play them. Stardock didn't add DRM for Galciv 2 and there isn't any in the newly released Sins of a Solar Empire. I remember there being a "swelling" of support from some advocates of piracy when Galciv 2 was released, resulting in a few torrent sites removing it, however it can easily be found now. They included a system where patches and extra content were released through an online update that one had to register for, although the patches and extra content found their way onto piracy sites too. From what I heard Galciv 2 ended up selling pretty well and Sins of a Solar Empire is also selling well so I don't think the lack of DRM is hurting them. This isn't to say that an effective DRM wouldn't help them, as a cursory search shows 96 hits for torrent trackers hosting it, the largest one currently with 4,298 seeders and 4,514 leechers. That translates to a lot of downloads in not too much time, especially since seeders on torrents tend to dwindle fast, it has probably been going strong since the games release. I'd be interested to see some statistics on total numbers of downloads. Note that there isn't a good reason to have to "pirate" the game because there isn't any DRM. It should be trivial to make back up copies from the original. Another thing that probably burns devs is that a lot of the piracy websites make money off it through their adds. Don't think they're all just scrapping by covering their bandwidth costs, especially the ones that only provide links to other trackers.

Current copy protections schemes just don't work. Piracy now days consists of finding a bit-torrent site picking what game you want and downloading. Many of the downloads come with easy to follow instructions in how to get it set up. It takes less brainpower to pirate a game than it does to drive to the store and make a purchase. Maybe when the copy protection schemes become more tightly integrated into the hardware/OS (as they are becoming) will be when they become more effective. If it required a lot more effort/risks to pirate games I'm sure less people would do it.

You can just shove the "do you want to restart" window so it's mostly off the screen. This keeps it from popping back up and taking the focus and since it's not really in the way of anything else it's not too much of an annoyance. Or, if you're on your own computer, there's a way to get rid of it: http://blog.adglobe.net/2006/06/29/take-of...prompt-message/ Edit: From the comments in the blog "disabling" it sets it to a 10 minute default. The max time limit for the reminder pop up is one day (which is hopefully good enough for most people).

You're right -- Microsoft should just rename "Direct X 10.1" to "Direct X 11" so people wouldn't whine so much