Humanoid

If you had purchased the censored Australian version this wouldn't have been a problem. :D

The kicker there is that the article states the events happened before she even hit age 40, so apparently at 39 you can no longer fall pregnant.

Is there an event where the entire Russian military shows up at the booth?

Bit of everything over the last week. Dragonfall, Skyrim Frostfall, Minecraft, Stick of Truth. Dragonfall. That the campaign is indisputably better than its predecessor perhaps makes me all the more bothered by the UI issues - primarily the combat UI - that they haven't really addressed. Tempted at this point to just set it back to easy and blast through it for the non-combat content. In combat: The number of clicks just to get a spell off, especially a buff spell, is a big offender. The fiddly way to even see the buffs you already have applied exacerbates the issue - as far as I can tell you have to hover over the character model itself (and not while in spellcasting mode), the portrait offers nothing but useless green and red triangles. What's wrong with a bloody hotbar? On a minor note, I keep accidentally shooting with the melee character first up because the pistol is defaulted instead of the claws, grr. Out of combat: The roundabout way in which healing is handled outside of combat is a persistent bugbear, and indeed just seeing your health in the first place is very non-obvious. An occasional issue, and one I can imagine being a rather big one at higher difficulties, is that you have to physically lead with your player character, which is tactically compromising when walking into ambushes. It's a bit of a dilemma, I'm happy that I don't have to manually move each person out of combat, something that turns many a party-based RPG into a chore, but I'd at least like the ability to choose the one person I want to move. Mechanics: I long for vertical cover being recognised, i.e. peeking around doorways, as the very limited amount of object the game counts as cover feels very stilted. Skyrim - don't really plan to do anything meaningful with this playthrough, just messing around with the 'hardcore mode' type mods, being Frostfall and Realistic Needs, as I have been in small doses over the past few weeks. I'm pretty okay with the mechanics themselves, but they can and do frequently fall out of place, survival mechanics being undermined by the game itself, for example, random revellers in a blizzard making merry. I don't blame Bethesda for it since it's obviously mechanically irrelevant for their intended design, but it just feels silly in combination. Minecraft. First time player. Entertaining enough diversion for a couple of days, but I don't think it holds any long-term appeal for me. Sandbox in general isn't really my thing, and if I wanted to build houses I'd rather play The Sims. As a non-fan of South Park, it was always going to be a risk of a purchase, but happy enough with it thus far. The QTEs are making me take relatively frequent breaks though, if not physically then they're at least mentally exhausting. The 'mash A' ones in particular I've just not bothered with, if an attack of mine requires it, I'll never use it again, and if I need to do it to counter an attack, I'll just stop and take it. Obviously the 'consoleised' UI controls are going to draw a reaction as well, I'd say I can live with most of it, but inventory management is predictably the worst part. The sheer number of duplicated functionality potions all just appear in one big list making scrolling a pain - I don't want to choose between a half-dozen separate listings for minor healing potions that differ only by icon. It's one of those cases where flavour unfortunately overrides usability, but even then surely it could be better handled. Maybe pool them together such that you only see one entry, but use the specific item you have the most quantity of automatically. Or try having one big generic stack but have the specific item you appear to consume be random. Add to that the irritation of the list not wrapping, and I'm mostly trying to brute force most battles without consumables. I also wish there were abbreviated animations for the non-interactive segments of the more elaborate skills.

The government of Mongolia has published a list of prohibited words, and phrases banned from use in Mongolian websites. These are a mix of Mongolian, Russian and English words, and while some are what you might expect, others are somewhat more bemusing. Highlights given include such mundane words or phrases as 'bad', 'huts', 'clumsy' and 'bad breath' (not sure why a separate entry is required if 'bad' is already banned in its own right); some mild expletives or insults such as 'idiot', 'jerk' and 'goshdarnit', some baffling non-words such as 'douchewaffle'; and erm, 'feminine hygiene accessory'.

I think you misunderstand the Haswell issue then. It's absolutely nothing to do with the TIM between the heatsink and the CPU - or more accurately, the heatsink and the heatspreader. It's to do with the TIM between the heatspreader and the die underneath. Prior to Ivy Bridge, the heatspreader was soldered on to the actual CPU die, so there was minimal loss in conductivity. As a cost-cutting measure in Ivy Bridge, they opted to machine the heatspreaders with a lot more tolerance, resulting in a larger gap between surfaces, and used pretty ordinary thermal goop in between it and the die to fill out that gap. You cannot fix that without physically prying/levering off the heatspreader, which is obviously a pretty risky thing to do. A picture tells a thousand words, so here's one of a de-lidded Haswell CPU. It's the thick layer of grey goop here that's the issue.

Clearly Obsidian are on their way to diversifying their properties in the manner that 80s powerhouses like MPS Labs and Origin Systems did - they explored every genre under the sun. I mean if you can do F-19 Stealth Fighter and Darklands, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, Civilization and Rex Nebular; or Ultima and Jane's Longbow, Wing Commander and System Shock, Crusader and Wings of Glory.

Maybe he'll have a "one more thing" moment. C'mon Justin!

I don't much care about Iris Pro IGP as I'll be getting a dedicated GPU anyway, but does this confirm higher end Broadwell desktop chips? I hope so. Seems a bit weird to put an IGP into higher end desktop chips, though. Won't the people in that segment of the market be getting a dedicated GPU anyway? It's down to Haswell refresh or Broadwell for me, I've mostly talked myself out of Haswell-E. I don't know if I trust Intel about the "Improved TIM". Does that mean they'll use better paste or just more of the garbage they've been using? I'll likely just drop 10 bucks on a small tube of Arctic Silver, it's a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing the chip will run nice and cool. The properly hardcore people will just run bare-die! But I'll take any improvement, really, I'm not even going to consider going at a $200-300 CPU with a knife or pliers just to get the heatspreader off (and of course, voiding the warranty).

If WW3 breaks out due to recent events, the market for this might explode! Now that's being market savvy.

Intel just had a conference call detailing their plans for the rest of the year - some new stuff amongst the old. - Socketed Broadwell with Iris Pro IGP - fairly niche use in my view and will likely be priced out of sensible range - Octacore Haswell-E with DDR4 support as expected - Haswell K series refresh featuring improved thermal interface to help with Haswell's notorious temperature issues, also new 9 series platform - Fully unlocked 20th Anniversary Pentium - uhhhh, okay.

Skyforge people want to make a tank game. Skyforge people are working with Obsidian already. "Hey, wanna do this other thing for us?" I mean if you've already got a good working relationship with an external studio, you're likely to give them first refusal on a new project rather than take the time and risk associated with finding another partner to do it.

Furthermore, a tank game WITH NO ROMANCES.

It's the same company, both games are listed amongst others here - http://games.my.com/ The decision to contract Obsidian of all companies makes a bit more sense in that regard - go with the company you know and have worked with, rather than a new partner. What I don't get is that Skyforge might be something just sold to the local Russian market, but this other thing might be sold internationally?

Heh, maybe I should go look up the Immature edition.

I guess the other thing is that, being stablemates, why this one is being given much more coverage than Skyforge, which as far as I know had no real reveal and no forum link here amongst other things.

A beta release for the new Tex Murphy game will be available shortly. While that's news, I find it more interesting (since I don't have access to it anyway) that the beta will be handled by GOG, unlike every other beta that's come before. I didn't know that was even a possible thing.

Got me stumped. On a more practical note, shouldn't the external link to the forums for that be down where the New Vegas one is?

This thread is even worse than the other one in terms of creating false hope, because I see "Official..." and think "oh hey, finally they've made an official announcement...."

You just need to listen to more 70s rock.

If someone is labelled Obsidian VIP, it's generally a former moderator.

GreenManGaming has just issued a new 20% code, which in itself is unremarkable, but unlike the previous one that just expired, this one works with Stick of Truth, which happens to be at a reduced price of $45 already. So it comes out to $36, which I imagine is the cheapest it's been. For convenience: PLOCVS-G2T5YX-DATY6M (P.S. I think a 'good game deals' thread might be a good thing to maintain around here since this doesn't really qualify as news.)

Goat Simulator, on the other hand, is being released on April 1st.

Yeah, sort of that, but also a large part due to them only really existing at the periphery of my awareness - not owning the platform they are native to. I'd give the example of the various generic rom-coms that get released each year, it's very easy to get them confused.

So who's the Ed Wood of games?