Humanoid

The hardest enemies in the game are Thinmen! I'm not kidding, relative to when they show up, I fear them most. It's not even close.

I've backed more than a few games out of 'charity', or for a better word perhaps, goodwill. Games I never had any intention of playing, but don't mind supporting. So in that context, it's hard to be disappointed...

So, Ultima Online?

I'm assuming the dude is drunk, hence the "hic" in the middle. Drunk slurring works in a movie when the guy at the bar is acting slushy but not so much (imo) in text. And I don't really mind the meme either. Actually I don't even get/know the joke of that meme - I just know it is a meme because I see people use it with "lol" or whatever attached. "Patrolling the Mojave, almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter"

Turns out I lied about abandoning my game of it and did the same. Then finished the lot, because by the time I went to tackle the first boss, it turns out that was strong enough to tackle all the bosses. I'd still stop short of calling it a "good" game, too many disappointments for that, but a reasonable way to pass some time. I'd say at this point my primary disappointment is that all the four levels are literally the same design, except with different colour schemes.

Well the repeated nature of it is probably down to an editor not (yet?) properly going through it. I'd assume it's a different writer in each of the three cases just not talking to each other when including their 'clever' reference. Actually, the hobo in #2 is just one of those filler NPC with no real interaction and gameplay purpose, right?

The profile is slightly confusing because the bit where it says "so-and-so badge" is actually just a row label, to the right of it is the actual value (which would default to nothing). Just like above it you have the label "Gender" and the actual value to the right of it.

I don't recall having a particular problem with it either. At least, not moreso than with the bit immediately preceding it, arguably worse because it's a recycled level (justifiably, sure, but doesn't make it less boring). Mind you, I'm pretty down on the game in general, so saying I have no specific issue with any given part doesn't mean it's 'good' per se.

I burned out on DXHR after the slog that was the back to back missions in Tai Yong then Picus. The supposed Montreal quest hub really needed to be a thing, perhaps Singapore too if I had gotten that far. Given that there's both DLC and a Director's Cut of the game, it's disappointing they didn't use the opportunity to add those hubs. It does reflect my preferred style of game though, which is to say, this post isn't totally off topic: screw the extended stealthy-shooty bits, I just want to wander around the city talking to people and doing smaller things. Dishonored was a bit of a weird one for me, tackled five (I think) missions so far, with months of not playing in between. The only time I played missions back to back were the Overseer followed up by the Golden Cat sequences. And I liked those missions because of the common areas between them which gave a good sense of the world - and again had some non-shooty-stealthy bits. But then the bridge mission I found to be an awful, linear slog. Then the Boyle mission, which really should have been right up my alley, turned out to be pretty ordinary as well. (What's the point of trying to put together clues when one person you can walk right up to at the start will tell you straight up what the answer is?) FONV I've finished. Finished once. I've probably killed Benny about a dozen times, but then lose interest in that particular save and abandon.

Yeah, the only 'difficult' requirement you have is probably the weight one, which most 15" machines will fail. Only the very premium machines at that size, namely the XPS 15, can even hit the 2kg mark - mostly achieved by using carbon fibre for the body.

Overseer was the first game to be released on DVD, so that's sort of current....

And maybe Steam will turn into a good piece of software eventually too, but it's also still got a long way to go.....

From a selfish perspective, a horror game is basically the only scenario where I wouldn't pledge for the game (well, I might as a 'charity' thing, but certainly not out of interest). That said, my definition of horror is pretty loose - no problems with Bloodlines for example. But if it's what they want to do, then I respect that. Not for the first time anyway, the Aliens game was something I had zero interest in.

That'd just be Alpha Centauri RPG. Which might be awesome.

Sadly perhaps, training roulette probably marginalises supports even more since without the medic abilities, it's pot luck whether you get enough offensive abilities to compensate (which is to say, bullet swarm). But in any event, I found I didn't particularly need the triple medkit, and it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Taking another assault (which is probably the closest to support tactically) often means you have both the defensive capability and raw firepower to not take damage in the first place. Most missions end with no damage taken at all, and that's with conventional tactics instead of cheap sniper camping (I restrict myself to one sniper per mission these days).

I ended up dropping supports altogether on my last game. My initial one died and without an immediate replacement I just went with the flow. Got so used to it, that there was no incentive to train one up. With tactical rigging, it makes sense to just give the medkit to the sniper, who can't really use anything but a scope anyway. That said, not saying that I wouldn't use one in a new game. For the first few months, I absolutely want the smoke grenade. But the late game devolves into simple massing of firepower, so the niche disappears.

Yeah, it gets harder the more contemporary the setting to get that level of detail. But I feel something like a more open version of Dishonored's Dunwall would be just fine in terms of supporting a fully-fledged RPG without needing to resort to external areas. Scale it up to the level of those GTA-type games and it'd probably lose too much detail (though I'd love to have Sleeping Dogs version of Hong Kong as a setting, maybe halve the scale).

I'm a bit over wilderness and large expanses of open, empty country. Give me something full of life, the hustle and bustle of cities. Add, of course, my usual pleas for very light, minimalistic combat.

You can buy digital games from Amazon US, all you need is to enter a fake US-based billing address. There's no geolocation or any other restrictions.

They should just transcribe TOR's dialogue into a bunch of text files and turn it into a choose-your-own-adventure text-only type game (with optional voice).

So Obsidian is making a World of Tanks competitor then?

I'd question whether their entire catalogue put together is worth $75. Fake edit: Hmm, oddly only available in Europe *and* Australia. Shocked that they even remember us for once. But I'll probably do it for the hell of it. Worst case scenario will be that I get DXHRDC out of it. It says four game so I'd guess that plus Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman perhaps? They've all gone for under $10 during sales as far as I know.

If space is a factor then I wouldn't go for 500GB drives - far more sensible to get up to a 2TB drive (the largest available 2.5" drives currently) and an 120GB SSD or larger. (Or 2x2TB spindle drives for raw storage capacity I guess). Saves on noise and weight, and it ought to be more reliable as well. Heck I'd just run one large drive and leave the other bay empty rather than go two spindles. Hybrid drives are an option too I guess, but I personally dislike them - I like having full control over my storage instead of relying on software to guess at my usage. Check if your laptop support mSATA and you might be able to get two spindle drives *and* an SSD, though that'd be somewhat overkill.

Just install any media player like VLC or MPC-HC though, and you'll be fine. What happened is that Windows Media Centre got decoupled from the normal versions of Win8 because MS no longer felt like paying royalties to include DVD playback. Instead you have to purchase some DLC (yep, OS DLC) - specifically the Media Centre pack. But beyond that, they've made it so that you must have the Pro version of Win8 to even get the Media Centre pack - I assume this latter move is just regular dickishness. And another caveat, even if you have that pack, you still won't be able to play DVDs through the regular Windows Media Player. Honestly though, your requirements are pretty general, basically any current laptop (Haswell - usually marketed as 4th Generation Core iX, made tremendous strides in this regard) can handle that - with the latest Bay Trail update, even Atom-based netbooks can play games to a certain extent. So really, you have your pick sizewise, all the way from 8" tablets to 17" desktop replacements You'll probably note a lot of Dell and Lenovo models listed below. It's mostly because in my shortlist, they've come out on top in terms of premium models. Lenovo's Thinkpad line, while somewhat drifting lately from the old IBM Thinkpad philosophy, is still a mostly unique beast in the market, bringing business class devices through the whole stack (unlike say, Dell's Latitude or HP's Elitebook range, which exclusively aim for the big end of town). The "Thinkpad Edge" and non-Thinkpad models are significantly less impressive, however. Pleasingly, Dell have switched philosophy since going back private and have mostly abandoned the race to the bottom that they were previously engaged in - the new model Inspirons are no longer synonymous with scrap plastic. Heck, even Acer have finally realised that quality is a thing and no longer exclusively push cheap plastic tat. Listing by size: Bay Trail tablet - yes, this is probably a wee bit too small, but there's a new crop of ~8" tablets that run not Android or Windows RT, but full Windows 8 (albeit in 32-bit form until next year). Models include the Dell Venue 8 Pro, Lenovo Miix 2 and the Toshiba Encore. Bay Trail netbook - 10" convertibles with the same hardware above, but more versatile given a keyboard dock. After a few years in the wilderness, netbooks are finally back. The Asus T100 is the model making all the waves here, impressively integrating an IPS screen (unheard of in notebooks at this price point, or even double it) and it even throws in a free copy of MS Office Home and Student (many of these Bay Trail devices do). In the US they sell for under $400, a steal. The upcoming HP Omni 10 will be the chief competitor for this type of device. Subnotebook - generic term for smaller traditional notebooks, usually in the 11-13" range. Expect all to come with low-voltage CPUs which trade off power for battery life (almost all ultrabooks will use these, marked by a 'U' suffix to the model number. There's a pretty big budget range starting with the cheap and cheerful Dell Inspiron 11 3000 up to the business class Lenovo X240. Other notable models are the Dell XPS 13 and the Samsung ATIV Book series, plus some Asus Zenbook Infinity models (which have a stupidly confusing model naming scheme which I will not attempt to decipher). Convertible - at the upper end of the range, there's a trend towards the convertibles lately, essentially subnotebooks which come not with a keyboard dock, but with 360-degree hinges or similar, making them rather oversized tablets in that mode. Notable convertibles include the Dell XPS 11/12, the Lenovo Yoga range (Thinkpad Yoga or Ideapad Yoga 2 Pro) and the Sony Vaio Duo (*not* the Vaio Flip, which fits into this category but sucks). The HP Spectre X2 is a competitor that takes the old keyboard dock approach. Full size ultrabook - typically 14-15" models with integrated graphics: Intel's HD4400 is finally passable for low-settings gaming. I've just gone this path myself, picking up the impressive Thinkpad T440s. (Somewhat confusingly there's also the T440 and T440p, the cheaper model and the higher performance model respectively, both being bulkier than the 's' model) Dell's competing XPS 14 has yet to be released but appears promising. A common gotcha here is the screen quality. Disappointingly most vendors still try to foist shockingly antiquated 1366x768 TN panels with machines of this size, which I consider wholly unacceptable these days. Even 1600x900 is pretty poor these days. Traditional full-size laptops cover basically everything else. I have no real interest in this type of device, so pickings are pretty slim in terms of what I can recommend. At the low end, it's all a bit of a muchness. As per the same sized ultrabooks, vendors love shipping 15" entry level models with crappy panels, so watch for that. The high end gets a bit more interesting: the Dell XPS 15 does come with an interesting 3k screen, but Windows doesn't handle super high resolutions screens (equivalent to Apples buzzword 'retina' panels) all that well. Lenovo's T540p is a direct competitor to the Dell, complete with the same screen, but comes with a low-voltage CPU instead, which somewhat misses the point of the exercise.

Two? Not much to say other than the usual: if your space requirements/budget allows, go SSD.