Humanoid

It's not even in the regular options as far as I know. http://www.youtube.com/html5

Pretty much, yeah. I *want* to spend, but the stuff out there really doesn't justify it yet. I mean it's like a laundry list of stuff I *should* be getting, but am not for one reason or another. One overriding one is the relative weakness of the Aussie dollar - down about 15% from the highs of last year. Not a huge amount, but still a disincentive to spend, whether it be importing from overseas or buying locally. I want more RAM, after one of my four sticks died this year I'm down to 4GB from 8GB. But the prices have been stupid since January, so I'm not going to bite. I want more storage, both spindle and solid state (or two). But WD's 4TB Red drive took over a year longer to come out than its competitors, and I'm still waiting for reviews on that. And there's nothing too exciting in the SSD arena: Crucial and Samsung have new(ish) mainstream ones with good capacity, but the Crucial M500 is outperformed by its predecessor, and the Samsung EVO uses less durable TLC NAND. The pick for performance is probably the Sandisk Extreme II, but the lack of competition is disappointing. But I should probably get a new platform first anyway before buying a shiny new boot drive. Speaking of which: Haswell. What a damp squib that turned out to be. Great for mobile applications, but almost a pointless release on the desktop - at least in terms of a "tock" (Ivy was a worse upgrade, but at least it's understandably so). And of course, AMD have done nothing outside the APU arena except for the silly stunt with the 200W+ overclocked chips. I'm ready to upgrade from my first gen Lynnfield - if not for performance, for new features like UEFI boot, USB3 and SATA3. but not when all on offer is this. And Intel's chipsets are still rationing out those ports as if we were in a world war anyway. And in other miscellaneous tech, Blu-ray burners continue to be pointless with stupid media prices, there are still no "legitimate" 120Hz non-TN LCD panels, the post-LCD display techs are still AWOL, and there aren't any GPUs that can reasonably push demanding games at 4k (quad-SLI Titan doesn't count as "reasonable"). Anyhow, rant over. And I actually did buy a piece of tech: another Logitech M570 trackball. I have one for my HTPC, and have bought the new one to replace the wired equivalent I was using for my laptop. I don't know why people gush about Valve discovering a new way to control your console/PC in the living room, the tech's been in production for decades.

Not sure what the difficulty is with climbing - are you trying to interact with the ladder itself? Don't, climbing is a free move, just change the elevation view and click the destination tile. A little ridiculous that it costs no more movement points to move one tile on level ground as it does one tile up onto a building, I know, but that's just how it is.

Blatantly stolen info: Kill XP is 30xp, double if it's a rookie, squaddie, corporal or sergeant killing a later-game alien (Chryssalids and later). Buyable perk increases values by 25%. (Note it's no XP at all for stunning an alien) Mission success is 60xp for regular missions, and 120 for 'special' ones like plot missions and terror missions. +50% one time bonus for soldiers encountering later-game aliens for the first time. Flat 20xp bonus for no casualties. And yes, correct on the engineers. Indeed it's conventional wisdom to *never* take scientists or build laboratories: early game you can't afford them, and late game you're mostly done researching anyway. Capturing more than one of each alien gives you their weapon only (at the cost of kill XP). I very much enjoyed my (so far only) classic ironman run (which I did after a normal normal run first up, which got boring towards the end). It was with patch 1.2, and bugs were pretty minimal - and while 1.3 was a buggy mess, it should be more stable now than when I played. Would recommend it every time.

YouTube has a HTML5 video option ....but requires you to have an account to enable it. >.<

Unless TES Online completely subsumes Bethesda, in the manner in which WoW did to Blizzard. Which is to say, it's not happening. And even then, they might just buy a studio to churn out Fallout titles, like an Arkane. Some people might like the idea of Zenimax acquiring Obsidian and having them be a specialist Fallout studio, but that sounds like a terrible fate to me. To be honest though, I'd not be too unhappy to say goodbye to Fallout forever. The genre is broad enough so that titles without the licence aren't lacking for selling points. Wasteland: New Vegas anyone?

The combat *system* seemed mostly fine to me (except the grappling QTEs, ugh), but the problem was how it was employed in terms of encounters. Having to beat up 20 generic mooks for a random sidequest, who spawn a few at a time is not an interesting challenge, just lazy design. It's even brazen enough to give you a mook counter on your screen telling you how much of this chore is still left to do.

Female smuggler was my only character, really, none of the others I tried (granted I only had the free trial month) made it past 15-ish. And I flat out disliked the smuggler gameplay. But the story kept me in it, at least until the end of act one. After that, well, I'll just say I never made it to 50.

Going to have to give the opposite advice to this. Gunslinger + Squad Sight is by far the preferred perk combo. Gunslinger is essentially like-for-like with Snap Shot, a little less damage perhaps, but without the aim penalty. But what the combination means is you get Squad Sight, which is amazing, compared to the mediocre and highly situational Damn Good Ground (which apparently does *not* work while flying). And while researching armour first provides a safety net for beginners, it's a liability for higher difficulty levels. At classic you can still go either way (though even then I'd still heavily favour lasers), at impossible it's essentially mandatory: plinking away with conventional weapons at 6hp Thinmen and Floaters will ensure a rapid death, no matter how good your armour.

Never less than 2 snipers. Providentially, my blonde-haired female Russian sniper was randomly assigned the nickname "Wolf." Those aliens can throw grenades, you know. The line is just something you do to move around between engagements, the idea being that every encounter initiated by the player means the point guy still has a move to get back into cover (and since it's probably an Assault trooper, to hit run and gun), and everyone else can get into cover and fire. When the contact is enemy-initiated, then you likely get to fire all six overwatches simultaneously, then start your turn fresh.

I'd say the mid-to-late 2D RPGs have held up better than the late-90s 3D titles listed there, visually.

Looked up the specs on an off-the-shelf SFX form factor PSU, Silverstone gives it as 125x100x63.5 mm. This would fit in the given specs. As would a low-profile cooler - Noctua's NH-L9 gives a height on 37mm above the motherboard, fan installed, which would also fit assuming ventilation holes are drilled above the cooler. And the video card with a blower exhaust would easily fit within the height requirement. A 2.5" HDD and slimline optical drive should fit over the areas of the board not taken by the CPU cooler. (EDIT: Wait, does the Steambox even come with an optical drive?) Now to deal with the other dimensions, it's crude MS Paint drawing time! I used figures from a Gigabyte mini ITX board, and the Titan (which has a standard nVidia cooler, since they don't allow custom coolers anyway). Figures are in mm, taking the longest total on each side gives 270x282 ~ 10.6 x 11.1in. Obviously there's going to be a fair bit more space between the components required so that they're not hard up against each other, but still, that's within the 12 x 12.4in spec given. I'm not saying that this is how it'll happen, obviously, but that it *could* happen, with the only specialised thing being some sort of accommodation for a PCI-E slot (which on mini-ITX boards is hard up against the edge of the board already) to be made parallel to the plane of the motherboard.

Launch a Kickstarter in Zimbabwean dollars. You'd then be able to claim to have raised trillions of quadrillions of dollars for your project, no matter what it is.

I've found Foxit to be too slow for my day-to-day use - almost as slow as I remember Acrobat Reader being - so I've switched to SumatraPDF for general use. It's not perfect though, I had issues printing a barcode for example (printed out a mostly black box instead), and I've heard some complaints about colour fidelity, but it's lightning fast and simple to use. Case in point - I opened up a test PDF with embedded images, and was able to right click it, select "copy image" and paste it into a graphics editor no worries. I opened up Foxit (which took several times longer to even load up the file) to try to do the same thing and couldn't find a way to do it. It was an eBook/Magazine type thingie, so a big file admittedly, but still, I expect a modern PC to not have to stop for several seconds to load it up. So try Sumatra I guess Monte if you get no joy out of Foxit.

For what it's worth, on easy and normal difficulties, civilians killed offscreen by chryssalids do nothing. On classic, they have a 50% chance of zombifying. On impossible, 100%. But yeah, generally speaking melee-based aliens aren't considered a big problem. I mean later on you meet the Muton Berserker, worry for a moment as it charges towards you, then laugh at it as you pick it off. The key here is the earlier advice to only scout with one guy, and move all the others behind him such that none of them explore any more of the map. Doing this means you'll likely have all six guns pointed at any alien trying to charge at you. I do admit that that kind of methodical play can get pretty boring at times - the winning strategy for higher difficulties is basically forming a conga line (literally, all six adjacent to each other in a line) out of your guys who creep around the map, out of cover but being near it, therefore being able to immediate mass firepower when contact is made.

You can save just the *one* civilian and the mission will be deemed a success. Never risk your guys for any civilians. Saving more than one means you get bonus panic reduction, but again, staying alive is the utmost priority (especially since I believe terror missions give your guys extra XP on completion). I've killed more than a few civilians as collateral damage with the rocket launcher and/or grenades. Yes, I'm a horrible person. Chryssalids are much less scary when you realise they can't attack as part of their move action. This means as long as you're more than one move away from them, you're safe, they'll spend their second action point just walking up to your face, at which point you can melt theirs at point blank. How relatively ineffective Chryssalids in this game is actually a point of complaint amongst XCOM fans, heh. That said though, the best advice for dealing with them is probably to research lasers as soon as possible, two laser shots will take care of them easy. Giving your snipers the Gunslinger perk (and giving them your first available laser pistols) is also strongly recommended. Ultimately though, the best advice for XCOM is this: only ever use your first move of each turn to scout, don't reveal any more of the fog of war with subsequent moves. This ensures you only ever encounter the enemy on your terms, with all your APs available. It also means you don't have to use cover when not actively in combat. P.S. It's weird that there haven't been any good sales for BL2 since the Steam sale. Prior to that there were some amazing deals just about every week, best of which was the game AND the season pass for $13 at GMG. That said. GamersGate currently have 50% off the *Mac* version of the game (which makes it a worse deal for the base game than Steam's current sale), and DLC (which isn't on sale at Steam). But I've been told there's no difference between owning the Steam version for Mac or for Windows. Makes sense, if it's on your Steam account, it's on your Steam account, but I can't verify it myself. Maybe someone who's looking to buy the second level cap pack (*hint*) might want to take the bullet for us and try getting the Mac version for $2.50 to test? :D P.P.S. The XCOM collection* is $10 at Amazon right now. Non-US residents will have to enter in a fake US billing address to allow the transaction through, any old address will do. (Predictably, most people I know enter Beverly Hills 90210) * XCOM: Enemy Unknown (w/ Slingshot and Elite Soldier Packs) + Apocalypse + Enforcer + Interceptor + Terror from the Deep + UFO Defense

Given how Adobe's history of vulnerable products, how would we be able to tell? Maybe it will lead to a reduction in exploits, as attempting to read Acrobat's massive bloat will lead to many a hacker suffering an aneurysm.

That height dimension is crazy, some video cards would probably be that thick by themselves. But it is very wide, which leads me to think it may be a side-by-side arrangement: a mini-ITX board is about 7" each side, a large video card is about 10"x4". So lay them both next to each other and you get the approximate dimensions given.

Great, so now Garrett is Kai Leng.

Ah, but according to the article, a backpack is a no-no. Cancels out the +1 score from the umbrella in the first place. (I don't own an umbrella and use a backpack, so -2 for me)

Hey, it's the Guardian's fat brother.

I won't wear anything that can't be machine washed. Am currently 17/40, but I still have a little bit of time to improve my score.

Was puzzled to see a parcel on my doorstep this evening, in a resplendent forest green plastic bag emblazoned with the insignia of Sweden Post. Turned out to be the Numenera sourcebooks, though why they were sent from Sweden is beyond me. Still waiting on the Shadowrun goodies, though they're not officially late yet.

Huh, I didn't know that campaign was still going. Not really of any personal interest since I've never played its predecessors, but I'm in a good mood (go Hawks) so eh, backed. And voted for H. Probably 50:50 with E really, but I think E will get to the runoff vote regardless, so backing the underdog for now. Sorry Keyrock, but I'll throw some cash at your genie game as well to make up for it.

Or more like Ant Farm Simulator 2014.