Humanoid

You might even have enough funds left to contract Prosper to make the game afterwards.

Never owned a tablet, but during my tentative research in the past I probably would have taken the conservative route and gotten one with a dock, such as the Asus Transformer series. Ultimately decided against a conventional tablet since I decided I wanted a Windows fallback (I'm an MS slave, I know), though I may still opt for a convertible ultraportable such as the presumably upcoming Lenovo X240t (current model is X230t).

My first build was one of those bare-die Athlons. If I'd forgotten to attach the fan I'd probably have seen blue smoke pouring out from my case within those two seconds. Also used a shim because I was terrified of crushing the core during heatsink installation. Still, I'd rather that now than Intel's playing silly buggers with their poorly coupled heatspreaders since Ivy Bridge. And yeah, I'm still down to 4GB of RAM due to a faulty stick and really ought to get some more, but these post-spike prices, eugh.

On the one hand, the client downloading itself a relatively big update is a good sign about the sale. On the other hand, I don't like how the client is updating itself even when in offline mode, seems a bit dodgy (and it didn't do always do this in the past).

Well at one point, the alternative to tirelessly bashing one stone against another stone for hours until one of them became a pointy stone was death by starvation. Some point later, "death by starvation" became "death by someone else's pointy stone".

And so passes on the ceremonial anti-static wrist band.

I apologise in advance for being a debbie downer, but it's amazing what "medical help" can accomplish these days. Tennis isn't 'my' sport, but there's a lot of overlap with cycling's problems, which I follow closely. THASP is a websiteI would consider essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in tennis and its endemic problems. (I'm not just pointing at the victor, if that's how it reads, the problem is magnitudes greater.)

I didn't realise what the commendations were for until the mid-30s, by which time my free month was just about gone. So, uh, I guess if I ever came back I could actually spend them on useful stuff now, yay. Aside, if I was properly roleplaying my smuggler and had the ability to, I'd probably have taken no companions along with me. Unless the generic droid counts. I'd probably have considered recruitable droid-substitutes for any NPCs you kill or otherwise spurn to be an acceptable compromise (as opposed to rebalancing the game around solo play).

I think they were also going to do an Obsidian shop to sell various knickknacks like the shirts, hats, mugs, cookbooks and minivans, so I doubt the shirt is a one-off either.

Well cost isn't directly proportional to the length of the game, since a lot of the costs will be frontloaded. But I'd still expect, and it's sort of implied by the update, that the remaining 75% will cost about the same as has been spent up to now.

I can't even genre-generalise control preferences because I preferred SR3 on keyboard and SD on gamepad. Though I guess beyond the obvious primary labels, you could call one a shooter and the other one a beat-em-up which is a succinct enough explanation. But even then, I was so used to driving with the respective control schemes that each felt natural enough with them.

I'd say more than a bit, that kickstarter ended less than week ago. Yeah, while I'm somewhat disappointed overall, that's really the one part that really wafts of malfeasance. I mean the other stuff is unfortunate, but relatively unsurprising and can be worked through constructively. The reason it's not surprising, even for someone who hasn't been following development closely as a backer, is that beyond being the first project of its type, it's also the most unplanned and ad-hoc in terms of design - but I do note that that fact was a known quantity from the outset. I mean the whole vibe of the project was somewhat along the lines of "Hey guys, help us make a game and we'll let you watch us making it and you get the final product, whether it's great or if it sucks." The process was advertised as much as the end product, and without a real promise as to the end product other than "the best we can do", it was always a relatively large risk compared to other projects which were quite a bit farther along the pipeline at the time of their funding drives. Heck, the closest project in terms of going live without a clear plan was the failed one from Romero's company - I forget the name - and even that had a more definitive direction by the time it was pulled. Anyway, not to say I'm excusing them for project mismanagement, but given the state the project is in currently, I'd say the method they've decided to pursue (the Steam thingie) now is at least a reasonable one.

Agreed. There's nothing really challenging in the entire game. That doesn't prevent the game from being a blast to play, but I wouldn't have minded some challenge, at least in some of the optional stuff like the activities/distractions. Indeed. There's nothing challenging about the gameplay. What made me get annoyed with the Insurance Fraud traffic driving was that I always found that those hot spots you were directed to just dried up and hardly had any traffic going through. Which is very frustrating when you want to enjoy the ragdollishness.. Only this game around, there's actually traffic. There was one part where you had to drive to places and engage in some shootouts that I kept failing over and over because of the ridiculously small arbitrary engagement zone. I kept getting insta-fails because I moved out of some silly pre-defined area, and I probably had to do it about a dozen times. It was probably a significant contributing factor to eventually giving up on the game.

The only thing I hated about Win7 was all the hoops that have to be jumped through to clean-install an upgrade licence, needing to either do some registry hacking or doing a double install (i.e. reinstalling immediately, effectively upgrading from 7 to 7). Upgrading to XP, all the installation process asked was for the user to put the old version CD in the drive for a moment.

It would be apt though, $1b is pocket change for both companies. But anyway, the sum is no longer that high anyway post the latest appeal, and it's still not been exhausted so the figure will change yet again. That said, there's plenty of genuine humour to be found in the sparring, such as the "you're apologising it wrong" shenanigans.

??? Are you referring to Atari's legal issues? Maybe the rest of EA is licking their chops (skeptical) though the only thing you'll hear from BioWare staffers is "Man that sucks." If you're implying that EA is somehow responsible, however, you'd be incorrect. Suspect is has to do with the Darkspore fiasco, which genuinely does stink. It also has implications, real or perceived, on other games with artificial online-only requirements in terms of how much the empty promises of "we'll patch the requirement out if we shut down the servers" is worth. EDIT: But then I'm more reading that the quoted statement means "may EA be struck down just as BGEE was struck down, rightfully", as opposed to a lament about its disappearance.

I somehow managed to injure my knee while sleeping the night before, and can only bend it about 20 degrees without pain. Consequently I couldn't really sit at my desk and play anything meaningful. And despite trying for a while to find one, I really couldn't come up with anything I wanted to play that would be playable on a laptop with no 3D functionality while lying in bed or on a recliner.

Louis Malle's Zazie dans le metro. My prevailing - and repeated - reaction to this was "what is this I don't even...". It's a collection of Looney Tunes cartoons chopped up, tossed in a blender and brought to life. It's Chaplin in neon colours. It's Tati on amphetamines. It's a contrarian inverting all the established rules of filmmaking. But it's also a charming, whimsical, and well, adorable film that goes beyond its slapstick routines and carries a healthy dose of smart observational humour regarding contemporary city life.

I've been saying that 2014 can't come soon enough too - somewhat facetiously, sure, but not without a reasonable degree of truth: the first half of this year (yes, there's a day of it remaining) has been a complete write-off for me in terms of new game purchases. Of games released in 2013, I've only gotten thus far Expeditions Conquistador and LSL Reloaded, and thus no games at all from "traditional" development.

A Dandelion spin-off compatible with Guitar Hero peripherals, yeah!

Why not Windows 3.3? (Apparently there was a Windows 3.2 for the Chinese market that I'd never heard of before)

Interesting, not something I've seen or heard of before. I assume you got the latest drivers from the AMD site instead of the ones supplied with the card - I wonder if it's an analogue-connection only issue. I did have an issue when connecting via HDMI in that the driver would "guess" that the connected display was a TV and not a monitor, and apply the incorrect default settings, that being over/underscan and pixel format in the Catalyst control centre. But it's a long shot that any such issue would apply with any other connection method. There's also been a bug with Adobe Flash in some versions, where having a Flash video in the background while gaming would cause the clock speeds to be set at reduced "I'm playing a video" level instead of max. The workaround for that was to disable hardware acceleration for Flash content (right-click a Youtube video or somesuch and select Settings->first tab)

You could try finding someone to send you a Scroll of Resurrection - if your account is eligible, which is to say it hasn't been played since 4 March 2012, you get an automatic upgrade to Cataclysm, 7 days gametime, and an XP boost for any one of your characters to level 80, i.e. the starting level for Cataclysm content.

I am also keen to try this game, it will just be a nostalgic sojourn for me. I won't expect much but some mild entertainment I downloaded it last night, but only had time to start a new game and attempt to cross the road...

Extending from Zoraptor's point, I'd say that "reasonable character choices" are most likely the ones that a dev will "think the players will want to make." Forced companions is always a point of contention, and BioWare's games (as well as Obsidian's) are certainly games that frequently suffer from that. And I'll raise DA:O has having a good counterexample. From a metagamey player perspective, it's reasonable to want to free and take Sten with you - after all, here's this strong, characterised, unique and generally obvious NPC bait. But from a rational character perspective, here's this dangerous, unstable psycho who seems just as likely to cut you down than to help your quest in any meaningful way. I loved the option to leave him there to rot, and indeed I took that option on both of my serious attempts to get through the game (which I ultimately failed at). If one option had to be hard-coded, then I'd plump for the later every time. Same applies for Zevran, though only one of my saves got as far as encountering him - did the obvious, sensible thing and cut his throat without a word. Going back further, I'd also glad they never forced you to take Yoshimo in BG2. Sure, in the end the closure was kind of hacky if you didn't, but far superior to the alternative. Anyway, I've probably steered the discussion too specifically to the topic of NPCs, where I was aiming for a more generalised example. Like the ability of not having to have anything to do with Mr House after fulfilling your contract with him (I turned him down flat when he offered more work after the chip delivery). And while Mass Effect is full of inexplicable decisions, a good number of them can be rationalised in-character as following direct orders from a superior officer. I'm fine with those too. But for a bad example, see the Companions initiation ritual in Skyrim, where there's no rational circuit breaker if you don't want to do an obviously dumb thing. Or the entire Thieves' Guild questline, which I might nominate as the worst RPG quest series I've ever encountered. It's a shame because it's contrasted in the same game by the alternative treatment of the Dark Brotherhood questline, which was great.