Humanoid

I have an odd relationship with NWN2 probably inverse to most people - MoTB I couldn't get out of the starting dungeon because I got sick of resting after each encounter (admittedly with probably an over-exotic character build), while SoZ I played almost to the end (where you open the chokepoint allowing access to the endgame area). The original campaign I only got as far as initially entering Neverwinter.

Relented and bought a week ago (combination of patch release and $30 sale convinced me to try it), and been playing it a decent amount over the past week. Took while because I maintain that Oblivion is the worst game I've ever had the misfortune to spend money on. Didn't buy that on release either - was a good 6-9 months after which should have been plenty of time for modders to fix it - but nope, still completely awful - so I don't believe the "mods will fix it" principle is necessarily true for a sufficiently bad game. No real surprises thus far, all the strengths and flaws are ones that any experienced gamer would attribute to any TES/Gamebryo game. Three-word review would go something like "huge, but shallow." P.S. I'm a bit scared about installing the hi-res texture pack with my 1GB card. Any reports?

Rarely ever use headphones since I don't have to worry about bothering any co-inhabitants with a chunky set of speakers, but decided to retire my Audio Technica AD700s because I just couldn't get used to the bulk. Disappointing because I bought them as replacements for my equally massive but somehow much more comfortable Philips HP890s (which I retired after a few years of running repairs using superglue and electrical tape). No complaints about the AT sound though. Replacing with a pair of Alessandro MS-1s which are basically a modded version of the Grado on-ear phones like in the opening post of this thread, haven't received them yet though. For my portable player I use the venerable Koss PortaPros which have been manufactured with basically no design changes since 1984. Love them to bits - and under $30 imported (vs $100 local retailers are asking for....).

Hmm, just popped in the CD I got with my drive (an LG combo drive) and it's PowerDVD 9 (never used it personally), and updates ceased for it middle of last year, so one would be out of luck regardless of using the paid or OEM versions. Apparently the OEM version does have an autoupdate feature though so I assume you'd get updates until the parent product is discontinued. Bastards either way want you to cough up another $50 for the current version - the hardware basically costs that much now. I use a HTPC and free software like Media Player Classic HC and VLC Player can play the main feature on unencrypted discs - you just don't get menus since they're in a licenced format. Not sure of the etiquette/legal status of decrypters here though so I'll leave it at that - just that I've had no issues with any of 200+ discs so far.

Do OEM versions of software players get free updates? Would be poor form if the software included with the drives weren't able to be kept up-to-date. I know they're hobbled in some ways (limited audio options usually, no bitstreaming or whatever) but one would think they'd at least do a basic job okay. Aside, I do buy a lot of blu-rays of older movies (and when I say old I mean right back to the silent era - Chaplin on Blu looks amazing), and they gain, arguably, more than recent films do. The result is more to do with the mastering than with the age of the film because even very old film has better resolution than 1080p. 16mm film certainly does, though I'm guessing 8mm film probably is marginal. That's before we get to the audio where the difference is often just as big.

Fast storage is incredibly addictive. I have a 128GB as my system drive, and then added a 256GB as my games drive. My HTPC has another 128GB drive in it. Scares me to think that's over $1000 worth of fast storage but I can't go without it now.

The aforementioned i5 2500k. 2600k doesn't add much other than a trivial clock speed bump and hyperthreading, which is useless for gaming. If you refuse to overclock then plain 2500 will do.

PCI-E standards are backwards and forwards compatible, the only real impact is that each revision has twice the theoretical bandwidth of the last - i.e. PCI-E 2.0 8x mode will be equivalent speed to PCI-E 3.0 4x. Now given current cards basically run 2.0 8x with no loss from 2.0 16x, I don't think PCI-E slot specs are going to be a real limitation when you do upgrade your video card, yes. As for CPU compatibility - Intel in the near-term will have two tiers of CPU platforms, Socket 1155 for mainstream, and socket 2011 for 'enthusiasts' - the former will be restricted to quad-cores. Z68 will be compatible with Ivy Bridge which is launching next year, but no guarantees beyond that. However given that Ivy Bridge is mostly just a die shrink of Sandy Bridge, it's unlikely that you'd ever feel the need to shift up to it, 20% faster projections at best can be easily matched by just overclocking your 2500k. At any rate, the best advice for buying a motherboard now is just to get what you need now, and expect to be disappointed if you expect future drop-in upgrade possibilities. Personally I'd say the most important criteria in choosing a board right now is having enough SATA3 ports to accommodate any future SSDs you might add, and number of USB3 ports. In over a decade of building my own systems I've never had the opportunity to keep my motherboard between builds. Don't expect this to change.

Not true in a literal sense, but there are a couple limitations - your OS really ought to be SSD-aware because there's some 'housekeeping' it needs to do on the SSD which otherwise will slow down excessively with use - this is called TRIM. Secondly, semi-related to the first point, it is recommended that the SATA mode in your BIOS support and be set to AHCI prior to installing the OS - this is required for the TRIM functionality. Without both the above functions available, you will have to run a utility at regular intervals to do the self-maintenance job that would otherwise happen automatically. Fortunately this isn't really a concern with current OSes and any remotely recent hardware. Good starting point for SSD uninitiated: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761

Hint system? The Smoking Mirror is the worst Broken Sword when it comes to absurd puzzle solutions and surreal encounters. Director's cut has a button in the bottom right that gives you hints on what to do. I keep hearing horrid things about BS2, I might as well play it to further understand why it gets that (that and what the hell, have nothing else to play ). I played the sequel first in the heady pre-Internet (for me) days, so it's no doubt going to colour the comparison - but I have no general problem with it. While a couple of the solutions made me go "what?" , it was nothing that a little spot of trial and error couldn't fix, even while accounting for my barely-teenage brainpower and obviously having to suck it up with not having the option to look at hints either in-game or online. In hindsight I also liked that it's the only game of the series to deviate from the overused Knights Templar storyline. I haven't played the remastered version but from what I've read it's not an extended version like the first was.

CPU-Z

All I remember of that is ANOTHER BLOODY CRATE PUZZLE.

The gate locks reminded me a lot of playing waaay too much Klotski. Sharp dialogs too. For what it's worth, those elements are what were added in the new Director's Cut. I've got mixed feeling about the changes - in terms of story and mechanics they do feel a little bolted-on and don't quite mesh - but the puzzles themselves are quite fine. It's just that the game doesn't quite start off with a bang anymore. Kind of cool that they managed to get Nico's original voice actor back though - random factoid: she was played by 4 different people in the four games. But it'd be petty to complain too much about free stuff so I won't.

An early use was Bill 'Leatherface' Johnson as The Guardian in U7.

Got me all excited until I clicked on the offer and noticed I already had them all except Dragonshard and Demon Stone. Still offering the 60% based on past purchases but are they even worth the download? Never heard of either.

While there was some perverse fun in baking blood-bread in U7, I'm not in general a fan of crafting implementations of basically "bring X, Y and Z to location A" which essentially makes it no different to a quest where a blacksmith asks for various things and makes a ubersword for you anyway. It's not an improvement on the game experience unless there's something noteworthy about the key material, at which point that becomes the only relevant thing and the supplemental materials really serve no worth at all. To whit: collecting special monster teeth to make extra rare shiny bullets is passable. Collecting lumps of lead to make regular bullets is a waste of time and effort. Skinning the Kayran to make special blingy armour is fine, collecting leather and oil to make hardened leather pieces is utterly dull. But given that, then there's precious little point creating a special interface for crafting when you can just have the blacksmith in town offer up a quest - "bringest me the tooth of a tarrasque and I shall make thee the most sharpiest knife thou hast ever seen."

will be hard to even find a suitable upgrade for that - most stores probably only carry a couple models that will fit that CPU, likely to be ultra-budget versions for people who need dead board replacements. If you need some extra speed just overclock it and save up for a proper upgrade. Should get to 3.5GHz without much trouble. Then when you're ready, current model Sandy Bridge setups (typical gaming rig would be 2500k + Z68 motherboard) would be a huge upgrade. If AMD's Bulldozer (which is out this month) turns out to be a hit, might get even better value there.

Would have thought so too, as does the article's tone. After all it sold more digital copies than Wing Commander 1 did altogether. (Yes I know that's drawing a veeeery long bow, but still, that's what the golden age of PC gaming provided)

Most likely your current board can do 8GB anyway with higher density sticks. But anyway, motherboard recommendations can't be made without knowing what CPU you have - and frankly if you're going down that route I'd buy a new CPU too.

What would be really awesome is Wing Commander 4 DVD - it was only ever released as part of the Creative DVD bundle although there are ways to patch your CD copy to use downloaded DVD FMV. Prophecy DVD would be nice too of course.

Opportunity to resurrect Wing Commander and Crusader at the same time?

Install the OS on it. Ideally a clean install, as there are various acrobatic feats required to set it up correctly if migrating an existing installation. There are some third-party (paid) utilities available to simplify migration if you must go that way - Google tossed up this for example.

Well Chris Roberts is apparently keen to come back to gaming so I'm willing to put my cynicism aside for a short while.

Yeah, would wait at least until the graphics vendors at least pretend to agree on a standard for the tech. Personally if I was looking to "broaden my gaming horizons" - forgive the marketer-speak - I'd plump for the old fashioned larger screens, bigger speakers and comfier chair.

Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.