Humanoid

I'm a dumbphone user and like it that way. Seriously considering a John's Phone.

Yeah, SMAC was interesting in that it had a pretty defined narrative compared to its predecessor and it's rival/sibling (Civ2 and Civ:CTP respectively), which is alternately viewed as either being brilliant or pretentious. Either way, lead designer Brian Reynolds was philosophy nut which explains most of the background design elements (which makes it all the more galling that he's now directed his talents making Facebook games). I believe EA still holds the rights to the IP, if only Firaxis could strike a deal with them. The faction leaders while conforming to broad stereotypes were a lot more interesting than the simple "Genghis Khan is going to stab you in the back because he's Genghis Khan" approach in Civ. The eclectic mix of wonder videos and voiced quotes for all techs/improvements added a lot of atmosphere too. Compare this to the bland videos and stale quotes in say, Civ4 (no slight on Leonard Nimoy, but the in-character stuff is just so much more engaging). So yeah, SMAC ends up having more plot than many RPGs, whether you take that as praise for the former or an indictment of the latter is up to you. The expansion, Alien Crossfire, is not included in the GoG download at the moment although odds are it'll be added free at some point. But it's a bit unbalancing and for some people, damages the narrative of the original, so it's often preferred to just play the base game regardless. Speaking of unbalancing though - Supply Crawlers.

If it's just a card you'll leave in there once you get a new system, I'd go for a 6850, or a GTX460 (end of life, but should be able to find stock). Lean towards the former especially if constrained by the power supply, I probably wouldn't run it with under 300W. Under that the only viable gaming option is the bare minimum 5770/6770 (they're identical). EDIT: Trap for the unwary - there are 3 versions of the 460 around. a 768MB model, a 1GB 'SE' model and a plain original model. The former two are cheaper cut-down versions, the original is the fastest. Between the cut-down versions, the 768MB model is faster at lower resolutions but might get memory bottlenecked at 1080p+ where the SE might compensate. Yes, graphics companies are in the business of obfuscation and this kind of naming stupidity has been around forever.

Info in the "Good time to upgrade" thread recently is still current. Quoting myself: That said, I'd always be a bit wary about buying a system in anticipation of a certain future release - you never can quite tell how a particular setup will go with what you're waiting for. If BF3 performance is the deciding factor then it may be best to wait until the game is actually out and tested with the hardware current as of the time of release. That said, a current midrange solution would look like: CPU: i5-2500k (if comfortable overclocking), or non-k version if not Motherboard: Any entry level Z68 chipset board Graphics: AMD HD6950 or nVidia GTX560, lean towards the former if gaming at above 1080p or with multiple screens SSD: Absolutely, Intel or Crucial most reliable To turn it into "high-end" just add a second video card of the same model, and get the 'k' version of the CPU and overclock to ~4.5k. This is faster and cheaper than going for the overpriced top-end parts.

The integration is precisely the reason they're not trusted. But while it's not saying a lot, I'd say I trust MS more than the likes of Google, Facebook and maybe even Apple. So while I don't particularly like Steam, it's mostly a standalone product which a lot of people are more comfortable with - in relative terms that is. A fair few can't imagine how messy a Steam 'divorce' would be, with a more integrated platform it'd be an even messier breakup. I think I'm rambling, but anyhow, not a big deal personally - I haven't even logged into Steam since I stopped NV in January.

Both buckets (basically alarms) and puddles are factors in the stealth mechanic, yes, and it does work to some extent. There are a few other things that have the same role as buckets, such as the swords leaning against each other, and small tables. Far from polished of course, but I had a pleasant surprise during one such segment where I managed to kill an npc with a throwing knife then proceed to continue undetected.

Well, it was reported in a study (no idea how exhaustive) that Australians despite the slacker image, worked the longest weekly average hours of any developed nation - might be local management as much as fault.

Descent to Undermountain 2

Didn't end up needing it, but at one point I hid behind a pillar long enough regenerating that combat dropped and I was able to save. Extreme cheese of course, but it meant that with patience it becomes three fights instead of one big one

If you're looking that far into the future, and because you're considering larger displays, it may be worth going the (somewhat rare) 3GB version of the 580. And yes, you probably need to go second-hand for a second one if you decide to go that way in the future (though next year's release of 28nm chips - the current generation is 40nm - may make that path poor value since it's expected to be a pretty healthy jump in performance). Alternatively, go for a midrange card now, and replace with a next-gen card next year.

The 580 is the top single-chip solution ...and is as such, very poor value for its performance. This is balanced by avoiding the complications of support for multi-GPU solutions. If you have an allergy towards the issues that do crop up with SLI/Crossfire then the premium may be worth it to you, but for raw speed, you can get in excess of 50% more bang per buck by buying two lesser cards. Remember that these days, both vendors multi-GPU solutions can scale in excess of 90%, compared to the situation just a generation or two ago where you would only gain 50-80% from the second card. I'd personally take a pair of 2GB 6950s, as at the top-end of performance, nVidia's lack of memory will be an even bigger limitation. Crossfire also scales marginally better than SLI. That said, a pair of 560Tis can hold their own for raw performance when not bottlenecked by the frame buffer. If you're sure you'll never want to go for gaming on multiple screens and/or 27"+, then the disadvantages of the nVidia option won't show up. Both have their issues - SLI didn't work at all for DA2 for a couple weeks for example, and both had issues with The Witcher 2 - but waiting a couple weeks is okay for me given the big gains otherwise and because even when problems do arise you can just use one card for perfectly serviceable performance. The value proposition can be shown in any old review - e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-ra...radeon-hd-6950/ to see just how dual GPUs crunch the 580.

How about Wuthering Heights?

http://staticice.com.au/ - search for EVGA 570 brings up a fair few shops, including my favourite local online shop (semi-contradiction I know) PC Case Gear. Note though I don't think they honour the lifetime warranty outside the US which removes much of the incentive of going with them in the first place.

P67 is the launch platform for Sandy Bridge, it has now been superceded by the new Z68, so the former becomes the "budget" platform - and a poor excuse for one given the price difference of only $10-20. The 2500k is indeed the popular pick, as only it and the 2600k can be overclocked - and the price difference is pretty big for a small clock speed bump and the addition of hyperthreading (useless for gaming). 8GB RAM is good, some might argue overkill but at rock bottom RAM prices who cares. On this platform, memory frequency (MHz) matters more than latency (CL rating). And yeah, grab the SSD for sure. nVidia vs AMD graphics is not so much about one performing better than the other, but on features. nVidia has more mature 3D glasses support, PhysX hardware physics for selected games, and support for up to two monitors. AMD has more memory which starts becoming a limiting factor at high resolutions and/or extreme anti-aliasing or if you plan on multimonitor support (3-6 monitors off the one care depending on model). That said, for raw performance I'd rank off-hand 560Ti (note the Ti is pretty important) < 6950 < 570 < 6970, but the gaps are small enough and highly variable depending on game such that I'd suggest basing your pick on the above criteria.

Would be a pretty balanced system for resolutions up to, say, 1920x1200. On larger monitors the 1.2GB memory on the 570 might start choking and the 2GB on the ATI 69xx cards will start to tell.

I'd take a third button for the leaping attack as a preferred solution with both other attacks being standing attacks. Adding more commands for specific moves otherwise is a bit too much complexity for my tastes. People with only two-button mice might disagree. That plus a more wieldy target selection + lock system would make my day

Never tried either, but that's just the inner miser in me. Knives aren't recoverable after using them are they? I also avoided Quen for the most part since it was boring, but found I'm just not good enough to dodge the big but quick foes like the golems - two hits and I'm dead.

Dammit, I just skipped to the bottom of your post and first thought was a physical robotic dog action figure not an ingame one. Disappointed now. They actually mention femshep at least....

That's all I ask for in an RPG really. The obscured message there is that me tolerating the combat is, in relative terms, a positive. Most other RPGs I count it as an outright negative - set easiest difficulty right from the get go, and if that's still too tedious, cheese/cheat to make it bearable.

Yep. I just finished it after a 12 hour session and there's so many things I hate about it. Yet it's still the best game I've played for a long time. Bunch of negatives: Don't like alchemy. Don't like the crafting. Don't like the looting and inventory system. Character system isn't particularly interesting. Most skill points are passive flat bonuses that don't change gameplay. (Rare exceptions like riposte and area-effect spells) Mutagens and weapon/armor enhancements are just passive fluff. Irritated like hell at the finisher animations (being an Aard spamming magic build doesn't help) Bored by the repetitive nature of all the spells. Ambivalent about the roll-roll combat in general. Ravines. Oh god, ravines. Turned lush outdoor environments into tunnels. Yet some things that I thought would be huge negatives we're really so bad. QTEs were easy and predictable - simple enough to know when to expect them unlike ME2 which tended to catch me when I was sitting back watching some cutscene. And boss battles - lots of complaints about them but I'd rather 90% of the inconsequential mooks be removed instead. Anyway, more generally - I'd probably go for another playthrough once 1.3 is released - but on easy (normal all the way on the first clear), skipping nontrivial sidequests (Melitele's Heart the worst of them) and ignore loot (including crafting/potions) as much as possible. And I'll still love it. EDIT: Early worries about instability didn't turn out to be an issue. After the two CTDs up to the beginning of act 1, I didn't get another ....until the end credits crashed.

You will have to upgrade the motherboard, yes. CPU-wise, Intel's Sandy Bridge launched earlier this year and that's all we'll see from them this year. Ivy Bridge is a refresh to it, not due until next year. AMD's next-gen, Bulldozer, is nominally due out this month but seems all but delayed until September at the least. Unlikely to be worth waiting for, unless you need 8 cores at an affordable price, it's very much expected Intel will hold onto its performance lead. For graphics, nothing has really been announced - the best we can do is rumours and that's that AMD will launch 7xxx sometime this year, probably Q4. Very unlikely nVidia will have anything this year. Graphics are in a bit of an odd spot currently - in terms of price/performance there's probably never been a better time, plenty of viable options all the way from $100 to $300. On the other hand, in terms of real performance gain there's been not a whole lot of improvement on 2009's 58xx series (which were admittedly a big jump). All-in-all it's hard to go wrong at the moment. I5-2500k (the 'k' version is for overclocking which is a huge gain on this platform), Z68 based motherboard, and for graphics AMD 6850/6950 or nVidia 560Ti/570.

Well DN3D was always generous with its shareware version.

Decided to start over with 1.2 and all the free loots you get and try to get through normal difficulty that way. Seems to have worked, although it might partly be because of the mechanics changes as well. Unfortunately have had two crashes to desktop up to the start of Act 1 (both seem to be caused by scripts triggering) - whereas previous game was 100% stable to the end of Act 1. Not sure if it's related to the patch, but hopefully it doesn't continue.

Probably get death threat for including it, and death threats for removing it. Can't really win with religious imagery.