Humanoid

Late I know but basically there are only two portable music players I'd recommend to anyone which between them cover all the bases. Both are selected with audio quality first and foremost, followed by a wide range of supported formats (I use a mix of FLAC and OGG), expandable memory (extra 32GB microSDHC) and no software tie-in. Sansa Clip+ is the first, and one I think everyone should own. Tiny matchbox-sized player with minimalistic interface, infinitely usable, rugged and cheap as chips - perfect outdoors/gym player. Cowon J3 is the other, and is the complete player and the best sound quality, and indeed video quality in the market bar none. The best of the best.

Then what is a Black Box? Only the best CRPG of all time.

I'm still cursing Microsoft for discontinuing gameport support in the latest Windows - every now and then I wax nostalgic about the good times when all you needed was a simple stick with 4 buttons and a hat switch, and the intense rivalry between Thrustmaster's F-4 based precision and CH Products' more genteel sticks. Gaming PCs almost by definition would be attached to a stick of some sort - such as the awesomely versatile and nigh-indestructible Gravis joystick. Mind you, a significant proportion of Wing Commander players were strictly keyboard only and swear by it. For me, it's not necessarily the most effective playstyle that matters, but the most engaging. But I digress - Privateer is indeed awesome and is always in my top 5 when those silly "Best Game Ever" threads come along. Privateer 2's combat kind of sucked, but on the other hand it had an great live action cast (I would argue the best ever assembled for a video game) and some psychedelic design. There have been multiple fan attempts to remake Privateer - the most successful being Gemini Gold - but I don't really know how they play. Launched it for the remade intro (and Privateer does have an awesome intro sequence) but didn't bother playing it. Slightly tangential, but jettisoning the space combat aspect, the relatively recent remake of Pirates! (or indeed the originals) make for many an hour of good explorey tradey goodness.

Vaguely on the topic of sequels, it's interesting to see how the expectations shift from 17 years ago to now. Wing Commander CIC has republished an 1994 article covering the making of Privateer - remembering by this stage Origin was well and truly EA's property. Of note is the final note regarding sales - 50,000 units to that point had already guaranteed that there be a follow-up, either an expansion or likely a sequel. (As it happens, both, sort of) http://www.wcnews.com/articles/art64.shtml

Only restating what's been shown earlier in this thread, but every single NPC in Oblivion (and for the most part, Morrowind). But then the ready availability of a certain kind of mod proves the other competing developers right. Though fairly simple, I like how Ultima handled the Avatar's companions. Of course, they were pretty much facsimiles of Garriott's real life colleagues/friends (also 50:50 gender split). Jaana the druid, Julia the tinker, Katrina the shepherd, and Mariah the mage.

HTPCs cost something in that range generally, and this essentially is a HTPC in a cheap plastic case - though not sure how Atom does with HD video. I'd go Zacate or even full Sandy Bridge once we hit the upper end of that price scale.

It was passable once you realise that you can jog away leisurely from just about any monster with no real trouble. They give up pretty easily. Not that running long distance across bleak murky terrain is much better - ends up being similar to most WoW zones actually.

All I remember of the M&M6 combat was equipping the whole party with bows and firing away while backpedalling. I think I played the in-game card-game in M&M7 more than the game proper.

Yeah, but the Deep Roads also won that award. Witcher swamp vs Deep Roads, go.

An AMD Llano-based one might be interesting on the other hand. But yeah, you can stick a mini-ITX motherboard in just about any retro/oddball chassis for novelty these days.

I bought the Broken Sword "Director's Cut" which had bit of added content towards the start of the game, so yeah, sort of. And apparently it's one of the most successful games on iOS, proving yet again that Mac users are easy to please.

Given that all they need to do to ensure ME3 is a winner is rerelease ME2 without planet scanning, I fail to see how it could possibly go wrong. Oh wait....

Out here, along with many other countries, lottery winnings are not taxed. But at any rate, I'd probably try to evaluate whether the winnings would be enough to live off the interest. Probably not immediately possible out of $1m (though it'd bring my retirement forward a decade or three), but double the prize and I think I could instantly retire and live without ever withdrawing the initial amount. Can't really think of a lot of big-ticket purchases otherwise - I don't plan on buying property in the middle of a bubble (Australia is home to the #1 most overpriced housing market in the world apparently), and I won't buy any sort of flash car, given that I can't drive.

Dropping the DirectX standard may well just result in a de-facto adoption of an even more proprietary standard. See Sound Blaster compatibility back in the DOS days. The Sound Blaster itself was compatible with AdLib. If you had a Gravis Ultrasound on the other hand.... In the current competitive environment it'd probably mean you need, at the very least, two video cards on hand permanently to make sure you can run any given game. If Intel comes back in, probably three. If you have a Matrox, well forget it. Back in the early 3D Decelerator days, you'd come across games that were pretty much Glide vs software renderer. Glide was awesome relative to the hardware capability of the Voodoo chip, but it was hell for the other vendors who tried to push their own APIs - PowerVR, Rendition, S3, etc.

So, nVidia launch the GTX590 to attempt to smoke AMD ....and end up taking it a bit too literally. With some mild overclocking/overvolting within the protection parameters, several review sites, using a mix of samples and retail boards have reported their test cards blowing up - indeed one tester had both his cards independently fail. Thermal imaging of the card in a closed case have shown the PCB heating up in excess of 110

I can rationalise it as the character having better sensory abilities than the player though, what with the augmented eyes and stuff. The perception stat in RPGs in general rarely seem to do anything logical, and admittedly it's hard to scale beyond making aiming more accurate which is a bit of a non-sequitur. I wear my sunglasses at night So I can So I can Watch you weave then breath your story lines And I wear my sunglasses at night So I can So I can Keep track of the visions in my eyes

I missed the conversation, is this about a Daikatana sequel?

Hmm, I didn't get that far before quitting. Maybe I should go look for my old saved games on the old PC.

Have to admit I never played KoTOR2 despite owning it. I dislike Star Wars though, so maybe in its non-Starwarrishness I'll have more motivation to play. I like the setting best when it mostly ignores the mystical and fantastical Force/Jedi/etc stuff, a'la the original Dark Forces where you couldn't wield a lightstick, or the space combat games which were mostly conventional to the genre.

I gave him all Sten's paintings since I left Sten in the cage to rot. My character did not forgive anything, ever.

Telling Ally that Duncan deserved to die was one of the very few moments in Origins that my character could vocalise what she really felt. Shame it was only a 5 second detour before returning to the railroad tracks.

It's a fair position - as I stated at the very beginning it's personal that I feel the evidence is strong enough to form an opinion. Obviously everyone has a reasonable threshold and this was never going to be enough to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. It is simply a combination of an incomplete number of confirmed facts, circumstantial evidence, and observation about the nature of professional sport and the inherent conflict of interest of each and every sport's governing body being a beneficiary of the commercial success of the very sport they are supposed to police. I don't think professional sports can even begin to be cleaned up until there is 100% independence between bodies like FIFA, the ATP/WTA, the UCI, the IAAF, etc; and the disciplinary body which oversees testing. Naturally this would require much more funding to WADA than what is currently available, and no small amount of political will. I'm not confident it will happen in my lifetime, if ever, but those are the stakes. In the end, when even legends like Gary Player believe that over half of all golf professionals are doping, no professional sport can, with a straight face, claim to be clean. So in the end, yes, I'm firmly of the belief that a clear and absolute majority of all professional sportspeople (and a significant proportion of amateurs) are on the juice. I don't ask anyone to follow me on that assertion, but that's not the interesting part of any discussion anyway. What I do like to discuss is what information out there can be gathered and investigated independently, against the commercial interests trying to sweep it all under the rug. Footnote: It's probably significant that all the major doping busts in memory have come as a result of police/federak action independent of sporting authorities, such as the Festina affair and the Marion Jones/BALCO case. Next on the chopping block is self-styled hero Lance Armstrong who is being pursued by multiple US federal agencies for fraud. I don't know if he'll end up in jail or even end up with a criminal conviction, but it's good to see all the same that some are still committed to doing their jobs instead of posturing and worse, being complicit in systematic cheating.

Yeah, I wouldn't put any stock on what that clown says - the man is pretty much a political corpse even in his own party, thankfully, and watching him would be comical were it not for the fact that he's the president. Political will has very little to do with it, there's a bunch of stuff related to the march 2004 Madrid attacks which for some reason Zapatero's government has no interest in investigating but the judiciary is nonetheless carrying the case forward. From what's been made available, it looks like Fuentes has been talking tough and threatening to disclose big names he could have been involved with since 2006... never to act on those threats. Call me na

Y'know, The Bold and the Beautiful would make an excellent RPG setting. Iconic characters, decades of interpersonal relationship development, cutthroat political intrigue, moral ambiguity....