Humanoid

The problem is that even 1080p is starting to push the capacity of the human eye at reasonable TV sizes. I doubt I'll ever be able to fit a TV of the size required to take full advantage of that kind of resolution. Ah, but with OLED all you have to do is roll your TV onto the wall like wallpaper!

Aren't the next gen TVs supposed to have 4000+ vertical lines or somesuch? Maybe the next gen will coincide with that (except for Nintendo who will probably release their 1080p console at that time, and top the sales chart with it). At the same time, I wouldn't be too surprised if they went back to x86 and consumer graphics chips. Even now they're pushing 5760x1080 gaming with single chips, and x86 is like COBOL, it just won't die.

I know nostalgia colours that sort of thing, but HoMM3 holds up fairly well given the 1024x768 resolution (hey, some people still use that today) and some lovely art. The older ones with 640x480 VGA I could understand a bit more.

The right card for any given generation is the midrange card released by each of the dominant vendors within the last 6-12 months. And with the respective companies rather random approach to product naming, what it'll be called is anyone's guess. Hopefully the 28nm process will be well and truly mature by then however (with 22nm coming in), unlike the fiasco that was the introduction to 40nm. Aside, 8800GTX wouldn't have been the right card at the time, the 8800GT (which using convoluted vendor logic came after the GTX) would have been the poster child of that generation. So good was it that the subsequent 8800GTS-512, 9800GT, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+ and 250GTS are basically the same product. A roll-call of the 'right' card, with the benefit of hindsight, over the past several years would read something like: GF4 Ti4200, R9700, 8800GT, R5850. Your call on whether the alternating dominance is a pattern or coincidence, but no one would make any serious bets on the next winner. I will say though that the current mid-range is more crowded than ever and it's hard to go very wrong.

I played HoMM2 before the original so it's hard to have an opinion on that comparison. But a moot point anyway as HoMM3 is the best - the perfect sequel in a way, adding a lot of meat but basically losing nothing good from its predecessor. I regret now not buying the (at the time) maligned Heroes Chronicles spinoffs (they were essentially standalone campaigns using the HoMM3 engine), they're nigh-impossible to find now. HoMM4 was if nothing else a bold attempt at branching out, since it would have had trouble improving upon perfection. Just a shame about 3DO being broke and all that resulting in a half-baked, unbalanced product (*stabs Trip Hawkins*) Nonetheless, it was fun enough to play as a single-character romp through the campaign with the overpowered heroes. Frankly in that capacity it was more an RPG than what passes as one now. Have yet to give HoMM5 a proper shake of the sauce bottle.

Dammit, for a moment there I thought they'd used Australia as an RPG setting.

Credit for achieving the impossible I guess. I've had an Xbox for a couple months now and don't have any games on it at all (I use it for pay TV streaming). I guess if the gameplay works well with it it's something to consider once things settle down. Better than wearing out my mouse buttons at any rate. On the PC I'd probably struggle to see it as what it is and instead see it as what I want it to be and come out disappointed. On the other hand, I quite liked Final Fight 3 on the SNES, and if I adjust my expectations accordingly.... (not as much a stretch as one might first thing, FF3 had a branching storyline and simple gear upgrades) So yeah, I'll be tracking the platform wars here, feed me!

Origin was bought first but Bullfrog was probably killed first - in the early years Origin retained quite a lot of independence (and their somewhat haphazard development cycle). Both were walking dead before Westwood were even acquired though, with Chris Roberts and Peter Molyneux having both left by the time of the Westwood purchase. The initial acquisition had been on the cards for a while and for a time, Origin resisted. The cube, sphere and tetrahedron evil generators were not in Ultima 7 by coincidence. By the time of Ultima 8 the inevitable had happened and the EA shapes reappeared as a magic artifact in Mythran's house. All it did was that the Avatar kneeled before it when it was interacted with - heavy symbolism there.

Not sure how it's organised but there's 700MB in the vo directory under packages, and a further 1.8GB under modules. Wild guess that the player character voice acting might add 50%, it would inflate DA1's install to 21.3GB (EDIT: working off proper install size, 16.5GB) or so, so it's not a major component really. Taking a proportional amount off from DA2 would result in a 6.5GB estimate if Hawke was mute. Of course, odds are this is completely irrelevant.

Also free first episode when it's released if you register - http://www.telltalegames.com/bttfoffer

Or Dragon Ball.

I've been playing a new character on a new account when they had that $5 deal a few weeks back - my old characters have too much baggage so I've put them on ice. It's probably safe to say it's probably the closest an MMO will ever get to a decent single player CRPG experience - and better than most single player action-RPGs in that sense. Will I continue on to play Cataclysm proper? I don't know yet, still quite burnt out by WoTLK raiding.

6950 Crossfire might be turn out to be the best value high end solution - costs about 20% more than a single GTX580 but 50-70% faster. That'd be the upper bound of the 6990 I imagine, depending on how much they end up having to cut it down to fit in the 300W envelope.

I probably played SimFarm a fair bit more than any of the core SimCity games. Not sure how well it was actually rated back then though. Also enjoyed "light-sim" Strike Commander for bringing together Space Opera with conventional military sim. And of course there's Ultima 8.

So, pretty much the entire catalogue is on sale now (except Activision which will start within 3 days) - could probably rack up a couple hundred dollars worth with a 5 minute perusal of the list. Not sure if it means anything but will very soon have more games on GoG than on Steam.

A fair proportion of the old game boxes were those two piece ones that can't be flattened. A lot sturdier though so I don't mind. Alas, 90% of my games are back in my parents' place, stuffed in boxes in the garage, hundreds of kilometres from me. I put all the CDs, manuals and yes, registration cards back into them before packing them though, so it's hardly a case of just storing boxes.

Not directly comparable of course, but my personal feeling was that yes, ME2 was a poor RPG mixed with a competent shooter, which translated to a better experience than the original's poor RPG - poor shooter mix. Storytelling redresses part of the balance of course, but I personally don't weigh it enough to alter the overall comparison. * I should also note that I'm not an FPS player, at all, and end up flailing wildly at the air when I attempt to play from that perspective. Played ~95% of New Vegas in 3rd person view. Probably something to do with the diminished situational awareness triggering some sort of panic reflex.

The reverse for me - playing FO3 I somehow ended up with the idea that dear old daddy might have been the bad guy and played it accordingly - player character all suspicious and careful instead of rushing after him. I might have shot myself in the foot with that theory.... New Vegas was simple but strong motivation - no one shoots me in the head and gets away with it and so needed no encouragement to progress the main plot. Well, that is until my revenge was served at which point the experience more or less plateaued.

I don't think that's retrograde. Technology does not always get smaller as it progresses. My current monitor is about an inch thick. Ten years ago, my cat could curl up on it when she wanted a warm place to sleep. Fifteen years before that, my mother owned a Mac that could have fit inside that monitor. Before I was born, she worked at a technology company where the computer filled a small room. Home fridges are almost a century old. Give graphics cards that much time, and they'll probably be smaller. Tangent: Fridges are also an odd example as they come in a wide range of sizes. They're meant to store stuff and their size is based on how much stuff you expect to store. Birth control probably had a bigger impact on the size of the average fridge than cooling technology did. I accept that advancement will always prioritise one aspect of the technology over others particularly in the early stages, but the personal irritation here is more about the chosen tradeoff. VESA Local Bus video cards were huge, but silent, but that did not generally impact usability. Nowadays some rigs are so loud that headphones become a necessity when gaming. Maybe the market is proving me wrong, but it's showing some signs of settling down so I hold out some hope. Some years ago Intel crashed headlong into the barrier of what the market would take in terms of CPU speed vs power dissipation. The engineering farce that was the P4 Prescott showed all consumer CPU vendors the line in the sand, and today we're seeing impressive developments in CPU speed despite that technological constraint. My hope is that with the 300W Fermi monster (GTX480), nVidia might have hit the same wall and that it's the beginning of a more mature, balanced approach to GPU development. I guess the most contentious issue is the question of how good is good enough - and I expect my standards are on the lower end of the spectrum. ME2 is the best looking game I've ever played and from what I know it's considered quite a distance behind the bleeding edge. I'll make the personal call that it's good enough for the mainstream and that if the upcoming integrated graphics options are enough to power that, I would be very happy indeed to see developers standardise PC graphics to be playable on said platforms. Not saying there should be an upper bound to graphical quality, but I think it's win-win for both developers and gamers if a common hardware baseline is established. It may be Sandy Bridge/Fusion, or it might be the generation that follows, but I look forward for when the time comes.

Men would be less depressed about losing their hair if plugs were better quality, easy to get and had no social stigma. ....at least I think that was the intended point.

I accept it in general but it's generally fallen over at portraying bleak. The supposed icy hell of Icecrown was a big letdown for me since all it turned out to be was snow and a zonewide blue filter. Tectonically ravaged zones likewise end up being very bright, etc. I felt the art direction better suited the more fantastical design and colour of the Outlands continent. This of course was before the developers did a triple somersault backflip at the conclusion of the Burning Crusade and went back to traditional fantasy. I don't really care either way on how the turnabout impacted the general storytelling, just commenting on the suitability of the art direction.

See the problem is that you can add swords to ME2 and call it DA2, but adding guns to DA2 results in ME2, not ME3. Cheap shots aside, I do look forward to it quite a bit more than DA2 mainly because of the preconception that I'll be getting a slow-paced action game (the type of action game I prefer) as opposed to a twitchy RPG. I tend to get deer-in-the-headlights syndrome with fast-paced action games so the ME series is about as actiony a game as I'll ever bother playing. As for plot, I'm not big on it but given the genre won't particularly fuss about it. Would like to see a better feeling of impending doom though - a'la the single ship capable of wiping out half the galaxy's firepower singlehandedly rather than the ship taken down by three guys with handheld weapons. On reflection I wouldn't actually mind seeing the reset button hit - i.e. total annihilation of the galaxy while the reapers are in it - with a handy escape hatch for our hero, natch.

After much delaying - having had access to the final quest for about a week - finished New Vegas. Was playing slowly as to try make my second playthrough coincide with the 'big' patch, but it's too close to holiday season now to start a new game now. Steam says 74 hours logged though there'd be pretty significant idle time in that. Undecided about WoW Cataclysm - I had quit halfway through a 6-month billing cycle so my account is still active (and I logged in to check out some new stuff) but not sure about actually buying the expansion proper. I've got about a week before leaving on vacation so anything I pick up now would need to be fairly low-commitment, not sure what to play now really. Might play the Broken Sword remake now that it's on GoG.

I accidentally started one with that guy holed up in Goodsprings. Couldn't even get the game to progress since I completely skipped the rules, so I tabbed out and force-terminated the game.

One thing that does irritate me about graphical advancement is that it's in some way retrograde - fridges are quieter, more spacious and more power efficient. Video cards are louder, bulkier and more planet-warming. So yes, while we do have technological advancement, I'd classify it as a relatively immature one where only one factor really matters. So yes, we now have painstakingly modelled, high-polygon, tesselated breasts; but at the same time our ears are assaulted by the incessant hum and rattle of modern "coolers," require investment in bigger, bulkier, more heavily ventilated enclosures, require air-conditioning in summer, and draw as much power as the rest of the house combined. Now, granted it's only been 15 years since 3D acceleration was born, but I hope the next 15 years bring a wholly more balanced set of advancements.