Humanoid

Mm, Ubisoft games from back when they weren't so evil. Maybe it's still lining their pockets but I'll just tell myself that I'm showing them the right way to do things - and because my copy of HoMM3 is a few hundred km away from me.

Thrustmaster Warthog A-10 Thunderbolt replica stick.

Yeah, I'd view it as a fun/silly option - since I'm not sure how an evil dude would get to that point in the first place instead of just shooting them all as soon as you enter the facility. Then again such a character wouldn't likely bother visiting the facility in the first place. I suppose there's the insane character roleplay option but that's probably a bridge too far for me (hello chaotic neutral). When I play the usual 'evil' runthrough the problem generally is skipping most of the content since the inclination would be to tell any questgivers to sod off (or shoot them in the head).

I'm awful at planning and contrived to miss whole lot of cultural centres. Knowing I only had a month to spend I don't regret the decision to chop the entirety of southern Spain (sucks missing Moorish centres like Cordoba and Sevilla but wasn't practical), but somehow contrived to also run out of time to visit important northern cities like Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela and yes, Barcelona. From memory, I only managed to hit a rough triangle - started from Madrid (obligatory day-trip to old capital Toledo) and struck off towards Salamanca via Segovia (particularly liked this). Turned north to what was originally planned to be Bilbao via Burgos but days lost already meant chopping out Bilbao and going straight to San Sebastian. Time spent there in turn ruled out Barcelona so I headed back down south via the sleepy small cities of Logrono and Soria to Zaragosa and finished in Valencia. This isn't meant to be travel advice by any means since it's a very small subset of what there is to see. I guess I was backpacking though I don't like to admit it. All travel domestically was by bus, I think about 10EUR per trip (bit vague on that), and stayed at small family run ..."pensions" I think the term was - small establishments of a half-dozen rooms or so for 10-15EUR a night. Mainly avoiding youth hostels and the usual stereotypical "ugly Aussie tourist" hangouts. I think I only met one or two other Aussies on the whole trip, and I liked it that way. I guess in the end I rationalised that I could always go back and fill in the gaps, but in the end I don't think I've got the stomach to be a regular tourist - time, money, travel - and in the 5 yearsish since then I haven't been out of the country. My sister on the other hand spent almost a year there (a large part of which in breach of the 90 day stay limitation which apparently wasn't enforced at all) and still wants to go back.

The roots of the universe/setting whose game they are building a sequel to: Deus Ex 1. I wanted to say Daikatana.

I didn't particularly like any of the Indy movies, but Fate of Atlantis is a good chance of getting my nod as best adventure game ever.

Didn't know about the carry-over half skill points, that'd good to know - the typical rpg game mechanics have conditioned me into thinking even-points=good, odd-points=bad so I end up with a character with either 4, 6 or 8 points in each stat. With skills I also tend to compulsively raise them in multiples of 5, which result in the counterproductive practice of tossing a spare point or two in a less useful skill. I'm not familiar with most of the voice talent in NV and I think I like it that way, very few character preconceptions that way. Not so say instantly recognising Malcolm McDowell in FO3 wasn't cool, but in my mind's eye I end up just seeing Admiral Tolwyn deliver all those lines. Vaguely recalled the name Felicia Day in some gaming news recently (no idea about the actor bit) and checked - random factoid: she's Codex Dragon from UDIC (the Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter) from way back in the early 90s.

Excluding the second one, which is a screencap of the Careless Whisper video.

I'm going for a Cybermage sequel purely on the basis that it's an EA property and therefore possible.

Getting losing paths back in the game could be fun. And by that I mean more than picking the wrong dialogue option at the end of a game and meeting a horrible fate. I'm thinking Wing Commander 3 where instead of reprising Star Wars, you instead get gradually pushed back into (and lose) a battle for Earth. Now that's impending doom. You don't play half the missions of Wing Commander 1 if all you do is win every mission - all that happens is that you miss out on some better missions. (That said, the Save the Ralari mission would have resulted in close to universal failure - rewarded by 3 extra missions)

Only if Fireballs can only be detonated on the ground. Being able to detonate fireballs outside the 2D plane of the floor would be kind of cool. Not to the extreme extent to grenade physics but it would add tactical options. Then again, Virtual Pool level physics with fireballs might also be fun.

Newcastle is.

It only has to beat Tabula Rasa to do so.

So who's in for the replica Geralt head?

I'd call it a race between a IBM Deathstar hard disk and a car with no air-conditioning. Highly probable fatal failures vs no native AA support.

Outside of characters, it'd be a fair bit easier to draw the sharp lines and flat, clean surfaces in ME. Even then it still involved a lot of pre-fabs and clone brushes. ME1 reminded me of NWN1 stylistically, though that may be a flaw of memory rather than a side-by-side comparison. Wing Commander has aged much better than say, Falcon 3.0.

Sounds like the various "multimedia experiences" typical as of around the birth of the CD-ROM (with the caddies!).

I always thought a map that automatically was drawn by the player character on graph paper as they walked around would be a cool compromise - mimicking what older gamers had to do manually. Minimaps in the old Fallouts were like documentation for FORTRAN programs. You could use it, but it was easier to just look at the actual world/code. On the radar markers, I think the most internally consistent use would be to ask the question "can I find it with a GPS?" If an NPC tells you about such and such building knowing where it's located then the ability for the player's compass to point the way isn't nearly immersion-breaking as getting compass direction hunting down a notorious outlaw who as far as your character knows could be anywhere.

Never been there but I don't think you need a Visa for the UK as an Aussie citizen. However the UK does have different rules to the rest of western Europe regarding entry - I vaguely remember being told before I went to Spain that if I were to head on to the UK I'd have to be mindful of the passport/length-of-stay rules which are not shared. This will only be relevant when entering France from the UK I imagine (unless you hop on a plane instead of a train), should you choose to do so. Once in France you'd be able to travel unhindered to any neighbouring countries. Depending on how much time you spend on the continent, one of those infinite-use train passes might be good value - Eurail I think it's called. The sum total of my overseas travelling in the past 15 years has been one month in Northern Spain, so I'm not an authoritative source. San Sebastian is lovely though.

Even Morrowind still looks pretty good to me. The threshold was probably around that '02/'03 crop of games when 3D was mature enough to kill sprites for good. I played Broken Sword 3 for the first time (so no nostalgia element) in the last year and it didn't feel jarring at all. For shooters you can probably move the mark back a couple years, action games like Unreal Tournament and Max Payne fit that generation and the nature of the gameplay hides 3D's shortcomings a bit more. Playing a mid/late '90s 3D game for the first time would be more jarring than doing the same for even an early 90s 2D game though - titles like Tomb Raider, Quake, even up to Ultima 9 are probably past the breaking point now personally.

I can't really name much either - owing to the fact that I leave the majority of my games unfinished. Even the Black Isle 'classics' - I'm yet to complete the likes of BG. PS:T, IWD and indeed, Fallout. Nor more modern titles like any of NWN1/2 and any of their expansions, KoTOR2, DA:O, etc. I'll get to it someday - after all, I finally finished Ultima 8 16 years after first playing it.... But for the sake of providing a title - Wing Commander 4. Both best and worst for the gratuitous FMV extravaganza, and that it turned into choose your own adventure title.

I still own the Commodore 64 versions of most of those games. It was such a hassle trying to buy these games in Kiruna (tiny town far, far north in Sweden) back in the day. I remember that when they stopped making them for the C64, that was the turning point when I gave up on computers for a decade. I wonder if they'll be worth something some day? Not sure how much correlation between age and value there is. I have a couple of copies of Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga which are apparently now worth hundreds of dollars each (when the RRP was actually half of a standard new release game) from 1997, whereas my five copies (yeah) of Ultima 5 have barely clawed their way back to the release price. I also have two shrink wrapped copies of Wrath of the Lich King that I picked up for $45 each on clearance. Quick eBay check shows they're worth ~$200 each though that's just based off a couple of sellers, and the game is less than two years old. Not a PC game but I also have a sealed Planescape campaign setting - wonder what it's worth....

I'm generally okay with the sprawling outdoor areas, even if they involve a bit of legwork - the minimap covers it well enough and I'm not one who pokes around every nook and crevice. I don't even bother entering the generically named houses in each town. Mccarran just needed a second fast travel point and it would have been a non-issue (like they did with Nellis base). It's more the mundane indoor areas that are built like labyrinths by architects who are apparently high on Jet. Upstairs at the Kings' Club and the whole of Gomorrah come to mind, but most large buildings suffer from this - having to cross a steel walkway to get the the technicians in the HELIOS power plant for example. As for crashes - it's been weird - there was a point between about the 15th and 25ths hours of playing that I'd crash every couple hours or so at least. I played on and have notched up almost another 10 hours after that without a single crash.

Just for something different I'll subvert my list by making it a list of the oldest games I remember playing - bearing in mind that they'd be been released before I discarded my nappies. They must have been memorable because they were good, and I submit qualify for the appelation 'favourite.' Don't recall specifically which was the first, but anyhow: Alley Cat - I have an enduring fear/hatred of disembodied brooms Pitstop 2 - I remember panicking whenever the wheels changed colour indicating wear, having no idea how to make a pitstop Winter Games - I remember mashing the keyboard and being very happy when my figure skater managed to jump All in glorious (four) colour graphics. I admit I had to Google the actual game titles, having remembered only the stunning graphics. Now, I may not have known how to play these titles at the time, but then neither do I know how to play most games released this year.

Well there's sort of an in-game explanation why there are no surviving recordings. No, and I don't think they should; that song has a tremendously sensitive meaning to some families that lost loved ones in the war. They shouldn't make a game of it. (Nice song though, and otherwise a good choice). Hardly stopped Kubrick. Irradiated food blasts away all the plaque and tartar!