Humanoid

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!

I'm still using the Repeater at 16. I don't even meet the STR requirement to use it properly.... And yeah. the initial people to talk to suggest that the area between Goodsprings and Vegas is very much "here be dragons" territory and funnel you counterclockwise.

That's why I put "killed" in quotation marks. But I assume that's just an 'out' to prevent an unfinishable state so not particularly relevant in terms of the denouement.

I know I'm miles (or ~2.5 weeks) behind everyone else, but anyway - finally got into The Strip about 25 hours and 15 levels in. Sort of regret it now, out of momentum after executing Benny - I'd been playing it all Charles Bronson so now my character doesn't really have a purpose. "Killed" Yes Man for being complicit (being 100% unforgiving is an everpresent trait of almost all my characters), went up to see House and ended up killing him too for trying to rush my decision (I thought I'd be able to do the usual "I'll think about your offer" response). So yeah, now feeling kind of aimless and tempted to start afresh with a different concept, probably a more self-serving one.

Must... resist.... urge to have a pop at DNF. Oh hell - Breaking news: Duke Nukem Forever to switch to Gamebryo engine!

Unfortunately it was just a turn of phrase. Our raids were text only. Feel free to substitute "yell at" with "have a pleasant private text discussion with." Probably one of the reasons WoW has now passed me by. Everyone else wants voice comms nowadays, and I don't - I prefer to game while listening to the Thin White Duke and there are some efficiency gains that indeed go too far for me to still classify as having fun. The experience probably peaked around 2007, natch.

(Italicising the WoW specific mechanics so people unfamiliar with WoW can ignore them - the rest although WoW in context makes sense generically. Or just ignore the big block of text and skip to the bold.) Not to argue against the point, but back when I played WoW (I haven't since 4.0) I had two primary characters for raiding - coincidentally a holy paladin and a moonkin which I used depending on which role was required. I'll genericise as necessary. I had to yell at my co-paladins to not nearly having the raw output necessary for the more difficult stuff. Now granted this wasn't at the bleeding edge of raiding - ended up with 7-8 hard mode bosses done by the time we called it a day - but the point is that when we first entered ICC I was outperforming the others by 100-200%. Digging deeper I found it was a combination of: The examples won't mean anything to non-WoW players but the general fault highlighted does. a) using the wrong skills - Flash of Light instead of Holy Light (yes, a choice of two spells and a lot still get it wrong) b) using the wrong equipment - Intelligence stacking combined with Flash of Light (Flash of Light is only viable with the spell power gearing sub-spec), or Spell Power combined with Holy Light c) not using skills often enough - a lot of downtime often due to a combination of mana conservation (often due to incorrect gear) or fear of overhealing (an outdated mechanic) d) poor use of support/supplementary skills - incorrect target selection for Beacon of Light, poor timing of mana recovery spell use TL;DR: I guess the point here is that while the mechanics were simple and the spells few in number, a lot of players still managed to grossly misuse them. I had to drill them back down to basics and force them to forget their preconceptions to get them working effectively again. Gear full Int, cast Beacon on the tank every 90sec, spam Holy Light, use Divine Plea aggressively Simple instructions but it got them to the point where the tank stopped whinging if I wasn't playing my paladin. _______________ I was a sole moonkin in the raid so I don't really have anything much to impart about common player mistakes. However it's actually a neat illustration of ignored and ineffectual complexity. Yes, the moonkin had a lot of tools - however half of them were not effective and therefore suboptimal to use. The result was that in practice it was actually quite simple to play .....provided one had an efficient user interface set up. Install the Squawk and Awe mod. Keep moonfire up, cast Starfall every minute, and pick Wrath or Starfire - whichever one the mod tells you to cast. (Insect Swarm for a few specific bosses only) I could play effectively like this while asleep, something I wouldn't be able to do with the theoretically simpler Holy Paladin. _______________ If you skipped everything above This is meant to be a simplified tale of two implementations. A dumbed down system which can still be completely misunderstood and butchered, and a complex system rendered moot because the extra complexity could be easily discarded with no ill-effect. I suppose I should try to find a point to my rambling, and I guess it's to say it's not a scale with dumbed-down on one end and complex on the other. It's a 2D plane - with one axis for complexity and the other for implementation. The four corners would be something like: dumb, streamlined, intricate and dog's breakfast.

I'd be concerned that it might cause the sun to crash to desktop and go supernova, or at the very least, start to splutter.

If US prices drop from $60 to $40, Aussie retailers will probably drop it from $120 to .....$110.

For the same reason the inventory/stores are huge lists too. 1. Put huge lists everywhere 2. ?????????? 3. Profit! While we are at it, I wanna know who got the idea that mouse acceleration is a good thing? I love lists. But with a catch. XTree could show more lines of text in 200 vertical pixel CGA than most game save/load interfaces can show in over 1000 vertical pixels. 95% of the screen space on the interface is blank. Hell, I'd be happy if game save/load interfaces just behaved like the Windows shell default ones. Resizable, tile view, list view, detail view, etc. Wouldn't mind if inventories worked the same way either - and add searchable, sortable, filterable.

Could always go double sided dual layer. Games took dozens of floppies before CD-ROM came along. Games took a dozen CD-ROMs before DVD came along. Actually would be neat if gaming came full circle and went back to cartridges once flash prices crash. Ship games on fast SSDs, plug them in using eSATA. Play straight off the media! Hell, make it bootable and then we've arrived at PC + console convergence.

I've made my feelings about combat in CRPGs known often enough. I don't have a problem with it per se, but it's development effort put into something I tend to just skip past. I'd much rather the devs spend time with other aspects with the game than fine-tuning a detailed, balanced combat system. So yes, I'm advocating the hiding of substandard combat systems by making combat scarce. If an average playthrough only had say, a half-dozen to a dozen times where the violent option be taken, then the choice to engage in combat becomes more a character decision than a gaming one. The violent path does not even need to be tied into combat systems given the now fairly accepted stealth takedown mechanics (which is so simple it doesn't really need to be called a mechanic) and the occasional dialogue-based violent option (the "execute" option if you will). But yes, I'd wholeheartedly support either getting rid of all the filler combat, or at least awarding no experience for them. Either option would make experience systems much easier to balance without hiring a chartered accountant. Once you cut out those, you have quest XP and 'Important Fight' XP. Important Fights are basically quests, and so can be considered and balanced with the whole character growth system as a quest. Tabulate all the quests and 'quests' and it should be fairly straightforward to regulate the levelling process. More simplistically I suppose there'd be lazy option of just cutting out XP from combat after a certain threshold (upped per level).

Civ5 compares well to vanilla Civ4. Given it's got 4 years and 2 expansions to make up for, I think Civ5 is in a good enough spot for the future. There are plenty of good arguments for an Civ veteran to let Civ5 mature, but the question as it relates to new players favours it more by providing a more natural learning curve and the chance to learn in-step with the game and the large Civ community. That said, neither SoD or Religion were particularly good implementations of depth. SoD covers for the lack of any tactical nous by the AI and the notion of stacking an axeman and a spearman is certainly no more an involved tactical decision than unit positioning is in Civ5. Religion while not in itself a bad thing is simply too dominant a modifier and renders most other diplomatic factors irrelevant, and furthermore, the implementation of founding religions made it such that it was neither advisable (or for most, possible) to do so. Ultimately none of the items in the list are real causes of the game being derided as "dumbed down," I'd suggest it's entirely down to the AI being less able to hide its constraints behind favourable mechanics - the requirement therefore being simply a smarter AI, or at least one that believably cheats more. Maybe this is all just because they just used the Sitting Bull AI module from Civ4 instead of the Shaka one.

I booted up Fallout 3 for the first time in ages as well, but had to quit and lie down after 30-60min. First case of motion sickness (I assume it was that) I've had in years, odd.