Humanoid

Steam usually saturates my line because my ISP mirrors most of the stuff they have. Also means it doesn't count against my download limit. One rare thing I can't complain about. Not sure how universal it is but a fair few ISPs still provide free backup dialup access so I'd be able to get that going pretty quickly if my connection fell over.

Yeah, no fan of Steam either but looking at the bigger picture, it's for the best that a relatively small company with a narrow scope runs it, instead of bigger evils like say, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, etc. The biggest irritation is not being able to readily specify the installation location for each game. I'd love to install New Vegas on my SSD but it's not going to work if all my Steam games live there. I did accidentally install Steam on multiple disks on my old PC though, and each copy just saw the installed games in its local directory - thinking that might be the way to go.

You could call Ultima Underworld a direct precursor to System Shock too - both in concept and technologically.

Not only split screen but I wish consoles would support multi-screen output too. Probably need to dial down the graphics a bit since contemporary consoles are starting to choke a little on current games, but still. Hotseat multiplayer on PC too please! Also split/multi-screen multiplayer on PC too thanks.

I am finally playing Alpha Protocol, years behind everyone else. So far I haven't encountered a single bug, except for being unable to tab back in. Imported EU version so no patchy for me. Updated avatar, decades behind everyone else. Image compression of the logo doesn't look so flash here.

Was pretty curious about it myself. Looks like I missed the boat. But not for long!

Makes sense - that was the main failing of the H50 which SPCR did review. But I'd imagine they'd instantly fail it anyway since the noise seems no different. At any rate, all my builds are absolutely slanted towards quiet computing so I admit I really haven't looked at all into what Corsair are trying to do. Breaks my heart that I can't source one of those Gelid Icy Vision VGA coolers in Australia. If AMD's new 6850 can be passively cooled, I'd jump on it even with it being a slight downgrade to what I have. I doubt such a beast is possible though.

Few minor updates bolded. Intel i5-750 @ 3.33GHz Prolimatech Megahalems + 2x Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans Gigabyte P55A-UD4P 8GB PC10666 G.Skill Eco DDR3 1.35V 7-7-7-21 808.8GB WD Green 128GB G.Skill Falcon II SSD Gigabyte HD5850 Asus Xonar Essence ST Sound card Pioneer DVR-216 DVD-RW Sony 3.5" FDD Win7 Pro 64-bit OEM Seasonic X-650 Antec P182 Scythe Slipstream 800-1200rpm case fans 2x Dell U2711 27" IPS monitors Audioengine A5 2.0 powered speakers Audio Technica ATH-AD700 headphones Next upgrade will probably be a new flight stick and a new SSD once the next gen comes out - will move the old one to my notebook once that comes about. Also thinking about building a silent HTPC.

Megahalems is still top of the pops at SPCR. The only notable release since then that I'm aware of is the Thermalright HR-02 which they haven't reviewed, but that's their silence-oriented series anyway.

I still use and will continue to use IE6 at work for the foreseeable future. That, and Lotus Notes.

I'd nominate the late 80s to early 90s personally but that's subject to the same, uh, light magenta tinted glasses most of us wear. (Rose-colour wasn't available in 16 colour graphics). Still, a quick peek at the output of the time (picking a headline game of each year) shows: SimCity (1989) Wing Commander (1990) Civilization (1991) Ultima 7 (1992) Only one of which is a sequel. The stories you hear about the nature of game development back then though - probably wouldn't be sustainable today. There's the story of how months of progress on Strike Commander was lost when a developer unwittingly deleted the contents of a hard drive - one that contained the *only* current version of the source code - while attempting to test the installation routine. Then there's the fairly well known story that there was not a single copy of the Ultima 7 source code to be found when the developers went looking for it a scant few *months* after the first release. Fun times at Origin headquarters.

I took a 3-week holiday while my guild fought Vael for the first time. When I returned, Razorgore was fairly routine and Vael was mostly learnt (probably killed it 2-3 weeks after that). We were a couple months at least behind on the bleeding edge of raiding so this wouldn't have mirrored their experiences. Besides, it wasn't a bad fight in theory, just grossly unbalanced in favour of warriors and rogues - and I was the latter. I probably wouldn't notice how bad Shazzrah was if I wasn't a melee class. Had no particular difficulty with Geddon, the only people in danger there are the leadership team (bounty of 100g if you managed to explode on the guild leader). Jin'do was an odd one - when we brought our best DPS squad it wasn't actually too bad. There's a bit of a threshold to it, once damage output exceeds the requirement it was a more reliable kill than some other bosses. With a weaker squad, we'd skip it, yes. Conversely, Thekal (tiger boss) was incredibly tank-gear dependent. EDIT: I should probably clarify that tmy observations are intended to relate to badly designed encounters instead of difficult ones.

Off topic perhaps, but I played WoW for about a year with the director of Bio-Dome. Yeah....

So, it got unlocked in Australia one day earlier than planned because of the rash of broken street dates. Active locally now, though my copy is still someone in Portsmouth probably. (My copy of Alpha Protocol which I tossed into the same order as an afterthought arrived today though - but my SSD is full. Tragedy.) Remember kids, crime does pay!

Not resting causing the character to hallucinate? I remember playing Might and Magic 6 and leaving the computer while forgetting to pause - when I returned all my characters had gone insane due to lack of sleep. Not sure what other games had similar mechanics.

That, or simply introduce higher level mushrooms. Mana restore potions had several levels of potency while the of poor mushroom there was only one basic model. But point taken, this would just make the two mechanics functionally identical and therefore redundant.

Conversely I have to say I felt Sindragosa was the worst boss since some of the notorious vanilla ones. Top (or should I say bottom) 5 least enjoyable overall definitely - primarily because for most roles it involves enforced periods of doing absolutely nothing, with no payoff. But just a trip down memory lane, other badly designed raid bosses: Molten Core - Shazzrah - If you're a melee character, stand at edge of room and do nothing AQ20 - Moam - Stack classes capable of mana drain AQ40 - Princess Huhuran - Go back to Maraudon to farm green level 30 nature resist gear (note that initially the blue craftable NR gear was not available) AQ40 - Viscidus - Poison cleansing totem or die. Which means since Alliance had no shaman at the time, if you're Alliance, you die. Naxx (classic) - Loatheb - Farm Scarlet Monastery for shadow protection potions. Several hundred of them. Mount Hyjal - Azgalor - Random death mechanic. While this is not in itself unique - Vaelastrasz and Teron Gorefiend also had auto-death mechanics - this was alone in providing no compensation, i.e. the Burning Adrenaline buff or the ghost minigame. Special mention to Hakkar v1 - One tank fights alone, healers on platform below, all DPS do nothing except get yourself poisoned every once in a while.

Based on past experience, if they ship on the Friday (22nd), there's probably 50/50 chance getting it the following week. If they ship a few days early (variable, depending on publisher they get stock in on different days before official release), then it's a much better chance. That said, I imagine NZ Post could possibly be faster than Aus Post due to smaller volume/geography.

I liked that kind of thing in Wing Commander - Bio should get Tom Wilson to do the comms. "Need a status report." "What are you, my mother?"

Once again. Of course, most gamers today might not recognise the old EA logo....

I had resolved not to pre-order it, but with the Aussie dollar as it is, $35 to my door is just too cheap to say no. Borderline whether I receive it before the end of the month but am in no rush.

I'll reserve comment on the whinging for now, but there's good news in there in as much as they acknowledge some employee/s are still interested in Ultima! Oh, it's that guy campaigning for Wing Commander - http://twitter.com/thatbarnettblok/status/25778878033 EDIT: Incidentally, Wikipedia tells me that WC4's budget was $12m. You could get 25 of them for SWMMO's $300m!

In my day, there was no tree of life and the top-tier healing talent was innervate and the only usable spell we had was Healing Touch rank 4. Now get off my lawn! *mutters* In all seriousness though, I put WoW away a couple months ago now and though my account is still nominally active, it's probably telling that I haven't been able to muster the energy to patch up and log on. Not that I mind change - the problem here is more the lack of change. Two years ago the player base was left with only Black Temple as the current content for a full year. The developers acknowledged the gap was a mistake and promised WoTLK would be much better in pacing content. Hah, so much for that - the past year has probably been the most stagnant in the game's six-year history.

It appears that the pronouncements of it being Dragon Effect were wildly exaggerated. Dragon Gauntlet would be a more apt tag.

If you sort their games by user rating descending, you'll find you have to scroll 4/5ths or more down the page to find the first game rated under 4/5 (that being Sniper Elite). Incidentally, MoO1+2 is second overall, and MoO3 is dead last. Still, I guess it's meant to be good old games, not mediocre old games.