Humanoid

"Learn by doing" mechanics result in the activity depicted in the graphic to the left. <- Anyway, it's all the same thing - whether your character becomes stronger through the acquisition of a singular experience point figure, discrete skill points, a sword of strongpower + 1 or a Super Mushroom (or any combination thereof) is immaterial and only of flavour value. Rrrrawr Bob become stronger, kill tougher bosses!

Maybe the standalone storyline sort of dampened interest in general? Got the same vibe for expansions/semi-expansions like Colonization for Civ4, Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics or HoMM3: Shadow of Death, just sort of ....disconnected. Or maybe the public just have no interest in playing a Frenchie. Incidentally are there new PC voice sets to reflect the new background or does the Orlesian warden sound still sound like a British coalminer?

So after 4 aborted runs I'm not sure whether to try for another or just skip the original campaign and try the expansion as a standalone game. Does purchasing the expansion add any functionality/gameplay to the old campaign or are all its additions completely contained in the new story? My biggest whinge is still having to repeat the whole Ostagar+Tower schtick every time which is discouraging me from restarting. I see there's a skip the Fade mod but nothing else so far. That said I might use the skip Fade mod anyway just because the powergamer in me would get massively irritated if I missed a single one of the stat buffs.

I was hoping for another tie-in with a new David Bowie album, but alas.

Problem with that is my current grey warden would prefer to raze Denerim personally.

Intel are charging extortionate prices in Australia so we either import them or go for cheaper Indilinx drives really. The nature of SSDs is that unlike HDDs the larger the drive the more operations can be performed simultaneously. 160GB SSD will perform significantly better than 80GB and so forth which is especially noticeable on writes. There's no real dropoff where gaining capacity does not give a performance boost. That said, even 64GB SSDs crush spindle drives on reads by so much hardly anyone would be quibbling about it - though I'd be a bit dubious about the general utility of 32-40GB models (typically marketed as boot drives now). Aside, best value SSD over in Australia for the time being will be the G.Skill Falcon II at about $250AUD for 64GB or ~$440AUD for 128GB. P.S. I've heard Raptors are actually very quiet drives in themselves, just that the 3.5" bolt-on chassis causes all manner of vibrations and associated problems. Used as a 2.5" and suitably mounted (ideally suspended) it'd probably beat out some 7200rpm drives for quietness.

SSDs are awesome but WinXP does a terrible job of supporting them - general use degrades SSD performance until it does some self-rearranging - typically for modern drives this is implemented using TRIM which is Win7 only I believe. For Indilinx-based SSDs there's also a utility called wiper.exe when using them under older versions of Windows which is roughly equivalent to an SSD "defragger," but being a manual process it becomes a bit of a chore. (Incidentally, don't use standard HDD defrag on SSD, it's just causing wear without gaining anything.

GTX285? It's pretty poor value at the moment though I understand some people are avoiding AMD GPUs. It's been reported that nVidia are holding a press release about GF100 this coming week so you might want to listen to what they've got to announce. To drop a little personal op-ed here though, I'd say nVidia's recent business practices are as dubious if not moreso then Intel's (handling of mobile bump-gate, PhysX lockout, Batman AA, constant rebadging). Also given the tiny difference between the 965 and 955 (200MHz and nothing else) and how trivial they are to overclock I'd go with the 955BE - since after all the only real reason to go for a BE is for overclocking. RAM for AMD is dual-channel only so 4GB. Motherboard you're probably looking at a 790X unless you plan to do crazy things like run 3 video cards.

Anandtech's Buyer's Guide also recently updated. Key decisions are probably how many cores you want (2, 3 or 4) and whether you have any interest in overclocking (and hence the BE edition CPUs) or even core unlocking. If on a very strict budget then an AM2+ board (instead of AM3) would allow you to reuse DDR2. My knowledge on specific models is pretty much nil but of the current AMD chipset offerings I believe the FX is the premium series, X is mainstream and G/GX is mainstream with integrated graphics. For video ATi currently win at all price points until nVidia gets around to launching their perpetually delayed new series - so any decision here comes down to a) buy whatever ATi card fits your budget, or b) wait and reuse your existing card for now.

Cuts area loading times in the likes of DA by 10x, and apps like Firefox load instantly. Never tried Win7 with a spindle drive however so it's not exactly a straight comparison.

New toy built over the holidays: Intel i5-750 Prolimatech Megahalems + 2x Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans Gigabyte P55A-UD4P 4GB PC10666 G.Skill Eco DDR3 1.35V 7-7-7-21 808.8GB WD Green 128GB G.Skill Falcon II SSD Gigabyte HD5850 Pioneer DVR-216 Sony 3.5" FDD (yeah...) Win7 Pro 64-bit OEM Seasonic X-650 Antec P182 Mix of Scythe Slipstream 800-1200rpm case fans Audioengine A5 2.0 powered speakers Pending are a viable 3rd party cooler for the video card and an ASUS Essence ST sound card. Perhaps a Dell U2711 when cashflow permits.

Given absolute freedom of choices, my human noble would have slit Duncan's throat as he slept on the trip to Ostagar - but it's a clearly impractical one as it would sort of necessitate writing an entire new game to branch off from that point. What I'd have perhaps liked to see instead is the origin stories relegated to the game's second act as a sort of flashback instead. This would convert the flimsy illusion of choice into one of circumstance, which on the whole I would find more palatable plotwise. e.g. You are a Bhaalspawn/Jedi/Guy covered in scars who wakes up in a mortuary instead of you (are forced to) 'choose' to become a Jedi/Grey Warden/general saviour of all humanity. Choice denied feels crueller than unarguable circumstance. Perhaps open the game by throwing the character thick in the battle for Ostagar - and at the point your character gets knocked out, the pace can be slowed right down to explore your character and how they might have gotte into the current situation. I realise that's begging for a dozen ancient tropes, it would allow me to feel more control over the player character as a personality rather than a storyteller's construct. My last attempted character concept was a genocidal elven supremacist city elf who would have loved to erase the entire human civilisation of Ferelden, along with the poxy human religion. Needless to say it didn't get very far (though open mockery of the chantry / monarchy / humans was somewhat amusing) and I'm waiting on the expansion to start my next game.

If only the movie was banned too it would have saved people a lot of money.

It reads to me that it would be improved if the method of delivery were to be similarly improved - and by improved I mean "made cheaper." If you have an automated VO software that could provide a usable variety of relatively convincing outputs (ideally client-side) in response to an arbitrary bit of writing (hello General MIDI), you'd have much greater scope in what you'd be able to write. Of course, this would probably mean another actor's strike, but so be it.

I'm quite happy with VO as part of the cinematic experience - but talking head sequences don't really fulfil that so I'm not too concerned either way whether the mundane conversations are voiced or not. The Wing Commander speechpacks were fairly pointless, one of the few things in the history of gaming that are a bigger ripoff than DLC, but on the other hand I'm quite fond of the FMV excesses of the sequels.

The fan on current model single-fan power supplies is an intake fan, the bottom PSU placement is designed to isolate the PSU completely from the heat dynamics of the rest of the system since traditional top-placement meant the PSU was taking air from increasingly hot CPUs and ramping up their own fan as they overheated. Likewise, modern 'blower' video cards take air from inside the case and exhaust it outside to the back panel of the case. The problem with multi-card solutions in terms of heating tends to be the upper video card is starved of cool air since there's very little room between it and the card below, and the heat from the card below heats up the whatever intake the top card gets. This effect would be further amplified the worse the front intake airflow is (around the HDD cage area).

Not impossible - indeed it could have been that the 5870 was glitching because of power issues? Don't see much to do besides test those cards one at a time to try to confirm the problem.

A DLC I'd buy is one that provided an alternate storyline progression between the end of each origin story and the point where the world map opens up - i.e. a parallel exclusive path to the Ostagar-Wilds-Ishal line. As it stands that part of the game rapidly becomes an irritating bottleneck on every playthrough after the first, whereas decent options (or at least passable illusions thereof) exist prior and following on from that arc. Possible hooks include perhaps having an alternate ending to each origin where you get captured, or another one where, say, you manage to escape your conscription while journeying to Ostagar - anything of the sort really, because Ostagar is starting to feel like Irenicus' Dungeon.

My mistake by omission. All i5 and i7 CPUs have turbo mode, it just behaves slightly differently in that the 920 does not speed itself up by quite as much. When all 4 cores are operating, they have the following clock speeds: i5 750 2.66GHz i7 860 2.8GHz i7 920 2.66GHz Yes the 750 and 920 have the same stock frequency, but because the technology is slightly different the 860 and 920 end up being almost the same speed in practice. With 2 cores active and turbo mode on it goes to: i5 750 3.2GHz i7 860 3.33GHz i7 920 2.8GHz The difference in clock speed is now suddenly magnified. In this situation both the 750 and the 860 will beat the 920.

I'm finding the haze effect when you have a fiery weapon or any sort of fire near you, especially during cutscenes, to be awfully distracting as well.

The rebranded 8800GT is called the GTS250. The i5 750 is the mainstream offering, compared to the i7 series it loses the Hyper-threading feature which while handy for some applications, does not count gaming among them. Therefore it is considered the best value gaming CPU around. The i7 860 and i7 920 are priced almost identically and perform roughly as such. The difference is that the 920 plugs into the premium and more expensive X58 platform while the 860 makes do with the same P55 platform the i5 lives on. The 920 is easier to overclock (which I don't think is of interest to most buyers of pre-built systems), while the 860 has a faster turbo mode. Turbo mode is the system in which the clock speed of the individual cores is automatically boosted when not using all 4 cores at the time (which has a tangible performance impact in many games). The difference between X58 and P55 is tri-channel vs dual-channel memory (no practical difference for gaming) and twin x16 PCI-E slots vs x16/x4 or x16/x8 (which just means it'll be faster in by somewhere south of 5% when equipped with dual high end video cards). By virtue of the motherboard costing less and not having to install as many sticks of memory, the P55 platform can make for fairly decent savings. The rule of thumb for new purchasers is this - people who need X58 already knows they need X58 and why; everyone else defaults to P55. Now for the practical stuff - I'd say buy the XPS 8000 instead. This as far as I can tell downgrades the CPU from a 920 to a 750, which is a negligible loss for gaming. This chops off $300 off the listed price. $180 of that goes towards upgrading the video card to a GTX260. The rest you can put towards a better monitor - $120 gets you an upgrade to a 24", which along with the video card upgrade brings to the total package price to the same point as the base XPS 9000. So in all you lose a tiny bit of CPU power, gain a huge upgrade in any 3D programs, and will have the monitor to do it justice. It's a tradeoff I'd take every time. P.S. If you can swing an extra $60 it's probably worth upgrading the RAM in the 8000 to 8GB just to guarantee getting 4 matching 2GB sticks. 6GB is a bit of a silly number for dual-channel, it implies 2x2GB + 2x1GB sticks.

Command and Conquer ....Might and Magic. That's a simple enough substitution. Though I'd probably skip the main franchise and go for the Heroes of Command and Conquer spinoff. If C&C went turnbased I might buy a game from that franchise for the first time ever. Hex-based for bonus credits!

I'd call it 7.5 rising to 8 once the technical bugs get ironed out. The game world is pretty well-realised given it's the first outing for it and you can take as much interest in it (or ignore as much of it) as you like. The combat mechanics will take a while to mature and should do so either in future patches or in sequels. What's there is implemented well enough - the spellcasting system is a highlight for example - but it'll take a few more iterations for proper balancing. Tactical encounters are somewhat lacking in variety, consisting of either scripted ambushes or generic rooms with generic lackeys in them. Still, they go by fast enough and rarely drag on too long. Enough's been said about the story and although sometimes improbable or overcooked at times (everyone you meet with either a) die within 30 minutes, or b) betray you) it goes along at a decent pace.

I'm perfectly capable of multiple full party wipes in quick succession on easy difficulty. I don't really play for the combat which is fairly repetitive so I only give the barest attention to tactics and skill selection.

A bug that hits me a few times every play session is during movement, the game may abruptly switch to a different party member. Initially I thought it might have just been me fat-fingering something but I'd say not because the originally selected character would just continue running in the original direction and get split from the party (most usually sprinting into a wall or a rock or somesuch). This tends to happen when I move with the mouse instead of the keyboard, although I haven't specifically tried to reproduce it.