Humanoid

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.

Sadistic games died when Sierra went under and Roberta Williams retired.

It's just past twenty years ago that gamers were trying to save the Ralari for the first time. Twenty years on and most are probably still trying. I think I managed it just the one time thus far. I was planning on replaying WC on the day of the anniversary before I realised I didn't have a copy of the game here, and that my old CH Flightstick would be out of commission because Win7 doesn't play with the gameport. Sad me. This was before the EA/Bio guy announced that they're planning on re-releasing the whole thing for free though. Happy me. EA have also granted permission, after ten years of legal limbo, to release the final Wing Commander novel. Laugh if you will but it's nice to see the non-evil side of EA coming out.

I guess the brand awareness doesn't need to be positive, as I imagine Australia's is for Vegemite.

Rhye's and Fall of Civilization is probably the closest you can get to a Civ narrative.

I had hours and hours of fun with the Starsiege: Tribes demo just playing kamikaze with the vehicles, even in offline mode. Wikipedia tells me this was in 1998. The last FPS which really grabbed me was No One Lives Forever 2, which I am informed was back in 2002. Shame that was the end of the road barring a crappy spin-off (Contract JACK).

Even if all you can do with I'76 is listen to the music looping while the game hangs on you, it's still totally worth it. Best soundtrack ever.

I'd love it if party automation was good enough by default to completely ignore party management though. My concept of party management was back in Ultima 7 on my massively overpowered DX4/100 (upgraded straight from a 12MHz 286!) before the days of MoSlo - I'd hit C and my party would happily run off at the speed of light and smite any nearby hostiles with no intervention. One-key combat, the closest I've gotten in my combatless RPG crusader of the following decade. I pretty much play all my RPGs on the easiest selectable difficulty setting so I can at least sleepwalk through the tedium.

For that particular quest I don't particularly feel that even the second option should have been there, it wasn't much less of a cop-out then the third option.

I've never watched Star Wars and quite like KoTOR, so that's a decent measure of success perhaps. ....my first Star Wars exposure was that dodgy Rebel Assault game during the painful birth of CD-ROM 'multimedia' gaming.

Inaccuracy stemming from laziness is just being sloppy, yeah, but actually I'd like to see more previews and reviews come in from perspectives uncoloured by the assumption of having played past titles. Hardly an original complaint I know but I felt very much marooned at the start of ME2 having never played the original (I subsequently have and was suitably unimpressed). Sid Meier I believe it was, said (and I paraphrase) that a sequel is 1/3 old, 1/3 new and 1/3 improved. Reviews of Civ5 however feel like 1/4 talking graphics and 3/4 comparing to Civ5. This works since I've played Civ4, but pick a random Starcraft 2 review for example and odds are I'll be utterly unable to make heads or tails of it. DA2 will be somewhere in between I guess - in the original I've played 3 of the main quest hubs (not with the same character) - but I've gone ahead and fully spoilered myself on the main game, expansion and DLC things because there's no chance of finishing it before the time arrives to make a decision on buying the sequel. Sliding off topic but my tastes in RPG have probably slid far towards the minimalist side in the last couple years - gone from being a stauch defender of the party system aghast at how the likes of Ultima 8 and Neverwinter Nights ripped apart the big party systems of Ultima 7 and Baldur's Gate to loving the unfettered solo adventuring of The Witcher (which I've only booted up for the first time this past weekend after owning it for a year) or even MMOs. Same goes for inventory systems, and ignoring the silly resource and credits minigames, fell in love with the abstracted barebones inventory of Mass Effect 2. The effect is so much so that I now completely ignore lootable crates/barrels, enterable doors, random NPCs and the like and stay in character much more. But I digress....

They're the side business of UK-based online store 365games. I've used the parent company a fair bit, and the oz one a couple times (it's only been around a couple months). Other options include dvd.co.uk (who charge 1GBP shipping but often end up cheaper because they take off the UK VAT once your order reaches 18GBP), and zavvi.com who are a bit dearer for shipping (2.5GBP I think) but I feel have the largest range.

Google tells me that Risen requires some simple workarounds to get AA to work properly. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,696728/...aster/Practice/ Haven't looked too deeply into it but apparently the current Unreal engine doesn't come with AA support out of the box and each developer has to go out of their way to implement it - some do it selectively and some not at all - witness the latest Batman controversy.

Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture is on track for Q1 '11. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3876/intels-...-bridge-part-ii Looks like the overall CPU grunt will be more an incremental increase, nothing earth shattering. The integrated graphics will be significantly better than the current generation - as in about twice as powerful - but the third party GPU providers will probably still dominate the portable gaming space. No idea about heat/power figures though. All in all I'd say it's a more exciting change for the mid-lower end of the market, less so for the serious gamer.

With the "new" steam price posted, it will be cheaper to buy from department stores and some small retailers (but not the dominant chains). The department stores in general will sell for $10-20 less - however they tend to only order in 5-10 copies of any new release, so one would need to get in early. Aside, Germany I've found to be the cheapest for bike parts so far. I recently bought a pair of wheels for 300EUR. Buying locally they'd have cost me $1000AUD (~700EUR), and that's *after* discounts. I'm sure someone will come up with something cheaper in Australia than elsewhere but I'm struggling to think of one.