Humanoid

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.

Actually it's worse, it's $90USD. Steam don't charge anything in AUD so you probably get hit by the bank for currency conversion fees too. If I had the option to blame just one party though, it would be the national distributor, no idea who they are though. I'm not preordering this but if reviews are good I'll buy from 365games/ozgameshop (same mob) for $40AUD to my door - I can wait a week or two.

The original Railroad Tycoon?? Many fond memories of playing it, but I was probably at least 12 at the time. And the game basically taught me how to read financial statements, which has proven to be a useful skill in my working life. Yeah, I played the tutorial again and decided to keep going. I recall memorising the copy protection train identification, but it's a long gone memory now.

I have Shadow Magic as well but remember nothing of it. Not unusual in itself - to say that I've played over half the games I own for less than an hour each would be no exaggeration. I do remember it was just about the last game I bought which came in a big box ....which contained a little box - presumably just dropping the US release version into a bigger box with the Oz ratings label on it. Unfortunately I think I left it at my parents' place so no access right now, unfortunate since I've got a lot of time on my hands right now after quitting MMO raiding and it being a long weekend.

It's about as good as it gets without going into the boutique gamer-marketed desktop replacements. Just don't try to game without it being plugged into the wall, and given the heat dissipation of the GPU and the CPU (in turbo mode), keep it off your lap too unless you want some nasty burns ....down there. But yeah, price is very competitive, so not a waste as long as you get to play with it.

I recently fired up Railroad Tycoon again, a game I remember being amused by despite having no idea how to play it properly as a ten-year old. I'm still as hopelessly bad at it on anything more than the easy no-collisions mode. Thinking about doing a final game of Civ4 before moving on, pondering Emperor difficulty which I haven't beaten yet. I played Dragon Age for the first time in several months and tried to resume the latest restarted game I had - only lasted a quarter-hour or so out of boredom in the Wilds. I wonder if there's a mod that removes all the bits between the origins and Lothering.... EDIT: Google to the rescue! http://social.bioware.com/project/3407/

I buy the vast majority of my games, and stuff for any other of my hobbies, from the UK, and sometimes from other EU nations. The net saving is generally between 50% and 75%. Customs here will not impose any GST/VAT or import duty on any purchases up to the value of $1000AUD (including shipping, but shipping is usually free). I've bought Civ5 for $40AUD flat compared to $100AUD RRP. Similar story for books and cycling gear. (Could even buy a fully assembled bike shipped free and tax-free if I needed to) I don't own any consoles but this works for almost all console titles too as the EU copies will be the same PAL versions sold locally, as opposed to US imports which will often run into compatibility issues. Aside, http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs is fairly enlightening as to showing the degree to which we get milked. That tracks Steam prices only obviously but the same markups apply to retail in general. I do stick with boxed copies for any non-trivial purchases (which I'll define arbitrarily for now as those worth more than five bucks), so I can wax nostalgic about them twenty years from now. (I'm waxing nostalgic about my 20-year old copy of Wing Commander now, happy anniversary) The in-vogue thing to do is to buy overseas CD-keys to save even more and play same-day (retailer e-mails you the key, tosses the media, nothing is shipped), but I haven't tried it personally. If the trend towards zero physical documentation continues however I might switch over in time. Oh how I miss the big fat manuals in the big fat boxes of decades past. Income tax (including Medicare levy) is 31.5% for the block of income from $35,000 to $80,000. Any portion of income below is taxed at a lesser rate and above at a higher rate, but this covers most of the populace.

I'm pleased at the decision to have a fixed character background. DA:O's shoehorning of distinctly different backgrounds into one rigid storyline was neither convincing nor compelling. And a fixed last name is scarcely any worse than having a player-defined one if the only place you ever see the latter is on the character info screen. At any rate, I've ranted enough in the past about the game making decisions for you which completely ignore the character's motivation, my hope is that a more settled pre-game character background will make the unavoidable railroading feel more graceful and less non-sequiturish than DA:O.