Humanoid

I bought myself a Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate - i.e. the one with blank keycaps. Not because I wanted blank keycaps, but because it was cheaper, being on clearance for one reason or another. A bit mixed on it now that I've given it about one week's workout. - The mechanism to raise the angle of the keyboard is accomplished by means of a plastic ruler with magnetic pads, which is simply placed towards the back of the base. The ruler function is neither here nor there, it's hardly convenient to have to pull it off the bottom of your keyboard if you need a ruler. But the design itself is problematic because it means the keyboard in this configuration is reliant on only the front two rubber feet to keep it from sliding around: the back feet are raised off the surface and the plastic ruler provides next to no grip. So I'd put this down to a silly gimmick that has an adverse effect on the core function of the keyboard, dumb dumb dumb. - Further to the above, it turns out the issue with sliding around on the desk is exacerbated because of product variance, there are reports of either the left side or the right side being the side with no grip. One of the rubber feet doesn't make proper contact with the desk so the whole keyboard ends up pivoting around the other one. A little twisting of the keyboard goes some way towards fixing this at least. Suspect this is related to the aluminium plate that forms the top surface of the keyboard: it's not quite rigid enough to keep the keyboard structurally flat at all times, and so if it gets twisted slightly during manufacturing or shipping, it tends to retain that shape. - The aluminium top plate is a bit wider than it needs to be, forming a sort of flange/lip around the outer edge of the keyboard because the plastic main body is narrower. I guess the idea is to give the plate a bit more structural strength, but it makes the keyboard a bit (in particular the space between the left edge and the first column of keys) wider than I'm used to. - Now has dedicated media keys and volume control, as opposed to them being alternate functions of the F-keys (with an annoying extra modifier key being placed next to the Windows key on the previous version). I generally like this setup but the volume wheel is easy to hit accidentally if you're moving the keyboard. - USB 3.0 hub built in is nice, and it doesn't require an extra USB port on the PC to be used. On the previous model, the keyboard needed two USB ports - one for the keyboard input itself, and another to enable the USB 2.0 ports on the keyboard. Also the new design has the USB ports at the top (rear) of the keyboard, instead of out of the right side. I prefer the new arrangement. All in all, eh, it's a bit of one step forward one step back from the previous model. Not hugely impressed and might have gone with something else if I had the opportunity to try them out, but will happily use it for the next few years. (The main reason I got it was because it was a good deal during an eBay sale, so I got it sight unseen. Previous keyboard was fine but one of the USB ports had died after an accident involving Diet Coke)

While the "by September 2016" qualification gives them a bit of wiggle room, there's no sensible reason to shoot themselves in the foot in PR terms like that unless they actually need most of that time, so yeah, smells like an August release maybe. After the rationalisation of WoD's reduced content being that they were working on faster expansion cycles, to have the final patch cycle of WoD turn out exactly the same as that of the previous expansion is a bit of a blow to their credibility. No surprise that they've decided to stop publishing subscriber numbers.

It's weird, I've been subscribed to WoW for approximately 8 of the 11 years its been around, never liked the world from the beginning and I can't say it's grown on me and I can say with confidence I won't be watching this movie. Not that that's a big statement, especially since I'm the kind of hipster who's never watched any of the Star Wars movies. I admit I have no previous experience* with the Warcraft franchise though, most of the people I'm around are franchise veterans and the discussion just sails over my head. I actually remember from the first day of playing, there was a quest where some obviously evil guy asked you to gather some things (as you do in an MMO) with no way of calling him out on it. So you do that because that's what the game expects you to do, he goes ahead and does his obviously evil thing, and you get a followup quest to undo those obviously evil consequences. The game then has the gall to say, more or less, "well I hope we've all learned something today". Indeed I did. That kind of taught me from the start that they weren't even trying to create a sensible world, and that perception has stuck with me since. The game is just about hanging out with friends and killing things with red nametags, but make no mistake, I've had a heap of fun doing that over the years. The Street Fighter movie (the van Damme one of course) is a masterpiece however. I wish more videogame adaptations were as consciously irreverent as that was. * Prior to WoW maybe played a couple of missions of the RTS with a borrowed copy, and predictably found it wasn't my thing.

Maybe that could be the central theme of the game. Instead of the Camarilla and the Sabbat, you have a massive conflict between new age vampires who want to embrace their new pop-culture popularity, lapping up the attention they're getting from sparkly vampire media, versus the traditionalists who shun this newfound popularity and wish for a return to relative obscurity where only PnP nerds pay them any attention.

So you can sell costumes, but how can you sell the far more common removal-of-costumes in an item shop?

Human Revolution had some fake-out abilities in the skill tree that would already be filled at the start regardless of what you had done previously. It was good for verisimilitude in that it showed that Sarif didn't just throw you out there with a completely off-the-shelf civilian class augments, and justified how you were much more effective than the average augmented street thug. These fake skill choices covered things like the radar system, your intercom, your basic hacking connectivity, stuff like that. Likewise for the Witcher, there could have been some fake skills that always start out learned, such as for each of the signs, the ability to parry-counter, enabling the adrenaline system, etc. The effect would be purely cosmetic but at least it removes the impression that Geralt is just some greenhorn Witcher that was recruited yesterday.

One trick with the zombies is that cripping any of their limbs instantly kills them. The bear trap fist is a weapon that has an extremely high chance to do so, given a passable unarmed skill. I guess that's one constant of any semi-recent Bethesda-engine games: melee builds absolutely obliterates ranged ones, be they guns or magic.

Not the latter when you get both Blackguards at the $6 level in the current Humble Bundle. And all the other stuff thrown in of course.

I'd rather an Obsidian-developed first-person (or third-person over-the-shoulder) spinoff of Wasteland. It can even share an engine and broad mechanics with whatever Vampire game they might make, win-win.

There's a reason the ubiquitous Kraft Singles and its equivalents are labelled "Cheese Product" and not simply "Cheese", and that's because they don't meet the legal definition of cheese, not even in America. No such legal restriction for RPGs though.

In terms of when it was released, yes, then came Honest Hearts - Old World Blues - Lonesome Road. But that doesn't correspond to the official recommended levels for whatever reason.

Technically each DLC has a recommended level range, being 10-15-20-25 for Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Dead Money and Lonesome Road respectively. In reality though, level scaling means you can pretty much do them at any level you like, indeed going in nominally very underlevelled can often make things too easy. Consequently it's probably best to just do the one that corresponds to your mood at the time. Frontier exploration? Camp sci-fi? Survival horror?

Back when it was announced, I thought the Way of Life DLC for CK2 was exactly what I wanted to be added to the game. I've only really started playing the game again this last month, but unfortunately it seems my expectations far surpassed reality. It's an unbalanced, lazy, and often outright broken addition to the game, and even when it's working it's not very interesting at all. I'm going to disable it for the next game I play, placing it on even footing with that other DLC everyone disables, Sunset Invasion. I'm not even talking about the screwed-up Seduction focus which tends to cause a worldwide herpes pandemic, though that is a perfect illustration of how poorly integrated the DLC is. No, I knew about that in advance and modded it out. But the Intrigue focus is just as, if not more broken, allowing treasonous acts with no negative consequences whatsoever. I realised this when I was kidnapped by a vassal and had to ransom myself out of prison, and finding I had absolutely no recourse to do anything against him - kidnapping your king is apparently not treason or even remotely dishonorable. It works for the player too, mind, after finding that out, I proceeded to kidnap people repeatedly (often the same people multiple times each), and as soon as they paid their ransom everything went back to normal with not even one point of negative opinion against me. Then I looked up the mechanics behind it: as soon as the random option to kidnap someone fires, you are in a no-lose position, either choose to do nothing, or make the attempt at the trivial cost of 5g. It's then a simple 50% chance to succeed, and 50% chance to fail without being discovered - that is, it's impossible to be discovered, it's absolutely risk free. There's an equivalent murder event with the same chance to fire, and this one at least allows for the chance to be discovered, but again it's a fixed 50% success chance, and feels much more reliable than the "normal" murder plots which at least has some complexity to it. The Way of Life method feels cheaty and unsatisfying.

Yikes, that's a bit pricey. It's hard to compare it to Wasteland 2, but I wouldn't say it is better. I think as a console game (which is why I assume it is $60) it probably will have better gameplay and graphics than Wasteland 2. But really, we are comparing two gems. I would say that it's worth $60 but not worth $30. By that I mean I found that my single player run kinda petered out by the end of chapter 1, and I left it at that for about a year. But then I played it multiplayer and had a blast, so it's definitely a game I feel you need two copies to get full value out of. This is based on the non-Enhanced edition though.

Well if it were up to Paradox alone, everything would likely be Steamworks-exclusive. They've gone so far as to retrospectively update existing games to tie them to Steam, so it gives some clue as to how they regard alternative platforms.

Would you get charged import duty or some other tax when taking it home though? I'd probably have to pay all sorts of fees on return to Australia if I tried to do that. It's worth noting that US prices are listed without sales tax, and a quick search shows that you generally can't get the tax refunded on leaving the US, unless you purchase in Texas or Louisiana, or perhaps more practically from a state which has no sales tax like Oregon. American sales taxes are confusing as hell but you mentioned New York and Wikipedia claims net sales tax in New York City amounts to 8.875%, which you can't get back, so factor that into your purchase price. If you get charged both that and your own country's taxes on return, you may find the savings nearly wiped out.

For Dell specifically, they run an outlet website in quite a few countries. These outlets sell pre-configured machines, which may be refurbs or new, in the latter case mainly being cancelled orders (and frequently cancelled bulk corporate orders, so they can have dozens of identically specced machines listed in some cases). The majority of machines listed are usually corporate Latitude/Vostro ones, but occasionally you get some consumer level Inspiron/XPS models up. This'd be the first place I'd look for a Dell - haven't done so personally but a relative has and they've had no complaints. Note that they come with an shorter warranty period however. Dell Outlet Canada Dell Outlet US (dunno if they'd be willing to ship to Canada) EDIT: Looks like no XPS13s currently listed unfortunately. A shame because several are listed on the Australian outlet, but you can get an idea of relative pricing of outlet vs their main website by looking at the prices here as compared to here. Example refurb: $1200AUD. Normal price $2000AUD, sale price $1600. Example as new: $1780AUD. Normal price $2300AUD, sale price $1900.

So judging from the previous pair of screenshots, they've also made performance enhancements by rendering the game in monochrome?

Can any international backers for Shadowrun Hong Kong who bought physical tiers tell me how much approximate shipping was charged? I understand why they don't provide fixed shipping costs in Kickstarter itself but I don't want to be stung for $50+ shipping if it comes to that.

No, EU/CK/etc. expansions don't usually do that much in that sense...tweak a few things, add a few more minor gameplay mechanics, flesh out a few other things a little more, and stick like a $15-$25 price tag on it. Personally, I don't think they're really worth their retail cost...particularly combined with Paradox splitting up their "expansions" and the cosmetic DLC associated with them into separate items on Steam (...in addition to whatever else other DLC there is to buy). Fans will defend them to the death (and not completely without reason, I will admit...they're not being COMPLETELY terrible), but it still seems pretty...I don't want to say "scummy", per se, but maybe a lesser version of that. There's good reason they're able to come out with a new, so-called "expansion" just every few months... Personally, I don't really like supporting that much nickle-and-diming...so I don't. I don't like the business model either, but WinGameStore had them all for 75% off, which is a surprisingly steep discount for the current DLC, it's not getting any cheaper even if I waited a full year. Might've been a pricing error, given how much of an outlier it is and that no one else has put any discount whatsoever on it.

After buying myself a (new) 3DS XL all the way back in February, I finally played a game on it for the first time yesterday, and the game was Fire Emblem Awakening, mainly because my sister just started playing it too so I figured it'd be interesting to compare notes. Not knowing much about it other than it being I think praised by consensus as the pick of the JRPGs on the 3DS, it makes sense that I play the game genre the 3DS is best known for, I suppose. Bear in mind the last JRPG I played was probably Final Fantasy 7 back in the 90s, so I'm going into it mostly blind. Up to "chapter" (i.e. mission) five at the moment and first impressions are that it's a reasonably good game, but not a good RPG: it's about as much of an RPG as Jagged Alliance or Heroes of Might and Magic. But hey, those are good games to aspire too, so I'll go on. Also played a bit of CK2 after getting the Charlemagne, Way of Life and Horse Lords DLCs. But it's still pretty much the same game even with those additions, and I don't see myself going on for long, they affect the core gameplay less than I'd hoped.

Doesn't she hum nonstop? No idea, the only thing I know about the series is that it's supposedly bonkers.

I'd say being a silent healer is easy, but being a silent tank is difficult and relies on the other tank being okay with taking the initiative. For what it's worth, I'm currently a healer with a tank offspec, but realistically I heal more than 95% of the time. That's just current content though and borne of necessity, over the whole lifespan of the game I've probably done equal parts damage and healing. Always been the jack of all trades and have done reasonable raiding (i.e. non-LFR) on nine of the eleven classes over the years.

Yeah, I'm in a social guild that I co-founded back in '07. Over the years we've raided with varying degrees of seriousness, but the fact that the core membership have largely stayed together through thick and thin (including my own lengthy absences) is a good indication of where the relative priorities are. Building that sort of community is something I'm very happy to have done, but I also know I couldn't possibly do it again. I guess that illustrates both the strength and weakness of the MMO, that growing something like that can happen, but also shows how hard it can be to get by without such support. As an example, at one point I levelled an alt of the opposing faction, initially really only to see the new quests on that side. Once at max level (85 at the time), I did a handful of dungeons, a few LFR raids, and after all that, I was still guildless, friendless, and had nothing to do. Fine by me because it was a diversion, but I can easily see newcomers to the game going through the exact same experience and be left to wonder "is that it?"

It could be one of those ironic nicknames given to someone who just can't shut up.