Humanoid

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.

On the other hand, if you have HK and not Dragonfall, the latter isn't currently on sale (that I can see on IsThereAnyDeal) so you'd be paying an extra $10-ish for the luxury of playing the games in-order. * Current price $14.99, lowest price recorded $4.04 (Humble). 25% off code at GMG should work though. Hong Kong has never been on sale at the major retailers but GamesRocket (never heard of them) are listed as having it for $11.95.

High heels in the bathtub. Seems sensible.

All of the BruceVCs all with BruceVC's typical grammar, or is that BruceV.C.'s? How do the BruceV.C.s feel about this? The ManifestedI.S.O.s? The 2.1337.4.U.s?

Uninstalling the game would also delete critical system files, rendering your Windows install unbootable. Especially bad because a) the game was terrible and therefore would rather likely be uninstalled, and b) the installation process was prone to fail, and if it did, the only option available if you tried to re-run the install process was to uninstall. Not to be confused with the Sierra Tools uninstall bug that deleted everything in the parent directory when you uninstalled it. If it was in C:\Sierra Tools, well.... EDIT: That's not to say these are the only two culprits, this sort of thing is more common than one might initially expect.

Nah, it's great to listen to OSTs beyond 10 minutes. CDs are awesome but they did tend to encourage musicians to put more pointless filler songs on their albums. I mean it's great and all that you can now have all four sides of all the great double-vinyl albums on the one continuous play, but most artists don't have the chops to fill a double-album every release. I meant to relate that to the topic at hand but the point got lost somewhere in the process.

To be fair, I don't think anyone could like any face rendered with that engine. (I'm another one of those people who don't know Felicia Day from any other media, but game exposure from celebrities who are genuinely interested in video games instead of it just being another contract can't be a bad thing)

One unfortunate accident of timing is that the MGS5 bundle offer ended today and nVidia have yet to announce anything to replace it. Mind you, AMD don't bundle anything worth a damn either, so it's a level playing field in that sense, but if you're in no rush, you might get something decent if you wait.

The 980 has never been justifiable, yeah, it's either the 970 or the 980Ti on nVidia's side, the rest of their range doesn't really stack up. So yeah, just backing the call for the 970 which is probably the overall pick from both nV and AMD sides assuming you stick with 1080p. The only wildcard is really if you can find a clearance 290/290X for significantly cheaper than the 970 somewhere - the load power difference is around 50W, going up to 75W worst case so it's managable even on a 500W PSU at stock clocks. They're probably long gone from most stores now though. 390 series is a bit harder to justify without a price advantage, the 970 is a better experience *now*, and while early signs are that the AMD cards may well gain the advantage as Win10/DX12 gain market traction, that's probably far enough into the future such that you may have upgraded anyway by then.

I couldn't deal with how the daggers when "sheathed" would just float there on your back. Even by 1990s 3D graphics standards that looks awful. The really weird thing is that swords look perfectly acceptable and sheathe at the hip.

FRAPS is the grand old dame of recording software, no idea how it compares today though - no reason to find out really since FRAPS is a lifetime licence. I know of Bandicam and nVidia's ShadowPlay, so I guess searching for a comparison between those options might be the way to go, which will probably toss up a couple of other options that I've never heard of as well.

Well if you go the other way and overindulge more, you'll eventually be able to fill out that bikini top.

Huh, so the filler crap essentially came from a Chinese sweatshop content factory. Now that you mention it, yeah, I can totally see that being true. I think that's a new low, even for EA. Well at least it wasn't the core content, like the stuff farmed out in Human Revolution.

I call it a Diablo clone even though I've never played Diablo. I tend to just imagine that Diablo is Divine Divinity without the humour. Now before you correct me, I'm sure I'm wrong on several points, but no one is going to get me to play Diablo so I will never know. I also only put in, oh, maybe ten hours max into DD. I think I played DD over D on the insistence of Di. (....and that statement sounds dirtier than it is)