Humanoid

People keep stealing the phone books at the office....

Well then given how I was (mostly) pleased with the way TWitcher 2 did the relationship aspect and would be happy if Wild Hunt continued in that vein, I guess that rules me out as a promancer. And as much as it pains me to admit, removing the choice in the first game would probably have made it stronger narratively - and this is coming from someone who chose Shani. That said, that kind of approach really wouldn't go well at all with a generic player character, so it's definitely something that should probably be reserved for the predefined protagonist RPGs out there.

On trying to get back to a positive note too: I'm pondering a new monitor, a decision prompted, oddly enough, by a bout of back pain. I don't actually think it's the cause of the problem, but with a dual screen setup (a pair of 27s) I'm finding I'm either twisting my torso alternately a little to the left when gaming and a little to the right when surfing which isn't the best ergonomically. So I think it'd be better for me (or at least an excuse as good as any) to get one more display as a centrepiece, to be flanked by the existing screens. Logistically it's going to be a bit of a problem: I probably do have the desk space, but just barely, and it'd mean moving my bookshelf speakers off the desk as well. There's also the temptation with going bigger - 30-32" for the centre, but it'd probably be even less practical. With the power of hindsight, I'd have purchased a smaller pair of displays for the flanks, to be used in portrait mode, but that ship has long sailed. And these Dell U2711s don't have pivoting stands so even trying to use them in portrait mode wouldn't be feasible. On reflection it feels good that even my 5-year old system with 3-year old GPU is still holding up easily well enough such that I can think about spending on stuff like this instead. People who like to surf the bleeding edge of technology might be somewhat frustrated at the glacial pace of improvements over the past few years, but not me.

Pondering a bit the meaning of 'romance' in the context of games. Does it count as romancing someone if it's already established at the outset that you're in a stable, long-term relationship with them? There's no romance arc as such, merely a relationship continuing to exist. And I think that's a good thing: instead of being a minigame for you to 'win', it's just another character development device for the writer. The player character and their partner have sex, just like all the times before the story of the game starts, and likely all the times they will after the game ends. Not something to build up to, it's just there. The Bioware approach can sometimes feel like being in a reality TV show in the manner of The Bachelor, given the extremely short time frames the overall story of games tend to take place over. P.S. For that matter, in real life day to day life with your spouse of 40 years, say, count as romancing them? If you have sex with them on a given day? Or is it something that just is.

When talking about hardware inextricably linked to gaming, it's no surprise that the hardware reviews often have about as much integrity as games reviews.

The demo is nice, but it lacks a glamorous French model (gender of your choice) to share the apartment with.

From a practical standpoint it at least looks like nV have done the right thing in talking to retailers who were refusing to take returns (Newegg being one of them) and instituting a returns program, even if only semi-officially. Legally it's the right thing to do for a product not sold as advertised, though one would hope this information be published shortly in an official channel rather than a low-key "talk to your retailer if you're unhappy" message through social media or whatever. That said, the card is still the best buy above $300 out there, and the news doesn't make the 980 any more attractive realistically. Yes, the deceptive behaviour is rather galling regardless, and whether intentional or not rather colours the public perception of the company, particularly following on the heels of other scandals like Bumpgate and Crysis 2's tesselation. Whether this would change a potential buyer's decision is a matter of personal principle: objective buying advice is still unchanged for now, though one might want to wait and see what the R9 380 brings in March-ish.

I remember the part where you have to manipulate the betting at the races as being the place I got stuck at most. I didn't really understand how sports betting worked back then ....and I still kinda don't.

I don't remember it being $15 on the original release. It's marginally more expensive than the 'standard' $10 GOG release of old titles that haven't had any tweaks or extras like the commentary track, so it's a fair enough premium. Especially since my original CD is some 700km away from me at the moment.

Buying it from GOG, which incidentally works out cheaper because of its regional pricing: $17.19 vs $18.85 if the US $15 price was converted directly. Also picked up Guild Wars 2 and Valkyria Chronicles for a tenner each (the latter from Amazon which pricematched Steam), though I have no plans of playing either of them anytime soon, just library titles for a rainy day (I don't believe in the concept of backlogs because that implies an active intention to play). P.S. I was an Aard spammer in TWitcher 2, essentially never used Quen - or rather, I tried it on some unsuccessful boss attempts before figuring out that chain-staggering him was more expedient. Non-enhanced edition for what it's worth.

60 days is the maximum as per their FAQ. They've reduced it a few times over the years, used to be quite a bit longer.

I consider Notebookcheck to be be most reliable source for everything laptop. They do monthly breakdowns for various categories of laptop, the top ten business, convertible, multimedia, etcetera. So here's their top ten gaming notebook list. Note the site is actually German so model availability is a little Euro-centric at times, but most of it is applicable internationally.

That ....escalated quickly. On topic: Cliff notes for new gaming GPU purchases with current US prices: 970 > 290 > 280 > save for a 280.

It's not a price-performance king at all, indeed it does not advance the price-performance metric at all, strictly speaking. But what it does is that approximately matches AMD in that respect, so it does make nVidia finally competitive in that market segment for the first time in a while. ...at least in theory. I'll never really understand the US hardware market with seemingly every second product having a mail-in rebate and various other pricing shenanigans. The suggested retail price of the GTX 960 is competitive and given the assumptions of 1080p gaming and cards being sold at SRP, it'd be the pick for that price point. On the other hand, you have the R9 280 apparently going for $150 after rebate, a card that performs approximately the same but less efficiently at 1080p, and which pulls ahead the higher you go - and yes, you can get viable options for 1440p at $200, and as this card shows, at $150. If you can find a clearance HD 7950, it's even better value, being essentially the same product as the 280. The power savings of a 960 will never add up to that kind of price difference over the lifetime of the product. The other thing that kind of spoils this launch is the $250ish and dropping R9 290s, which is probably my pick of the midrange at the moment (though I'd add $10-20 for custom cooler version), beating out the 960 by ~50% for 25% more money. Hopefully this is the price-performance ratio that any hypothetical 960Ti aims at. TL;DR version: GTX 970 was nVidia knocking the socks off AMD. GTX 960 is it gently ambling up to AMD and muttering "hey, I'm here, kinda". EDIT: Wouldn't the 280X be a better value? That's definitely debatable. The R9 280X is certainly a little bit more powerful, but it's also about $40 - $50 more expensive. Yeah, never liked where the 280X was positioned. But as mentioned, both the regular 280 at $150 and and the regular 290 at $250 are very much better value. Newegg prices though, so international customers might not get the crazy good deals Americans tend to get.

Surely there's got to be more coming, a GTX 960Ti hopefully at least. As it stands the efficiency is nice but other than that it's an HD7950/R9 280, a two-year-old product at the same price/performance point. Granted, the 960 becomes the better buy most likely (unless you're pushing a lot of pixels - more than 1080p - in which case it might start to fall behind) but in terms of the overall product landscape it isn't really making waves. Given the all conquering GTX 970 launch at least, people could be forgiven for expecting more than this. There's a huge hole in the nVidia product range as a result, so hopefully it's filled sooner rather than later.

Well if you're already infected by Steam, might as well contract Origin and hope both antigens wipe each other out.

I see R9 290s dip under $300 in the US, so until we know more about the GTX960, this will most certainly be the best performing card at the price point.

Eh, graphics card prices are pretty stable, from budget options to 'sensible' high end it still covers the $100-400USD spectrum as it has for years, so any issues would be down to exchange rate. Your CPU is up to date, so it's a complete non-issue. The motherboard can easily support higher capacity RAM, but this is not necessary unless you need to replace them all for some reason (e.g. to go 2x4GB). So just buy a new video card, that's all you need to do to make it a competitive system. Would suggest R7 265 as the cheapest viable option. R9 280 is the next major step up.

Yeah, aware of the earlier titles, I meant the six released just now, plus the 6 that will be released in a day or two. All twelve being Star Wars. Such a shame.

You'd think that out of twelve games they'd be able to make at least one of them non-Star Wars.

I hope the "protecting plants" bit is not actually a typo.

Sure, but it does inevitably change the dynamic of the whole survival angle when the lands you travel are largely stable and civilised. Just knowing that there are plenty of mundane settlements around the world where a mundane daily life is the norm rather does that. NEO Scavenger may not have zombies, but a post-apocalyptic world offers comparable challenges in a way that medieval history does not. Travel is probably already too safe to be an consistently interesting gameplay experience by the period, unless you're a stranger in Pagan lands or somesuch. Perhaps a point earlier in human history might feel more believable, but I'm not sure how far back it'd want to be.

Arcanum's character creation was like walking into the biggest shopping centre in the world with everything you could ever want being available ....but only having $5 to spend.

I have half an itch to replace my P55-based system (i5-750), but as long as they're still putting USB 2.0 ports on current gen boards, I'll give them a miss.

Not sure how the survival aspect would mesh with a society that is well-established and has a stable structure already though. Unless you play as a witch or something and you just replace the zombie sprites with pitchfork-wielding peasants...