Humanoid

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...

On an individual level, sure. But then to follow up, to what extent is that negative bias cancelled out by Bioware getting a free pass from other people for doing that exact same thing? There'd be a lot of white noise in both directions, with games being rated for ideological reasons rather than any qualities with the actual game itself. I'd posit that the two groups would largely cancel each other out and we might have ended up with a fair score by accident.

Would like to have an excuse to back for more than the minimum, but not much incentive to do so just yet. I understand why they've moved away from fixed shipping prices, but in terms of backing it does put me off a bit not knowing exactly how much it'd cost me on top of the actual pledge.

I'm pretty blase about spoilers these days, so I'll outright watch long sequences of long-form gameplay, whether with commentary or not, on games I'm unsure about. I might even read up on the entire plot to avoid another ME3-esque disaster. I've never been fond of surprises anyway.

There was one sex scene in the middle chapter (which was incidentally the one cut out of the Australian version) that seemed like a throwback to Witcher 1 pointlessness (and New Vegas is guilty of it a bit too), but the others were reasonable character development acts, optional or no. They didn't feel like quest rewards or some sort of "you're done" achievement marker like Bioware ones generally do. Maybe the lesson here for game devs is to have 'em early, and have 'em often.

Most certainly will not be free in the US, but the installation process for the OEM is no different to retail versions anyway. The box will be a bit less fancy (last I bought one it was in a typical DVD case with a plain white slipcover) but the purchasing experience is as with any boxed software, a DVD and a product key in a box. Indeed I believe the DVD itself is identical whether it's the retail version or the OEM version (though either way I recommend downloading the latest ISO directly instead of using the DVD which may be an older version that creates more hassles with updating).

Higher is better, yes, and they're different architecturally as well. That said, even if you have a 7850, the margin between it and the "minimum" 7870 is small enough that a modest overclock easily makes up the difference. If a 7870 can run something, the 7850 will too. The minimum CPUs specified make for a pretty nonsensical comparison by the way. Listing the i5-2500 makes no sense when the listed AMD CPU is the Phenom 940. The previous generation Intel CPUs already easily outclass the AMD chip, so even if they claimed the minimum was an i5-750 (2.66GHz) which I'm running for example, it'd still be setting an unrealistically high mark compared to the Phenom.

Quick look at the likes of Amazon and Newegg show OEM versions are still plentiful (OEM installations are tied to your motherboard and won't activate again if you switch it to a different model, and are not covered directly by MS support, but are otherwise full function) and I don't see the situation changing anytime soon. The Pro versions of Windows 8/8.1 come with downgrade rights to Win7 Pro, but that's probably an unnecessary expense (probably the only way to buy direct from MS though). If you can find a copy of the discontinued Win7 "Family Pack", that's three upgrade copies of Win7 Home Premium, but a quick Google will show how to do a full install with it (legally a bit questionable but eh). The latter is likely the cheapest option (per copy, that is), but somewhat hard to find these days.

It was a good day when peripheral designers decided that putting buttons on the stick itself would be a good idea. I miss somewhat the idea of joysticks that were *not* explicitly designed for flight sims. Like this classic Gravis: I can't see the Atari joystick being much good for anything these days, but something simple like the Gravis would lend itself pretty well to some gamestyles.

Yes and no. My preferred stick for space sims (where I favour minimal resistance) is the CH Products line. Other than switching the connection method from gameport to USB, their current products are absolutely identical to the ones they were selling some 20 years ago - and I'm glad that they are. Contrast to Thrustmaster (who were bought out by Guillemot) who dropped their entire line of products to make these oddities. That said, they still produce the god-king of all game controllers, the Warthog HOTAS.

New Infinity Engine game? May as well announce a new Quake engine game.

Be honest, you are in it for the bewbs. Considering the reduction Lara got in the reboot, if I was in it for the boobs I'd list the original as much, much better than the new one. Quality over quantity for mine, so I'd reverse that ranking personally. (Heck I'd go for another reduction in quantity personally) (As for the games themselves though, I think both the original and the reboot are poor, so I guess it's neutral in terms of the question posed by this thread)

On average I believe 750Ti > 260X > 750 > 260. The nVidia cards will consume 20-30W less power under load though.

Critical analysis by Canadian intelligence agents.

Unfortunately practical concerns mean I'm unlikely to benefit even if fully automated cars become a thing (as opposed to what's essentially increasing levels of cruise control). No car, no licence, never driven in my life: I'm just the kind of person who would stand to gain the most benefit out of this kind of thing. In implementation however, the self-driving car is really just a convenience for people who are already fully capable of driving due to legislative concerns, since I have little doubt that I'd still be required to learn how to drive and have a full licence before I could own an automatic car. Sure, in my case it's purely out of personal choice not to drive, but the same limitations will be faced by people who are physically incapable of driving a conventional vehicle. Don't get me wrong, I can see why any government would not want vehicles with no manual fallback (i.e. a qualified driver with manual controls) out on the streets, but as a result I just can't see the real benefits of automatic cars ever being fulfilled in my lifetime. It's probably an all-or-nothing kind of affair, where full automation would only ever happen if every vehicle on the streets was automated and all were networked together. Manual cars would be banned on public roads, and only used for leisure purposes on private racetracks and such.

Fallout 2's ability to push companions out of the way alone makes it the superior game to its predecessor.

Two 21:9 screens might be a bit weird. Two 16:9 or 16:10 screens, hell yeah. For utility I guess you could mix it up, even have the second screen in portrait mode, say.

They're probably happy to be rid of dwarves altogether in time, no more weird outliers to animate (especially the sex scenes) so the artists are happy. Might turn Vol into one of those rabid anti-Biowarians that haunt this place though.

There is no period of "former glory" unless you count singular products as being an era. Bioware made a mix of good, bad, and average games then, and they're doing that now. BG2 was a relatively early Bioware product, and was a very good one - but it was a one-off. There's a tendency to think of all Bioware games of that period as being good due to the aura of BG2 rubbing off on them, but doing so is erroneous. It's really just a subset of the tendency that's showing in that other thread about RPGs in general, we identify a few 90s RPGs as having exceptional writing, then somehow extend the praise those games deserve to all RPGs of that time, generalising that good writing was a hallmark of that era. A generalisation which is, in the vast majority of cases, incorrect and the praise wholly undeserved.