Humanoid

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.

Well the other thing is that hardware costs are generally not that variable around the world, compared to software, rent, or food. So for residents of countries with higher average income (and higher average living costs), the cost of PC hardware is probably not a big deal at all, relatively speaking. For a median income earner here, I'd estimate that's one month's take-home salary, as opposed to three. Which, if it's an 'investment' that will last 4-5 years, I think is pretty good going.

Beholders are people too!

Bard. Always Bard.

The Amazon rainforest was named after the civilization described in Greek mythology which in turn was named after Jeff Bezos' online bookstore.

Wrath of the Lich Queen (or: How to not use Google Image Search for your news articles)

Yeah, the Lara Croft game is the one game in that list I already own ...never played it though. In other news, PS4 not powerful enough to run Tetris.

So the Squeenix Christmas MYSTARY pack turned out to contain the following: Thiaf - The Master Thief Edition The Last Remnant Murdered: Soul Suspect Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Deus Ex: The Fall Nosgoth Founders - Warlord Pack Yeahhhhhh, I'm not going to be playing any of that.

I'd be happy if the stereotype of rogues being dual-wielding light fighters died out altogether, but then the rogue archetype I play is the thief with no meaningful combat skills. I especially loathe situations where *not* dual-wielding is outright disallowed. Godammit, WoW.

Actually its not, there are many cases of women being involved on various levels historically in military conflicts. But there contribution was and is overlooked by narrators and some historians Sounds interesting, care to provide links? Because for the most part I'm certain that in trained forces women were kept out, irregular armies and special corps might be a different story. They're too busy inventing COBOL to fight, obviously.

It's not an RPG if a game has a combat system that isn't purely auto-resolve. You character should be able to handle the entirety of combat autonomously because it's the character's tactical prowess that should determine the outcome, not any interference by the player. A true RPG has only two buttons to handle a combat encounter: fight or flee. You then get a pop-up window showing the outcome of the fight. (Actually, my non-facetious answer is that a true RPG implementation of a CRPG would require the development of a natural language parser with an infinite decision space)

My one-month renewal to WoW expired yesterday, and as the single-player content is uncompelling as ever, I'll leave it alone for now, will try another month next year once people are back from holidays to check out what's happened in the raiding scene over the last couple years. With less than a week before I leave for holidays myself, I'm going to avoid any big commitments like Wasteland 2 or XCOM Long War which I've been wanting to (re)start for a while, and just mess around with The Sims 4. Holiday period itself will likely be a whole lot of co-op local multiplayer gaming, so not doing any of that yet either. Incidentally, new Sims 4 patch just released earlier today, couple new careers which were inexplicably mission obvious inclusions - being Business and Athletics - plus some other minor things. At this rate it'll be worthy of being the new title that it is in 6-12 months. (There's also a free Holiday Celebration Pack DLC but it's just fluff)

No live link because of forum rules and all that, this is as SFW as Oglaf gets.

Wasteland 2 was at my doorstep when I got home just now, so that's my official answer as of now. The second last physical game I got ...is also Wasteland 2 because I'm in the tier that gives me both the CE and the regular boxed copies. (Third last would be Super Smash Bros for Wii U) For a while there I was worried it'd arrive while I was away for three weeks over the holidays, so I'm pretty happy to see it arrive this week. For what it's worth, I got the shipping notification email on the 4th, so that's a pretty standard delivery turnaround to Australia.