Humanoid

While it does seem a weird notion, the Sandforce controller does a lot of funny things with data compression, which is where a lot of its raw speed comes from. If you look at comparative benchmarks, Sandforce-SSDs often come out with a huge lead in compressible data transfer, but are either at parity or slower when dealing with incompressible data.

Well figured that it might be a final test before returning it or somesuch (though I didn't notice it was that new), in which you might as well try everything. Or are you just putting it down to Stalker possibly having a specific compatibility issue and everything else is running fine?

So after a secure erase and a clean install of the game? I guess the lesson here is never buy a Sandforce drive.

I'd hardly call Flashback an adventure game. Every single puzzle in Flashback was "how do I open this door?"

Can't say for sure because I've always done clean installs as far back as I can remember. It's worth noting that Win7 is Microsoft's first SSD-aware OS, and as part of installation will set up appropriately (including things like not scheduling defrags, moving the swap file, etc), so perhaps something was missed by not doing that. Hopefully it's not just another Sandforce-based disk doing a dodgy, firmware is more important to those than just about any other controller.

General SSD advice would be to check its alignment, update the SSD firmware, update the Intel/motherboard drivers. Use something like AS SSD to verify the AHCI driver being used.

I think you can probably do it yourself, I believe Pro versions of Windows 8 come with automatic downgrade rights to Windows 7 Pro.

I checked my aluminium foil and it doesn't have them. I'm sad now.

But yeah, for those who might be thinking of disputing Ashes Cricket 2013's status as the worst release of the year (in face of stiff competition from the likes of Colonial Marine and Rome 2). It's an ineptitude only matched by the actual England Cricket team in the actual Ashes 2013. A snippet, featuring the wonderful AI fielding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjGgau3iF8 EDIT: If you only know baseball, imagine a situation where the fielders just throw the ball amongst themselves for a good while, as all the runs are scored. Then the fielder throws the ball over the fence for a home run.

They treat that option as more of a suggestion than a request though. Look, you can use Steam in its minimal capacity as a download client for cheap games, ignoring all the frills. That's the good part of Steam. "Just ignore those extra frills if you don't like them then" is the usual follow-up argument, but it doesn't work that way: Steam's ubiquity unavoidably affects everyone, including people who don't have Steam. It is absolutely a bad thing if Steam becomes the de-facto One and True platform for PC gaming, but the 'features' they add, even the superficially innocuous ones, are most certainly being added with that end goal in mind. By features I mean the achievements, the trading cards, the increasingly integrated screenshot system (to the exclusion of being able to do it manually), the voice chat integration (on by default). It's a conscious design to keep 'em on Steam, and keep 'em online. Even the seemingly rational "I don't care about trading cards, I sell them all, it's free money for playing my games" is problematic as it very much contributes towards this monopolistic behaviour. You see people saying stuff like "I want it on Steam because it has achievements" or "I want to keep all my games together in the same place" - hell I've seen "I need to use Steam to keep in touch with my friends". It doesn't have to be sensible, and it doesn't have to even be a majority position. It's building momentum towards a critical mass, a Gabeutopia where Steam *is* PC gaming. And that's what I ultimately have a problem with.

I had some fun with the International Cricket Captain series back in the day. It's a management sim, like the ubiquitous Football Manager series. I don't think I've played an actual "play cricket" game since Brian Lara Cricket 99 (renamed Shane Warne Cricket 99 in Australia). I have vague memories of a cricket game on the NES too.

Well for watching movies filmed in 2.35:1 it's perfect. It's a niche product to be sure, but it has its uses. It's also probably a bit more appealing if you've already settled for just having the one screen.

I think Dell only have the one model? So assuming the ridiculously wide 21:9 (should just say 7:3 ) ratio U2913WM. Hopefully won't run into too many compatibility issues with that.

Eh, to be fair it's probably a bit tongue in cheek. You can't evaluate similarity on a list of arbitrary dot points which are arbitrarily given the same weight. (Not that I can strictly dissent, I've played neither game, and indeed no JRPG other than the ubiquitous FF7) (EDIT: I lied, I also played Super Mario RPG)

Revolution have backed down on their Steam-only physical copies decision for Broken Sword 5 and will provide DRM-free discs for boxed copy backers on request. Nice to get a result and all that, but it's getting predictable that all these projects are making the same mistake and all then having to incur the extra expense for correcting it. Who will be the next Kickstarter developer to fall to this assumption that everyone would settle for Steam?

Got bogged down for the same reason, haven't played it since last week. That said, at least I can send away items I don't know have a future use to my "stash", thank goodness for small blessings I guess. Might just wait out the supposed content patch (the new companions will hopefully be more tolerable than the current duo), assuming it's not too late in August.

Mystery Train. Doesn't exactly make me want to visit Memphis, but as always with Jarmusch, wonderfully moody even if it is about absolutely nothing.

I'm mildly surprised at how many people are going through D:OS with the default characters. By which I mean I see a fair few posts and comments from various sources referring to characters with the default names, and I guess good odds on them being the default appearance.

Yeah, prefer a non-fantasy game next *unless* it's an Oglaf game. South Park was the perfect preparation for the project, an irreverent fantasy-comedy, join the dots. :D It already has an established world (and map), a fantastic roster of recurring and throwaway characters, wondrous artifacts, twisted gods, etc. Imagine a tutorial guided by the Derp Fox, that alone would be worth the purchase price!

Okay, so then detect evil, then follow said people evil around (some ranks in stealth will help here). The moment they do something obviously evil like jaywalking, run them through.

The right thing to do would be to murder paladins, the bloody fascists.

What's to say it's an RPG? If Obsidian are doing a tank sim....

Shadowrun didn't have inventory management hell, I'll give it a points decision on that basis alone.

Sweet, I've been meaning to run through Dragonfall again somewhere down the line. I need to decide if I'll run through once beforehand or just wait. Have to admit I never finished my attempt at Dragonfall either. Not through any fault of the game, but I got distracted, and as it so often tends to happen, a big enough lapse in time in the middle of playing a game leads to difficulty in going back to it. So this news is just what the doctor ordered I guess.