Humanoid

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.

It's something that can be painted either way, I could reel off the same Steam 'features' and label them an intrusive attempt to gain control over every aspect of your gaming life. Because that's what Steam is designed to do. Make Steam the default for everything and everyone. Now some people are perfectly fine with that, and that's there prerogative. But then people were fine with Microsoft's bundling tricks and other moves to ensure lock-in as well. The series of Kickstarter game developers misreading their backers' stance on choice of distribution is an easy illustration of the position Steam has wrangled themselves into, the de-facto default. Broken Sword 5 is the latest case, there's a fight just erupted over the decision to only ship Steam copies of the physical boxed games, which to a large extent rather defeats the purpose of a physical copy. But they're far from the first, and won't be the last to make that same misjudgement. Shadowrun, Banner Saga, Tex Murphy, Divinity - all have had issues with their launches related to assuming a universal desire for Steam (yes there are nuances in each case relating to contracts or unexpected technical hurdles, but the big picture adds up). This is the damage caused by Steam's ubiquity.

Maximising longevity is a reasonable enough position to take, but in general I feel for the most part it's not really something these type of comparatively minor decisions even meaningfully effect. There's two parts to determining longevity, being reliability and obsolescence. And my feeling these days, is that the former is mostly pot luck. If a part's going to fail, it's overwhelmingly likely to fail because of a manufacturing or design fault rather than any variance between specific models. I doubt even a comprehensive statistical analysis would show a different between models. Maybe a particularly poor choice of PSU would show; other than that it'd all just be statistical noise. As for obsolescence, I think the last time anyone had to even make a decision that genuinely made a difference in the lifespan of their systems was during the Q6600 vs E8x00 days. The choices made between the other components available in that day don't even register, it's not even a footnote. It's been six years now since Intel introduced the i5, and in doing so introduced the 'choice' of having hyperthreading for $100 or whatever. And in each of those years I've recommended against it, and I don't think there'd have been any genuine cause for regret for anyone who took that path. This is probably the first year since then where I think I can say it wouldn't be a waste of money, but it's hardly a recommendation either. It's still nowhere near the magnitude of that C2D vs C2Q decision. Further than that, even the graphics market is far more static these days than it was back then. Adding it all up, it really does feel that everything is a muchness, there are no decisions that would make a notable difference. The tech will hold up. Any reasonably built system today will. Now to wander off completely off-topic, I'll say this: I may hang around here a lot, but am actually pretty conservative on tech. Give me a $1000-1500 budget and I'm happy, put it up to $2000 and I'll spec something with some nicer bits and bobs. Put it up to $3000? $4000? I'll tell whoever to get the exact same $2000 thing and think instead of some other things that would make for a better experience today. All the SSD space to install all the games without even having to thing about it. A bigger, better screen. More of those bigger and better screens. The nicest chair you can find. Hell, spend that entire $1000 on a Herman Miller chair, it's a better investment than any PC component could hope to be. A nice big desk. Mahogany if you feel like it. Feel like a high-flying executive, or like Captain Kirk as you lean back and survey your domain. Furnish the entire room, all the comfort add-ons and all the storage that'd ever be needed. *That's* how I honestly feel about spending priorities. If you can still read the writing on a capacitor, it means you can theoretically go out and replace said capacitor. Whether it's worth doing so.... well I wouldn't.

I've always been the type to just buy a near-basic level board, so I'm not used to the world of high-end ones. So I'm coming at this from a position of relative ignorance, and am pretty much just using the Asus website's comparison tool only. I guess the chief consideration is how highly you rate the Wi-Fi adapter and the SATA Express support on the Deluxe. I'm not ready for SATA Express SSDs, in my view the state of SSDs today is still the same as it has been for the last few years, capacity is the only meaningful metric, performance is just simply not an issue with today's offerings, certainly not worth more than say a 10-20% price variance. More capacity over more performance every single time for mine. As for the wireless, it's superficially obvious perhaps, but here's the thing: despite it being "only" a 867Mbit adapter, it's still got an external antenna and therefore will outperform any other 867Mbit product. To get a product that's clearly superior to that, you will likely need to spend nearly an extra hundred dollars to get an AC1900 PCI-E adapter. On the other hand, you might be happy with the speed of a $15 Wireless-N adapter - since I'm also guessing you will need to buy a new ~$150 router if you go the AC option. So depending on how important the wireless requirement is, the it's either totally wasteful or good value. I'd just go with the lower total package price. I guess there's a bit of a wildcard with the sound chip on the respective boards. The respective sound specs for each is just a bunch of incomprehensible marketing jargon to me, but a review might be able to shed some light on which is actually better. Assuming, that is, you don't plan to use a sound card, an external DAC or even a full AV receiver. (I know this is missing the point, but personally I'd just buy a cheap 'C' version, reuse my Essence ST soundcard and not worry about wi-fi, but that's just my personal priorities.)