Tigranes

I think they are comparable to Oblivion, actually. The angry Yeti shot, for instance - no AA, terribly low textures on the PC arm (which has a random chunk missing), the Yeti also is fairly low poly, background shows unshadowed rocks and stones popping out of the smooth ground, etc. The valley shot looks nice but Oblivion had plenty of these too, it's just that when you actually played the game you'd get a sea of green goo because of draw distance / low texture swaps / etc - and even here you can see super-low grass textures. Character models definitely look much better but as we discussed before, Bethesda have a history of deception here and we don't know for sure yet. I don't mind too much because Oblivion-level graphics with a more unique art design would be great to play in, but certainly doesn't seem too much better technically atm.

Yeah, the CHA seems a bit low, am I diseased or something?

First try: Score: 4516 Accuracy: 95.8% Wave: 30-31 ish. Don't remember exactly what level it was. I lost because my keyboard didn't register a keystroke in the middle of a word. It didn't click in time for me to finish the word and get the next one before it hit me. You need to kill those big ones fast before they let out their swarm of smaller ships. And I hate you now because I'm going to end up playing this for half the day. I got to wave 40 and quit because the difficulty hardly increases between each wave. I played the first 30 waves and it felt like it doesn't get any harder. I understand making a game start off easy, but why slow down the progression?

Fock-Affare would have made an infinitely better thread topic.

That was the single bloody most depressing football-related experience I have ever, ever had. I DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT

Long time RPG reviewer.

Disappointed that the bug forced you to cheat the game to keep going, but I guess it's all in the name of Troika. So we're pretty much to the final battle? Would be cool to see some character stats at the end BTW, even if TOEE doesn't keep kill counts or the like.

Halo 1 was the only one I ever liked, before it got so full of itself. Halo is a generic scifi shooter with an arsehat story and arcadey combat, but very fun and well polished enjoyable arcadey combat. Not sure what you get out of remaking a not-that-old FPS though? What do you change? Graphics?

Buy from Gamersgate instead, Hurlshot. You'll still have to download the whole thing but you won't have to deal with the Steam app, much better option. Gah, now I'm really on the fence on GG Div2 or GG TW2.

Lots of the video looks good and fun, not very impressed with the UI however. Reminds me of 10 year old console JRPGs with Solid colour gradients, big square menus everywhere, etc. Doubt it'll change much but it doesn't look good, it doesn't look like it fits in the gameworld, functionality seems OK but not great - hard to see why it's designed that way.

It's not restricted to Obsidian, but it's very widespread - and in some cases predates DLC, as part of Collector's Editions and such. All recent Bioware games did this, for instance. Not sure whether it's 1 or 2, I'd guess the former if I had to.

Sounds good so far, it's making the right noises.

Hang on, is DKS = Divinity 2? They have some screwed up version system at the moment. But Steam is no-go for me, FNV was enough.

Replaying King's Bounty AP for my strategy fix, great stuff - not downloaded my purchase of King Arthur yet. Also a nice Football Manager run where I took AS Cannes (third division, the original club for Zinedine Zidane) back up to Ligue 1. For RPGs waiting to see if I can bloody buy Divinity II anywhere, it's meant to be on gamersgate but accessing on NZ it doesn't even show up? Anyone know?

That destructoid article is based purely on the original Gamespot article, which has yet to be substantiated. Again, it's the media biting off each other's articles and regurgitating them as usual. That said, since the rumour is now pretty widespread it'd be nice to see Obsidian clarify it quickish.

I bet you if you drop a steak pie in front of that man he'll impale himself on his greaves when he bends to pick it up. Awesome to see someone drop by and post new stuff.

While hypertextual experiments have remained niche, impractical and largely plain weird thus far, with rich internet applications (God, what do you call them, Flex and the like) and all sorts of other things coming through, surely it's not long until we have a system going where the hardware is a portable reader, and the software (the e-books) are designed with hyperlinks, cross-indexes, search functions, drop-down menus, enlarge view / interactive diagrams, etc for a truly electronic textbook. Integrate that with existing interactive quizzes/tests & even simple educational games and you've got it all. Can't say I agree with it for educational purposes, though - one of the major consequences of more mediated communication is that, contrary to the variety and choice it provides, it actually commandeers the attention and gaze of the student a lot more and locks him/her into its pace. Good study needs time for contemplation, piecing things together, finding your own ways towards understanding things or finding solutions, not running breakneck speed along an elaborately designed edu-route. Never used a kindle properly so I can't tell as well, I suppose I'm trying to control the degree to which my time and attention is fragmented and distracted. I don't even want a smartphone - while sometimes it's useful a lot of the time having the internet, little games, etc. etc. on the bus, in the toilet and everywhere just makes you less efficient and more chaotic.

Regarding the possibly-bogeyman-MB issue, it's been interesting to me that they've stayed almost invisible in the media reports of what's happening - they haven't spoken up as a group or tried to commandeer the popular uprising under their banner. Probably a smart move given how big and furious it is, but especially now Mubarak has made his move and is organising his own 'protests', and the army has subtly shifted from its neutral position (bringing the full weight of its former neutrality towards its latest recommendation for dispersal), it's puzzling. Is it simply that they feel they can't hope to lead the movement or take any advantage? Are they as 'invisible' down amongst the Egyptian protests? (I've heard that they're playing a big role in grassroots organisation of the protests, but can't remember where). Certainly the failure for the protests of such size, length and vigour to not crystallise into (or appropriated by) a specific demand involving specific personnel makes the situation still capable of a twist - El Baradei hasn't really been the spokesman for the protests either.

I tried COH Tales of Valor in some noob-on-noob LAN, Monty. You'r right about it being tough. There seems to be so much involved in the 5 different ways you can upgrade each unit, veterancy, different weaponry, special abilities, air strikes, etc., in addition to simple counters, I just can't make head or tails of anything going on in battle even after a few hours.

As the man says.

Only thing we know is that there is hotseat co-op. We don't know what kind of MP there are overall. We dont' know how XP works in any MP mode. Anyone telling you otherwise is just as clueless as you. I guess we need a FAQ here soon, too...

Actually, I have no real complaint with what you're saying here Grom. To clarify, I don't think DA2 DRM stands out in any way - it's pretty average these days. And that's the object of my concern, that only a couple of years after online-DRM was the next big bad thing it's already gained a lot of ground. Certainly, DA2 doesn't push the envelope here - it's impact is that as a big, supposedly PC-oriented release it will contribute to, and show, how commonly accepted online DRM has become. More specifically about the prospect of playing DA2, I wonder whether the weekly logins are hard-set (i.e. every 7 days at a given time), or it just logs in every time if you are online, and then counts 7x24 hours after its last login when it can't. If the former, then you'd sit there thinking "I need to go somewhere without internet, now when's the last time this game logged itself in?" I suppose requiring EA login makes it even easier to entice people to DLCs though.

Love the lighting.

I think the DLC & DRM situation over the last ~3 years have very clearly shown that, though not necessarily across individual items (who is arguing that DA2 DRM will directly cause all other DRMs to become worse? I know overblowing the opposing argument is a time-honoured debating tactic, but...), the industry as a whole *is* progressively heading towards more prohibitive and internet-based DRM, microtransaction economy, etc. With slowtrain's argument it's very difficult to tell, but my feeling is that the death of the pc market is way exaggerated and the lack of clear numbers only adds to it - the PC market remains a healthy, if smaller, source of revenue and fanbase. It's not a case of "screw them anyway", it's much more likely that the industry sees online DRM as the best way to give them more control over their customers and thus would-be pirates.

I prefer bugfests to annoying DRM, at least I'm used to bugs.