Tigranes

I've just finished my 2nd playthrough with my Explosives player, siding with Mr. House (first time was Science/Speech, Independent). House becomes a lot more likeable when you get to know his full plans and such, actually - quite a solid option for the future of New Vegas. I thought it was a bit silly I *had* to blow up the Brotherhood, and even sillier that Veronica didn't say a thing about it when I left her waiting outside the bunker, but it might be a consequence of the bugged Veronica quest I could never finish. on Very Hard with XP nerf I explored 180 locations but still finished at level 26, and it was actually very difficult at the end - had to Stealth Boy then use the ARCHIMEDES on Deathclaws at Quarry Junction, and hope they all cripple their limbs in the process - also used up the Holy Hand Grenades that way. Still had a lot of reloads. End battle was very tough as well, I lined up all ten C4 explosives I had gathered throughout the game but missed the Legate by a bit and only took off half his health, and had to sacrifice Veronica to line up some explosives. Thinking of Unarmed Ninja for the third playthrough, and finally go for the Legion - see how badly I can screw up the NCR on the way. Tagging Unarmed, Sneak and Survival, and fighting the temptation to keep Speech/Science as low as possible and spend the points on Barter, Lockpick, some Explosives, etc. I could take perks like Hunter (+animal damage), Mister Sandman, Night Person, Piercing Strike... Kinda sucks though, looking through the perk list it seems many perks that improve melee/unarmed have a melee skill requisite. Hrm.

Freeside is probably the worst designed area in such terms - iot's nonsensically cut and its key locations are also haphazardly placed, so that it doesn't feel like a community at all, it might as well be part of the rest of the surrounding Vegas landscape. IMcCarran and Hoover Dam wouldn't be so bad with better fast travel points.

PhD applications continue, these take me like 2 months because i hate doing them. Just got to finish the research proposal now.. The American system is screwed up, by the way, those guys want enough forms to choke a black hole to death then idiotic statements about "what made you who you are now" and "what your dreams are". Whcih means everyone just makes up sappy stories about their dead cat and dead grandpa and how they made them feel soft and mushy inside.

The great thing about NV is that there are so many bloody quests, it doesn't irk me to skip a couple of them - and I have a pretty bad case of completionist. I think there are a couple of NV quests that are pretty much worthless (i.e. totally not worth the work) - the emo Khan, the Boomers love letter delivery - and then a couple that you sort of need to do but are really annoying. Ausir's right in that Still in the Dark is a lot more annoying, actually, with Return to Sender you at least have the fun of finding these well hidden Ranger camps. ....if only you didn't have to go to them a second time for no reason whatsoever.

Calax: Because that space is often utilised by the poorest arrivals who are trying to get as close as possible to the source of jobs and urban amenities without actually paying the unaffordable city rates. While the suburbia thing may be more American, Nepenthe, I'd say such outlying areas exist all over the world these days, including many European countries.

The BoS weren't powerhouses in FO2. They were, even at their peak, never a large or dominant force in a given region; they were a small elite force who had their time, and by FO2 were already suffering various troubles. Even if we accommodate FO3's randomly thriving DC BoS into account, it has to count as an offshoot that got a life of its own. BoS weren't screwed in FNV, it's actually surprising enough such an esoteric and hostile group who everyone knows has amazing technology has managed to survive in such a coherent way for centuries of the apocalypse and even explore new regions. I guess it's a testament to their ability to unlock particularly effective pre-war tech.

Geography-wise, the Mojave is designed ridiculously well. You clearly have the NCR constructing a border from Hoover Dam / Camp Golf down to Camp Searchlight, and you can see that the Legion's strike on Nipton was enabled through their radiation bombing of Searchlight and a breakdown in the NCR position in that area. Unfortunately, the area around Searchlight is much too difficult for players arriving there first time and very few are going to go out of their way, with no real in-game prompts at that point, to discover Cottonwood Cove. And in fact, based on my experience (I might be wrong), if you did go there so early, you'd find you didn't really have a lot to do. I think this aspect of the game would have been hugely improved if Inculta at Nipton, or the leader of the Legion troops transporting the Nipton slaves, or a random patrol around the Searchlight area, could have marked the Cove, then the Cove serve as a Legion quest hub for counter-NCR quests (e.g. you could get the Vault 22 mission there). I'd have taken that in the place of, say, ~20 smaller sidequests that don't really do much to the factions. I've just found Pushy (?), which is even better than Paladin Toaster! Now, if I can only stop Veronica switching to Missile Launcher at random times and blowing me up to bits...

*shrug* we can simplify and generalise to extremes, but you know that's not what I mean - I just said I was fine with, say, Jaheira's harper pin. The difference is when you get a very direct, quantified, blatant, systematic, comprehensive thing going on. New Vegas is part of the problem for me rather than the solution, though not as bad. Certainly DAO's gifts system was pretty much identical to dating sims and hentai games in terms of mechanics.

Arguably, that's the way to show NCR's impotence and weaknesses the best - by putting you in a locale where they are the dominant force and reasonably settled in. The fact that they have all these resources and manpower and infrastructure in place and still can't stop Nipton and still can't inspire any sort of respect from the Mojave's inhabitants. I do think that there should have been a bit more Legion (I think one extra "normal Legion town" as a quest hub would have done it, as well as an option to get some directions from Vulpes Inculta at Nipton, move to Cottonwood Cove and join the Legion early), and a bit more robust Khans (perhaps at the expense of the Fiends). I don't think many people will be 'invested' in the NCR per say, though, the game tells you every 5 minutes what a mess they are. It's a small balance thing, and I think all 3 options (House, NCR, Yesman) are very viable - it's only the Legion that are a bit shafted.

It's good that Bio revamped the approval system in this way, but I really don't understand one fundamental thing: Why do we need to get gameplay benefits for follower relationships so much? And why do we need to get it in this totally comprehensive and systematic way that ensures no matter what you do you will get some kind of bonus and they are ideally balanced so all bonuses are equally beneficial? It's really a trap that the devs have put themselves into. When you start introducing +3 to Hit Points or something as representative of a companion's loyalty to you, you start thinking, but what about other companions? Then once you give every companion bonsues, you think, but hang on, then people will just metagame companion dialogues. So you give equally weighted bonuses to companions liking AND disliking you. It's an improvement in the sense that if you're going to do it you might as well do it properly, but in the end nothing you do in that direction will solve the fundamental issue; companions and companion dialogues are now much more designed to be munchkin'd. Certainly connecting the gameworld/gameplay across various systems is something that should be applauded, but I can't help but think that the direction we're seeing now is a dead end. It was okay when you had, say, Dak'kon's sword or Jaheira's harper pin, but geez. Maybe a quick fix is to not tie it to approval so much - a la New Vegas, Veronica can craft things for you just because that's what she's good at, not because she lurves you (or, uh, hates you so wants to help you really really good).

Oh, the simplicity is essential to its appeal, indeed, but I just expected something monumental from everyone fapping to it for the last year or so. It certainly is fun. I don't know if the original is different, by the way, but it wasn't scary at all. The icons, yes, but in general I can't think how it would be scary at all. Mainly the things that got me going was the teamwork, the tight pacing, the on-your-toes aspect of the special zombies, the nice touches of characters talking to each other, etc.

Be nice, people. 1) That particular quest can bug out on a number of junctures, because of the number of solutions and different approaches available. But from the linked thread it's not quite clear where you are at; -did you start the quest by visiting the Khan longhouse, or by getting it from the NCR at the Dam? -so I take it you've then visited all 3 influential khans and had them back you up, right? And also exposed the Legion man so he is shot down by the Khans? -and after that, you had the conversation with Papa Khan again, correct? What did he tell you there? Was he persuaded to leave the region? Did he actually say that he will rally the Khans to fight alongside NCR? (Because as far as I know, that never happens - you just pass a 75 Speech check and he abandons the Legiona lliance and decides to leave the Mojave behind.) -If Papa Khan has said they will leave, then all you really need to do is go back and speak to the NCR at the Dam to finish the quest. If you gave a more full description of what is actually happening here it might be easier to see what's gone wrong. 2) you should have the option of simply assassinating Papa Khan to finish this quest. If all fails, you can do this. This isn't a game-breaking bug by any means. If even that doesn't work you can use the console to mark the quest finished (see here for how.) Certainly it's an annoying bug, but your game is, fortunately, not broken. 3) Generally, it is now the industry standard, for good or for worse, that this kind of debugging is handled within the community, while the devs will read up on people's problems and address them in patches. However the official customer support you'd need to be complaining to is Bethesda, not Obsidian, in this case.

I played Left 4 Dead 2 with some friends, a couple of campaigns. First time I tried it and it's pretty fun, though I have to say all the hype I was hearing is overrated. It's a very tightly made arcade game where teamwork is important, but I felt it was pretty simple.

Again, Harlequin, clearly you're now discussing your personal disapproval of Christian teachings and/or religious teachings as a whole. That's really a different topic I don't want to get into at length here. I will only suggest that in the manner you present them, your views on religion are extremely narrow-minded and perhaps based more on public perceptions of what religion is about than how religion actually works for many people in real life. Of course.

Yes, but from what little I've tried, it seems that with melee you can't target limbs in VATS? Maybe it was just those times / low skill, but that seemed really stupid. I think I'll try unarmed, what with those neato tricks you pick up along the way, and of course I'm seeing Veronica's prowess with the Paladin Toaster. Super-high sneak + unarmed should be fun, and make the wasteland pretty tense even at lategame. Hopefully. Speaking of which, the infamous bug-ridden Veronica quest has now ground to a standstill, which sucks because I want to get all the companion content over with and then play solo for the ninja playthrough. According to the wiki it's because Now they just stare and wont' talk to each other and the various fixes I've seen don't really address that.

Has anyone tried a melee/unarmed build, btw? My second playthrough is reaching lategame, and I'm thinking next one I might go a silent assassin/ninja type character, make use of those ninja perks. High luck, melee or unarmed, tag sneak. Just wondering which is more 'fun', or fun enough to stop me from just resorting to guns.

I know. What's the problem? They are teaching their faith in their churches. As long as they don't invade shopping malls and scream JESUS IS REAAAAAL at the kids, again, there's no need to go overboard. Obviously this has nothing to do with what I was saying, though? This discussion is clearly (and sensibly) confined to the question of, what kind of social conventions & understanding needs to be established regarding Christmas, for the good of all. So obviously we don't want extreme Christians taking over the whole show and shoving it down your throat, etc. My point is that there's no reason to go overboard and attack the Christian 'origins' of the holiday - there's nothing really wrong with the Western world celebrating a highly secularised holiday with its own visual signifiers and conventions and rituals, most of which by now originated from a variety of sources and/or has lost much of its Christian inflection. To be honest without putting things into your mouth, I feel that your argument is currently mixing your personal disapproval of Christian beliefs/ideologies and some very general principles/beliefs with an analysis of a specific situation, and it's just muddying the waters. I don't think, say, excising Christmas of its historical connections to Christianity / Saturnalia / etc, or making Christmas wholly non-Christian, really achieves anything meaningful.

All New Zealand based video game sellers have ceased to have any relevance for me a few years ago, but it's nice that Australia has finally got over this.

Sooo does this mean mkreku curses those meddling kids and exits stage left, only to return in the next act demanding people's credit card transactions? (Just kidding, he is in fact the heroe of the land)

Agreed. On one hand I'm interested in how Bioware does this and if they can do something fresh and interesting, but on the other I'm dreading the whole Disney stuff. But then, I remember a DA trailer where the party banter looked completely like something from a 90's Disney movie, and it wasn't the case... DA2 hype continues to be a fine balance between might-be-fun and WTF.

Steam's not 'evil' because of all that tosh, it's clear as day by its own actions that it wants to be monopoly/market leader and lock people in to their service by whatever means possible. At least brick and mortar stores didn't force me to join their loyalty programs or something. I'm just glad the offline mode seems to work reasonably well after years of, well, not.

I read too fast for the voiceovers, which is fine with me, but I don't know why voiceovers would make you not read the text. :/ With nerfed XP & an Explosives character with only 35 guns the wasteland is getting quite tough. Veronica, even with Paladin Toaster and Power Armour, gets her health run down fairly quickly by some of the enemies and I just feel like explosives don't do enough damage, even with 2 ranks of 20% damage perk, to justify how scarce they are. I had to lob away most of my grenades with the launcher to survive . Well, it makes it challenging, definitely... Going to go see Caesar, delayed doing any quests to see if I can sabotage them as a Legion person.

Without having read too much on this latest leak, I'm inclined to agree with Enoch, and really, one question rises to the top at the moment - what was the point of these leaks? Firstly, the things that are getting the most attention are mostly stupid celebrity gossip rather than real 'transparency'. We could, arguably, blame the press for cherry picking, but if so, why do the press get first access and thus the gatekeeper role? Why release so many documents in so short a time that people have to rely on the press to gatekeep? Why release all the frivolous crap in the first place? I'm pretty sure the answer from WikiLeaks would be that their belief in transparency is about full disclosure and openness, not themselves taking on another kind of gatekeeper / filter role and controlling the flow of information. Well guess what, it happens anyway... who's going to read everything they leak?

Arguably there's nothing really wrong with a symbolic celebration of Jesus' birth on a certain date, and nothing really that wrong with the fact that it's become such an embedded part of our culture that everyone celebrates Christmas (but in very very non-Christian ways, anyway). Certainly extremists getting freaked out about happy holidays or forcing it on everyone are annoying as hell, but I find that it's overkill to bring up the really old roots (Saturnalia, etc) and so on and so forth. The real social issue with Christmas, if you want one, is not the Christian aspect at all, but the amazingly integrated commodity system. Christians celebrate it in their own ways, no worries, as long as they don't go gaga about it.

We all know Yahtzee doesn't exactly have wonderful taste, he's just a bloke who likes some games and doesn't get others, like most of us. Mainly I think he needs to be applauded for how he keeps this same schtick funny for so long.