Tigranes

I didn't see this, when was that? The one lingering stench about the Dutch is the continued participation of van Bommel, of course. The very avatar of snide 'tackling'.

Actually, a postapocalyptic Africa would have been amazing IMO - that's something I'd love to see done with a OTS/FPP, 3D fallout. There will be extremely remote areas where the small population and their environment was never really in touch with technology, and were not so affected by the apocalypse, either; more 'urban' areas that do know about it but were not targeted by bombs and become the new metropolis; devastated areas; disruption to wildlife and nature; some refugees from the West that made it to Africa or were stuck when the bombs hit; etc.

It just confounds me how the Dutch fall apart on the attack every time they try to string passes together, yet still score. Van Persie isn't up to form at all, Robben's marked out and still refuses to release early... at least Kuyt tries hard. I still don't know how they are so wayward. The Dutch attack did get better in the second half, and they did deserve to win, but it'll be a massive coup if they manage to win the Cup outright.

Oh? How do I keep missing these things? I need to shut up more.

No, thanks. Hopefully for my Diablo 3 I can choose to be Akbar Akbar from Afghanistan.

1) Rumours have no foundation. 2) Sega says no sequel, see thread. 3) Still, you can just copy and back up your save files somewhere.

I don't even know why I even bother editing instead of closing/deleting, but keep away from the handbags, people. This place is like a Middle East peace summit, an Israeli religious group and a Nazist party sharing the same bus.

I absolutely love long games, when I was younger I had no problem with Final Fantasy and the scale of BG2 continues to be fantastic. As I keep saying, the issue with Deus Ex's length is that the gameplay doesn't evolve to keep up with the length, and becomes stretched. Interesting point about other U3 games - it had to be technological reasons that ruled out bigger levels (whether engine-specific or project-specific), but it really hurts AP.

I liked the original Ultima VII, though it had quite possibly one of the worst combat in any RPG... I wonder if I can find Dungeon Siege for the cheap?

Fair enough - looks like some of the augs work quite differently from what I imagined from the descriptions and limited experimentation. I'm doing the endgame now and there's a certain satisfaction in abusing Master level stealth pistols. Not a fan of the crazy alien / mutated animal beings (kind of like Halo's Flood...), but ah well.

Oh, T3, not T2? Well, T3 ran great for me too.

Ah, but Spain has the experience of actually winning a major tournament with a similar team (though they aren't doing anywhere as well in this one), and the quality they've shown *on the pitch* this WC is far above what England has. Not to mention the Spanish aren't crippled by infighting / power play. I think they have a good shot, but they have to do better.

Thief 2 was a mission to get working on Win7, but I eventually did it, with a fanmade nvidia fix, some compatibility mods and the like. I *think* it works now, but it's hard to tell - things look very dark and I think there are some texture weirdities, but I haven't really played it yet.

Wals, I feel it is my solemn duty to poke you surreptitiously.

I'm still in Area 51 so I don't know about after that, but the game is too long in the sense that it outlives the natural lifespan of its gameplay. What does Deus Ex's core gameplay involve? Scoping out a new area, choosing your method of infiltration (tech, sneak, shoot, mix & match), and executing it while picking up some interesting tidbits. It doesn't really fundamentally change. If anything, the gameplay gets a little bit worse because of all the superhuman bots with rockets they throw at you. The story didn't benefit that much from the addition of Silhouette and the Illuminati, either, at least, not yet. I think it drags on a bit. On Spy Drone I may be totally wrong - I didn't get it, I just read you can disable enemy bots from afar with it. I'm curious - is the targeting aug, for instance, useful by the time you get it, when most people would have a few points in the weapons of their choice? (With no training I had no problem with most weapons anyway.) The anti-rocket defence aug and such - isn't it way too clunky to go for your F buttons in the middle of a fight? Maybe they were of use for other people.

Yeah, it did perform better in 3dfx. But I'm not talking about graphics in that sense - polygons and whatnot. Now that I've played more, I think Hong Kong does a bit better, though. Anyway, now I've played through most of the game, I can see the point some of you made - there are a lot of differences between the two games. DX levels really get *big* and there are tons of secrets, tons of alternative paths - a sprawling level design that I think is probably the single biggest thing lacking in AP. I think that's a big part of what makes DX enjoyable. I did notice a few things that I didn't use to think about DX - I think some of Denton's dialogue is a bit odd, and his take on events / attitude sometimes seems a bit out of wack (e.g. his sudden tear-eyed line talking with Sam Carter in Vandenburg). The augmentations don't seem very well balanced - there are few that are clearly much more useful (e.g. Cloak, Spy Drone) than others. The game is entirely too long and stretches like thin butter over bread - should have been wrapped up more quickly after Hong Kong. But in the whole I think it still has a great feel to it and an entertaining core gameplay that stands up very well. AP could definitely have learnt from its level design.

RTR was brilliant, yes - it really transformed the retarded RTW. Played it to death, though, and like all great TW mods, it couldn't fix some of the many, many hardcoded idiocies in the AI. I enjoyed FF Tactics and Mount & Blade, and I'm a longtime FM addict, too. But one day I might try Jagged Alliance...

When you put in 1 point in sabotage, as the skill description states, you can now use the E (Use) key to automatically use an EMP. My guess is that the ability to simply 'throw' EMPs was removed late in game and the tutorial wasn't updated. So the functionality is fine - just sucks for the few people that get fooled by incorrect tutorial.

I've seen it, I ain't hardcore enough. ETW even with 1.5gb of mods - well, Darthmod was a big letdown. Battle AI is still horrible with infantry completely rearranging themselves right in front of me (hey you, regiment on the far left change with the guy on the far right!), Campaign AI with meaningless alliances. Still a bloated piece of crap that flatters to deceive. Deus Ex is awesome, though the endgame is far too long... might check out some of the otehr suggestions soon.

They exist, but in practice they are so lenient that, in fact, an economy of rule-bending thrives. How do you break someone's, say, fibula and tibia, risking that person's career and putting him out of commission for ~12 months, and receive a 3 match ban? I'm not saying tit for tat, but examples are plentiful: a cynical foul to win a critical match is worth it most of the time (Suarez), as well. Germany scores again after some nervous minutes, the Argies have been frustraetd and their defensive failings have finally been exposed.

The rules should, ideally, make it a risk not *worth* taking, yes. But in this case the only way to do it is give it as a goal and give a red card - and I doubt FIFA want to set a precedent of allowing a referee to declare goals like that. Again, tactically, currently, it's 'worth' the cost - whether that makes it the right choice for Suarez is not clear cut. But for anyone that's watching and likes football, there's no reason to applaud it.

I don't know, since all I know about hockey is those big scrums wehre everyone smashes each other with their hockey sticks, but that's probably not representative. In a pragmatic short term sense Suarez did something that is worth doing - in the sense that it's cost effective. The red card of one player, the insults, the penalty risk, etc., is a legitimate risk to take to stave off one goal, if you only care about winning. In Suarez' position? Maybe he does. Now, in the position of a commentator, pundit, fan, observer, forumer, official? It's despicable and there's no sense in condoning this kind of thing, because it just helps ruin the sport for everyone involved. (I mean, it's quite different from wasting time next to a corner flag.) edit: BBC quotes Suarez: Seriously?

Felipe Melo, of all people, katana-slices the entire Dutch team in half with one pass, Brazil one up. Bloody European teams failing at everything

I believe this is a parody. Meh.

I see - fair enough. I agree that if the map screen shows those objectives as unfinished, then they're probably it. Sorry I'm not of more help, but I haven't seen anything about this so far.