Tigranes

Sold.

Just Arcanum, Gabriel Knight, Sanitarium, Psychonauts and The Longest Journey. Already have physical copies of BG&E, Fallouts and Gothics. Looking at Giants: Citizen Kabuto, though I have no idea what that's about.

Sorry, but that's just a bad comparison.

I'm not sure why Nightshape continues to persist with this 'hardcore gamer vs. average joe ignoramus' distinction. It's not backed up and it is almost certainly too extreme a form of categorisation.

Oh, my bad.

PC's not in the gaming mainstream, definitely not. But again, I'm still really not sure whether anyone has a good grip now on what the 'wider society' impression / understanding of PC gaming is. Is it still nerds in the basement? I really doubt it. There are so many kids playing games now, and people who don't care about games are hardly going to differentiate between console gaming and PC gaming! I think it's actually a transposition of a gamer's categories and distinctions. Maybe society at large still thinks gaming as a whole is 'basement fat nerd activity', though with so many people playing now it's not certain. I don't think there's been enough good research and I don't think anyone can just say "well its obvious, non-gamers all differentiate PC gaming from console gaming to say PC gaming is nerds in the basement and not worth caring about". Can't agree with Boo though, I don't think it's realistic to dismiss consoles like that. Again its a transposition of a gamer's knowledge and categories to draw conclusions about a public that includes non-gamers. There are people who own a PS3 or Xbox360, and they don't KNOW if that graphical technology is outdated, or how it compares. They don't read NVIDIA news. I know a guy who owns a PS3 and as far as he's concerned it's the best, because, well, from the games he can take a look at on a quick internet search or in ebgames, it has the best looking games. The Wii is not a 'gimmick' because as far as those guys who don't usually game are concerned, the Wii IS the norm. It's just how gaming works for them. The Wii isn't a games console, it's just a 'thing'. Comparing the Wii to a PS3 and saying the Wii is a gimmick, to them, is like comparing apples and oranges. They don't know or care about the PS3 or what gamign consoles are usually like. The Wii is a Wii and they like the Wii.

It's a lasting question for me, actually. There's no denying that the console market is bigger now and the game publsihers pay a lot more attention (and money) to console gaming. But in wider society, is there a strong recognition that PC gaming is 'dead'? I don't know, but i haven't seen any good evidence or arguments to suggest either way. In fact, if there's a fine example of Purkake's 'stuff-only-gamers-care-about', this might be one of them.

Oh, I'll check those out then. I think I only saw mugs and shirts.

Go to dosbox.conf in the GK folder not dosbox folder, set fullscreen=0.

Yep. I can think of at least a dozen people I know IRL who play games, don't care for the games 'community', don't know what DRM is, but will be enraged and pissed to hear that they have to be online for single player. and you know, the funny thing is, for a hardcore RPG player, there's a much higher chance that they will so want to play the game they will buy it anyway, buy it and crack the DRM, or pirate it. For your hey-ho guy that plays some games, there are hundreds of games out there and to him one's just as good as the other. He will just move on the second he realises this game was made by anally retentive people. Despite Purkake's everlasting cynicism, the gamer minority getting their panties in a knot isn't completely pointless in this regard. Get more general tech places like Wired to pick up on this kind of stuff? That does help.

Oh, it's out elsewhere too? 40USD is out of my budget at the moment, but I'll pick it up when it gets cheaper.

I thought i was done with this combat demo, but if it's a lot harder I'll have to give it a try, good stuff. Now, if only they'd let me donate money instead of buying silly merchandise...

Stop having good deals, Steam!

Every country throws tantrums, it's how international relations work. China throws tantrums about Taiwan, Russia throws tantrums about its neighbours, North Korea throws tantrums to get rice, the US, Europe, etc, etc. As Boo says China has no reason to let go of Taiwan yet, there aren't any real disadvantages to maintaining its claim.

Gimcrack, forsooth.

The fact that we have the same voice actors, or that we had celebs back then and celebs now too, don't disprove the suggestion that older VAs tended to be better. To be precise, I'd rather suggest that the number of games that had excellent, appropriate VA throughout the entire product is higher in older games, than newer games in the period of significantly larger production teams, budgets and the new business models. Indeed, the celeb thing is not a big deal here. I'd agree that Liam Neeson did a decent/good job in FO3. The fact is, maybe because FO3 had so many more lines than GK (which is why GK having a lot of lines for its time doesn't matter so much here), you could encounter characters with some odd, subpar or irksome voice acting, whereas in GK the quality is much more consistent. Same with Dragon Age. Risen. Coming back to Planescape: Torment, again you wonder whether the VA quality would have been so consistent if they were pressured by the market to fully voice everybody, even if they cut the wordcount in half. I don't think it's a question of celebrities (my bad, it was just a side mention for me) or whatnot. The issues are more likely; (a) time/money investment in VA may not be proportionate at the moment; i.e. even though you got a lot more money and manpower going into a game, just how much more attention is being paid to VA? According to stories of just how expensive it gets and how often it has to be done in limited takes, maybe not quite enough. (b) the market expectation of fully voiced games, which puts an unrealistic demand on (a) - did Oblivion really need all those nasal shopkeepers and short-tongued elves? In fact, if we had to endure the same kind of VA in, say, Ultima VII, would our opinion of the game change a lot? If Oblivion had Patrick Stewart and few other key voices only, wouldn't we be judging its VA as consistently good quality?

Heh, really? My bad, I'm awful at recognising celeb voices (because I didn't know who Liam Neeson was, for instance). In any case, I don't know, maybe it was the smaller amount of lines that allowed tighter direction, but VA seems a lot more appropriately done in older games. It's not just this one - see Grim Fandango and other adventure games, or even PS:T / BG2.

Three hundred times funnier than CAD.

The voice acting is really good, that's what makes it come alive. You wonder why if we had such good VA (everything fully voiced, even "these two objects can't interact") back then, why we've got all these celeb voices now oand they sound worse. I think the first half is nearly always better than the second half of these kind of games though, this fixation with cult / voodoo stuff means after some very fun detectiving and adventuring you're shunted off to random African caves or mystical places at the end.

Just finished Gabriel Knight, boy is it good. Highly recommended to anybody and everybody. I did consult the walkthrough on a few bits, especially the puzzles near the end. The thing with these kind of games is that also, sometimes, you are given no reasonable clue as to where to find X, and have to look everywhere for a tiny hint (e.g. ) Still, good stuff. Hope they put on the other Gks on GOG.

I thought he was dancin'.

That looked good, actually. I'm most impressed by how polished everything looks - almost looks like a Bioware game. The interfaces are really clean and snappy, graphics may not be top notch but blend well and locations are clearly differentiated. As pop says combat still seems too easy and a little bit obtuse - which I think was evident from the gameplay vids we got last year. The enemies aren't going to be the smartest, but hopefully they're still a challenge on higher difficulties.

Yes, exactly.

No, because in the absence of respectable, well-researched figures the best anybody, including professionals, can do is speculate based on rough numbers, existing arguments and trends. Getting into the nitty-gritty without real nitty-gritty to speak of is pointless and just leads to circular arguments. Yeah, because all those companies wasting time & money on DRM can't be wrong! I mean, it's not like they're not acting on their assumptions. They're not doing anything illegal, or unethical, no. That doesn't mean what they're doing is above criticism, or is even smart business.

No, he's saying that having Mao as one of your favourite political philosophers alone makes you a moron and/or a bad person. I think.