Tigranes

Just finished it, it was pretty satisfying but I doubt I'll play again. There's not enough variation and I abused kicking people into fires and spikes. Crysis... maybe.

Got one of them, an 8gb, for birthday and it's pretty good. Does everything it's mean to do. The interface is horribly dry and ugly, and it won't even let you look at its clock easily, but at least it's not a pain to use.

In Chapter 8 and nearly done with the game - pretty short, but I think it's the right length to explore and have fun with their mechanics and end it before it gets boring. My character is appallingly built and I'm just as bad, but I'm getting by on Normal and having fun. Switched from a never-be-seen Thief ninja to a run and gun daggerman with a kick fetish, the mountaintop orc stronghold was great.

As someone who doesn't knwo what any of these people are or what party they belong to or whatever, sounds like the news guy's full of bollocks. It's just typical sensationalism, there's nothing wrong with that Mao quote. Getting worked up about that kind of stuff just makes politics even more suffocating.

We did get an interview. Last week.

Is it just me, or does that make zero sense? So if a communist government decides the distribution of wealth based on contribution to society, how do you decide how much $ you get paid for mining, uh, a ton of coal? How does it compare to the $ you get paid for... fishing a ton of fish? Does it depend on how important coal is to society relative to fish, i.e. the demand of coal in society as opposed to the demand of fish? In which case, isn't that basic capitalist market forces? Or do you pay the miner and fisher the same? In that case, how do you control production rates - i.e. what if everyone decides they'd rather fish than mine coal, and you end up with way too much fish? Do you start paying them less because their contribution to society has proportionally decreased? Again, isn't that basic capitalist market forces? Or do you (forcibly) reduce the number of fishermen and redirect the labour to coal - in which case, we've lost freedom to choose our jobs and have made our theoretical communist govt require even more military force?

Clearly you need a dictator to get things done and actually make things free.

Don't think he has that much input in Beth's own projects, he's a PR guy and, well, what he does works well in today's industry.

I just get really disoriented with these kind of games, first person perspective with frenetic melee bashing. I'm pretty useless at Morrowind / Oblivion melee combat as well, I have no idea what's happening, I have no idea how far away he is and I just slash wildly. Been enjoying sneaking up and kicking them down from heights, or reading their patrol patterns, smashing oil jars and setting them all on fire (I got two mages to suicide that way). They did take a few notes form Thief to their benefit.

Well well. I'm still useless at melee combat but a mix of stealth and magic is serving me alright. I've just started seeing some orcs. The story is actually not bad here - the delivery (e.g. hallucinatory dreams) are pretty good. It's a pity the bad voice acting lets it down.

Wait, what?

Just did about an hour, not bad. Story's probably a load of crap but I did enjoy what they did when you get attacked outside the city - great use of FPP and camera. Fighting is fun purely because of kicking and setting people on fire and such, but we'll see how long that lasts.

Oh, Jedi Knight games - I loved those. Changed my mind at the last minute and plumped for Dark Messiah, firing it up now. Will give feedback... in the DM thread I guess. Crysis still on the radar.

Well, you can only go back as far as the 70s / 80s to say that there was 'pretty even' opportunity, and the 90s / 00s to really say 'equal opportunity everywhere'. That doesn't give them a lot of time, does it? Only right now are we seeing women who actually grew up with equal expectations and got education in such a climate. Even then, scientific breakthroughs - from what I hear of people in research careers you still have a predisposition towards having male PIs.

On reflection, Crysis it is, let's get some shooting going without the WW2 business. Played HL2 before, it was okay.

Oh, sorry. PC only. And dear god no WW2 or WW2-inspired settings Dark Messiah's pretty appealing. How fun is Borderlands to play single player? It's more expensive, but if it's fun enough I'll go for it.

Interesting, a good debate for once. mkreku, you're saying, how did men come to be in a dominant position anyway - isn't it because men were superior / stronger in some way that allowed them to gain and maintain that dominance for so long, and so their dominant position doesn't mean that they have an 'unfair advantage'? Well, yes - but historically speaking, it would be too shaky a footing to suggest that globally, over hundreds of years, the dominance of patriarchal societies over matriarchal ones (which, after a while, due to overlapping patriarchal societies, would have an exponential / domino effect) points to some biological or other fundamental superiority in the male sex. I mean, I don't think it's that hard to imagine matriarchal societies hitting the 'magic point' in terms of technological advances, societal organisation and whatnot very early on in human history, and things unravelling so that we have a modern society with women in a similarly dominant position. It's also pretty hard to go back and deconstruct the whole process by now because so much of what a 'man' is is dependent on historico-cultural influences as well as biological ones. Simple example: clothing and colour preferences for young children were not very differentiated in 18th/19th centuries, and around 1900, for some, pink was actually a boy's colour - 'pink for girls' was only set in stone around the 40's and 50's. Obviously this will have a much smaller impact on something like physical strength.

After several years of neglect I think I have sufficient craving for an action or shooter game. I'm going to spend a few days being on standby for sick family, so now might be a good time. I generally don't find these types fun. I don't know any real life guns or whatever and don't find Rainbow Six or Metal Gear Solid 'cool'. I did enjoy the original Unreal Tournament and Halo for quick mindless romps, however. I have yet to try Far Cry, Crysis, Dark Messiah, etc., so maybe I should. I'd rather either go the fast and hectic (UT) route, or something much more stealthy and gadget-y (i.e. Thief route). Thoughts?

Ausir says Mark Morgan may be composing FO:NV music Ausir's usually reliable, so I'm gonna get my hopes up. Morgan music + FO3 visuals / perspective + Obsidian writing could make some very, very good atmosphere.

Let's move on... 1) Criticism of Bethesda or Obsidian or Wal-Mart is all good, that doesn't mean you need to post "X sucks" every two days. 2) Sometimes mindless shouting is just as bad for conversation as trolling. This applies to everyone no matter what position they hold. Repeating "FO3 sucks arse" every single time is just as annoying and pointless as "FO3 haters suck arse". Or "Get over it / get a life", "2D > 3D", "3D > 2D", or whatever. Can you post something that accurately portrays your views without reducing people that disagree with you into one-dimensional fanatics? No? Don't post. 3) If all else fails, use the report function, cowboy.

Actually, if you're going to have a long tutorial, then FO3 was quite well built. At first glance it looks like FO3 is more ponderous and takes its time to hand you the reins, but think about what happens in in media res openings (KOTOR2, NWN2 OC) - there's a fire and it's all hectic but you still gotta take your sweet time to equip everything, level your guys, check the level of your companions, go through a couple of ridiculously easy fights with tutorial explanations, etc, so I think they score about the same. The difference is that in, say, NWN2 OC, you've gone through 5-10 minutes making your character already, then you're spending another 5-10 levelling up that guy and working out what all your abilities do, because you have 15 of them already. FO3 opening is very focused in that it tells you what one thing to concentrate at any given time, all of the 'cutscene' sequences give you stuff to do, and the fact that you're speeding through 20 years of your life in 20 minutes means it feels as if you're getting things done quickly, whereas in Harbour Town or Peragus, despite the "OH GOD WE GOT TO HURRY" what you're actually doing is getting to terms with the quickbar or looking for a wooden staff or whatnot, and it actually feels like slower pace. Anyway, I like MC's idea somewhere before - let's go back to what we had with those 'multi-choice answers' for your background (e.g. Ultima gypsy), and expand that into something like Dragon Age origins / FO3 tutorial. You are born - you choose the circumstances in which you are born (near-death, which has a hit on your constitution; unusually large baby, which gives you a strength bonus; born in a normal home or without proper parents, which determines choices you get later.) Fade out and back in to 5 years later, what do you ask for your birthday present? (toy sword, book); when you are 13, do you follow the strange magician visiting your village to be trained in magic or not? So forth.

Never trust the shops, they have no clue on the release.

Summon a LOT of creatures and make a wall of bodies directly between you and Fighter. Stick some skeletons to LOVE full-time and try and stay out of his line of sight, so that he wastes his charms on the skeletons. Kill the fighter as fast as you can - make use of the wands you should have by now, he will fail his saves on at least half of them. (Wand of Heavens is good.) Kivan is useful is he is there. Something useful is the massive set of traps to the southwest of where the dwarves start, if you h aven't been silly and have disabled them already. Run Imoen through there after downing a potion of fire resistance, try and get at least two dwarves (but not Love, obviously) to follow. The ensuing fireball bonanza will, if lucky, get at least 2 dwarves down to Badly Wounded, which helps a lot.

Back on topic gais. I find DA is quite replayable, though not as much as the BG series. There's decent scope for building different types of characters, there are challenging battles, there's fun loot and pretty good balance throughout the game. I'll probabyl do this, go through Awakening, then shelve the game.

Already played the Witcher twice, not much more to see after that. Was good.