Tigranes

The only thing that you really need in an MMO is a well balanced world (in terms of grinding / monsters / loot / pointless walking) and tactical combat that encourages thoughtful co-operation. Unfortunately, in most of them I've found that you run a marathon to get anywhere, hit the same button 30 times, then gain a miniscule plus to one of your seventy thousand abilities.

Your feat example is in fact, an example of a rather tame bug. I'm not wanting to defend Obsidian here because I agree they need to improve on this, and we should be setting our sights high... but it wasn't a case of Obsidian being markedly inferior to other RPGs in terms of bugs. Morrowind? Oh dear God, so many people could not play it for weeks after launch. Bethesda got better and FO3 was a remarkably stable game for its size, though. Play Gothic 3 and you will understand the meaning of 'playable'. It froze every 60 seconds, took longer to save & load than for you to drink a cuppa, etc. All Troika Games, obviously, need a mention. Bio's become pretty good with this with Jade Empire and Mass Effect, so that people have forgotten about the aberration that was NWN1 (as bad as 2, really.) I don't think Obsidian has a fatal reputation for being buggy, but it is certainly seen as below the standard on that area.

Aliens was never announced. Dun dun dunn

I knew one of those crazy kiwi bastards who eat nothing for breakfast, an apple for lunch and fish & chips for dinner, and still grew a 6" hulk at age 12.

It's what type of building you start with. If you take over many native cities they will be limited. Simply demolish & rebuild (esp. with native farms).

They did, and tried to stick to their successful formula while experimenting with a few new things. That's good IMO. The only issue is that the new things they tried follow the same 'CINEMATICK" / emo approach.

We need a proper heir to Durlag's Tower and the Severed Hand. If DA can provide (and I think/hope they will try), that alone will make me squeal.

Gromnir smash stupid people for their lateen.

Actually, they continue to get away with this. It's not very uncommon in the industry to believe that this kind of aggressive 'PR' works in their favour. And seeing as how nobody really calls them up on it... I suppose it's not wrong.

Same. It does testify to what great games they are, but also to how critically flawed they are. I wouldn't mind so much if they were actually trying to fix that. I love how they've unlocked the royal family though, the modders - if they can restore full functionality it would be amazing.

The trailer is old.

Mkreku, so that's all I'll need to get my Gothic Universe Gothic 3 ready to go right? I'll download when I get home tonight.

If we had a few more ladies it wouldn't be.

Human relationships are the devil's work and potential romances are even worse. I need to make this video clip by thursday and I can concentrate about as well as a wrestling duck. Why did WES eat up 170USD and take 3 months to tell me that all As equals 4.0 GPA? Astounding revelations.

Deus Ex didn't appear to take itself seriously but in fact seriously committed itself to an ironic representation of what it portrayed very seriously without being too serious.

We could unfortunately no longer tolerate Walsingham's irrational and obsessive behaviour regarding certain long-serving members of our community. You guys will probably not be aware, because we took care to delete any of his more public outbursts, but heads did roll and groins were kicked.

Our company is expanding and hiring, and I'm one of the first 4 in a new team & position they created back in December. Which seems a bit odd, but oh well. It's weird because we technically are part-time, but in reality work nearly full-time and are treated as such, and yet I don't know how long I'll stay here.

VATS isn't actually a 'different combat mode' because they don't even fire back or react most of the time. It is, in fact, a glorified Bullet Time move - a 'special ability' that you just get to use quite generously (or not). Obviously it can still be very fun (or not), but I think it's a misconception (maybe hype) to think of VATS as giving FO3 two 'combat modes'. That's like calling the gravity gun a mode. Coming from that perspective, I don't have an issue with VATS being in a FPS game - Max Payne, after all. It's just the decision to make slow-motion death unskippable (it's not actually a 'bad' decision, because so many people love it, which makes me more depressed) and the fact that enemies stand around and hardly react that makes it a broken system.

I don't have the quote on me, but Orhan Pamuk said it best: we claim we want the exotic, but what we really want is to see what we think is 'universal' in an exotic guise.

I spent an hour late last night taking various photographs of an umbrella, sheets of architectural plans, saucy magazine covers, kitchen knives and a decorational penguin.

1) If North Korea manages to get whatever it has off before it's crushed, S. Korea and Japan will be the worst to suffer; two of the world's top economies with global corporations and investments, and very important markets for the U.S. and other countries. You don't want bombs coming to Seoul and Tokyo. 2) Because the U.S. is what it is, a forced reunification of Korea would probably involve foreign forces; the U.S. would probably demand general command over the invasion force and the political processes afterwards, creating an explosive quantity of ill-will in both Koreas and suspicion in Japan and China, with the obvious diplomatic impact. 3) Whatever else, a reunification would pose massive, massive problems / issues for the South Korean government regarding infrastructure, law and order, social issues, massive migrations, welfare, jobs and opportunistic enterpreneurs. It would take decades for things to get sorted out, which means an extremely volatile political situation for that period. I suspect that the U.S. and S. Korea are happy with the way things are, as long as NK doesn't get too crazy and really blow up crap for fun.

Of course there is a 'lowest common denominator', and most of us indulge in it to varying degrees. Put aside the silly reactionism about OMG DONT CALL PPL STUPID and a decades-stale sentiment of "If everyone likes it it has to be great", and there's not much reason to rail against the 'elitism', either. Every Bio setting has been lowest-common-denominator. It's just becoming a bit more brazen about it.

That's true. Maybe I'm projecting because I just want a Thief remake. But even if we use, say, Hitman, it still feels like a poor substitute when it comes down to the actual assassinatin'. I'm not far in though, so we will see. I can't wait to go back home so I can desperately dig around and try and find my Thief 2 & 3 CDs. Also, Crash Bandicoot 3 for the original Playstation.

Wrong. According to Volo, every single person in the board has bought every fantasy game released, as well as every Bioware game. Also, it must be said that DA still looks a lot more delicious than Drakensang or the like.