Tigranes

Um.... http://www.fifengine.de/ Foot attacks Lare Kikkeli! Foot strikes Lare Kikkeli in mouth.

Mod Oblivion to destroy the retarded level scaling then start a new game. It'll be worth it, instead of playing 10 hours and realising how stupid it is, and then finding out installing int he middle of playing breaks stuff. How's KB Mus? Not even shipping here in NZ so I'm wondering whether to bother. edit: Just about done with Morrowind, 100+ days (not sure game hours, probably around 30). Tons more stuff to do but it does get repetitive after a while. I'll probably try and see a couple of the faction quests through to the end; I don't think I've done that before. Telvanni & Morag Tong, perhaps. I just know that I've broken the economy now with the +10k daedric weapons and whatnot that I can't sell off.

Screw that, lots of RPGs had good combat. IE combat was good. NWN2 combat would be good with good AI and good tactical situations, which Tony K's AI, MOTB/SOZ and mods sort of proved. It looks nearly exactly like NWN2 actually, where's the clutter? I agree the animations look quite bad upon a second look (maybe the Aurora engine made me blind to that). I won't mind too much though.

By the way, despite what.... somebody (?) said last page, I think there is an important difference between having to replay the entire battle and to replay from the moment you saved in the middle of it, and the former does have value (unlike you know, making you save before a 30 minute exposition that is directly followed by a boss battle, Final Fantasy, you bastard.) Namely, a good battle in a party RPG should always be a tactical set piece, a tactical encounter... and, provided that the designers aren't morons and don't give you pointlessly long battles, the only reason for saving in the middle is that you have basically got a favourable condition. i.e. the dragon failed the will save, or you got a critical hit on your first blow, or simply that you made it alive after knocking off half of the enemy. The only reason for saving is that you feel you have 'completed' a certain percentage of the encounter and don't want to ever have to replay that part again. But for me it's a lot more fun trying out different ways to get past the encounter as a whole if one approach fails, instead of breaking it up into small increments where you save after each kill. ...That, and the NWN engine had this wonderful thing about everything moving around when you reload during combat anyway.

No. Also, what exactly is so bad about DA animations, for those who say so? I'm just curious, since I didn't notice much.

Well known fact, but surely irrelevant to the general lengths of games.

That's... an odd logic, but I suppose every setting they are making/using now is 'newer' than ME. For me it'll finally be a chance to be satisfied with a Bio game after NWN/HOTU. (And buy one, too.) From mkreku's extended trailer, btw: 1) After you knock the enemy over, you notice how your mage's blue balls of damage keep hitting him, which must mean they are actually traversing through the large crossbow thing he was using as cover. That sucks. It *could* be that they are accounting for that little gap between the wood in the crossbow thing (scorpion?), but that would be quite impressive.... 2) Why in the world would you have a bunch of low-level characters with few special abilities in a trailer??? Look at what Diablo 3 did. Nobody is very excited seeing normal melee attacks over and over again! PR failure.

Why would you touch ME but nothing else from Bio? Just curious. Impressions: 1) This emphasis on showing combat close up reminds me of that NWN trailer where they insisted on showing the silly melee close-up too. i.e. an unwise attempt at "IMMERJUN" PR, but should have no impact on me. 2) If it's anywhere near BG2 length then it will be a great length, "90 hours" or not. 3) 10-12 NPCs, let's hope they are all pulled off well. I haven't played much of ME obviously, but JE didn't give me much confidence. 4) I hope you can turn off / mod away the big selection circles and even worse, the glowing red jelly all the baddies took a bath in. WTF.

It depends. With 50/50 multiclasses or spellcasters it can drag you down because you can't cast higher level spells quickly or whatnot. Survival and Hide/Move are the best skills for the Overland leader IMO, because the former spikes up the movement speed and the latter lets you avoid +90% of all encounters. There are also mods out there now that reduce the encounter rate.

It doesn't really disappear as you get older I think. There's always this thing about defining yourself through expressing dislike, even when you don't know about it. By all means I'm not immune to it. But I'd rather try and have perspective and end up whiny sometimes, than say to myself 'meh its all good' or call all critics whiners.

I'm still on AVG out of laziness, but it's starting to get cumbersome. I might try this 'Avira' myself.

That's it, I'm moving to Sweden before the hellfire reaches NZ.

Now that looks pretty awesome. I'm usually not a fan of remakes (I prefer BG combat, interface and graphics to NWN2 ones anyway, mostly), but the areas look really pretty by themselves.

The only game that really made me jump was half-life 2, but then I haven't played Resident Evil and the like.

When I was 11, mom saw me playing FF8 with a friend, and saw the Shiva summon. Commented that I was a bit too young to start watching porn with my buddies (as opposed to, uh, alone I guess). Clearly ready for akshun I played KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV so much back then, I recently fired it up again and my mom instantly recognised it. After ten years! Also, an internet cafe opened in Wellington, and they have little booths with NES, SNES and... the Mega Drive 2. My first gaming experience. It still looks pretty good after all those years actually. Better than Superman 64.

Speaking of Architect, I'm listening to a lot of Aussie radio for work and basically you have those middle aged women with really slow up-and-down voices going OH GOSH ITS CHRISTMAS AND SOME PEOPLE ARENT CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS CAUSE YOU KNOW THEY ARE ALL ARAB (AND PROBABLY TERRORIST BUT I DIDNT SAY THAT) AND YOU KNOW JUST WAHT COUNTRY ARE WE LIVING IN?!?!?! Or calling in and then talking with the radio host about his sister or something But then, I'm biased because I hate how hot the place is. I dont' know how you guys live there. IT BURNS

I plan to destroy Shryke, so that I will inherit his women.

That is what has happened, according to the article. "titles that don't contain a single-player experience, and therefore did not apply for classification."

No, you rate the game content then add the caveat.

And clearly, as long as you advertise it, it's okay whatever you make.

They will not be banned, stop falling for retarded journalists. Despite the press the AU censorship board gets for FO3 and the like, I know them quite well and they aren't that bad.

What did I miss? I watched carefully at the time, but that was during weeks of frenzied activity that has since driven the details out of my brain.

Fine, I'll elaborate. I will agree that it was a relatively well made movie. I don't mind, in fact, I prefer, the paucity of akshun, and I don't think it was too boring at any point. I said flat, etc. because while there was great potential to explore the situation in a mature and insightful manner with the interactions with the Arab leader (sorry, it's been a while), the main character and the American boss, it had to be interspersed with a bland run-of-the-mill Hollywood romance, and I felt it was quite contrived to have Matt Damon (right?) be captured just like that just so the point about the Arab leader could be made. I did like the bit where he doesn't believe Damon, or Damon reveals his deception is screwed for it. But I wish they went all out on exploring that as opposed to touching base with shallow, formulaic romances, "Oh I don't want to do this anymore" and such.

Woke up, helped someone with an essay, took mom out to lunch for birthday, at work. Will play some Morrowind when I get home.

It's not just Starforce, after a couple of idiotic broken DRMs you learn that any new invasive DRM runs a risk of screwing you over. If someone came up with a new 'secure' DRM I wouldn't buy that game in the first couple of months of release, until people have figured out just how invasive it is. edit: whoa, how did it get to DRM? Do we know something about DA DRM?