Tigranes

Really love-hate for this one, I see. I'll probably succumb and buy anyway, around next month.

Gothic-punk MMO + Rhomal site? Good combination.

I enjoy the scarcity of ammo, weapons are so easy to come by in FO3 that if you had ample ammo for all of them it would quickly devolve into a monty haul. the Lockpick game still doesn't make sense to me, though. But I like how they stop you from even trying on harder locks without the skill %. Karma is nonsense btw. Couldn't believe it when I stole a single stimpak completely undetected and my Karma went down. HELM SEES ALL. KNOW THIS AND BE JUDGED!

Don't you? Haven't noticed yet, either way. The system is mostly fine, its just the writer being a bit lazy or pedestrian occasionally. Nothing terrible, at least, not after Bioware dialogue.

True, if you want to apply your definition of 'barbaric' on the religions. Hoooo. Leaving that aside, though (cause that's really an unresolvable debate), yes, it's true that Muslims in general are more strict and literal in following their scripture. From the perspective of the believer that might actually be a good thing. By the way, who came up with this religion v. state thing? I mean, Krez, I'm just trying to point out how partisan you are, though not out of intent. You're instinctively employing a lot of ideals like separation of church and state and your idea of 'civilisation', most of which originate from a heavily christian-influenced nation. Then you're able to say "Middle Eastern culture has actually developed further towards religious fundamentalism in recent history" as if that was, of course, a negative and dangerous thing. certainly, I think that way too. I would abhor a situation where my native country is built around a religion that I may not subscribe to. But is it so farfetched to consider a possibility where a strong Islamic theocracy based on a non-extremist but strict interpretation of the religious law is the best course for Middle Eastern nations? Not every country has to be infected with the secular capitalist democracy virus, despite the best efforts of American and other governments.

Why would you ever move at less than maximum speed, unless you were sneaking, anyway?

OE makes the game, and that box is 99% fake, made by some random Gamestop employee. I wouldn't trust any dates this early in the cycle.

*shrug* the ways of citation manuals are convoluted and silly, but they have absolute power. I remember when I had to check every ' and " in a 50-page paper to see I was consistent. I *was* consistent, in my own world...

I thought the only people who seriously insisted that were the more retarded of the mainstream press. For me it's Oblivion Plus, and that's good enough for a few dozen fun hours. Just like I didn't expect IWD2 to redefine RPGs. NMA compendium mod is a big boost as well, it's actually really really hard now. Dialogue isn't as bad as I feared, and certainly better than Oblivion. If anything, it suffers from a lack of polish; e.g. no options to come straight out of a deep tree (you have to say "let's stop takling about Y... let's stop talking about X.."), inconsistent referencing of game events, random changes in tone. And of course the combat enemy AI is a puddle of poo, they just stand still while you blow up their friends next door, then just proceed to run at you shootin'. I mean, why design a bridge full of cover for the raiders if they just run over it all? Meh. Keeps me going, though. Worth the money and a bit more. Nothing fantastic, but I wasn't asking for fantastic.

Can't be worse than FO3's "We stand ready". i guess for some, it is hard to go back, though.

Just wanted to let you guys know how it is. Fallout 3 runs at nearly max settings perfectly. Game loads in under 5 seconds, and quicksaves/loads are nearly instantaneous, as are area loading screens. I dont' even need to do a 360. Other games do okay, but I haven't done 'big test' games like Crysis, as I'm not much interested in playing them. The clean XP is nice, too.

Besides, you know it's bad when official government documents from a native English country has there/their confusions.

Just a quick note; You'd think so, Anime being the archetypical "weird out-there stuff", but actually, anime was being Americanised as early as the 70's. Here;

Ketchup. I'm usually in support of preserving traditional forms of spelling, but only because so many of them serve a purpose. E.g. doughnut - that's got 'dough' in it. It's actually a lot easier to remember words or understand them if parts of them, or their Latinised prefix/suffixes/etc, are still in place. (Besides, if we changed to thru, so many people will get confused by thoroughfare) some are just anally retentive, of course.

Moira succeeded in the effect they were aiming for I think, but they were aiming at the wrong things. Yes, sometimes voices are MEANT to be obnoxious and annoying, but not to the point that you abuse your mute button every time she talks. It's also much too upbeat and I get visions of pink ponies in my Fallout. I do have an allergic reaction to happy fluffy voices though. edit: and about accents - you wouldn't believe the difference between San Andreas' Asians and, say, well, every other game out there (including Jade Empire). In SA I think they actually used a Korean for Koreans, Chinese for Chinese, etc. Or my ears are horrid little pluckers.

Mebbe everyone's done with the game now, but I'll still keep truckin'. Started again with NMA's compendium mod, mainly for the slower XP gain. Got out of the Vault and checked out the nearby, the one in all the previews. Combat changed quite a bit with the mod; I think it limits your VATS shots to 2, and I was actually better off shooting in real time. It was also pretty hard, with them killing ME during my own vats sequences. Eventually cleared the place out then visited Megaton from the side. Voice acting quality does go down from here - Vault was on the whole decent/good, this place, well, hard to find good ones. Nothing too cringeworthy so far, though. Oh, except Moira. Absolutely disgusting. People are divided about environments apparently, but I think they're superb so far. The things like dented fridges and broken trolleys are very well made, and the architecture in Megaton is pretty good. Talking to yourself DR?

I saw some random French comedy/life/thing, Ghost Town, on the flight back to NZ. Decent for when you're stuck to the seat like I was, but nothing special. It has that fellow - Rick Gervais?

Since SoZ isn't out in NZ yet, I decided FO3 would be the test bunny for my shiny new laptop. Just got out of the Vault then saved. The game looks a lot better than Oblivion so far in certain areas (the faces and the rocks), and the same in others (e.g. walls, caves). Maybe the voice-acting plummets in quality after the Vault, but so far it wasn't too bad. The cinematic presentation of the tutorial was cleanly and well done, and I actually enjoyed all the hubbub in the birthday party, which, for all its crowdedness, didn't devolve into a Radiant AI fest. Combat is already a joke; unarmed is like Oblivion but clunkier, and VATS slow-motion is despicable. I was Level 1 taking on the security chief in the Vault, and I had a 95% chance to headshot - which criticalled, taking off his head at... the neck, as if it went through some high-intensity laser beam. I guess the future has wide-radius instant cauterisation pistol bullets. Slow-motion is boring, too. It's going to get very stupid if the enemies don't use cover a lot. Sound/music/etc is nice so far, except for the levelling up ding. Looks like a fun game with boringish combat, but then I played KOTORs, so i can weather that. We'll see.

5.9 per category is max, I believe. Mine gravitate between 4.9 and 5.3 But I'm halfway through formatting now, for XP.

Aaaand the laptop is here. Can't wait to try some games on it, but first it's a long process of doing a clean format / XP install, and moving in the apps and settings. Scored a 4.9 in WEI, btw, but that should improve after the above processes.

Sounds like one of the best suicides int he industry.

What a weird, weird idea. Gonna be interesting, ta least, to see what comes of this.

I guess it means it's about as convoluted and hacked as SOZ's electron. Then ported to the console.

What has being EE/Polish got to do with this case, though? I mean, CDProjekt have proved they can do a million-seller on the worldwide PC market.

Not really. Its fundamental combat logic is well suited to console-play and the 'new system' will probably make it even more fast-paced, more dependant on 'special moves' / abilities, and the interface will most likely get a rework. If they simplify alchemy so you aren't handling all those components with a controller, and such, the game itself should do decently.