alanschu

Hahaha, I can imagine. I love how they bitch and moan about the historical innaccuracies of Medieval II, but...hello people, their haven't really had much going for historical accuracies up until this point, what makes you think 4th time is a charm??

I'd recommend playing them in order as well.

Yeah. I love how they point out a -4 game in 2000 for Lidstrom. And do you really want an effortless player representing YOU at the All-Star game?

Different Strokes for different folks. I'd probably rate the Fallouts just behind Ultima VII for favourite role playing games.

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/spo...3e-fdee76eaa870 Hahahaha

The "reviewer's tilt" is the most important rating as far as I'm concerned.

Oh yeah, I remember that bug now. The way I worked around it was to quit to main menu before loading, since I was always allowed to load my game from there. It was in the streets of that town, which had lots of soldiers and resulted in me dying a lot :D Hahaha, there was no hot loving for me. Must have missed that part

Draconian Police Staaaate

So is your criticism of Batman in a role that other superheroes have been in (helping the military) more because you don't like Frank Miller, or because you actually didn't like the role? For what it's worth, I think Superman helping the military in WW2 was stupid, because it just leads me to think "hey, why didn't he just go get Hitler?"

Heh, I wouldn't hold your breath.

So?

Yeah, you beat me to it.

I have loved each and every single one of the Splinter Cell games. Double Agent (even on teh PC Bokishi....I guess I'm just lucky again because I never had any real issues with bugs in it, though I know they exist. The only one I had was fixed by using AMD's dual core optimizer to help with the timing of dual core chips). The only disappointment I had in the series was that Double Agent didn't continue the trend of every successive game being better than the previous one. I think it was a bit of a step down from Chaos Theory (which I loved immensely....I actually missed Sam's chatter with Grimsdotter. Given what happens in DA, I bet he would have loved to have had a chat with Grimsdotter again), but the idea behind the game was promising. The story was still pretty solid IMO.

CC2 limits the tanks by only allowing a small number of support units, which tanks are included under. I think you can have at most 6 tanks. But that also comes at the expense of mortars, heavy machine guns, and snipers. The Russian Front was definitely more tank oriented than A Bridge Too Far. I think it's because there are some operations that are literally out in the fields. They removed the distinction between standard units and support units, and allowed you to mix and match in any way. But if you're coming into any town area, you'd be best having some infantry. Last thing you want is to have some anti-tank rifle shooting holes in you, or worse yet, a flamethrower at close quarters (lost a King Tiger to one once. I was pissed). The tanks are very expensive for unit acquisition points though. I don't necessarily mind a preconceived outcome, just not given some of the operations that existed in the grand campaign. I don't mind the preconceived outcome in Silent Hunter III for example. I'm just one sub, and even if I sink some huge tonnage, I don't expect to single-handedly change the course of the war.

What do you expect Shadowstrider to say?

Superman had alraedy been done. It's not at all uncommon for comicbook superheroes to be used in patriotic means.

I was a huge fan of the second one. I loved the quasi-dynamic campaign along Hell's Highway in Belgium. Basically the grand campaign is split into 3 regions, with 3 operations happening in each one. Each operation has a few predefinied battlemaps. The regions, IIRC, are Son, Eindhoven, and Arnhem. There's about 5 or 6 bridges that need to be captured by the Allies, in order to bypass the Siegfried line and zoom into the industrial core of Germany (a "war is over by Christmas" plan). The Germans are typically on defense, with some offensive areas behind the main line to retake landing zones and cut off XXX Corps (the Armoured column that has just left from Antwerp and will get to the first bridge along the Son River in about a day. While you can't decide to attack along different fronts or anything, the impact of your battles makes an impact. You get to keep your troops from previous battles, and if you can cut off the Allies, you can prevent Armoured reinforcements and dwindle their supply lines. One region can be airdropped supplies a day, so if you can capture Landing Zones, it makes life easier. And if you are about to lose some of the smaller bridges, you can blow them up. This delays XXX corps by 14 hours. In between battles, you can choose for 1, 4, or 7 hour ceasefires (until night time gets too close, at which point you can wait overnight). The Allies have a week (or maybe 10 days) to capture Arnhem, or the operation is a failure. Unit availability is historically accurate. For example, after a few days, one of the local SS Panzerkorps divisions in the area is made available to the Germans. A bit less stuff like this for the Allies, as their historical unit available is influenced by how well you do in the campaign (i.e. the progress of XXX Corps). The third one improved on the battle dynamic, though the campaign was made up of a ton of small operations. Ultimately, given it's scale, the outcome was preconceived. A bit silly, as I successfully captured the Kremlin and held of the IS-2 tanks at the outskirts of Berlin, but oh well. I got "Total Success" for the campaign, though Germany Still loses. Kind of funny. The combat model was better though, and it also introduced artillery strikes. The 4th one allowed for a more dynamic campaign, about the Ardennes Offensive. You had to make pushes up through the forest, and logistics are a mess. Only 1 division can occupy a region at a time, so if you can stall the German offensive, you can limit the amount of divisions they get in the area. It has a small map, where you can direct your divisions to go. Holding Bastogne is huge, as it's a central hub that lets you move in a large variety of directions. It also introduced air strikes. Usually they were unavailable due to bad weather, but they were another thing to call in in addition to artillery. I never played the 5th one (nor the first one), but it sounded quite similar in its play dynamic of the 4th one, except it was around D-Day. The Allies needed to capture a few places like Cherbourg, Caen, and St. Lo. I believe you also had control over which division came in as reinforcements (which made lots of people happy. People like to play with TIger tanks, but the only way to get them in CC4 was to have many of your divisions lose battles and fall back to the back of the line).

8

I blast formations of swordsmen with legions of the Knights Hospitaller.

Unfortunately, it seems ingrained that admitting mistake is a very, very bad thing. Because once you confess your mistake, you can't possibly deny it any more. Which means, depending on the situation, you may have also just opened yourself up to a hefty payout via lawsuit. At least that's the thinking. I hear about it a lot in the medical profession, where admitting a mistake makes a malpractice suit easier to win. The funny thing though, was reading up on an article about a hospital that had an open policy about admitting mistakes. I think it was in MacLean's. Basically, the hospital felt it was bad for the mental health of both doctors and patients (or those related to the patient) to try to obsfucate the issue when something goes wrong. If doctors make a mistake, they are encouraged to have an open discourse with the patient. Interestingly, the discourse made the doctors seem less arrogant and more human, and they typically received less malpractice claims against them. The idea was that perhaps keeping patients out of the loop helped foster feelings of animosity.

I have heard about that too. I believe the TIME Magazine 60th Anniversary magazine mentioned it. The one that was particularly neat was when the US Navy had Destroyers nearby one of the beaches (likely Omaha, since that's where they were having the most trouble). Apparently the destroyers broke protocol, and aggressively approached the beaches to make their fire support much more accurate, relying on their own visual spotting rather than from radio teams on the beach. They got as close as they possibly could (I think one even bottomed out) to provide maximum fire support. It's a bit shakey since I read it a while ago (2004), but I do remember one of the command ships picking up a radio signal from the beach stating "Thank god for the United States Navy" But for much, much worse, Hitler had assumed pretty much absolute control of his armed forces by that time. Ironically, when Germany was achieving a lot of military successes, it was when more open thinkers such as Guderian and Manstein that encouraged initiative had more control over their forces.

This solution is a bit less draconian than mine. And undermines my Xenophobic desires to scare new users away

Then perhaps you should have chosen your words a bit more carefully. And there are no penguins in Canada.

The impression I got from reading up on many things about D-Day was that the Allies gained the advantage because their NCOs and Junior Officers had much more freedom to show initiative than the Wermacht did.

No other studios from any other country have made movies about courage, honor, and sacrifice? Man, sounds like a market waiting to be tapped!