Pop

*thwack* IT'S NOT DEAD It's been 15 days since Game Informer got its exclusive look at F3, so now everybody else takes a crack: Bethesda Q&A 1 and 2 Comprehensive IGN coverage Gamespot coverage Joystiq article and bullet points Eurogamer coverage 1up coverage o'course, links cribbed from DAC.

Lock it before Ron Paul comes up.

Buddy Wakefield, Alias, Buck 65 and Sage Francis at the Gothic. Went for Buck. We got there a little early, Buck and Alias were manning the merch booth. I didn't know who Alias was, so I looked at his CDs and mainly remarked on the featured collaborators (some dudes from the Notwist / 13 & God) and Alias said that Neon Golden was one of his favorite albums. I also met Buck for the first time, bought every bootleg he had (and Square on vinyl) and had them sign them, along with a t-shirt. Buddy Wakefield was the first act. Picture a huskier, younger, tweaked-out present-day Bruce Willis. We were up in the balcony, but we could see him giving everyone the crazy eye. Turns out he's a spoken word dude, and his set, while short, was impressive. Lots of pent-up energy and stream-of-consciousness weirdness. Next up was Alias, and I felt kinda embarrassed when I realized the guy I had just talked to at the booth was an act. He's one of Sage Francis' producers, and he had a pretty good flow, I dug his set. He had a funny little story about an unnamed rapper who apparently hated Anticon for being a "white label" and how fake said rapper was for making songs about "punching you in your ****" and not actually doing it when given the opportunity. Next up was the main attraction for our little group, Buck 65. I can't seem to remember the setlist all that well but Buck was a very charismatic performer, playing with a laptop and a turntable and dancing. It's not exactly flattering to think about, but picture that from Knocked Up who wore the NIN shirt, 15 years older, same hair, with a scruff beard, and you've got Buck. First he did a little Mick Jagger impersonation that was definitely winning, and he went into a disappointingly short (45 minute) setlist. Highlights were "Out of Focus", "Fish Heads" "The Centaur" and "463". He also played a song from his new record (an American release, thank God) that sounded pretty amazing. Since he apparently went on for too long, he had the crowd "choose" the last song, between "Pants on Fire" and "Wicked and Weird", and much to my disappointment the crowd chose "Pants on Fire", which Buck started, then stopped, then restarted with an added turntable backing, but failed to spice up the really dull live mix. After that, my friend Rai had to get a cigarette outside the venue, and the smoking area was packed, so we hung around. When Sage Francis' set started everybody but us and a few other Buck fans stayed in the smoking section and we talked through about 80% of it, and perhaps made a new friend in the process (we'll see if we hear from him). For the last 20 or so minutes of the night we went in and met Buck again and chatted him up, and had him sign some more stuff. We talked about the differences between the music business in America as opposed to the rest of the world, how success was relatively easy to achieve elsewhere (Buck says he's doing very well in Australia) and how he's been largely shut out of the American market until now, as his new album's gotten Sage's backing. He's a great guy, but I was aware that I was just another fan and the small talk didn't really amount to much. Great fun, great show, I didn't really care much for Sage Francis anyhow. I got what I came to see.

KDUST has some pretty good classic rock, and unless you're playing on a PS2 or a 360 it's not terribly difficult to program your own station.

San Andreas is only "ghetto" for the first fifth or so of the game. Once you get past all the Grove Street missions it expands into more GTA3-esque weirdery. New term for the day: weirdery.

The best way to send a message to mediocre developers would be to form your own awesome development company and blow the others out of the water. Learn capitalism plzthx.

Pac Man: Championship Edition. Fast-paced, like Geometry Wars with a lighter learning curve. ****ing pinky always gets me.

What

It's funny that there are as many hospital beds as there are people in the US, because it's damned hard to stay in one compared to 20 years ago. My mom tells me wondrous stories of overnight hospital stays for outpatient surgery. These days they send mothers home the day of birth.

If that's the case, why do you own consoles in the first place? /:|

Nay, Tale did us all a great service. Increase the peace.

With all due respect, the very last source of information I would seek regarding the efficacy and value of the free market is a libertarian. That'd be like consulting Fidel Castro while researching the value of socialism. They both place high rhetoric over history when it comes to their respective idealpolitiks. I get mighty suspicious when I see the 30+ countries with better healthcare than America and I'm told that what works there cannot work here, or even that being worse is preferable, because the taxes aren't justifiable or whatever it is that people want to argue. It's a poor excuse, and the industry of medicine should be concerned with healthcare over profits, and the only way to make that work is to take the onus of care away from entrepeneurs and businessmen and into the hands of the people who should be benefiting, the taxpayer. I would much rather have a European socialist (yes, I said it, don't have an aneurysm) system with a weak capitalist safety net than an American capitalist system with a weak socialist safety net. That isn't to say that I've completely discounted the idea of capitalism as a solution to the crisis, I just don't see it as acceptable. Making medicine for-profit would leave the healthcare situation largely as it is, since there's really no reason to treat people who can't pay (ie the 40 million Americans without insurance) short of some kind of government-provided incentive, and I actually think that everyone has a right to healthcare regardless of their financial situation, and that just doesn't jibe with rugged individualism or whatever it is they're renaming social darwinism these days.

Much as I detest Moore's previous polemics, there isn't a lot of room for him to overstep his bounds here. No foreigner, no matter how conservative, would wish to switch their health system with ours, because ours really, really ****ing sucks. Free market medicine just doesn't work.

Sid Meier really, really needs to get off his ass and make Alpha Centauri 2. Seriously, now.

This got me through high school. Ah, to be young again. Also, Levi just dropped me a line on the RAWBERRY **** YOU BALTIMORE I want one And last but not least, the infamous . Imagine watching Dr. Who at 8:30 and seeing this in the middle of it all.

there's a petition out to persuade Bethesda to release the full Fallout 1 design docs. I signed it, but I expect it to do about as much good as most petitions.

It's about 12 hours long. 24 in-game hours, each taking about half an hour to complete. There's another 8 on top of that to finish the game.

PS3 and 360. If the rumors are true, the 360 version will be the optimal one, considering the amount of money ($50 mil) Microsoft put into exclusive content deals. Not sure about PC, but given the series' history it's a safe bet it'll come out eventually.

I tried the monk type. I never get too with him. The difficult part was that you had to be a journeyman in h2h before you started doing damage with your fists to things that require magic weapons, thus up until about 8th level I was using a blunt weapon I wasn't that great with. In Morrowind, you always had that ability by default. It was fun to go out and get into fistfights with ghosts. Just reinstalled BG2, installed all the mods I had - Fixpack and the problem seems to have been eliminated.

Nothing, I've been personally using today. That and I feel like trolling.

Why yes, I was looking for an excuse to use that. And Kor, I'd would say that I wish the same happened here, but in BC no one ever gets caught for holding. :D Indeed.

Glad to contribute.

Has anyone here actually finished this game? Yeah. Monk-type, didn't dally on most of the sidequests, finished the game at level 9 easily, what with the scaling system. Apparently the forces of Hell could only spare weak scamps to stop me from foiling their plans.