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Frank Miller.

Is there any indication at all of an intent to develop the property? Any indication that this isn't a routine move, ala Rockstar trademarking GTA: Tokyo?

Either you intended to play the game, or you're a terrible impulse spender. Either are definite possibilities.

If you look at their careers, Obsidian is more akin to Scorsese, I would suppose. Coppola is unmistakably Troika.

Halflings. They were halfling villages.

I'm pretty sure we've gone through this routine 8 or 9 times already.

Playing TF2, mostly.

That the game was replayable didn't matter because none of the playthroughs felt complete. The CNPCs became less characters and more "find the new dialogue in the loop" puzzles. Which happens, I guess. Which wouldn't be much of a problem (Bioware avoids this through meticulously railing their exposition, but it's no more satisfying) except that the ending's payoff largely hinges on your knowing these characters, no pun intended. I never unlocked the characters, even after 3 playthroughs.

Guys, ISOs. Use them.

PS:T has the same problems that The Witcher has, namely a propensity for dragging the player through tedium to get to the interesting bits. Combat in PS:T was atrocious, even more atrocious than the IE usual (which makes Baator particularly aggravating). And the way that the (meaningful) dialogue and the quests were set up was confusing. I've played through it three times and I've gotten different, but always incomplete, sets of dialogue from the CNPCs. Each time I beat it I was unsatisfied. The bad parts overshadowed the good parts. And if you're going to make an argument for ambition overshadowing ****ty gameplay in one case than it ought to apply consistently. It just happens to be the case that ****ty FPS gameplay is infinitely more tolerable than ****ty IE gameplay, which I suppose is a null point if you consider FPSes to be Crimes Against Gaming. In the end, Bioshock was a wildly ambitious game that also happened to be wildly successful, because its design was more favorable to the whims of the market. PS:T was then and is now an ambitious game that was uncommonly set against what the market made successful. The difference is only significant if you consider eclecticism to be a virtue. I don't think it is. Bioshock's the one that has the better chance of informing the direction gaming's going to take in the future.

Easier said than done, especially when you have big consequences for decisions. What if you inadvertently kill a character you like / need?

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It's an interesting concept, but it's a little punishing. If you're 22 hours into a game and you accidentally press the wrong button you'd have to go back through 22 hours to rectify the mistake.

If you thought you were getting your ass handed to you in STALKER, wait till you play the Oblivion Lost mod. Shoot a blind dog and 17 or 18 of them come out of nowhere. And you lose your anomaly detector. And bandages don't do anything more than stop bleeding.

By my estimation, none of the obvious strengths of the better Black Isle games outweigh any of the obvious strengths of the better Bioware games. But most people seem to favor the Bioware games, and this to me is explained through the flaws in BI's games being more immediately observable. In the broadest terms possible, Bioware games appealed to more casual RPG gamers and BI games were more for enthusiasts and PnP nuts. You get more out of PS:T in terms of potential story content and such, but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of patience and a lot of dealing. Bioware games are easy-breezy in comparison, but the game won't change in many basic ways from playthrough to playthrough.

There's a serious case of rose-colored glasses for Black Isle. They were hell of inconsistent, and really, BI's successes weren't necessarily better than Bioware's. They were just less adept at hiding their biggest flaws.

Is that in addition to the internal battery or in lieu of? What size battery? In lieu of. I won't lie, it's a sizable player, about the size of your hand stretched out. It's got a nice big screen for watching vid files, too. I haven't had to replace the battery yet (I think they run for $30 or so) but I've been dilligent about only charging when the battery's fallen below 25% power.

Ipods depend on the generation and the size. The 1-2 gigs last awhile, and older, heftier versions of ipods are generally pretty durable. It's when they started going form over function that the quality started to slip. Besides the fact that it's durable, another nice thing about the Zen is that it has an external battery that can be manually replaced.

Ipods aren't made for anything more rigorous than being lovingly gazed at, which is fine, Apple products are lifestyle accessories first and foremost. You don't get a MacBook Air or whatever it's called for the function. You get it because it matches your latte holders. In that case you could actually pay hundreds of dollars less for a laptop from the same brand that is very slightly larger and with much better specs. I got an ipod for my jogging routine. It lasted 12 days. My Creative Zen has lasted me 10 months now.

I never got all that absorbed in Condemned scarey bits, except for the part in the department store. There are mannequins strewn all about the level. Some of them are mannequins. Some of them are people. They'll stand perfectly still until you turned your back. This combined with the (excessively, in my opinion) claustrophobic level design and the pitch black darkness really set up an atmosphere. The problem with FEAR (besides the fact that I never found Ju-on evil little girls to be scary) was that it was easy to distance yourself from the horror elements because they weren't a part of gameplay. They were basically cutscenes seamlessly inserted into the gameplay as visions or whatever. The Ocean House in Bloodlines did a little better, as there were parts of it that could kill you, but still, after that first time it's not very scary. But that first time in the basement it's ****ing intense. Contrast those with something like the labs in STALKER. The poltergeists and psionic monsters created the same sort of atmosphere that you could get from harmless ambient noise and scary visuals, but they also had the ability to kill you. And the jumpers and pseudogiants made the best sorts of noises.

http://www.med!afire.com/?tbxn1mvc1b2 V/A - Purple Pain http://www.med!afire.com/?mzxnfrgytbd A punk cover of Prince's Purple Rain: featuring Randy, Refused, Stonefunkers, & other Swedish punk bands Replace ! with i in url.

I see what you did there, meaning the opposite of what you wrote. Tricky.