Pop

If you don't like good music, that is.

Tigranes is using colorful language that doesn't mean anything. MCA being sad as a melon just means he's sad.

Indigo Prophecy had a great licensed funk / R&B soundtrack, apart from the Theory of a Deadman. Jade Empire's soundtrack was probably the best thing about it.

Hmmm, don't know a Martin, but maybe Andy is Andy Battaglia? Shame.

It's already been established that Thorton will be able to keep tabs on world happenings. So expect a Bloodlines-esque newspaper / TV dynamic to make it into the game.

Both. And while I find the denigration of the BG2 writing mostly ridiculous (and Fallout 2's NPCs were better? Ah, nostalgia), nobody else has managed to implement intraparty interaction on the scope that Bioware set for that game. KOTOR and the like put it on rails, and BG1 and its ilk were deadly dull in comparison. There was no reason not to just create a TCP/IP game and fashion your own party.

Some free online hip-hop mixtapes, courtesy of AV Clubber Nathan Rabin. Busta Rhymes and the late J-Dilla - Dillagence ...Mick Boogie and Little Brother - And Justus For all (yessssss) Mark Ronson and Rhymefest - Man in the Mirror (a perhaps ill-advised Michael Jackson tribute... check out that awesome cover) And some Bishop Lamont mixtapes - N*gger Noise and Popemobile. The thing about rappers is that they're often wildly inconsistent. They might put out weak commercial output but more often than not, their best stuff is free and on a mixtape somewhere. See also - Lil' Wayne, Buck 65. Now I just have to track down Piracy Funds Terrorism...

Well after some digging I've found the "mod" file in the Steam directory. Anybody know any good mods to implement?

Unfortunately for me I got STALKER off of Steam, which apparently means no patches and no mods.

It should be pointed out (again) that bloggers (to whom a growing number of gamers exclusively turn for info) are not journalists, in the strict sense of the word. The line between reporting and editorializing is ever thin.

I quite liked Atton and his story arc, as well as Kreia.

I wasn't satisfied with most of the NWN2 NPCs, Khelgar included. Once he becomes a monk he ceases being a character. His alignment was muddled as well (he's pretty obviously a chaotic character, his logic doesn't really work) He was an interesting character concept, no doubt, but it didn't add up to much by the end.

Audiosurf ID is thepopstalinist, as far as I know. Just beat Crysis. I liked it. One of those rare FPSes whose back end is much more satisfying than the front end. Which surprised me, since Far Cry was exactly the opposite. Justified a new computer purchase? Not at all. But I got a new computer for STALKER, mostly.

The concealable weapons were fine, but it never made any sense to have customizable non-concealable weapons. You'd start the game with a shotgun and someone would see you and then the mission would become significantly harder. The SMG and Silverballers were always good, though. But then, I never cared about getting SA scores.

What the **** does that even mean? I'd assume you mean "cutting out the middle man" and let the fans see the development of a title. But that's a really silly notion, and an outright stupid decision for a developer to make. It's one thing for a superfan to gripe loudly about something he knows very little about, but giving that superfan a platform in which he has the legitimacy of having seen the work gives him far more power than he would ever deserve. Anybody who thinks the Fallout fanbase would do a better job of analyzing Fallout 3 than the gaming press ought to go ahead and donate their and their descendants' soft tissues to medical science. You give one schmuck with an axe to grind a daylong tour of your studio, even, and he's got real ammunition to sabotage the image of your game. Right now NMA / DAC are pretty much in the dark about Fallout 3 (despite "unnamed source" bull****) and given their predilections Bethesda has no choice but to keep them there. And obviously Bethesda can't care about the accuracy of what's written about their game. Imagine the pissing and moaning that would be heard of Bethsoft asserted editorial control over previews of its games.

That's not really a discredit until you take Predator out of the equation.

I like how people talk about PR pushes like they've never happened before. Even with so many different game sites it doesn't do to say "well, it's covered" when something's already been featured somewhere else. Every gaming outlet has an "exclusive" with "new screenshots" or whatever. If it wasn't that way the entirety of game press would be Game Informer and EGM. They're a part of the industry. We can moan about how awful Oblivion was but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of people bought it and a lot of people liked it, and as such Bethsoft = site hits. As for the fawning in the blogs, one, they're blogs and have no real standards for the way they ought to behave. Two, they're not Codex-type gamers. A gaming blog run by NMA types would elicit the kind of scorn that Pitchfork Media only dreams about, because let's face it, that sort has no enthusiasm for gaming at all, in the general sense. Can't you just imagine the headlines? "Another ****ty GTA game on the way a bloo bla bloo", "Bioshock sequel to signal end of civilization a bloo bla bloo" etc. etc.

Odd that they're keeping the level 20 cap.

I remember getting a CGM with Doom 2 featured on the cover. It had a painted scene in which the doom marine -helmet had jumped up on a Hell Baron's knee and was shooting it in the chest with the (new!) double-barreled shotty. Great stuff.

Isn't that what pulp espionage is all about?

Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure Descent Rise of the [expletive removed] Triad Colonization Civ 2 Starcraft Fallout Fallout 2 Baldur's Gate 2 Vampire: TMB Edited by SteveThaiBinh

STALKER was so muddled plot-wise (probably due to weird translation, but that can't account for all of it) that it'd be difficult to fault at least some players for getting bad endings.

Might've been the original engine, which had UE3 syndrome, in that all the characters who had normal bodies were the emaciated ones, and the "normal" characters were all giant dwarves with wide bodies and huge hands. No wonder Rosa lost weight.

Ethan Hunt seems to have gotten younger as well. And he's got a beard. In the first game I could've tagged him as any of the older dudes from CSI.

A hasted bowman with all the arrows of detonation you can buy made short work of Sarevok's entire party. I'm playing BGtutu, though, so I don't know if those arrows are added in from BG2.