mr insomniac

In some cases that might not be a bad idea. KotOR without Carth, ME without Kaiden -- not that I'm singling out that particular voice actor. It's not his fault his characters are lame -- ME2 without Jacob or Thane, DA:O without Wynne, Oghren or Zevran. Yep, not a bad idea at all.

At least your teams will have their own pick.

I bought the X games the other day at the Steam sale, but have to wait til... well, at least midnight pacific time to download as I'm on a monthly bandwidth limit. Steam tries pretty hard to make every game they sell seem like a huge deal, but I have to admit the X games intrigued me enough to give them a try, since I was hooked on Elite back in the day. Looking forward to giving them a try.

I liked AP a lot. I plan on playing it again one of these days. I think I might have loved the game had it been released as originally intended. C'mon Obsidz, do a director's cut!

I never knew Kelverin very well, except that he made a baseball thread here every spring. Condolences to the family and RIP.

I'm excited to hear about Mass Effect 3 as well. Probably the game I'm most looking forward to... well, other than Portal 2.

The swamp is where I quit playing the game both times. I just felt like whatever momentum the game had built up to that point, with the atmosphere, the music, and just being generally cool... it just ran out of steam in the swamp. Also, Valve killed the Witcher. Twice. First with Portal, since I bought both The Witcher and The Orange Box at the same time. Secondly with L4D, which came out shortly after I decided to give Witcher another go.

Emphasis is mine, as that's how I feel about Dragon Age 2. For me Witcher 2 is very much wait-and-see, since I couldn't get through the first one in two attempts.

^ I thought of that as well, although she must be named after the Avelline in Leliana's tale, or perhaps took the name herself as a tribute?

Contestant for worst name ever? Not if it has a pic of Private Joker in classic pose on the cover.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is on sale today for $5. I was intrigued by the first one but ultimately passed on it. This one looks like good mindless fun. Has anyone here tried it?

Same here. I'd easily recommend it as a single-player game. I think the game scales the number of baddies you face at any given time, based on how many people are playing it, and that's the only difference between Single- or multi-player. For DLCs I'd recommend Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Secret Armory of General Knoxx. The former has great atmosphere, and the latter feels like a complete game in itself. Claptrap Revolution was good but imho it's a distant 3rd compared to the other two. Mad Moxxi's Underdome is a grindfest in single-player mode. Bleh.

I just had a look at the list of spells that Rosbjerg put up. Good stuff, I'd never seen the complete list before. As to how it works, it doesn't mean you can't ever cast those spells if you're an Arcane Warrior. It just means your weapon will become unequipped when you try to cast one. You can re-equip the weapon again afterwards. You don't get to pick a specialization until you hit level 7, and you get a second one at level 14. Other than that, the only requirement is unlocking them. Some spells will have a casting time, eg: chain lightning, AoE spells. There's a combat skill that, for mages, will decrease the likelihood of your spell being interrupted. Also very useful to max that out, even before coercion.

Force Field + Crushing Prison is a good combo, for spells. I also like Tempest and Blizzard for AoE. Winter's Grasp/Cone of Cold + Stone Fist. Mind Blast is good if you get surrounded by enemies. I always liked Virulent Walking Bomb, at least early in the game. Best visual spell effect yet. Survival is a good skill, but really only one person in your group has to have it. Even playing as an arcane warrior, you won't be able to gain any of the special archer/warrior talents, so no real need for using bows at all. Staff is lower damage but it never misses. For stats, pump magic and willpower. I usually go with a 2:1 ratio on level ups. Get cunning up to 16 to max out Coercion, and some other skills, if you go that route. No need for anything else. Dex does increase your defense rating but killing everything as quickly as possible is better. I also liked spirit healer as a specialization, but then I'm usually the only mage in my group when I leave camp.

Didn't see this posted anywhere yet: L4D Does LOTR

Rest in peace, coach. Will never forget the awesome '93 playoff run.

Gah, no kidding. It's part of the reason I've never finished any of NWN2. EDIT: I've recently started a complete ME run to get both games fresh in my mind again. It's been a fair while since I played ME, but no so long that running around and scanning 21 keepers again bores me too much to continue for now. So... A couple friends of mine have just begun their own DA:O games and talking with them about it has inspired me to start another run, and maybe this time actually completing Awakening and the DLCs. Also really need to get into F:NV.

I'll add to that entire sequence: getting the Transcendant One to merge with me was the first time I'd ever dealt non-violently with an end boss and it fit in so well with everything I'd done in the game up to that point. As for worst endings: In recent memory, Borderlands. Bah. At least the Secret Armory of General Knoxx made up for it.

Sure the council and the alliance don't like that Shepherd is working for Cerberus, but if he went to them and said, "hey I want to come back to you, I'm not gonna work for those terrorists anymore, blah blah blah, what can you do for me," what could they do? Give him his spectre status back? Okay, they did that, but it's like a Justicar trying to get by on reputation outside of Asari space. Everyone knows they're badasses but nobody really cares about spectres in the Terminus. Sure the alliance could re-instate him as a commander again. Then what? Give him a cruiser, send him into the terminus and make him a target for every pirate, smuggler, outlaw and who knows who else? Or with an army and start a war? No one in council space is willing to do that. Cerberus has the Normandy mk II ready to go. It's the only way Shepherd can get around the Terminus unmolested. I wouldn't say that Shepherd is taking everything that TIM says at face value. I just don't think there's much choice, and Shepherd knows it. I didn't find it to be that exactly. It was quite good at throwing bad guys over the edges of long drops. Probably why they don't. Besides, their operations have never been large scale enough for anyone to take notice before. Maybe the reapers thought a human reaper would have a better understanding of human behaviour, instincts, etc.

Leliana's Song was okay, but yeah, the best of a bad lot. Admittedly I haven't finished Awakening yet.

Would that be the "most advanced warship in the alliance navy" that was destroyed in minutes at the beginning of the game? Or would it be the one that could only defeat the collector ship after having its shields, weapons and armor upgraded and was nearly destroyed anyway? I dunno, maybe you spacebar'd through the early conversations with TIM, and didn't realize that Cerberus was the only organization willing to go after the Collectors, let alone having the resources to do so. Whatever TIM's ultimate motives might have been, ie: wanting the Collector Base for himself, the explanations are there for why Shepherd should work for Cerberus. And you can play the entire game from the POV of not trusting Cerberus if you wish. And Cerberus is still seen as unambiguously evil by the council, by the alliance, by your old squadmates, and even some of the new ones. Meh, in the end it seems kind of silly to argue plot in either game. I just happened to like ME2 more. Oh yeah, shockwave was actually kinda cool.

Right-click on the game in your steam library, choose properties, then the "updates" tab. You can set the game to "do not automatically update", and yes you can set that for a game that's not currently installed before you install it, because the game is attached to your account, not whether it's actually on your HD. It still appears on your library list If you really want to see how it all works, experiment with a small game, like World of Goo or Machinarium.

Okay, I believe you're talking about installs that haven't been updated yet? That I dunno about. But yes you can backup everything you need to re-install F:NV onto a blank disk(s), delete it, and then re-install it anytime you want from the disk. Now that I think about it, when I re-installed Mass Effect, I did have to re-download and install the Bring Down the Sky DLC afterwards, even though I'm pretty sure - not 100% positive though - that it was already installed when I backed up the game. EDIT: Okay here you go: Installing from a backup At the very bottom of that page it says: So I guess you can assume from that it's a fresh install.

I thought Isabella was kinda cool, myself. When I met her I was kinda wishing the current LI wasn't within earshot.

That doesn't reinstall the game tho, does it? I mean, I can back up my save games on my own just fine. But if I want to DELETE/uninstall the game, you can't back up the installer, can you? Yes you can. As long as you have steam installed on your PC, you can re-install any games from disks. I've restored almost my entire library that way, after a HD crash.