DemonKing

Well, I think we can presume from that that we won't be seeing DA until well after Mass Effect - although I hope to see DA well before their MMPORPG is released. Judging from the steady stream of developer posts on the DA forums it seems like work on DA is still pottering away, although I very much doubt it will be a 2006 release.

Seriously cool - something to keep us going until TWM2. I was hoping they'd give us an Alexander game/expansion - I'm really looking forward to this one.

Can someone clear up for me who actually owns the IWD license now? I know Feargus bought a lot of the IWD art assets in one of Herve's garage sales, but I would have thought Atari owned the license still and it would be up to them as to whether or not a new IWD game could be produced. If Obsidian actually owns the IWD license then how does that fit in with the Atari D&D license?

I think that's the problem - if they had a model like Guild Wars (which the instanced adventures part of D&D Online apparently resembles) where you only pay for the expansions you want and no monthly subscription, then I think this would work. As it is, I've already heard of people hitting ht level cap under 1 week which is hardly going to keep people's attention enough to want to pay the subscription fee over a long period of time. I'd buy it if it was set-up like Guild Wars but at the moment it doesn't sound like value for money to me.

I don't know - they don't take much time if no one releases any, which for PCs has pretty much been the case since KOTOR 2 came out last year unless you count weird European/Russian stuff or Jeff Vogel's budget games.

That's the problem with ATI drivers - they're all about increasing FPS in the hot games of the moment, but sometimes they make older games unplayable. I remember at one stage the recommended drivers from ATI were different for three of my favourite titles at the time (KOTOR, Thief 3 and BF:Vietnam). Fine if you only play one game at a time but I like to chop and change as the mood takes me.

Yes but the problem with ATI was their drivers, seeing as they are constantly breaking older games with each driver release. After a couple of years of ATI I swore that I'd never go back until they started doing decent driver testing rather than pumping out updates every month for PR's sake like they do at present.

Played it: Positives: Weapon sounds/animations feel pretty good. Nice-looking level layout. Can switch between commandos on the fly. Negatives: Looks and plays like a last generation console game. Sneaking is not very well implemented. Demo (both levels) takes about 10 minutes to complete. Overall it looks like a bargain bin title to me - which is probably why they aren't releasing it at full price.

Run, don't walk, to your local gaming store and buy it. You won't regret it. It's almost two games in one - tactical combat and a strategic turn-based city/empire management sim. And for those the love Medieval - Total War: Medieval 2 will be out later this year.

I treated myself when I got back from 2.5 years overseas last year so my current rig (home built) is pretty groovy: AMD XP64 Dual Core 4400+ 2 GIG Ram 250 GIG SATA HD Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB Soundblaster X-Fi Music Soundcard Logitex MX518 Optical Mouse (I need one with a clickable wheel) Samsung 930bf 19" LCD Monitor (4ms response time - it's sweet) Zalman 5.1 Headphones with mic. I like to play my games with all graphic options on max so I guess I'm doomed to upgrade fairly often, although hopefully this baby is future-proofed for a little while. I might upgrade the videocard when the Dirext X 10 models plus games to support them come out in the next year or so, plus will probably go the Vista and 64Bit path as well as long as the reviews are favourable. Only problem I have is some games don't respond well to the Dual cores and to avoid crashes I have to exit them and disable one of the cores manually, which is a pain in the butt (so far Rome:Total War, Dragonshard and any Source engine game have had these problems).

Well if you want to be anal about a typo then for god sake's don't forget to start a sentence with a capital letter and finish with a full stop.

I don't get why Volo even cares if JE was a failure or not...save for rampant fanboi-ism, assuming of course that he doesn't have a stake in Elevation. JE was always a long shot anyway, given the lack of an established license, obscure Asian hybrid setting, and its release at the tail-end of the original X-Box lifecycle.

That's a great vid - my favourite bits were when the guy starts screaming "Mercy? You want mercy? I"M CHAOTIC NEUTRAL!" and at the end when they start talking about being Plutonic Life Partners 'cause I actually know a couple of nerds who are like that.

I used to have a Mitsubishi Diamondscan 230 22" CRT monitor and it was glorious, but when I moved countries recently I swapped to a Samsung 930BF LCD (4ms!) and I can't say I'll be going back to CRT anytime soon. There's no motion blur or any problems with this screen compared to older LCD models. I'm much happier to recommend LCDs for gaming now I've been using this baby then those I saw a few years ago the last time I was in the monitor market. As someone else said, just look for <8ms and you should be fine.

Apparently he was 270lbs when he died...and I don't think any of that was muscle.

PST was an interesting effort, but it was pretty flawed: the radial menu was terrible, missile weapons non-existant, animations awkward and it was more like a book than a game in places. It was also very linear and I didn't find the NPC interactions that much more interesting than in BG2 (thank god for Morte). I prefered the original IWD - beautiful graphics, music and a surprisingly complicated and compelling storyline. It reminded me of what it was like playing D&D with my mates when I was 12. ie: It captured the essence of PNP. HoW was not that great (but TotLM made up for that). IWD2 was ok but clearly suffered a bit from its rushed production schedule. I liked the BG series too - it was really fun to collect all the iconic D&D magic stuff and the NPC interactions were new and fresh at the time. The expansions were a bit disappointing though, and didn't add too much to the game (ToTSC was poorly designed apart from the mega-dungeon and TOB was ridiculously overpowered to the extent that I would leave +3 swords lying around because they weren't worth picking up).

I thought it was a pretty amazing acheivement given the development schedule, but it certainly wasn't as good as the original. Pros: Nice 3E implementation (thank god they didn't go for the "hybrid" 2E/3E that was proposed at one stage), sub-races, great variety in party makeup, some well-designed areas. Cons: Painful puzzles (especially on replaying - *cough* Fellwood *cough*), rehashed levels from the original (Dragon's Eye, Kulldahar, The Hand etc), some pre-patch problems (game stopping Dragon Eye bug, lack of heavy armour), too many darts of frost and not a lot of interesting loot unlike the first game, Music used too sparsely. It was a decent game but don't expect miracles from something that was put together in such a short time frame.

A Feast for Crows is a little different from the first three books, with the war of the Five Kings winding down somewhat and the survivors trying to consolidate their power bases/recoup. Most of the next book is already written as Martin had to split his original Feast up as it was simply too long - so all the Tyrion/Jon/Dany fans will have something to cheer about (hopefully) later this year or early next. Feast alone is worth reading for Cersei getting her just deserts at the end.

True...except for the one graphic application that really matters...GAMES!

There are plenty of evil, tin-pot dictators in the world...are you proposing that the US should intervene everywhere? I found it pretty funny how 2.5 years ago Bush was playing dress-ups on an air-craft carrier declaring victory and now he's begging for continued patience and saying that victory in Iraq is "still possible". I can't believe the US public was dumb enough to give this guy a second term.

I think it would be naive to assume that the recent world and Australian focus on the "War on Terror" have not resulted in an increase in race-attacks against people of middle-eastern origin. Also recent pre-emptive arrests of alleged Muslim terrorists in Australia may have promoted a "get them before they get us" mentality amongst some of the drunken yobo element. In any case, the Australian media hasn't helped by inflaming the situation by blanket-coverage and sensationalism.

From my understanding, it seems like a case of double idiocy: 1. Lebanese-Australian gangs causing trouble. 2. Drunken Anglo-Australians "standing up" for "real Aussies". The Lebanese gangs should be dealt with just as any other gang/semi-organised crime group should be - perhaps there is a perception that they were treated with kid gloves by authorities not wanting to seem racist which is partically to blame for the problem. The drunken Anglo-Aussies are equally shameful - telling Australians of Middle-Eastern origin to "go home" is kind of daft considering most of them are only 1 or 2 generations away from being immigrants themselves. All we need now are some Aboriginal gangs forming and telling the Anglo-Aussies to get out of "their" country. There is definitely racism here in Australia. The rise of the infamous One Nation party in the late 90s is proof of that. Our Prime Minister (despite some lame protestations to the contrary) is clearly aware of this vibe and happy to exploit it as can be seen through his pre-election "get tough" stance on illegal immigrants, blind support of US foreign policy in the Middle East and constant warnings against "home-grown" terrorists. Case in point: When an Asian country executes an Australian citizen everyone is up in arms, but when the Governator executes some black ex-gang memeber no one blinks an eyelid.

That movie is a laugh - I see it on TV every 10 years or so and it still cracks me up. "SH*t man! The chicks are packed!" "Warriors...come out and play!" Has me ROTFL every time.

I had no problems with Bard's Tale 3, but I had to buy the guidebook to get through one section of Bard's Tale 2. Other games I've found extremely difficult: Wizardry 7, Myth 3, Sudden Strike, Dark Reign, Silent Hunter 3 and the end battle of Pools of Darkness! I never got past that bit in the Hitchhjiker's Guide text game with the babelfish either - although I was pretty young at the time!