DemonKing

In the later parts of the old series you see a number of daleks getting blown apart and their chunky, glistening, slimy bits being splattered around. I think in the Peter Davison Dalek story (Resurrection of the Daleks) you get to see the slimy blob that crawls out of a destroyed dalek attacking someone and in Revelation of the Daleks, there is a glass dalek containing a human being mutated into a dalek creature. I still haven't seen the new series as I'm living in Germany at the moment but will get the boxed set from the UK when it's available. Luckily Blake's 7 series 3 just arrived and I'm enjoying that at the moment to tide me over.

I've only played the full game of Wizardry 8, but I would recommend that -great character development and tactical combat. The only problem might be the storyline which can be a bit confusing if you didn't play Wizardry 7. I tried the DD demo but it didn't do much for me.

Australian Cricket Team. No contest.

So difficult - so many fond memories, way back to the Apple II/C64 days. At a pinch I would go with: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Icewind Dale Wizardry 6 ...but even that is a real struggle with so much missing.

Beware the ZOMBIE dogs!

I remember the only interesting sermon our priest ever gave was after his kids dragged him to see "Return of the Jedi". Basically he was talking about how the Emperor represented the temptation of the Devil and that despite his many sins, Vader got redemption at the end. So SW made me listen in church for the first (and last) time in my life!

Apparently BF2 had more players on-line this past weekend than either CS or CS:S, so I guess you'ld have to say it's been moderately successful so far. I quite like it. The physics are pretty good - it's fun to watch bodies flying in the air from a well aimed artillery blast. The crashes are spectacular and the infantry combat is much better than in previous games. The sniper rifle is pitifully underpowered at present, but that might change in future patches. I still can't fly helicopters very well though.

All Wizardry titles were also made available on the IBM compatible format. They were never available for the C64, but the Bard's Tale series (quite similar games) were. You could even import Wizardry and Ultima characters into the original Bard's Tale game.

No - the rustic colonials in her Majesty's former colonies are quaint, for their strange habit of leaving letters out of perfectly good and proper English words (eg it's "honoUr" not "honor"). Back to the question, I find most higher maths incomprehensible and dull. My brother is a mathematician and he says the problem is that most mathematicians aren't very good at "selling" maths. Everyone can see the point of being able to do basic sums but advanced trigonometry seems to have no bearing on everyday lives and most maths nerds can't articulate that bearing well enough for the average person to appreciate it. I dropped maths after junior high school and haven't missed it in my working life, no matter what crap my brother says.

I must really be old - I've played almost all of them!

Not very optimistic are you? So what's your prediction for the forthcoming Ashes series?

I saw Star Wars (none of this "Episode IV: A New Hope" rubbish), for my 7th birthday, so I expect I'll be pushing up the daisies any day now.

Never felt guilty about the first one. It was just a bit weird in retrospect. I just wanted to do what any teenage boy wanted, but Mum was a very strict "no sex before marriage" kind of woman who lived in morbid fear of the shame that would fall on her if I fathered a bastard. Hence I actually used to feel physically sick with guilt when I tried to do normal teenage things - probably because she was a pretty good mum up to that stage of my life. She's chilled out a bit now, but seeing as I had to break the ice for the rest of the kids (I have an elder brother but he was school chess champion, so no girl would touch him), life was pretty tough there for a while.

I would murder my religious zealot of a mother so I didn't have to go through puberty feeling guilty every time I touched a girl or having to endure a "family meeting" every time a girl rang me at home.

If you're a Bio fan try the forums at www.rpgcodex.com - you're sure to fit in!

Nope - they shipped me multiple replacement graphic cards before I sent it back to them, and the temp on the graphics cards was within limitations. Whatever - I usually build my own systems but had been salivating about an Alienware for years (taken in by magazine hype) so I thought I would spoil myself when I moved countries. Worst mistake ever. They'll never get my business again (although I must admit my inner nerd is tempted by the cool Dark Side Sw cases they've pimped recently).

Alienware screwed me badly -I forked over top dollar for one of their top of the line machines and ended up having to send it back for repairs 4 times in the first year alone. The first time was from an over-heating problem, but the subsequent 3 times was from an unexplained crash everytime I played a game for more than a few minutes. Every time they assured me it was fixed and it wasn't until they finally gave in and replaced the whole system that a proper resolution was reached -and that was only after I threatened to make a formal complaint to the department of consumer affairs. I must have wasted weeks of my life trying to find a solution on-line, reinstalling drivers, video cards, reformating my entire system and harrassing their help line.

Don't forget that Interplay own the rights to the "Dark Alliance" name - sans the FR/D&D setting. Another brilliant Herve move - I'm sure he's busily sourcing finance for his next MMPORPG Dark Alliance console title as I write.

I didn't say it was, just that the combat and party system seems similar, given that I only played the FF demo. You can pause in combat in FF right? Not sure about that. I'm sure they bought some art assets - seeing as you can pick them as your avatars on this forum, but no one's directly come out and said "we own the IWD franchise". I imagine there would be some issues with Atari on that count - unless of course they have been purchased from Atari in the first place.

I only played the demo for the latest Freedom Force game but it seemed to be party-based with combat that was real time with pause - sounds a lot like BG to me.

Yes but they've been hiring like crazy recently and remember they have two studios, one in the US and one in Australia.

I've heard rumours that Irrational Games (who developed the Freedom Force Superhero CRPGs) are working on BG3 in their Australian studio. Might make some sense given that Irrational and Bioware seem to have some sort of relationship - you can order Irrational Games from the Bio on-line store now.

I think we have to stop making guns look so phallic - then little boys won't want to play with them anymore and will be less inclined to join armies and point them at whoever their leaders tell them are "THE EVIL ONES". Fat chance of that happening. Anyway, purely in terms of what appeals to me in FPS games and so on, I love the feel of my trusty MP40 in WW2 games - great for clearing out rubble-strewn towns in conjunction with my handy potato-masher.

Well they did get $65million from Hasbro for giving their intellectual property back to them, although of course Herve could have burned through that in a week back in the old Interplay days. Now imagine if they injected the full $65 million in developing a new D&D CRPG...ahh what dreams are made of!