Bartimaeus

Malc you have to admit its always better playing an RPG where you can explore the various Romance arcs? Nope he doesn't. Planescape: Torment Arcanum of Steampunk and Magik Obscura Vampire: Bloodlines To name a few. An engaging story does not need active romantic pursuits for the protagonist to engage in. Romance does not make writing engaging or good just by being present. Good writing is what makes writing good. Ideally, if the romantic arcs were well written and did not take away resources from other aspects of the game, then, if they weren't forced down people's throats, one could make an argument that it is always better to have more options. But it is not better to play a game with crap on the side just for having crap on the side over one that doesn't have that. After all, most of us here enjoy a good steak, none of us though would ask for the cow to crap next to the plate. (yeah I know, terrible analogy. Just pretend it was said by Al Pacino or someone else who can get away with saying anything in a movie.) I didn't explain my point properly. I'm not saying you have to have Romance to have an engaging RPG ( but I do think it enhances and makes party interaction more significant ) I am saying if an RPG offers optional Romance its better to partake of them than to ignore them Not if said romance is written as they are in most games where they're present today and it consequently completely breaks the experience for you. Or...if you're the type of person to project yourself as your character, and find the idea of being romantically involved with whatever choices the devs have pre-written out for you when you already find merely being "friends" with them to be a chore to be an unpleasant one. ...Or if you find the entire experience inorganic to begin with and would rather not bother with it at all. I'd say I'd fit somewhat in all three categories, and these are just the reasons I can think of right now. For me, I find that the best character relationships - whether they be friendships or romances - are those between other characters that do not include your own. However, even these seem to generally be done shockingly poorly when regarding a long term relationship, (say, game long). It's just a delight when they're not.

Why couldn't you send yours in? No ready replacement? Did they ask that you send in the old one after the new one arrived, out of curiosity?

Finished Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. Got Silent Assassin ratings on every mission. Weirdly enough, the latter half of the game was much, much easier than the first half: not sure if it's because I got better, or if it was just because it was genuinely easier. I'm leaning towards the latter, but it's something worth considering. Playing a little Binding of Isaac recently. I have the Golden God achievement, and the only thing I'm missing for Platinum God is kill Mom 200 times. I have a little over 100. Can't wait for Rebirth. (edit) lol, I thought this was the what are you playing thread. Whoops! Well, both of these games are on Steam, so...

Sorry, that was a poor way of stating what I meant: it's not that I'm totally uninterested in the morality aspect of the issue in general, but rather the boring, bland discussions that generally arise from discussing it. The discussion did indeed mostly head that way, which is why I bowed out of the topic after that first post of mine. Everything said here has been stuff that has been said a thousand times before: people trying to justify their particular exception (or exceptions they can think of that, in their opinion, might make it...at the very least, not completely reprehensible or whatever), and the other side, equally arrogant in their condemnation for whatever reasons, too. Most everyone's already so entrenched in what they think regarding the issue, and the people that aren't generally don't have anything much interesting to say (e.g. me), either, which is no better. Which is why I asked what I did: I'd have rather seen a discussion purely on the legal aspect instead of the moral, because it'd at least but something semi-new, but I guess they're both too intertwined for that to realistically happen - indeed, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what a discussion purely about the legal aspect would even look like. To me, this is like a discussion on abortion and other such "moral" standstill issues: nobody's going to change their minds, and it's going to (probably) be boring for those of us who have seen the subject raised a dozen times before with nothing to show for it. My opinion on the subject is the following: it's not black and white, (nor is anything hardly ever, really), exceptions can (and probably should be) made, laws should probably be updated to reflect the reality of the situation at some point (without doing something stupid like giving copyright infringement blanket legality), things can't be as horrible as some make it out to be, (on both sides), or there wouldn't still be massive corporation profits from making software/content, and you wouldn't be able to pirate stuff if you really "needed" to without being arrested, etc., blah blah blah. Honestly, I'm boring myself here: tempted to not post this, since it's rambly and poorly written, but...since it's already here...

Huh. I'd always wondered what "hardware mouse" actually did in the few games I've come across that have it as an option. The only question I have is why it's an option instead of the default...

First unless you correct the white around the second's Steam symbol to be whatever it was before you pasted it on the penguin. Then maybe that.

The plug and play/charge kit, at least for the 360 controller, doesn't allow it to actually work as a wired controller - still need a wireless transceiver.

I don't understand: what's the purpose of these special, rather obnoxious looking keys?

I would think that that's because a legal punishment isn't required nor appropriate, (in the case of infidelity).

Morality, (at least for this issue), doesn't really interest me. Other people's subjective morals are hardly likely to be of interest to me unless they raise interesting, new points/perspectives...of which there is almost certainly to be none of in regards to this subject, as it's such a dry, burnt topic that everyone seems to already have entrenched view points regarding. Nor am I really interested in detailing my own, equally subjective thoughts on any issues such as this in a forums as wildly polemic as these can be. Consequently, I'm more interested in the legal aspect, and would like to see the discrimination made between the two for this discussion so I can either ignore or follow this topic, accordingly.

Are we talking about in a legal or a moral sense? Your first question was "piracy or not?", when makes me think legal; your second is "is it bad or not?": which is it?

I love rainy days. In fact, I would very much like it if it were raining and semi-dark outside all the time, (discounting any other effects, like floods, that might result). Depends on what's in it. Could range from not caring hardly at all to contemplating suicide. Fix that crap. Throw it away if it's unfixable.

Very interesting. I, too, am curious as to whether it's true. If it is, well...previously, I was uncaring as to whether I'd end up getting a Z87 or a Z97 board for my 4770k, since it's unlikely I'd upgrade my CPU within the next five years with it. However, if it is true and actually begins to be implemented, the new speeds would completely ruin current SATA 3 capabilities - nevermind what they'll be in a few years - necessitating a jump to SATA Express/M.2 that I previously thought was not worth it. Even those might not be enough for the next few years if it's really as good as that article makes it out to be. I'll have to keep an eye on any further developments in the next few weeks as I'm considering a motherboard purchase.

I played NWN2/MotB on Core difficulty, and could never make myself control any character but my own. I don't know about Hardcore, but regular Core was pretty dang easy. The camera always infuriated so much that I refused to deal with it as much as possible. How much that game would've benefited by having a proper camera system...or simply being 2D. Although...it didn't even begin to compare to the absolute horror that was the Dragon Age: Origin's camera, so I guess there's that - that was nearly enough to reduce me to tears at times. I'll never play Dragon Age again for just that reason, nevermind all the others. All the time wasted trying to navigate the stupid "personal" camera so that you can actually see anything, having to readjust every five to ten freaking seconds if you're anywhere you might be making >=90 degree turns, (e.g. those tunnels in the beginning of MotB - those were a huge pain in NWN2...can't even imagine how terrible it'd be in Dragon Age)...or a completely non-functioning isometric camera that gets you murdered over and over because it doesn't let you see what you're going to be running into because the developers thought it'd be a fantastic idea to not be able to move your camera at least as far as the first archers you run into can shoot you from - no, instead, it's closer to only half as long as that...

Yep. 6-12 months here, generally, depending on the game in question. I haven't pre-ordered or bought at release an AAA game in many years.

Tried out Steam's "In-Home Streaming" today. Seems to work pretty well, though it seems to depend a bit on the game you're playing. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was playable, but had minor input lag. Not too bad, but it was noticeable, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game where any amount of input lag is very bad. Still, like I said, not too bad - I was able to pick up my previous save in the middle of the Red Forest and make my way to Lab X19. Counter-Strike worked perfectly. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin didn't really work at all - massive input lag, and video glitches that weren't displaying on my desktop that were displaying on the streamed-to computer. Overall, I think, good stuff for something that's still in beta. Still seems like it needs a little work, though, but that's to be expected. Might also be limited by the crappy video card I'm still using - not entirely sure. I thought that at first for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but when Hitman 2, a game that's less demanding by several orders of magnitudes, did much worse, and then CSS did perfect, I'm not so sure.

Penumbra: Black Plague is significantly superior to Overture, IMHO, you should check that game out. It, like Amnesia, doesn't have any weapons, though it is possible to kill enemies via environment. Mostly, though, like Amnesia, it's about avoiding combat altogether. There are some fantastic mind****s in Black Plague. I have all three on Steam...or actually, I have none on Steam, but I have a good friend who does who is Family Sharing the games (and about 300 others - thank you, Valve ) with me. Thanks - I'll probably try it out eventually. Want to finish Hitman 2 or Terranigma first before I begin any new games, though.

I've never played the Portal 2 multiplayer. Beat Penumbra: Overture about a week ago. Fun game. I actually enjoyed it more than Amnesia, although I wish the combat had been made harder. Much too easy to simply smite most baddies if you learn how to use the "weapons" in the game. Still working on Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. I'm about...15, maybe?...missions in. All Silent Assassin ratings so far. Weirdly, the first few missions were the hardest thus far, with that three stage snow mission being an outlier, while most everything else has been fairly easy. Eh.

Pretty sure, as a Half-Life player, that the inspiration for Bioshock Infinite came from System Shock and System Shock 2, not from any Half-Life games. Yes...but it's arguable that unlike its predecessors, BioShock 1 and BioShock 2, BioShock: Infinite is inspired quite a bit (more) from Half-Life (2). I think it took elements from Half-Life 2 it abstained from using in the previous two entries and ran with them and just kept running.

A most interesting effect. I'm not familiar with the original song, but it seems to sound quite good for a song being played roughly at 1/4th its normal speed. My own tests make their own interesting cases, too - it's only unfortunate that it tends to leave you with gigantically long songs... Songs with drums (or other heavy bass instruments) seem to fare poorly. So do songs with long, heavy notes. Interesting and fun.

You might try Cheat Engine and hook it to your browser (or whatever), and set the browser to 100x speed or something. Not sure if it would work, as it depends on how it's "speaking" to you, but it might be worth a try.

Sorry: I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I posted that, as you were mostly correct. I simply felt as though you were giving much more importance to those rather minor (in my opinion) connotations than was appropriate, (to my credit, at least, I didn't actually *contest* those connotations specifically). Obviously, the context is important, too, as you have rightfully pointed out. Apologies.

Indeed. The one I linked to is fairly high quality, though - Seasonic design and all. Price does not necessarily relate to "cheapness", especially in the 400-600w range. I think it's rather insane to pay $150-$200 for a higher efficiency model, (like the Seasonic Platinum Edition you mentioned earlier), when their levels of reliability are not *that* far apart. Though it does also depend on how much you push the PSU - if you're pushing it hard, you would want to go as high quality as possible...except at that point, unless you're considering electricity bills, you should probably just get a slightly lower quality PSU at a little higher wattage for half the price. (P.S. Not sure why the text of my link is to a newegg page, but then goes to reddit. I must've screwed up somewhere, haha - not that it really matters, since the topic was already removed from the subreddit a little bit after I posted my previous message for already being expired.) Funny anecdote: my mother has been using this piece of garbage for roughly the past 4, 5 years. It's a joke of a PSU that I wouldn't use to power a toaster, much less my desktop, but she's been using it with no problems - probably related to the fact that her components don't push it very hard. I gave her an old OCZ ModXStream of mine so that she doesn't end up blowing up her computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371059 Wouldn't be enough for SLI, Keyrock, but it's a fairly cheap, high quality semi-modular Seasonic unit for a single card setup, if you're interested. Edit: I lied. $25 MIR expired yesterday. Still being advertised, though...darnit, reddit!

800W seems about correct to me for a SLI of two 780 TIs - maybe 750W with a Gold or Platinum, but...no need to push it. I generally follow this list (combined with that realhardtechx page...Humanoid posted earlier to make sure you're getting what you think you're getting) when buying PSUs. It's not perfect, (and it's not complete), but it seems to generally be a good guide. From my time following http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/, it seems kind of rare that good deals for higher wattage PSUs are done, (whereas there are deals for the 400-600W range posted at least every few days, it seems). Best of luck.