Bartimaeus

"Female" and "male" flow off the tongue better for me than "man" and "woman". I've never liked the latter two so I generally do not use them, (with the rare case of "man" as part of a phrase, such as, "What were you thinking, man?"). Define female: noun: female; plural noun: females 1. a female person, animal, or plant. Usage defines, unfortunately. The "weirdness" is kind of your own making - the same could be said for my dislike of "man" and "woman", true, but I'm not preaching at others for it.

I wish so many cases weren't rounded like that one is. I like meshes, I like black, and I like perfect right angles. As I'll be needing a new case fairly soon if I want to be able to run both of my desktops, does anyone know any other cases similar to the Antec Three Hundred (what I currently have - e: actually, I have the original Three Hundred, which I think looks slightly better, but has less features, but it's close enough) or Corsair Carbide 300R (that I currently am considering to be my best choice) that I should keep my eye on for a decent price? Preferably without any LED fans, but it doesn't matter that much.

I think I've said this here before, but I honestly think it kinda...sucked. Some of the most hamfisted "story"telling I've seen in quite a while, with the game forcing you to do stupid things - things you know that are stupid even before you do them - just so it can try and make you feel guilty for doing those things it made you do. Every time you ever do anything, the stupid three characters whine and complain about what "they" did, and then continue to do the same sort of stuff and then complain some more. Pretty bland shooting mechanics to boot, too. If the forced anti-America/anti-war circlejerk is enough to make you want to play it...well, you're welcome to it, but if you're going to have that sort of thing, it could've and should've been done way better, IMO. I would've preferred some more genuine horrors of war than the silliness it generally showed. P.S. It didn't help that Mass Effect has made me dislike third person shooters in general. P.P.S: The most powerful moment in that game, for me, was not when the characters were doing their..."self-reflecting" bit about some horrible stuff they did, but when we were in the middle of fighting a bunch of generic Arabic guerrilla fighter types, and I was actually playing, when some normal Arabic dude came running down a hallway and I just gunned him down on instinct, and realized even as I was doing it that it was just a regular guy, but couldn't stop it now. Nothing's ever mentioned about it later, and there's no penalty of any sort for doing it. It was what it was, and I think that the realization that you come to completely on your own was a much more powerful thing than any of the other crap the game did.

I never really thought of modern game dialogue like that, but I think you're right. Excessive, slow voice acting combined with poorly executed visuals and not to mention vague replies on your part (if it's an RPG) or just stupid replies (if it's not and the lines are set) tends to make me not care about what's being shown beyond quickly skimming the subtitles. Neutralizing one or two of those negative elements tends to go a long way. Valve games come to mind, where the lip-syncing is actually pretty good, especially for games that almost completely lack normal cutscenes, and where there's not actually all that much talking except for short, occasional sequences, and where you can usually keep actually doing stuff while listening to an NPC talk. It doesn't have bookish quality of some other games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - which, again, goes a long way towards making me more interested in even the random filler text that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has - but just those already lift the game's (visible) writing above any competitors.

I generally stick to ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI. ASRock always seemed a little too off brand-y to me, but maybe I should consider them, too. Just purchased my 4770k for close to $110. Whee. Still no motherboard to put it in, though...Oh wondrous pricing gods, deliver a decent Z87/Z97 board sale to me soon!

Path of Exile: my hardcore character died, in the final boss fight. Everything was going swell until it suddenly wasn't and I was dead. I think I lagged for a few moments...that combined with me generally overestimating my character thanks to amazingness of those Vaal superabilities lead to a sudden and swift departure, methinks. Oh well. I almost completed my goal, which was to beat the game on normal, but you can't win all the time.

Using ALT-F4 to avoid deaths is pretty gamey and being gamey to avoid penalties strangely enough warps the game difficulty of the game. You're free to do it of course, I don't mind - I'm simply commenting on the irony of being gamey and complaining about difficulty. Given that the only penalty one can receive is essentially the loss of your character, I think it's wise to use any tools or advantages you can to make sure that doesn't happen. If they didn't want you to be able to do that, they'd probably disable the keys from functioning, anyways. Or, failing that, not immediately logging you out after exiting, (I think a 3-5 second wait would be appropriate). The entire "hardcore" thing is "gamey" - although in an opposite sort of way - so I'm not too concerned about using such tactics if necessary. You may also note that I said I've only done it twice since...properly outfitting, so to speak (and both times were in the mid to late tens, which was a while ago).

"Crashing"? You mean...exiting? Which you can do under normal circumstances anyways, although through a slightly more unwieldy menu?

Path of Exile. Witch on hardcore. Level 37, been a cakewalk so far. When I last played a few months ago, I recall this being a bit harder. These Vaal superabilities make the only difficult encounters, (typically unique monsters and bosses), so much easier, even if you can only use them every so often. I just save them for any encounters that seem like might be trouble, and the trouble magically disappears, (the Summon Skeletons ability, in particular, is ridiculous - I can summon 25 skeletons at once with one cast and overwhelm basically anything attacking me, including bosses, who have all died within about 10 seconds of me casting the spell - I've only had to ALT+F4 about twice since getting this spell to save myself from imminent death, and those were times when I simply could not use the spell). Ehh.

"What you do is connect the two ps3's with a network cable directly to each other and use the "Data Transfer Utility". Will copy or move everything including copy protected saves. It's the only way to move copy protected saves other than paying for PS+ and using the cloud storage." Google Not sure if you could do that because the old one's screen is blank, but perhaps you could, navigating solely from the new PS3?

Indeed: happy Mother's Day.

I often hear about people having problems with "coil whine" in their PSUs, but I'd never actually heard what it sounds like prior to listening to it on YouTube just now. To be honest, unless it was exceptionally loud, I probably wouldn't notice it, between my closed headphones, my giant industrial metal fan that I constantly have running on low (because medium will literally blow pictures off the walls and such...nevermind high), and the ridiculously loud stock cooler that my Phenom II came with that eclipses all other computer noise when I can actually hear my computer at all, (which is not often). I have permanent tinnitus, (and other sensory problems), so I always have to have some sort of constant noise. Sounds crappy if you otherwise have a quiet environment, and it bleeds through, though.

The Core's fan is almost silent. Between my case, it could not be on at all for all I can tell. Another PSU I got for $25...I'm a sucker for decent deals. The 80+ rating speaks of efficiency, but not necessarily reliability, which is what I'm more concerned about. Also, actually, I'm not really considering swapping them out yet, per se...but I'll be doing a swap of sorts, regardless, when I get that new motherboard and CPU, and I was considering switching out the Core to remain with my AMD parts while having the Silverstone go along with my Intel. But I (probably) won't do that unless I see at least one professional review saying that it's at least not a piece of crap.

Yeah, I found that FSP manufactures it, too, but their products seem to vary somewhat in terms of quality, (seems to be from "standard" to pretty great), and nobody seems to have done a single review on it anywhere, (not even ye' olde clueless user reviews). It is, apparently, a fairly new product, so perhaps someone will (professionally) review it fairly soon...for now, it sits unopened. Curious as to whether it's better than my XFX Core, an 80+ Bronze Seasonic model.

Where are you getting a $330 CPU for $100? My sister works in retail, which allows her to take advantage of Intel's "Retail Edge Program", where you can buy one after doing a small amount of work within the site, (some nonsensical quizzes and such). That's how I got the 4930k last winter for a paltry $200. This year, I'll get the 4770k for $100 instead, as my sister won't be in retail this coming winter, so I won't be able to take advantage of it. http://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-Tek-Single-Certified-ST50F-ESG/dp/B00I6DLHO6 I got one of these for $25 a weeks ago. Not entirely sure what to do with it. It seems really nice, especially for a mere $25 when it's normal price is ~$85, but I can't find any proper reviews on it, so I've abstained from actually using it so far. How the heck do you figure out if a PSU is decent or not?

I bought a fairly random 120GB SandForce SSD a month or two again, (PNY XLR8), for about $35. I was using a 10 year old SATA 1 80GB Seagate as my system drive until then, (with a 1TB 7200RPM Seagate for storage, and now an additional WD Green 3TB that I got for free), so I was getting pretty desperate to get just about anything to make my boot times a little faster than the 4-5 minutes it was taking that old Seagate. (And now it's about 20 seconds, total, which I think is pretty decent. Much better, anyways. ) I'd like to wait until Broadwell comes out to get a new CPU, but the 4770k is only $100, and it's extremely unlikely I'll be able to get anything similar then. That, and it'll still be miles better than my current AMD Phenom II 970.

Bought an Asus Z87 Sabertooth for $140 for my 4770k, (regular price of $250 - I would never normally go this high, but it seemed like a great price). They sent me an Asus Z87-A instead. Fun times abound.

I agree with Lexx and Keyrock - they have some very basic similarities, yes, but they're so far gone from each other in tone, style, and depth, (not that either have "more" depth overall than the other, necessarily, but many varying levels for different aspects of the games), that they're hard to put in the same room. Fallout 3 is more similar to Stalker than New Vegas, anyways, and yet they're still worlds apart. I also wouldn't really touch either Fallouts (after having already tried), whereas Stalker is one of my top three favorite games (series).

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like most BG modding paused when BG1:EE announced, as if people realized that they should probably wait to continue modding until the EEs are out, otherwise it could very well be wasted effort if the EEs require it to be done differently. Since the EEs have actually arrived...and to a mostly positive response for the more occasional players, but much more mixed for the hardcorer/modding community, it's been like a graveyard around the regular modding sites. Kind of sad.

It's not exclusive to women, either, sadly...that personality type is found on all sorts of people.

Aren't examples such as above usually decried and derided more or at least equally by USians than anyone else, anyways? Sure, they still happen occasionally...but people tend to get really bent out of shape about them. Why are we talking about this, again? I thought this topic was about "female gamers in gaming communities", not silly criticism of America, (whether warranted or not - the place it's being put is what makes it silly).

No, no, no that's completely wrong. I believe in freedom absolutely but not if that freedom means it offends or hurts someone else That's not something that, as the offending party...or even necessarily the offended party...can control.

OTOH, running and gunning is also a fairly viable strategy in Silent Assassin, and the way you gather weapons from enemies also adds an interesting dimension. I remember getting the M4 being one of the biggest hassles I've bothered in a game. Er, well, yes...but you get terrible mission ratings, and it wouldn't be very fun to just gun down everyone I meet...I mean, shooting is pretty easy...