Bartimaeus

Holy clutter, Batman...

In what way do you think they are not supported compared to desktop cards? Your video card is essentially for running a modern desktop interface, and fairly unintensive indie games or games that are fairly old (e: at high settings), (>4, 5?). There's not much more to squeeze out of a 710M... I think the fact that you were even *TRYING* to play XCOM at higher settings and weren't running into severe difficulties suggests that the drivers are performing very well indeed...

(I still can't tell if the "genres" they list are actual genres, or if they're making fun of themselves...)

None. All of my opinions are the only correct options. Um... 1. I don't really like any of the MEs anymore. I say "anymore", because I did like the first one at the time I played it, was more or less ambivalent when I played through the second, and was rather sick of the series by the time I started the third. Keyword here being "started", because it had nothing to do with the ending of the game, and all to do with the (shooting) gameplay generally being a complete bore and/or chore to get through. I wasn't an advocate of the "let the game handle the dialogue so you can get through it faster" option, but I honestly don't think I would've minded a reverse of that - a "skip the awful gameplay" option would've been grand. I was only playing for the (now, in hindsight) rather subpar (but nevertheless rather enjoyable) story, anyways. 2. I've never liked any turn-based CRPGs, (actual turn-based, not internal timer turn-based like the Infinity Engine games). 3. I think romance, (or rather, how romance is done in games today and in the past), can right shove off. Especially in games where it's either romance or nothing, (a la Baldur's Gate 2, where if you say one "mean" thing - and where your options are either 1. don't be a jerk, 2. be a jerk, 3. be a jerk, 4. be sort of a jerk maybe depends exactly on how it's said (basically, be a jerk) - to most characters of the opposite gender, said character(s) never ever talks to you again outside of "scripted" interjections). 4. Honestly, I really miss the internal round timer that the Infinity Engine games used. There's something about it that makes combat seem a lot more "solid" and quantitative, so to speak, to me. Something more appealing about a +1/2 attack per round stat on your weapon as opposed to 23% faster attack...I hate numbers like that being used as percentages, for some reason. Probably more.

I have the MK550 combo myself - though I use a G400 mouse instead. I am mildly satisfied. Its comfort isn't as good as my old Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 that I thought I ruined by washing it, I have to admit, though, (it's actually perfectly fine, but was shorting out for a while, which made me think it was broken). Keys are a lot harder to press down, too, which can create cramps after excessively typing for long periods of time...I always think about going back to the Microsoft keyboard, but I never do thanks to the bunch of Fn macros that this Logitech one has...

I don't think I've ever used a real mechanical keyboard...are there any decent "ergonomic"/curved mechanical keyboards? (P.S. This might be more suited to Skeeter's Junkyard...although it is a fairly quiet section...)

If it makes you feel any better, I've never bought anything on Origin.

Origin doesn't accept my card, Steam does. I guess EA doesn't want my money. does that make their portal better? Offline mode. That's all. Just curious...have you used their offline mode recently? I'm not saying it's better, but I recall them saying something a while ago about how they were in the process of changing how the offline mode works, (or rather, how it sometimes doesn't). I've never had problems myself with it, but just curious...

People's idea of "old" for computer parts sometimes disturbs me...my mother was still using an old single core Athlon 64 up until a few months ago...now that's getting on the old side. I am still using single core Athlon 64 for my PC gaming and it is enough for all the indie games I play. There was not a single PC AAA game that would convince me, that upgrading it is not waste of money. I do 95% of my gaming on PS3 now, and I am satisfied. If all the games you play on PC are indie games, I would probably feel the same way.

Yeah, I have Chrome installed for that. Maybe I should ditch it and just run two different versions of Opera like you.

No...but maybe I should try it. I'm still stuck on (Old) Opera 12.16 myself...won't update because they switched to Chromium as a backend in later versions, and I really don't like it, Tried out a new version again recently...still do not have a normal bookmarks menu. Until they at least give me a way to have more than a couple of bookmarks, I won't be updating. Oh, how I miss Opera.

2033's stealth could be frustrating and in some ways difficult, sure. But if you look at it from a realistic standpoint - as in, how would this situation play out if I were actually doing this - what you could do was quite frankly ridiculous. I've played through 2033 several times with killing every single human opponent and never causing an "alert" while only using knives/bolts. That's fairly difficult, especially considering you often run into situations where two or three guys (or even more) are bunched together and notice immediately when one of their own dies. From what I played of Last Light, it was pretty rare you ever ran into more than two guys together like that, as you could often kill guys right by other dudes without them noticing, (but of course, like 2033, it was inconsistent as all heck). Breaking out of the Nazi stalag defied belief, where you were shooting them with your little dinky silenced revolver in a huge chamber where sound would very much echo around and be heard, where it be the bullets or the sound of bodies dropping... I don't know why they got rid of the 4-stage stealth watch in favor of the two-stage one. Truth be told, while I was a little annoyed by the stealth, it's not what made me quit...

I thought the opposite - overall - in regards to Metro: Last Light. Much preferred 2033. The stealth was even poorer in Last Light than in 2033, the plot was completely pants-on-head retarded, (particularly anything involving Anna, who you make love to after having maybe five minutes total of actual face time with her - I quit and then uninstalled maybe fifteen minutes after that), uh...I felt like the gunplay was about the same, except more hampered by the even more ridiculously easy stealth, so I never used a real gun against anything mutants at any time, anyways...Khan went from a wise old man to some crack-smoking hippie "duuuude"...Miller and the other Rangers basically became your archetypal American meathead soldiers...I was very unimpressed, overall. The final nail in the coffin, though, was that (quite frankly) idiotic love-making scene with Anna. Maybe it was just me, but I would've shot her before doing what Artyom did with her. If you're going to make a tsundere-like character, please spend more than literally no time at all to transition between "you are a worthless sack of crap, I laugh at you with my thick Russian accent, ha ha ha" and "oooohh, artyom-san, I missed you soooooo much, I've been so worried about you and oh how I missed you! now come make love to me in this disease-ridden hell-hole...". When that...Communist, was it?...held her hostage as leverage against you, I immediately shot at him. The completely psychotic things you can do when you're being forced into impossibly railroaded situations not of your liking!

People's idea of "old" for computer parts sometimes disturbs me...my mother was still using an old single core Athlon 64 up until a few months ago...now that's getting on the old side. Well I said older not old, just meaning it's not the current generation of CPUs or GPUs (am a full tick-tock behind on the CPU at least ) Hah. Yeah, I suppose so. Don't mind me - I'm just being fussy.

People's idea of "old" for computer parts sometimes disturbs me...my mother was still using an old single core Athlon 64 up until a few months ago...now that's getting on the old side. Mothers don't count unless you're a mother who builds/buys a new gaming rig every few years. That said, it's not irrational to consider a product 2-3 years old to be "old" in the world of computing, given Moore's Law. Besides, for those of us who still haven't hit 30 and didn't major in geology, archaeology, paleontology, or astrophysics/cosmology, 2-3 years is a long time (I suppose I should also assume there are those who did/could not attend any institutions of higher education,) especially considering the fact that humans' biological clocks accelerate as one ages. 2-3 years pass in the blink of an eye for a senior but feel like an eternity for a 6 year old. BUT I DIGRESS. I get your point, but...when gaming computing "needs" have increased so very little over the past few years, an i5-2500k is still perfectly serviceable. More than, in fact - still fairly comparable to the "brand new" Haswell i5s. And a 680TI? Please. If my mother was able to play silly SW:TOR on her over ten year old machine, I don't think your "old" hardware is likely to be a problem for a while yet...so don't blame software problems on your still rather nice hardware. (I don't actually too feel strongly about this. It's just that I'm still running ye olde Phenom II X4 with an equally "old" 5770, and am still finding it hard to rationalize upgrading when there's no real apparent need to - not for gaming, anyways, unless I REALLY REALLY want to have the best, which I don't; "just" "high" - "medium" at the absolute worst - is perfectly fine for me - so when somebody mentions their much superior hardware as possibly being the source of their woes... .)

People's idea of "old" for computer parts sometimes disturbs me...my mother was still using an old single core Athlon 64 up until a few months ago...now that's getting on the old side.

Representative democracy means they vote indirectly. If people vote in corrupt people repeatedly, that means they suck as voters, not that the system is broken. Not when said voters [effectively] don't decide the candidates available to choose from to begin with...although I admit this is kind of blurry to me, as we [uSians] really *do* have the power to choose who we want, outside of the two usual candidates...we just never exercise that right, and probably never will, as we've basically been brainwashed not to. Pah.

You're talking as if Russia was an actual democracy where people had a vote as to what happens with their money. It's also a country that institutionalized homophobia and yet hosts an international sporting event supposed to stand for equality and fairness, not personal bigotry of a de facto dictator. You're talking as if democracies have it so that people can actually vote as to what happens with their money...

This is the problem I have with Total War games. My 300 against their 1500...I lose 10-20 guys and the enemy loses 1200-1300. The AI is always stupid in that it tends to rush ahead with its cavalry if it has great superiority, which leads to me quickly trying to take out said cavalry, which then leads to me picking off their ranged units with my cavalry with only lines of infantry to weave through...which then typically leads to me charging one unit of infantry from two opposing sides, causing them to rout, and then again for another unit or two, which subsequently causes a mass rout. I always build my stacks with Cavalry in mind, and tend to win every battle and always feel like I'm cheating. "Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance." -Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Circumstances beyond my control forced me to take down all my VNVN videos for a while yet more... In retrospect, uploading Transnational a few days before its official release wasn't such a great idea... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bJsCrloGa8 It's always fun seeing artwork you scanned yourself show up in other places. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4USrHveKw-4 [...]nowhere else are people so addicted...so addicted...so addicted...to apathy, entertainment, naive faith, and emotionally potent oversimplifications[...]

I was trying to play Medieval 2, but it looks like something's gone wrong with Steam's build of the game in the past few days, because I can't start up the game suddenly and others have been reporting the same problem...the .exes just don't do anything, haha. Even tried doing a complete reinstall...neh. Some indie game called 10,000,000 that a friend gave to me because it was on sale for like $1 on Steam, and he enjoys making me play games I don't want to and/or suffer in general. It's actually not as bad as I thought it'd be, for what is essentially a Bejewlwed-RPG hybrid...

Whoa, maybe it's just me, but I feel like this is something that should've been mentioned months ago...haha. Hurray!

Possibly because you've either been dead, in a coma, or simply living under a rock these past few months? Where have you been that it has not been mentioned?

NuMantra - Mesh