Bartimaeus

6/9, U.S. Got literacy rate wrong, (chose 60% instead of 80%), wealth distribution, (chose A instead of B), and completely got the women's average number of years in postsecondary education wrong, (3 instead of 7). Didn't mind getting them wrong, though.

I don't mind trying to get badges of things I like...(e.g. since I like the Roman Empire, I like getting Roman/Byzantine Empire related badges). I never pay for them with anything besides money I got from selling other cards, though.

I don't see how I could possibly disagree more. I can't think of any games where that type of camera was done well, (including your two examples). Every time it's used, I find "tactical combat" impossible to actually do, and usually just let the AI control anyone that isn't the main character. "Tactical combat", because this "tactic" actually works most of the time, which makes me think these games aren't very tactical at all. What's worse is that these games also usually have crappy isometric cameras, (Dragon Age: Origins being the worst offender I can think of), as a result of the game not really being built for it. You know what I like about "complex", "tactical" combat? Not having to mess around with the horrendous camera system every time I click on a different character because it's always facing the wrong way, or getting stuck behind objects, or getting stuck in front of objects when I try and issue new commands to those different characters. It's enough of a headache to control just one character - there is no way in hell that I am going to try doing four to six characters every battle. Automatic AI control it is, then, for everyone besides me.

How is this news? Those were posted in June, and I distinctly remember this being reported way back then already...you know, when they were actually posted, ... "EDITED Nov 4 2013 - holy thread necro. Looks like Kotaku decided to link to this post from six months ago, and every game blog has copy-pasted it. The "two week" timeout issue has been fixed for months now, along with several other bugs. We're still working on improvements, and you might catch them if you read the patch notes carefully, but we don't bother to post on the forums every time we fix something (maybe out of fear that it will get posted as front-page news six months later?)." Yeah, sounds about right, I guess.

Didn't Shogun 2's expansion have *another* similar DLC, too?

Ha! That reminds me of a bug for Age of Empires 2 on 7(/Vista?), where the graphics are completely screwed up...unless you have the Windows screen resolution page open, (that or the personalize page - been a while), it would automagically fix itself.

As far as I have seen, the only way to get them these days if from crafting badges, (get one per badge craft, if I'm not mistaken). They are pretty random...if you happened to be part of a larger community where everyone's always giving them out on a "want" basis, I think it could be nice...but I certainly can't be bothered.

If you *think* it's overheating, why not actually check while gaming? I would guess there's probably a problem with a fan/heatsink - probably either the GPU's or CPU's.

Free Coupons: -10% Shadow Warrior -75% Droid Assault -75% Serious Sam 3: BFE -50% Divekick -66% Awesomenauts -33% Foul Play

Well...the use of those Warcraft 3 icons pleased me. Does that count for anything? One thing I notice right away is that it's just too big...the largest piece, (the minimap) takes up more than 1/4th of the screen vertically, while the smallest takes up almost 1/5th. In comparison, Baldur's Gate 2's bottom bar took up 15% of the screen, (and at 1024x768). With the advent of widescreen, (particularly the 16:9 brand of widescreen), I feel like taking up side space makes much more sense than taking up top/bottom space. XP bar seems silly - presumably we won't be leveling up often enough that we need a bar to see how fast we're progressing. Animated portraits? Eh... Minimap? I...actually wouldn't mind this too much...needs to be smaller, though, and there should, of course, be a larger, full-sized version somewhere else. Three things that really get me about this, though: how much space is wasted for those "other screen" buttons: stronghold, journal, etc. I feel like much smaller buttons with no text combined with simple tooltips that would explain what the buttons do as well as what the buttons assigned for accessing them are for new users would more than suffice; how much space is wasted for portraits: get rid of that "selected character" portrait, in my opinion, and just highlight the currently selected character's portrait. The other portrait stuff can stay, I guess, but it seems a little janky, although perhaps not quite Torment levels of jankiness; and finally, where are the ability/skill buttons? With how you currently have it set up, you have basically no room to speak of for even BG1 cleric/mage-level amounts of abilities, (though with the whole "grimoires" I don't think we'll have that many spells, but nonetheless). Simply not doable.

Wow. Now I know who to blame. Thanks, Putin!

Oops? Happy belated birthday, J.E. Swayer!

Having not played it, but previous Total War games...can't you manually enable most/all factions anyways? Though I'm sure they probably created at least some minor new content to make it work better, (e.g. the difference between playing the Papal States in default Medieval 2 and playing a mod that actually builds them as a real faction).

Where's the "dislike" button? This thread is one of the bigger attractions these forums have...

Sandboxie can be used to run more than one instance of a game, (and pretty much everything else - I, for example, run two Steam accounts on one computer). (It's supposed to be an antivirus tool of sorts, but it has other uses.)

I laughed as well, but then I took the poll and noticed Call of Duty has over 2,000 votes. I cried. Everyone loves joke options. Anecdotal Proof: I picked Call of Duty,

If you're referring to me, (which is possible, given that I've supported the project in the past), it should be noted that I still prefer Baldur's Gate Trilogy, (the mod that puts BG1 into BG2 and you can play both), infinitely over BG:EE. The fact that there are basically what I consider to be "fanfic" party members in the game bothers me enough that I would probably prefer playing BG even through the original engine over it.

Don't be so certain until you finish it. Blood Money was a true Hitman game and a stealth approach won't always work for you. Hmm. You made me curious as to how far I am into the game. I was kinda saddened to find out there's only 13 missions, and I'm already on the ninth. Maybe I should've played the hardest difficulty instead of the second hardest...I can't have played more than 10 hours so far. Modern games, these days...erm...as modern as seven years ago was, anyways.

Bartie it is a terrible thing having to actually think and work out how a game functions. This is how all games use to be, you console kids have it easy I'm going to ignore your "console kid" comment because it doesn't apply at all to me, given my intense dislike of consoles for the past half of my life, and that most of my favorite games are relatively old, The biggest difficulties, actually, were right in the beginning of the game, when it was trying to teach you specific tactics. Like it told you to take a human shield...and that's it. No actual idea on what buttons to press, or the conditions necessary to do it. Unpack the sniper rifle. I pick up the case...I then hit almost every darn button I possibly can, before realizing I simply have to go into my inventory, (even though it's already in my hand), and reselect it. Push the dude over the railing. I sneak up behind him...and hit what, again? I try and left click, but that just hits him with whatever I have out. I try and hit E, the activate button, which is sometimes used for combat purposes, (human shield, for example, as I found out). After multiple times of retrying, I don't have anything out one time and I magically push him...okay. I clearly should've realized that having a pistol in your hand prevents you from pushing a person. And as for the sedating opponents instead of fiber wiring them...well, again, it told me in the beginning to just put it in a secretary's drink, not that I could up behind someone and stab them with it. In reality, I didn't really need to know much of this to begin with anyways. I'm never going to use human shield because...well, it's Hitman. You shouldn't really be getting into firefights, or really be shooting any gun besides a sniper rifle anyways, (and also, shooting is a crapton more boring than doing things properly). Sedating? Well, useful for roleplaying/perfectionist purposes, but it's basically the same as fiber wiring somebody, so...I've used the sniper rifle a total of once, and only because there was absolutely no other way to win the mission in question without causing a huge ruckus...so I guess it was kind of useful...Haven't pushed a single person yet since that first mission...if you're not gonna spell stuff out, then either don't mention it and try to make me do it, and instead let me figure it out on my own (if I ever even need to figure it out), or make its usage intuitive. Don't give me some stupid, vague objective without giving me even the slightest hint as to how to do it.

Friend convinced me to try Hitman: Blood Money after complaining so much about Hitman: Absolution, (and the new Thief and other recent "reboots"). Liking it so far, but a lot of things weren't very well explained and the controls were a bit hard to get a grasp of. Nonetheless, I've gone through like 8 missions now.

Shadowkeeper has worked to begin with...just have to mess around a little. I think you have to go into the My Documents folder for the game and put the english (or whatever language you're using) dialogue.tlk in the base game directory as well as your saves folder, (and then move back your saves after finishing editing). It's been a while though, so that might not be entirely correct. Also, if I recall correctly, someone was working on a version of Shadowkeeper that natively supports BG:EE a while back. Don't know what came of it.

If your copy of Baldur's Gate is enchanted, I suggest returning it and asking for a full refund. Alternatively, become a wizard.

Those last ones sort of remind me of the end of Shamsuk's Tower from Aidyn...except cooler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=l8pImL1FeaE&t=55 HEADSHOT! :D "Thief no more", indeed.

On the downside, it looks pretty bad...but judging from your "troll face", I assume you already figured that.