Monte Carlo

Jesus I love this game.

No, I'm on a US server with StuG the barbarian, just been doing R/L stuff for a day or two.

OK I'm off to bed, I have Diablo 3-inspired repetitive strain injury on my fingers from clicking. I also need one of those gaming mice I think, you can CLICK FASTER THAT WAY. Did I mention that I love Diablo. But I hate the checkpoint save thing.

I've noticed that the coasting along level of difficulty changes considerably in Act Two. The crazy green flying bugs that fire machine gun mosquitos at you are driving me nuts.

I actually like second-rate action movies and Dolph has graced quite a few. Beer, pizza, dumb-ass action movie = great. Sadly this wasn't one of them.

Krezack, why not try reading my post again? Especially the bit where I discuss my atheism. In your indecent haste to play the man, not the ball, you've gone all Point. Not. Found.

Tigs plays hot wizard chicks who die more than a freshly dual-classed Imoen in BG1. I on the other hand have a manly barbarian juggernaut of devastation. Or something.

Not really. The 'Beast of Haverfordwest' is a retired farmer called "Dai the Maniac." He is merely roaming slightly north and eastwards of his usual hunting grounds (i.e. the Fishguard branch of Aldi where he rifles through the bins and drinks abandoned cider until he passes out). Dai will finally get bored of chewing cattle and go home to his day job as a traffic warden until the next full moon.

Here's a review from Rock, Paper, Shotgun that's spot on in my humble. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/15/hack-slashes-three-hours-with-diablo-iii/

For me it's all about D3, Company of Heroes and waiting for CoH 2 (next year). Having played CoH obsessively for many years I'm now almost slightly-OK-but-not-crap at it, which is a major achievement. I'm also looking forward to the re-booted BG1 and have tried Dungeon Siege 3 (which is OK).

Because I managed to get onto the D3 servers, played for fifteen minutes and got a "servers offline in fifteen minutes" message. WTF?

^ That isn't a movie, that's a spy camera in Blizzard's offices right now.

I heard it from an American. In the UK phonetic alphabet we'd call it Whisky Papa.

So, just to chuck some Willie Peter into the room, where are we all on the whole 'having kids too' thing?

In the UK Diablo 2 is commonly found for about UK

^ Fair point, but I should have made myself clearer - I am specifically referencing the single-player online requirement. I shouldn't have to worry about it whatsoever. But I do.

If I am seriously religious and married to a woman, how does gay marriage force me to do anything? It doesn't affect my beliefs at all, it doesn't lessen my personal experience in my wedded bliss. At least it shouldn't. As I said, if you are concerned about marriage as a religious institution being attacked, then you should be going after the atheists and the folks eloping in Vegas, not just gay couples. C'mon Hurlie, can you seriously not see how the entire concept is undermined by allowing same-sex couples to get married? I used the word existential for a reason.

^ Servers are still down and the shutdown period keeps getting longer. Blizzard have screwed up, the forums are melting with nerd-rage of a type that shocks even I. The online DRM for this product is a steaming pile of viscera-flecked swine poo.

^ A bit of both I guess. If you take the position that marriage is existentially a union between a man and a woman then both come into play. Which I do. I am uncomfortable with forcing people with sincerely-held religious views to accommodate something that is already more than adequately covered by civil ceremonies. If people want to call that 'marriage' then the sky won't fall in. There is no easy answer to this question. But I'm a bit pissed off at people trying to play the bigotry card at those of us who have a more nuanced position. Men and women entering into a lifelong union and having children is a bizarre development in our story as a species. It's also been extremely successful. Why take it away for reasons of social engineering. I'm sure Prez Obama has honestly held views on this one, but let's not kid ourselves the guy wants Hollywood dollars for the forthcoming campaign, and also wants to position himself against a dull white guy with unorthodox religious views. This is the gift that keeps on giving.

^ Noooooo. Dolph never wears armour in the movie. Not once. He wears and old olive green army jacket and an Arab shemagh-type scarf. You never see the castle either, just a polystyrene wall with some fat Ren Fair guards idling about outside. The biggest pitch battle in the movie involves about twenty people. It's like a bad D&D LARPing session gone horribly wrong. So that poster is slightly misleading. And there's no bad King-wearing toupee either.

Er, because a marriage requires a husband and wife. Duh. Sorry, but I'm a doughty defender of gay rights. I'm best man at a civil ceremony in the Summer. I'm also an atheist but I respect the religious aspect to marriage too (see what I did there?). I see no contradiction in being pro-Gay rights and not supporting Gay 'marriage.' As for Obama, meh. He talks the talk but will go down in history as a Jimmy-Carteresque lightweight.

My excuse for this is that I was drunk. I saw this Uwe Boll movie with Dolph Lundgren. Dolph is a martial-arts expert commando who is sucked into a parallel world, one that closely resembles a Ren Fair with very low production values. A king gives him a mission to kill a witch. The king is wearing the worst toupee I have ever seen in a movie. He keeps adjusting it. Anyway, the witch isn't really a baddie at all: the king is. I suspected as much, based mainly on the hairpiece. There is some very poorly choreographed fighting in a forest, then Dolph runs away from a big rubber dragon. This dragon is to special effects what Saddam Hussein was to civil liberties. The dragon attacks a castle made of polystyrene and Dolph ends up in modern Canada where he drowns the king in the bath. I cannot remember what this movie was called and I don't want to know. Dolph Lundgren, bad wigs and rubber dragons. Sheesh.

^ LOL. But you know when a game is good when server meltdown makes you itch because you want to play. I think it might be a late night tonight...

I spoke too soon: the servers are down. This SP online thing is a terrible idea and I suspect Blizzard might regret doing it. Anyhoo, the game itself is great. I love the exploration, big dungeons and outdoor areas, visceral combat with heads and body-parts flying everywhere, the classic spooky muzak, lots of different enemies and phat lewt. Even the crafting mechanic is fun. The side-quests and dungeons are there too if you want to look for them. All in all I love it, but then again this is the type of click-tastic stressbusting game I enjoy. I appreciate that it ain't going to be everyone's cup of tea and, yes, the SP online thing sucks donkey nuts. At the moment 7.5 - 8 out of ten. When they sort out launch issues and give us some more classes in an XP it will be trundling towards greatness.

I'm having no problems at all, it's very smooth. Then again all big launches are like this. Player 'A' has a breeze, player 'B' has a nightmare.