Monte Carlo

On reflection, I meant gibber.

Perhaps but the second term is all about Legacy. Take one look at Obama and tell me that you don't see a soaring vessel of self-regard and utter confidence, a being carved from a raw ego? I know I do. His healthcare reforms will become mired in Somme-like political warfare in Sentate and Congress. The economy will continue to falter. Emerging economies will nibble at the edges of the already tatty American hegemony. His much-vaunted Pacific focus will be dragged back to the Old World by forces that cannot be ignored. He will surprise us all, especially with regards to Iran. When he shaves in the morning I'm pretty sure he sees the Dove who can play Hawk in the mirror.

He makes a pretty good point - expecting a great ending from a game akin to one you'd get from a book is a big ask. Endings are tough to write, especially awesome multiple endings.

I think Obama will win, narrowly. I also (looks into crystal ball) predict some Clinton-esque military adventurism in the second term for all the usual reasons (albeit strictly of a non-boots on the ground type, more like Predator Nintendo). So who's going to be the next GOP pick?

Cheers Gfted. What are your system specs, if I may? And are the dungeons linear or more open? I'm looking forward to this more and more, this will be the summer of D3 and (gasps) enhanced BG1. Who'da Thunk It???

I can watch the Duellists with the sound turned off, like moving wallpaper. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but I love the visuals.

It's all sounding good so far, thanks for posting the updates Drowsy. I've played BG2 to death but haven't played BG1 for a long time so am looking forward to this immensely.

He's gone. Forever. Into Diablo 3.

I've got it, been in bed for 2.5 days. Haven't been this sick since I had glandular fever aged 19.

Hmmm it is clearly a rip-off but then again the original GW tank is a rip-off of old WW1 MKIV tanks and the Israeli Merkava.

Feedback pls!

I know I'm coming a bit late to this, but was that Santorum creature real? Or was he a Manchurian-candidate style Democratic party sleeper agent?

Yes, in this case Apple is more evil than Amazon.

Thor. Amusing popcorn movie. Asgard looked incredible.

Amazon is a five hundred pound gorilla, the Google of publishing / e-books. Apple is the axis of tech-evil. What did you expect. An e-book is almost as expensive as a physical copy with hardly any of the overhead costs. The reader is getting screwed as are writers. The winners are (quel surprise) apple and Amazon.

Yeah, Dungeon Keeper is doing it for me.

I have two novels on submission with commissioning editors and an agent eyeing his fifteen percent. You can be sniffy about commercially successful fiction, but my experience is that for every awful teen vampire romance novel there's another tautly-plotted thriller. So for me it's not a bad metric of whether a book is 'good' or not. Of course, e-books have shaken things up so the niche now gets a fair crack of the whip. As for good stories with so-so characters I give you Frederick Forsyth of The Dogs of War and Day of the Jackal fame. Forsyth, by his own admission, makes his characters fairly sketchy (in of itself an interesting idea, allowing the reader to project into the character) but makes up for it with excellent, well-paced plotting and mastery of technical detail. Not everybody's cup of tea but his stuff is a good read. I could name others.

Do you mean in games or in fiction generally? In fiction generally I'd disagree, some writers get away with being plot-heavy and relatively character lite and sell lots of books. And vice versa. In a video game I'm looking for gameplay first and foremost, that's the skeleton (incidentally combat is part of that but then again it could be an economics / resource type game or something completely different, as long as the way that mechanic is delivered is fun). The rest is the stuff draped around it to make it look nice. Which is why me and Bio are never going to get along ever again because I'd argue that they're not really making games anymore. They've created a new type of interactive story hybrid. Good luck to them.

Custom skins and items are a massive part of PC games - look at the amount of mods and paid-for DLC that provides it from RTS games to RPGs. Games are obviously very visual - being able to customise how different / cool / whatever that part of it is unsurpisingly going to be important to a lot of players. That's a part of it, add to it a meaningful gameplay mechanic (i.e. different stuff does different things) then it's a win-win. I'm actually amazed that this even comes up as an issue - it's a given to me. Bio wants to railroad you in every way, remember the writer who wanted the player to be able to skip combat so you could enjoy her next beautifully scripted cut-scene? The control freakery they display is funny really. And another reason why I haven't bought anything they've done since DA:O (and before that NWN).

I remember in the old pen and paper D&D rules magic armour expanded or contracted er, magically, to fit the wearer.

That works. Some people would hate the micro, but I like it.

Company of Heroes (duh). Mainly the Modern Combat and Eastern Front mods (both are great). Tried the Kingdoms of Amalur demo and found it to be meh. Reminded me of Rift. That's it. Am waiting for Diablo 3 TBH.

Bioware have always been over-confident of their writing and plotting. Which is at best so-so. That such basic stuff as the Big Three points identified even need to be reiterated just shows you the head-up-arse world that Bio devs now live in.

Yeah it could be pretty bad (cough FIREWINE cough) and got worse the bigger your party was. The twisty under-city dungeon in BG itself, towards the end of the game, was awful.

I'm really interested but the ability to mod it is a bit of a deal-breaker for me.