Monte Carlo

Wait for it... Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

I'd like to challenge the notion that games are a 'waste of time' and I'm certainly not slamming MMO players. Anything that you genuinely enjoy can't really be a waste of time. The idea that everything you do should be in some way educational or enervating is bunk. Some of the nicest people I know are slacker - gamer types, most of whom can and do very well at whatever they put their minds to. Personally I find the idea of paying a hundred pounds to watch a soccer match an oafish decision to make. That's a genuine waste of time IMO.

Krezack, quit posting after you've been at that bong. The American electorate, save for the small Volvo-driving elite clustered on each coast, do not much care about what the French or the British think about them. When there home is in negative equity and they've been laid of at work... that's the stuff of elections. Obama is a skilled Orator who had the cunning super-ability of not being in the same party as George Bush. Politics is cyclical. The GoP will eventually absorb the politically realistic rump of the Tea Party and rebuild. But not yet. Let Obama ride out this economic nightmare, why win now? 2012 is Obama's. The GoP field for presidential candidates reflects this.

I love the way magic is presented in this series, the scene in the tent with the horse was funny and spooky at the same time. As for Mr. Dinklage, if he doesn't win a brace of awards for his performance as Tyrion then I'll get all huffy and upset.

Wii is genius. We're gamers so we're not meant to get it. In much the same way a Prius us a car for folks who don't like, or know, anything about cars... a Wii is a computer game for people who don't like, or know, anything about computer games. DISCLAIMER - I spent two hours playing Donkey Kong with my son yesterday and almost enjoyed it.

OTOH I got utterly addicted to Company of Heroes online. Like a junkie. I spent real money on it and everything.

Your backlog is pitiful at the side of my own. I would wager a huge amount of money on it. If I had a black cat, you'd have a panther called Midnight

I tried Rift. It was fun for a week then it was... meh. Grinding / running about / grinding. I cancelled the subscription. MMOs aren't my cup of tea and, a bit like sports sims and bioware games, their appeal eludes me.

Centurion I think this was meant to be a cross between Gladiator and Apocalypto. Dominic West tries to out-do Brian Blessed in the bellowing stakes, there's a female Pictish hunter who looks like a super-model and lots of gory fighting scenes. And if it was actually filmed in Scotland I'd like to know where. Not bad as a Saturday night WTF is on TV type deal.

Bwahahahahhaaaaaa

But the British Empire was superior.

I don't consider myself European in any meaningful political sense. The idea that there is a cultural European identity is nuts, ask folks in the Balkans or Germany. I don't consider myself particularly special. You've got a bug up your arse about my country, that's clear. And I couldn't care less about that either.

The US/UK way of dealing with problems. And they scratch their heads asking why it ain't working. Because the current situation is working a treat, ain't it? We could go the European way, which is set up an embassy, fly around in Learjets, refuse to deploy militarily, waste billions of Euros in aid and deny basic free trade to third world countries to satisfy a bunch of French farmers. Then wonder why that ain't working.

It's a fun game, fairly short and the multiplayer is crazy.

What about smartly-dressed racists?

We can't 'win' it's binary thinking. You can't have it both ways, the 'kill 'em with kindness' doctrine requires 'winning' to involve the imposition of democracy on the place, which is by all accounts a sclerotically corrupt, terminally doomed failed state. But we were told we weren't there to 'win' in that context, we were to dampen down the extremists in the field whilst administering first aid to the fledgling regime so it could stand on it's own two feet. This quagmire of hypocrisy has resulted in nothing but death and the scandalous waste of billions of dollars. Much of which I suspect is in Karzai's Swiss bank account. Basics: Can we sort out Pakistan (no) can we stop an international brigade of young Muslims making their way to Afghanistan (no) can we stabilize the region to allow civil operations to take root (no) can we do anything about Karzai's kleptocracy (no). Get out and police the region with drones. I couldn't care less how Afghanistan is run. If they forment terror against us drop some instant sunshine on them.

A few thoughts having played the demo: 1. The game is real purdy 2. It doesn't feel like a Dungeon Siege game 3. It's a console game, meh 4. Don't like the camera, and the need to use keyboard buttons to interact with the environment. It's the reverse of days of yore, now the PC-port crew are the victims 5. Combat feels smooth, hack & slashy and fun 6. Inventory / skills etc aren't great to access and look at, but hey its a console game. I won't be buying the game, will wait for D3. Sorry Obz, loved FO:NV, I love H&S Diablo clones too but this hasn't grabbed me.

Keyboard warriors want boots on the ground, wasting lives for what? Presumably to still their bleeding hearts.

No. The reason the government gave was that we were directly frustrating terrorist infrastructure that might threaten our national security. Nation-building was explicitly not part of the deal and I am mad as hell about every penny spent on the place, which will descend back into chaos the moment we leave. Your reasoning is false. We should presumably be invading the rest of the medieval third world hell-holes that litter the globe.

I have a 'fake' FB account with a pseudonym just so I can keep in touch with people (who know it's me). I don't upload any photos of me or my family, nor would I. Therefore I have no problems with it, I get a free, easy to use comms tool that is relatively anonymised (I use proxies a lot of the time, am seriously considering TOR) and FB gets to spam my account with stuff I like (targeted spam on FB can be quite useful seeing how specific it is - i.e. I'm on Foo Fighter and Game of Thrones and that stuff is quite cool).

I'm hardly a 'femi-nazi' but a video consisting solely of unprovoked violence against women, even in a video game, is ******* sick and some of you need to get a grip of yourselves for applauding it.

I'm playing a really interesting hands-on computer challenge. It's called 'trying to get my Blackberry to work.'

The Mechanic Jason 'The Stathe' Statham is an assassin. Donald Sutherland is in a wheelchair. People die. I liked it, especially the end.

I like the pitch Wals, although making it a vampire-romance-camel-slaying epic might widen the appeal, along with a superhero angle, mebbe the camels are experimental super-mutants. On a more sombre note I'm glad people are waking up to the more sinister tendencies of the Green movement. Mother Gaia and all that is cover for a miserabilist, totalitarian, life-hating clique. READ RAINBOW SIX - TOM CLANCY IS A PROPHET!

She's either a sadist or we managed to keep it concealed better than we thought. I'm guessing the former, because in my experience all women are sadists. Is she a hot sadist? ^ Thanks for cutting to the heart of the matter!