Monte Carlo

Like hi-level AD&D, BG2 is predicated on spell combos. Some of them are irksome, but there is a great deal of variety. You can cheese your way through some of Bg2, but eventually you hit a WTF tactical challenge that makes you read the manual. DA2 had that freezing-stuff and storm spell thing going on, rinse and repeat.

As a non-Marvel comic person I'd say either Judge Death (Judge Dredd) or Torquemada (Nemesis the Warlock) both from 2000AD.

Except this one is set in, er, 1940s Los Angeles.

Dude.... installing that game. Seriously, that's the gaming version of The Hurt Locker. That game is to operating systems what a dozen 125mm arty shells, connected by a dodgy command wire, with a Nokia duct-taped on top, are to Jeremy Renner. Stand back from the installation disc and call a professional with a robot or something.

I see what your saying. But... At at least it's an attempt at something new and grown-up that doesn't involve +5 Hackmasters or Plasma Pistols or Space Marines. I shall be guardedly optimistic until the reality of the computer games industry smashes me like a broken bird sucked into a jet engine. For the record I don't like GTA et. al.

All I can say is that the standard of trolling here is heading downhill and needs to be improved. This one struggles to get a D+ in my book.

You...you... have spies?

If you spliced Al's final going-bolo-at-the-posh-school speech with Jack Nicholson's Nathan Jessup rant at the end of "A Few Good Men" then you might cause a sort of testosterone-fuelled tear in the spatial fabric of reality or something.

Angry, your life appears to be a bit like Waiting For Godot filtered through early John Steinbeck. With maybe some 1960's Ingmar Bergman black-and-white angst on the beach thrown in. You deserve a break somewhere tropical with hot and cold running dancing girls.

I was completely serious.

Ah. You don't need to see the actual cable to make your decision. The Telegraph wins again. Yay, "we want to believe, therefore we WILL believe". Your faith in your government is touching, if not slightly scary. So what you're saying is that for me to reach an opinion is that I actually have to lay eyes on a caveated, sensitive government document? And it's not what I want to believe, speaking as one of the more pro-American voices on this forum, which is often full of knee-jerk anti-Americans of the most tiresome sort. It's what I'm inclined to believe based on the available evidence, which is that your country is no longer particularly concerned about mine and that the current Whitehouse would happily dump a seventy-year alliance for short-term political advantage in a tough mid-term year. So, yes, I bloody well think your government would intelligence share with the Russians if it was in their perceived interests.

I know which version I believe and it ain't the one coming out of la Clinton's office

Yes. Apologise, dammit.

Phew. In which case I must get a silly haircut, an iphone and an epic sense of entitlement.

Admittedly Winston had a few of those, but the scheme the US resisted most ferociously was the one about not assuming the position for Stalin with regards to carving up Europe.

See my post above. Do, please, have a little look at Joe Kennedy, pro-Nazi, pro-IRA, elder of 'America's Royal Family.' What a piece of work. Edit: Anglo-American tensions during WW2 deserves its own thread, it is an epic tale of mendacity and hubris on both sides. What I think Wals is referring to is the anti-British, mainly (but far from exclusively) Republican, isolationist tendency that wanted nothing to do with saving Europe from the Nazis. Churchill is another hero of mine. Most heroes are flawed. He was a giant compared to FDR.

1. Any examination of the repellent Joe Kennedy in the 1930s and 40s is enough to turn the stomach of the most ardent pro-Atlanticist. Point proven, M'lud. 2. The Falklands is trickier. Reagan said that the UK should have "all assistance save that of military support." I am a huge fan of The Gipper. Latin America is the Us backyard, they have to chose their actions there carefully (which is why Hillary Clinton's appeasement of the Argentinians at the moment is opportunistic and precisely the sort of problem we currently have with the Speshul* Relationship). We got a lot of diplomatic and int support from the septics in '82. * Speshul = Special as I imagine it is spelt in the Merriam-Webster dictionary

Like any relationship, The Speshul Relationship has it's ups and downs. With your saintly Mister Obama, it's just on a bit of a down at the moment.

For democracy to flourish you need fair-minded but flinty-eyed bastards, in the woods, heavily-armed. I would move to America if the green card lottery wasn't so weighted towards countries that actively hate the USA.

A significant number of Labour politicians coming of age in the 70's were usually members of the CCGB and other astroturfing leftist groups. Tolerance of 'progressive elements' like the IRA and KGB-funded 'liberation' armies is in their mother's milk.

Re-read the post. I never accuse the US government, but a section of the community. Of course, there is a strong anti-British tradition in a small but significant part of both main US political parties and among them there have always been Irish Republican sympathies. Was there tacit support within a part of the US political machine for the IRA. Very probably. In their minds the IRA were always Robin Hood type characters, hiding out in the woods from the evil Redcoats in their armoured cars, as opposed to murdering Marxist psychopaths. None of this excuses the last Labour governments actions apropos Lockerbie / Libya, which were uniformly vile and make me ashamed of my country.

Another reason why Second Amendment rights in the US seem to make a lot of sense sometimes.

If anybody else disses Prince in this thread then I'm going to go postal. Leave Prince alone, he is (literally) a living god.

I really don't think the US would have. The whole not negotiating with terrorists thing is taken pretty seriously by the US government. Not that I think it is always the best policy, but in this case it would have been appropriate. LOL. You gave the Russians all of our nuclear weapons ORBATs to boost your start treaty. You gave safe haven to IRA terrorists for years, stood by whilst a section of your community funded and armed them, then your judiciary put obstacles in the way of their extradition when they sought sanctuary there. Puh-leez. That's a mighty high horse you got yourself there.

Then again, if the shoe was on the other foot does anybody seriously, for a moment, doubt that the US government wouldn't do exactly the same thing. It's the Speshul Relationship, stoopid.