Monte Carlo

I'd pay good money for a modded version of Avatar where the blue hippies get pwned by evil space mercenaries and their natural resources are pillaged to make more tanks, planes, bombs and stuff.

I'm so sorry. There is a support group for that, though, if it helps. I've seen... Knight & Day The critics hated it but I kinda liked it in a strange way. It's got a bit of an identity crisis going on, is it a black comedy a genre satire or a comedy-thriller? It's none and all of them and suffers as a result. Having said that, Cruise is actually a gifted comic actor and clearly enjoys sending up his action hero / Mission Impossible persona. Cameron Diaz is a 21st Century Goldie Hawn, and very good at it too. There is one laugh-out loud scene which, had the directors chosen to be a bit darker, shows what the movie might have been. In any case, a confused popcorn movie which was a reasonably amusing way of killing a couple of hours.

You know that Bio, really, want to make games where your pre-defined character is completely pre-defined in terms of weapons, attacks, attire... everything. It makes the game "more consistent with our vision of the game we want to make." The only thing you'll get to choose is, yes, facial appearance (Bio fans spend many, many hours playing with that it looks pretty and doesn't involve math, although why micro-managing your chin is more meaningful than your inventory is beyond me) and of course RomANceSSSSS!!! Damn your eyes Bio!!!

:: Sigh :: I'll probably be catching up with the past two years - The Witcher (groovy ultimate edition), King Arthur, CoD Black Ops perhaps (curious about the fuss) and if it's released Diablo 3. The wargaming / strategy sector is looking good from an indie POV, but that's an obscure subject for another thread. Curiously, nothing by EmoWare features in my list.

I used to be Grinch-like, but now I have children it's much easier because obviously they love the whole thing to bits. I am off to the countryside for the Holidays visiting family. I will be offline until next week I guess, so I'll take the opportunity now to wish you all a very happy Christmas wherever you are or whatever you're doing. Cheers MC

^ WoW is cartoony, lame and predicated on playing with other humans. It's a bit apples and oranges, Calax, but does illustrate how difficult it is to get such a game just right.

I'm old enough to know better, but I'm telling you now that gaming is a great hobby and perfectly valid. Evidence? * I'm a technophobe, but since I started gaming I've learnt how to install mods, use compression tools, install / update drivers, had advice on free anti-virus / spam / clean-up utilities, can now optimize my rig / ave got into and understood high-end PCs a bit better. If I'd never gamed I'm telling you now I'd never have done this. * It's a stress-buster. My work can get on top of me sometimes, but when I'm trying to pin down waves of enemy infantry on the Hochwald Gap or de-buff a lich with a gimpy character on uber-modded BG2 guess what? I'm kind of not bothered. * It's fun. You don't need to validate fun. * It gives me kudos with all the early twentysomethings I know because I might not look like I understand web culture and humour but I do. And that, by and large, is down to gaming. * If it weren't for gaming I'd never have known who Olivia Munn was. * The community here might have it's fair share of asocial pedants but I kind of like them and enjoy wasting my time online with them. That's down to gaming too. So the O/P needs to chill out.

I'm not a graphics whore by any stretch of the imagination, Wrath, but that game is uglier than an ugly thing wearing an ugly mask.

Today I hit level fifty in Company of Heroes Online, which was rather good. My level-up game was the shameless demolition of a lower-ranked team in a 4V4, unleashing rocket barrages, hordes of stealthed-up stormtroopers and hero armour units. Wahey! They were rage-quitting left, right and centre. Fifty is the level cap, I've made the top 3% of players in my commander class. I've never really been into competitive online gaming but this one is awesome. Now I've made an allied Airborne Commander, which is definitely not a power-build. Should be a challenge nursing him to level fifty, after the sheer armoured steamroller of my Blitzkrieg guy it should be fun playing a lightly armed mobile doctrine.

I liked the strategic overlay in Bulge, where you could move battlegroups inbetween missions, but yeah it wasn't as cool as the others. Did you play the D-Day one, BTW? In case you're interested, Matrix Games have re-engineered versions of all these titles.

The original close combat games are exceptional WW2 RTS games too. I love A Bridge Too Far! I love them, own them all. The Russian Front one is the best IMO, and the most heavily modded. They are dated now, but for a squad-level tactical combat sim the series remains awesome.

^ Awesome, I completely agree.

I know it's easy to be negative, which is probably why I am. But this looks spectacularly bad. Why? D&D is flawed, quirky and fun. What it isn't is 'easy to pick up and play' and with Gauntlet style co-op. This product isn't playing to the strengths of the game. Plus it's 4E.

Diablo is all about exploring masive dungeon complexes, playing dress-up dolly with matching armour sets, developing ever-more awesome powers and turning legions of monsters into ketchup. It is also about staying up until 4am against your will because for some reason this silly, grinding, repetitive game is like freaking crack. I love Diablo.

Never played Homeworld. Is it one of those sci-fi empire builders that require you to open an Excel spreadsheet to track your in-game decisions? In any case, Relic haven't even hinted about CoH2, I'm not expecting anything this side of 2013 at the earliest.

So according to your logic, since there will always be crime, the only way to stop it is to lock everyone up. Would that make you feel better? Wait, was that kindergarten reasoning only supposed to be applied on my arguments? Sorry. Alternatively, you could choose to address the entire post rather than selectively.

@ Tig, there is a bit of a dilemma for you here. First, you could always download CoH Online (CoHO) which is free. Or, you can pick up the original game (i.e. CoH, Tales of Valor, Opposing Fronts) for pennies on Steam. The originals have more content and factions although the single player American campaign is also free with CoHO. CoHO is very competitive and uses a micro-transactional model (at the moment I'm dropping about 5

Company of Heroes: Eastern Front a massive mod made by a collection of genius gamers. It's awesome and free.

I will now ask a very difficult question that you right wing nuts will struggle with (apparently), but here goes: why does he break into your house and steal your stuff? Remove the incentive and he won't. Amazing, isn't it? You are clearly a utopian, and therefore a fantasist, which doesn't really help your argument. Go out and give all your stuff away if it makes you feel better. There will always be crime. Sometimes more and sometimes less, remarkably the more criminals you lock up the more acquisitive crime goes down. Unless a third party (i.e. the State) intervenes to deal with those who damage the community they live in then you end up with vigilantism. I'm sure you wouldn't want that. Am I a flinty-hearted SOB who'd lock 'em up and throw away the key? Nope, I think there is a big place for rehabilitation within the criminal justice system. There is also a big place for punishment. Carrot and stick. There's too much carrot and the moment. And criminals know it.

Career criminals laugh their heads off at hand-wringing liberals like you. They actually despise you, but make all the right noises when you're in earshot. The simple truth, so simple that supposedly educated people struggle to grasp it, is that when incarcerated the criminal is unable to break into your house and steal your stuff. Amazing, isn't it? If some thieving recidivist wants to make a career out of stealing stuff from others, even if it is because he needs to put junk in his arm, then he should expect to spend a significant amount of time in prison. Screw him. Personally I'm more interested in the victims of the oxygen-thief. The victims are the people the bleeding hearts aren't very interested in, no radical crediblity there. Would it be because most of the hand-wringers are middle-class, self-despising leftists who think property is theft (until they get mugged themselves, of course).

Seriously, I hope they make timed dialogue response optional and / or via player controlled timer. What about dyslexic people? It's hardly an uncommon condition and this could seriously FUBAR a game for them.

They also said that NWN1 would be an immersive single-player experience 'right out of the box.' What's the phrase? Ah, r00fles!

We might as well say it anyway: DA:O was too old-skool, too darn complicated what with all those tactical choices an' all. The gaming media are hopelessly biased towards console / twitch-gaming and talk down any title that isn't completely tailored to the slack-jawed casual gaming crowd.

Did I say something to upset you...? Now you'll never know! *manic laughter* I do. Wow Nepenthe, you are even more evil than I hitherto suspected.

Hmmm a really big subject, an interesting propostion and whoah the thread is de-railed! Your point only answers fifty percent of why Hitler ordered Op. Barbarossa (mainly because it was conceived before the start of the war). Sure, it played a part in the rationale, but early Nazi military successes in the West should also be compared to the utterly parlous, near-medieval state of the Soviet military in 1941. I can't put my hand on my heart and say it was a gamble I wouldn't have taken (modern example - a brace of armoured divisions, utterly outnumbered on paper, invade and conquer a large country with a massive army through a combination of technlogical superiority, a professional army and air superiority - yes I'm talking about Iraq in 2003). The ideological zeal / Lebensraum aspect of Hitler's decision-making is more of a useful factor in why the Nazis invaded the USSR. He was genuinely convinced that the untermensch would roll over. This was the flame which military success in the low countries tipped a bucket-full of petrol over. Cheers MC