Monte Carlo

^ Don't believe you about the Indian food. Nicholas 'The Hardest Working Man in Hollywood' Cage has moved to Europe and keeps buying castles. Because he can. Like I say, Yanks love old buildings.

* Oh, and curry. Forget the Indian claims about curry, ours is a bizarre Bangladeshi hybrid created to pander to the infantile British palate filtered through distant cultural osmosis from the Raj. And completely delicious, best enjoyed with a drink (q.v.) Never had a good curry in the States. Never. Great Chinese food, but for some reason the Indian food isn't right there.

Cambridge. Picturesque, interesting, cultured. And bloody windy. The wind comes across the fens like a whip, and doesn't stop. It's really flat out there (then again, you are from Chicago, the Windy City, right?). I prefer the western side of the UK TBH, and I'm originally from deepest Sarf Lunnon. As for schools, a country the size of the USA is inevitably going to have an amazing diversity of provision, from superb to disgraceful. You'd call it a zip-code lottery, what we call a post-code lottery. It's strange for Americans to move here unless they are sent here for work reasons. Having said that, I've met a few (more Canadians TBH) and they all seem to like it. Unless they're from somewhere hot. I'd prepare myself, were I an American, for the following: * Very long conversations about the weather. This cliche is completely true. * Dreadful, prurient tabloid media that makes the National Enquirer look like the Washington Post * No guns, well not very often and certainly not anywhere nice unless you happen across one of these wierd rural death-wishes we've had recently * Football. Lots of football. Jesus I hate football, get into rugby it's far more interesting * Excellent beer. Good wine is cheaper than you find in the States, too. In fact, get used to British drinking. The British are drunks, we will look at you strangely if you are not partaking... * ... which brings me onto pubs. Find a good one, dig in, get known, enjoy and you won't go home. Literally. * Old buildings. Yanks get really freaked out by the old buildings. My local church is Norman. * Driving on the correct side of the road * The Queen. Don't diss The Boss * London. London is a post-modern Rome, a city state that is part Blade Runner, part 16th Century Venice and completely loopy * Walking. We walk. We don't drive everywhere, mainly because that gets in the way of us having a drink There's a starter for ten. Cheers MC

...as long as you don't make a wrong turn and end up in... (whisper it) Swindon.

You will find that UK house prices are heavily predicated on the quality of the local schools, if you see a bargain the first question you need to ask yourself is 'whats the local school like?'. There are some interesting things happening in UK education policy, I'm quite enthusiastic about the future. My son's school is excellent, and completely free (infant school). As for the general reasoning behind your idea to live abroad, I think it's good for kids. If I had the chance to work abroad for a bit I would, but I think you might find residency issues as a US Citizen unless you get a job and they sponsor you. My wife works for an American company, and they have some Americans at her office. They seem to like it here, a lot. They find it liberating that you can drink a bottle of claret at lunch and not be carted off to the nearest Betty Ford clinic. France and Italy are lovely, but the French hauteur might drive you nuts, and the Italian way of life (and I love Italy) although great means putting up with Italian local government. Which will drive you mad. At least here everybody will understand you. Cheers MC

Brighton is slightly bohemian and pleased with itself, to be honest the place gets on my nerves. It's populated by trendy Londoners who tend to crowd out the long-established Gay community there. I used to like it there fifteen years ago, before it became Notting Hill-on-Sea. It's also very expensive, consider areas slightly out of Brighton to get better value for money. Having said that, Sussex (the county Brighton sits in) is nice.

A few points from a veteran Londoner, born-and-bred. Edinburgh: Beautiful, fab architecture, lots of culture, great pubs. It's also the most expensive city in the UK next to London to live in and the weather is something else. Awful. Ireland: The economy is FUBAR. England is in the doldrums but nowhere near as bad. Avoid it for now. England: London, forget it. Very expensive, it's like New York in the early 80's - a place for the rich and the poor and tough for folks in the middle. You're an IT type, want a nice community, want to live in Europe, right? You need, like the person who said that he knew Americans living in Reading, to consider the Thames corridor that follows the M4 motorway west out of London. It's where most of our high-tech industry is located, you are on top of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and the West Country, are near some good regional airports / sea ports for your trips to France, Spain and Italy and it's not hideously expensive with good schools. You can still easily get to London if you want to see the sights. Furthermore, the lush green England you might have in your mind's eye, with pubs and people playing cricket does actually exist out that way. This website is a pretty good starter for ten, check out how far your dollar might go. Alternatively, if you know any folks in the military ask them what life's like here or expat Americans, there are lots of US airbases in the UK (I'm sure there must be an online community you can visit). Cheers MC

^ That's a fair point. Shame Bio is more likely to fling assets at soppy romances.

If he starts at 18 (and fit as a fiddle) and the game ends at the relatively tender age of 28 then I suppose the biggest potential obstacle is facial hair management and trying to avoid a nascent beer belly.

Just checked out some SC2 screenies. I like.

^ Try Company of Heroes. Seriously, and it's free online from September. It's awesome on very level.

I hear you brother. I'm not twitchy, smart or competitive enough for MP RTS versus humans. I love Company of Heroes, I've got a friends list as long as your arm for skirmish V CPU. But people? I get my arse kicked every time. So, yeah, the SP vanilla campaign for a RTS is crucial for me. Games like CoH deliver on that front, I've played the core allied campaigns two or three times and not got bored of them and love online but, as I say, not against the waves of pro / smurf ninjas.

I liked Starcraft 1 for lots of reasons but Starcraft 2 is just too.... overwhelming. At the moment I've only got time for one big game in my life, SC2 isn't it. What's the Diablo 2 release date, BTW?

It's refreshing, in of itself, that this thread hasn't descended into the usual flame-war. Oh no, look what I just went and said

As usual you are talking out of your you-know-what. My Bio purchase history, since BG2 has been NWN and Dragon Age. Jade Empire and the Mass Effects passed me by. I won't be buying DA:2. I will however, be sniping at it. Diablo 2 and Battle.net will I suspect be my next big gaming thing.

Look, the 'unreliable narrator' is a long-established literary convention (Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a classic example) which only goes to show the pretensions that drive this project. As the man said earlier, the unreliable narrator will be a device whereby whatever you do, Bio still tells you what happened. The excuse being, "it's an unreliable narrator, a classic literary device, look how clever we are." Lastly, the time frame will merely provide new, linear, activity hubs (Years 1-3, Years 3-7, Years 8-9 the YeAr 10 ThE YEaR of DaRk HERoiC FantASy!!). How do I know this, sport fans? Because of the hyperbolic spin around every previous Bio title since BG2. Cheers MC

It doesn't matter how tired the mook-creature-orc trope is, I expect the journo to know and elaborate. Crap journalism is crap journalism and gaming is very poorly served by it's attendant media. A movie correspondent wouldn't get away with that, unless he was trashing the film.

Tigranes, next time try it with the player character, Imoen + your own party Icewind Dale style (i.e. create a MP game and cut-and-paste it into your SP folder). This is a hell of a lot of fun, because you can bash the game up with a custom-built twink squad and try out all those classes you've heard so much about (I did it with a Kensai / Mage twink build, the notorious dual-classed Beserker Cleric, a Cavalier which is twinkier than a twinky covered in glitter and a Ranger / Cleric. Even with lots of mods and challenges it was hot knife through butter time and lots of fun.

'Ranks' are a bit of a misnomer, aren't they? There are more Catholics than Americans, which puts Pope Benedict right up there. Unless we are using the Stalin gauge of power 'How many divisions does the Pope have?'

Baldur's Gate 2 is a significantly shorter crit-path game. It was probably orders of magnitude cheaper to make too. Point not found. You're comparing production costs in 1999 / 2000 (Apples) to 2008 / 2009 (Oranges). In BG2 retrospectives in the mid-2000s, other industry professionals were citing the stronghold quests as an example of overly generous design.

The Force is strong in this one.

The main thing is that most outsiders view the US political system as more hegemoinc than it actually is, so this move looks like imperialistic arrogance rather than grand-standing. As I said, I am on the whole a big fan of the United States. Lived there, travelled there, like the people there. So why, over the past eighteen months or so, is the USA getting on my **** so much?

I went for a minor upgrade, namely a 1GB NVIDIA

Quel surprise! Vol speaks out of his arse. The primary engine for the EU in the 1950's, out of the European coal and steel stuff, was the fear of another pan-European war. The counter-balance to the US stuff was a French thing and came much later. Again, you speak out of your fundament. Look at the generosity of residence & employment rights to Commonwealth citizens several generations after the end of Empire, and our complete acquiesence to EU treaties and law. This, I suspect, would require you to think before posting though so is extremely unlikely.

^ I think they would, Grom, I think they are moving to a console-focussed model in line with virtually every other developer.