Monte Carlo

The graphics look nice but the costumes look awful. I won't be getting it, for some reason the whole thing leaves me cold.

No, it really doesn't. Braveheart is a fantasy on amost every level. LotR has more meaningful things to say about English and Scottish relations in the 13th Century.

I'm still playing CoH and need a wingman or two. It's now crazy cheap on Steam, it's the best RTS ever and it would be great to play some of you lot online. PM me for details. Cheers MC

Dennis H doesn't feature in the VO credits... but the rangers sound just like him as Snake Doctor in The Unit. VO is important to me. And RTS games aren't noted for their excellent VO (Silo Needed!) so CoH deserves a special mention.

^ Oh, and CoH also has the most awesome VO, I'm pretty sure Denis Haysbert does the US Army Ranger sergeant and the dude from Full Metal Jacket does his Drill Sergeant schtick to perfection.

Men of War.... hmmm. I can't make my mind up about it. There's something... flat about the visuals and it has the worst, most wooden VO EVAR. It's certainly not as good as CoH as far as I'm concerned. EDIT: An review on GameSpy I have to agree with 100% Art direction, music, mood, VO, gameplay... all polished and executed with extreme skill and style.

Far Cry and / or Far Cry 2 are good fun (and I'm not much of an FPS guy) but I echo Pops and others views on Crysis. One of the few FPS games I ever got addicted too and I loved the Predator homage vibe. In fact, at times it feels like a sand-box exploration RPG with lots of shooting --- this cannot be a bad thing. Lastly, Mercenaries (old and probably dirt cheap) and Mercs 2 are cool and I've heard good things about Bad Company. Cheers MC

^ It's a genuinely good, if not flawed, CRPG. I'm in broad agreement with Gromnir. Bio keeps up it's unique power to create genuinely irritating NPCs of little or no merit, and the game mechanics were possibly created during a marathon caffeine-and-sugar fuelled brainstorming session, but you can have fun building a character. It's also, like every system, open to amusing min / maxing and twinky munchkin abuse. Not that it's a bad thing. It's party-based --- the bigger battles genuinely make you think. There is lots of fighting in tunnels, a rip-off of my unique CRPG ruleset but I've a heart the size of a big thing inflated with helium so I'll let that one go. The fighting in tunnels is my favourite part of the game. It also has a confusing currency system and an in-world economic scene where a backpack costs the same as a small castle with hot and cold running water. Buy it, I suspect you'll have a laugh with it, possibly more than you thought. Cheers MC

FWIW, will these boxset spammers please realise that their annoying spam makes me loathe them and not buy their products. Delete the post, ban their accounts. Or something.

This DLC thing is marvellous, why didn't they QA it properly then bundle it as an extra with the XP and charge a couple of dollars more?

You just reminded my of how fugly the character portraits in ToEE were. And the VO... LOL didn't they run out of money and hire a load of students to do it?

^ You've simply identified the paradox Bioware trapped themselves in with Dragon Age. For Bio, 'story-driven' means extremely linear --- the choices are illusory. Then, to make things worse they tried to make the Grey Wardens all things to all men to square this circle --- badass destroyers of evil (if that's your thing) or paladin-esque upholders of good (ditto). Alistair is the fly in that ointment, he's easily one of the most annoying NPCs they've ever written. It would have been easier to put 'evil' characters under some sort of geas and make them defeat the Darkspawn by hilariously evil means. It would have been more fun than the plot mish-mash and inconsistencies you describe.

I dunno, but from the trailer I saw I think the returning NPC is Alistair. Who will spend the game in camp, in his shorts, completely ignored until he's forced on me by the designers.

Well Bg2 / ToB is obviously the one I've played most and enjoyed, I also rate NWN2 / MotB / SoZ. Warriors of the Eternal Sun was touched with the Wand of Awesomeness, IIRC it was the first D&D computer game I'd ever played. ToEE wins the Most-Promise-But-Fatally-Flawed award. Dragon Shard, that RTS thingie set on Eberron wins suckiest game for me personally.

^ You can't discuss the Ottoman Empire, WW1 and beyond without Attaturk. Secular nationalism was unleashed by WW1, but by that point 'The Sick Man of Europe' was already on it's knees. Were it not for Attaturk it is entirely possible that the region might have been subsequently gobbled up by Hitler or Stalin had it remained as it was. As it stood, modern Turkey was rescued by it's geography and by it's army.

Are there tunnels in this expansion?

^ Obviously, there are different interpretations. Furthermore, 'The Caliphate' was hardly homogenous --- although classical Islam views politics and religion as indivisible it was inevitable that medieval (Almohad)Egypt might be run very differently from Mesopotamia. The Muslim cultures around the Mediterranean flourished for hundreds of years but the factors I describe had a terrible impact... * Crusading Christian armies attacking, frequently, from a number of directions. The Christian nations of the Outremer in the Holy Land were hardly a recipe for stability in the Muslim lands. * The Mongols destroyed, razed, ransacked everything in their path. Scholars such as Lewis genuinely believed that the impact of those events left a terrible legacy in the development of the Middle East in the Medieval period --- it was as if the Muslim kingdoms were hurtled back to the stone age by the level of destruction. By the high medieval era the Christian nations were overtaking the nations of the Caliphate not only by dint of skill and the renaissance, but because of the destruction wrought by the Horde. * Others suggest that the precursors for post-feudal economic models were hindered by a theocratic society --- I'm far from an expert on this but I've heard the theory. Early Christianity "rendered unto God what was God's and unto Caesar what was Caesar's" a distinction unrecognised in Islam. This separation of the temporal and spiritual, it is argued, led to more economically productive and impactive models of governance in Christian Europe. I think if you want to look at the decline of the Ottoman Empire you can better see this argument in action, although in the 16th Century the Ottomans were a regional superpower who easily threatened Europe on numerous occasions. That's just a starter for ten, like I say I'm far from an expert but am very interested in classical Islam and the Caliphate --- not least because it is so misunderstood. Cheers MC

By the early 12th Century Muslim metallurgy, mathematics, medicine and philosophy were equal to, and in some cases superior, of that of China. There is a sort of consensus that a number of factors stymied further progress, namely the increasing military power of the Christian Franks, the nature of the Caliphate (theocracies tend to reach a certain point of glory then fizzle out) and last but not least the Mongol horde that by the 13th Century razed almost every centre of Muslim civilization and learning. If you need to be reminded of the potency of medieval Islam go visit southern Spain and marvel at the architecture and agricultural bounty they left behind. In Europe. I ate my paella made from rice irrigated by fields established in the 12th century. One of the ideological drivers for Islamist (as opposed to Islamic) bitterness with the West (etc) is the lost promise of the Caliphate. Check out some Bernard Lewis for more. Cheers MC

I have to disagree, the Romans were the antithesis of ancient China: outward-looking, mercantile, flexible and curious. Rome, played out differently, seems a plausible candidate to climb the tech tree rapidly. you need capitalism for the rapid technological progress that launches you from fireworks, ornate sailing ships and metallurgy to engines, internal combustion and electricity. And, in the early Medieval era the Muslim kingdoms of the Caliphate were the most technologically advanced. Cheers MC

^ FWIW, my view is that because DA has such a strong, linear narrative it makes convincing bite-sized DLC (story-wise) an issue. Where does it all fit in? Not a problem for an XP. DLC for a more open-ended game? sure, no problem, you could visit Durlag's Tower and it had no impact on anything else you did. I don't get the feeling that this is Bio's vision for DA:O. A shame, a big just-for-the-sake-of-it dungeon in the middle of Ferelden, four hours game-play, five bucks? Why not? Alternatively, you could download my mod, which is heavily tunnel-based. Cheers MC

Yeah. I read a quite well-reasoned theory once that, had the Roman Empire not imploded when it did, and it's technological progress continued apace then the Space Legions would be storming Alpha Centauri by the 1700's. Of course, this is predicated on a Roman industrial revolution and a thousand of years of world peace. Hmmm.

Yes indeed. Mwuahahahahaaaa!!!

On the Bio social site thing. I'm not surprised you haven't found it, the place is a mess.

My Meh! Gland is working overtime at the fact that you have to be a Grey Warden. Again. And I think it's hilarious that they let you re-specc your original character, I suppose it is the most popular DA mod! Mine will presumably be a lich re-animated from his casket at the Weisshaupt Fortress. Bio needs to get a grip of it's web operation. The lack of info and confusion over the release of Return to Ostagar is pretty shabby, and the new networking site is a nightmare to read and navigate. DA:O's web presence never got over the Marilyn Manson makeover experience.

I'm trying to work out the math --- it's allegedly 15 hours + 5 new NPCs (+1 oldie which has to be Morrigan). It's just over half the price of the original (in UK