Monte Carlo

I like FO3 a lot, but kind of gave up on it because of (a) lack of stability and (b) repetitive combat. I also don't like the scrounging / scavenging - it just gets a bit stale for me, as do weapons breaking all the time. Seriously, you can bury an AK in gravel and sewage for years, slap a magazine in, ready it, pull the trigger and it'll likely go 'bang.' So why does my FO:3 AK degrade after I fire a couple of hundred rounds through it? That's not immersion - it's a pain in the arse. I can understand it with energy weapons, because they don't actually exist... Having said that, I love the sandbox aspect and the art direction: I'll defiintely be coming back to it when it's patched and I've figured out which mods to use (hint - more durable weapons, please). Cheers MC

Have work commitments until next week, then have free time to play Storm of Zehir. Still agonizing over a good party, too much choice. In the meantime, a turn or two of MTW2: GC mod every now and then (England, turn 112). Cheers MC

I didn't like NWN, but I can appreciate why lots of people did - not least the toolset aspect. Looking back on it, one of the reasons I didn't like it was the hype, and marked the end of a fairly fan-boyish attitude to Bio. Bioware's hype for NWN was overblown and inaccurate. The OC was awful, a bolt-on to what was a superlative D&D toolset for builders. This wasn't what was promised and as someone who bought it for the single-player experience that was a big let down. HotU, OTOH, was a solid, enjoyable product. If the OC had been of comparable quality then I'd have been a lot happier. Oh well, water under the bridge. Cheers MC

I live in London, which is a pretty big place. Yes the 50 megaton effort destroys it fairly comprehensively, with the tertiary effects covering the entire M25 (the orbital motorway, most of which isn't actually in London). OTOH, Little Boy, at a mere 15 KT, only zaps Westminster and a few outlying areas. I'd probably be faraway enough to see the mushroom cloud and catch radiation sickness. Cheers MC

^ Clearly not, then again I have a day job, a family and other stuff going on. You could enlighten me as to how these games worked, rather than sneer at my lack of available idling time. Cheers MC

^ Yes, I'm sure we all get the Fonz / Jump the Shark reference.

One of my favourite games, ever, is Hackmaster. A parody of 1st Edition AD&D, it works because it is clearly a homage to a much-loved original. It manages to tread that difficult line between parody and actually being playable. A Hackmaster session, with the right players and some alcoholic refreshment, really is like spending an evening in your very own Monty Python movie. On the computer, this seems to me to be a trickier premise. Having said that, DungeonKeeper struck me as not just witty and playable, but a game where the humour wasn't a bolt on. I'm struggling to think of others, maybe because games like Evil Genius (I think that's what it was called, was really looking forward to it but the less said the better) don't cut the mustard. So, where do we stand on comedy and parody in computer games? Hackmaster would, in my opinion, utterly rock. I'm sure you could tinker with the NWN2 engine and do a Hackmaster mod. Cheers MC

Or Wrongtastic. Wrongifullnae. Wrongtabulous. Those aren't new words, they're existing words with an annoying suffix. I'm completely aware of the evolution of language. That doesn't mean that the future of English being determined by Micro$oft spell-checker is necessarily a good thing. Cheers MC Edit: I can't be bothered to argue with Vol.

That was a good review, even if it did confirm some of my worst fears about deus ex machina gameplay via origin stories (i.e. the arc is fixed, you only make tweak-decisions, we are all goldfish in Dave Gaider's aquarium). However, and this cannot be forgiven, the author used the word 'impactful', which isn't a word and annoys me greatly. On the other hand, I simply cannot wait to see what the community does with the cutscene dialogue tools. It's gonna be a riot. Cheers MC

^ I was on my own in a house in Dorset (very rural), drunk and watching The Shining. It was pretty scary, although not as scary as my hangover the next day.

That would be Doomsday from writer/director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) with Rhona Mitra, Sean Pertwee, Alexander Siddig, Bob Hoskins, and Malcolm McDowell. That's the one! Rhona is extremely lovely, but she does scowl all the way through the movie. There's a Vin Diesel movie on pay-per-view at the moment called Babylon AD. Mrs. Carlo likes the look of it and so do I. Has anyone seen it? If so I'd be grateful for a quick review, although the synopsis seems reminiscent of the sci-fi movie with Bruce Willis and Gary Oldfield... blimey I'm getting bad at remembering movie titles at the moment! Cheers MC

Am very lucky, Mrs. Carlo hates sci-fi (i.e. "anything with spaceships") but really likes, er, non-spaceship based sci-fi. This is the way her mind works. Anyway, I've now indoctrinated her with the core message that it cannot be sci-fi if there isn't a spaceship. Therefore she swooned all the way through the trailer for Death Race, both at hunky Jason as well as the silly cars and OTT action sequences. It's all a question of semantics. Cheers MC

I saw a movie the other day where Scotland got taken out by plague and years later had degenerated into a Mad Max-style PA dystopia. Anyway, some futuristic soldiers get into the armoured car from Aliens with the pretty brunette chick who took over from Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. They drive up there to get the vaccine for the plague, which had reappeared in London for some reason. England is run by a sinister totalitarian political party, so there was a bit of realism in the film. Half the surviving Scots had gone all cannibal punk and the other half had gone all Medieval, living in castles and wearing chainmail. None of them sound very Scottish, which I suppose is a symptom of the plague, or bad casting, you decide. Pretty chick escapes in a pristine Bentley in a hilarious car chase that is a total homage to the end of Mad Max 2. It was so insufferably preposterous that Mrs. Carlo and I laughed all the way through, loved it to bits and want to see it again. I can't even remember the title, but it was awesome and I implore you all to see it as soon as you can. Seriously. My next big night in will be Jason Statham in Death Race. Am giddily excited. Cheers MC

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Romans: didn't matter where you came from or who you were - 22 years in the Legions and you got a big sack of salt, enough land for a farm and citizenship. Can't say fairer than that.

^ Exactly. You could also choose what sort of leader you are as you build your character. Dump all your skill points into bullying and you might be able to get the best weapons from the armourer. Then again, dump them into marksmanship and you could be just as deadly with a standard issue weapon. Or, be a charismatic leader and watch your NPCs marksmanship and tactics improve as a result. Personally, I've never liked being a 'hub' character, whose skills are all about making others better (i.e. your bard or cleric type) but in a military RPG it would be interesting.

I hope I feel the same, as this historical period holds little or no interest for me whatsoever and naval combat? Meh. My love of the TW gaming experience, however, is epic. So I'm in a difficult spot, I'd rather they'd have remade Shogun using a new engine. Cheers MC

Sawyer's point makes the case though, doesn't it? The party is together for a reason. And the reason is central to the plot. The people-trapped-together device is a classic, from Das Boot to Red Dwarf.. It works and has all sorts of possibilities for dramatic characterization. Compare and contrast with, say NWN2. Even the plot-thin BG series had some NPC motivation, albeit in many cases a veneer. I suppose the difficulty is balancing the game with the NPC interaction - I don't want to play a NPC manager programme but I do want some sort of dynamic concerning the people around my character. A military RPG like Mass Effect, where your officer-grade military guy buys stuff from stores is just lame. Why not a requisition point system ("You ain't cleared to take the MKV Plasma Blaster on this mission, Sir), or a bullying mechanic ("Give me the MKV Blaster, corporal, or I'll have you posted to latrine duty for the next ten cycles!") or just about anything else. Please. If I can think of it, then the elite team of Bioware creatives in the Master Brain can. Cheers MC

You, sir, are Herve Caen and I claim my fifty Euros.

A good summary of why I've gone off of Bioware CRPGs. And, as far as Alpha Protocol is concerned, the spy genre typically centres on the lone agent. Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer and James Bond have people hanging around to help them occasionally, but they often end up dead. So that design decision is entirely consistent as far as I'm concerned. Cheers MC

The right to vote should be won only by serving in the military, especially against giant insectoids on faraway planets.

^ Hey, we can't agree all the time.

^ That's what my tech guy said - there are similiarities between copy protection and DVD burning / editing suites (which I suppose is obvious when you stop to think about it). Nero is, apparently, a pretty complex piece of software and can be difficult to uninstall. To be fair, the cleaning tool they issue on their website is easy to use and does the job. Cheers MC

Arcanum? Ugly to look at, pretentious, awful combat and depressing music. And I don't have a lot of time for crafting. Apart from that, I loved it Good luck with your game, heartily ignore grognards like me! Cheers MC

You lost me there mate, because I'd rather feed my hand into a shredder than play Arcanum or anything remotely like it. Good luck though. Cheers MC

Mock me if you will, but look at the last screen Maria posted and tell me you aren't, in some way, reminded of Gustav Klimt. Cheers MC