Monte Carlo

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

Hmmm, asking around at work, my suspicion that it was a Nero Essentials issue increased (every time I said 'Nero Essentials' our resident technical person shook his head and made gloomy noises). So I used the Nero removal tool to delete it from my system, re-booted and my DVD drive mysteriously and happily started working again. Not a SecUROM issue, although I'm sure it's as problematic as you describe. Cheers MC

I'd tried to uninstall Nero essentials today, and I couldn't. I think it might be linked. How can I get a diagnostic and how do I repair the problem? Cheers MC

I tried to boot up MTW2 Kingdoms when I got a SecuROM message pop up saying that it couldn't detect a DC/DVD-ROM drive. Sure enough, it's disappeared. No icon in 'My Computer.' I'd previously de-fragged my 'puter, a few hours earlier. I'm running Vista (I know), any ideas? Edit: In device manager I'm getting this message: Check for solutions didn't work. Who'da thunk it? Cheers MC

^ Upgrade to Kingdoms then download the Grand Campaign mod, that ports all the improvements into the vanilla game. It's excellent. Cheers MC

Some good 70's actioners: The Gauntlet & The Eiger Sanction (Clint Eastwood) The Warriors ("Warriors.....come out to pla-aaay!!!") Assault on Precinct 13 (actually, Ethan Hawke's remake wasn't too bad) Death Wish (Charles Bronson) --- The 80's though, is the decade of action movies (there are dozens, not all good, lots of pulp but a smorgasbord of fun) --- The late 60's had good action thrillers, my all time favourite being the uber-cool Lee Marvin in Point Blank. Cheers MC

As for The Eagle Has Landed... Donald Pleasance as Himmler is suitably sinister. Rutger Hauer gets his first screen role as one of the Nazis who drags Col. Radl off for execution at the end. The Rangers sub-plot is great in the book and one of the better parts of the film. I don't know if Higgins was influenced by Went the Day Well (1942) but it's on similar lines. Cheers MC

It is indeed Play Dirty. Didn't realise it was 1969, kudos to you. Cheers MC

^ I am obscure action movie geek. I'm not proud of it, but it is something I have to deal with. Can you name the early 1970's Dirty Dozen rip-off starring Michael Caine set in North Africa in WW2? As for The Eagle Has Landed - the first novel I ever read (aged 8 or 9) and I love it to bits. Have read it probably twenty times. The movie is OK and I'd love to see a remake. Cheers MC

The Guns of Navarone was probably the first WW2 action movie. Given that it was made in the mid-60's the war was still recent enough to be treated reverently by movie makers, if we take away propaganda pieces made between 1939-45. Then, all of a sudden, Hollywood decided that WW2 was a perfectly acceptable vehicle for action movies (the mid-late 60's gave us The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Battle of the Bulge, Where Eagles Dare, Tobruk, The Longest Day...). The 1970's gave us allegories (C'mon, Kelly's Heroes is clearly about Vietnam) and overblown (but enjoyable) epics like A Bridge Too Far. The thriller genre was a bit too tied up with the Cold War IMO, but still there are gems in there if you look hard enough (for example The Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood and the Dirty Harry movies). OTOH, the 1980's action movie can be enjoyed for what it is, i.e. pulp. Commando is a well-executed confection of cliche that is eminently watchable. Whilst Hollywood was agonizing over Vietnam, Arnie was making Red Heat and The Running Man! Keanu Reeves made Point Break and Speed (OK, early 90's) that are still great popcorn movies that trace their lineage to 80's pulp actioners. OK, there's more than enough dross to be getting on with, but in the same way Tarantino heavily references 70's pulp in his work, I'm hoping that Stallone will see the opportunity to do likewise. It's fashionable to mock the man, but there's clearly more to him than meets the eye. The last Rambo was actually very good from both a narrative and technical perspective. The man enjoys fine art and paints. He opened a bizarre series of burger restaurants with Arnie and Bruce. He married Brigette Nielsen. He's more than the sum of parts... go Sly, go!* Cheers MC *I can't forgive him the re-make of Get Carter, though.

Hurl, you must have seen Mickey in the awesome video for Enrique Inglesias' Hero? Where Mickey swats Julio like a fly? At that moment Mr. Rouke sealed the deal, honestly he will become a paragon of awesomeness in The Expendables where he plays a sinister arms dealer. Mickey was born to play a sinister arms dealer in an over-the-top homage to action movies populated by the steroid-addled heroes of yesteryear. This is so awesome I think that the premiere will result in the appearance of the Higgs Boson. It's that awesome. Even as I write I feel sheer hunger for this movie, and am planning the day I go to see it. Cheers MC

Guys, you're missing the point. This is a celebration of a genre that ranges from the sublime all the way to the so-bad-it's-good. Ronin sits comfortably with Red Scorpion on this thread. Cheers MC

^ Some interesting points... and I agree about Mann. Look at The Kingdom. Quite average, rescued by a superb, nail-biting action sequence at the end of the movie. Miami Vice? Execrable. Absolutely rotten. Great gunfight at the end. And so on. Forgot Way of The Gun. Extremely good shoot-outs, love the empty fountain full of glass sequence. I think you are still too cerebral to fully dig this thread, though. Retreat to your den with a couple of dozen straight-to-video action movies, anything with Dolph Lundgren is good, and drink heavily. Only stop to eat pizza. After a while, you will be One of Us. Cheers MC