MacMichael

I wholly fail to comprehend the state of mind that would produce a statement like this without ironic intent. Being a PC gamer, I never really got the desire for achievements on the consoles until I picked up Fallout 3. They add a kind of game within the game. They give a reason to go back and try things that are challenging or fun that might not cross one's mind to attempt otherwise. And the way I imagine achievement design should be, getting all the achievements should mean you've seen or done all things the developers really felt a player should have tried in their game. Though with AP, unless it's GfW-Live enabled, the achievements probably won't matter as much to me, if they even make it into the PC version. While something like the achievements in the PC version of ME provide a similar pull, they don't have the same amount of pull as a Live achievement, even though I have no illusions that my gamer profile is ever viewer by anyone but my self, the fact that they exist there provides for more incentive than if they just exist in my copy of the game on my PC only. Probably something about being able to see them outside of the game itself makes them feel more real and thus more desirable.

I use a program I came across a while back called CPU-Control. The first time you set it, you do have to have the game up and running, but after that, if you have CPU-Control running, it does it automatically.

Using a dual-core and found that switching the game over to a single core speeds things up. Game runs a little faster and the initial start up is cut roughly in half. Haven't had a chance to try out the hotfix they released today, but it sounds like that improved things for most people, speed wise.

No kidding. One of my biggest disapointments of CoD 4. Could have atleast made the US campaign longer. I kept wondering if my Marine would later show up, maybe get to crawl out of the city, but thinking back to it, I'd say it was a great way to end the US side of the campaign. It was a real "wow" moment.

I didn't but there's a cumulative effect with the years and years of it. besides I somehow presume Role Playing game developers who created Torment and MoTB to be immune to crap of that sort. I almost puked at the end of Call of Duty IV's single player, for the sheer idiocy, bias and misinformation in the story. It ruined my experience of what was essentially an excellent game. Maybe I'm over thinking this or missing the point, but wasn't CoD4 the one where That seems a bit satirical actually. I have faith enough in Obsidian's writing skills that if they decide to deal with world politics in AP that they'll make it interesting. Not too much longer before that faith has the opportunity to get tested.

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Just came across a series today on Netflix, called MI-5. It's a BBC series and the first couple episodes look promising. Kind of a British version of 24 without the beating of people to a pulp. And each episode so far is a self contained plot.

Not horrible, just brutal to start of with. Once you get the hang of the controls and some money in your bank, it can become addictive. But the story is bad. X3: +Pretty -The slowest game in the history of mankind, just finishing the weak story will take hundreds of hours where 99% will be just waiting to arrive at your desitnation -A severe lack of information on how to play the game and how to accomplish missions makes the learning curve more like a wall -The only actual gameplay is shooting stuff and that isnt much fun -Really bad control interface, you'll need to click deep into menues for simple basic stuff -Its really boring -The missions can be extremely frustrating because of insufficient ifnromation and bad contruction. Its also very easy to break them. I hate it, I really do. I've easily put more hours into X3:R than any other game I've ever played, only Ultima Online could possibly give it any competition. It would be helpful to know if you're talking about X3:R or X3:TC. Some of the complaints, look more like TC, as of a couple patches ago, don't know how it's doing currently, I've been too busy to load it up. Some of the criticisms are entirely justified though. The manual and story aren't really worth bothering with for the most part. Though the forums and the guides you can find there fill in for the manual reasonably well. And the interface could use some work, but if you spend enough time with it, I at least stopped noticing. As far as gameplay, shooting stuff is probably about the smallest part of X3, though TC seems to lean a bit more towards it. The business side of things is a huge part of the game. Trading, building factory complexes, constructing your fleet, then of course the exploration. And as Bos_hybrid mentioned, there's a great Mod community built around the X games.

I think it's possible to pull off a "serious" spy RPG even with over the top characters. Maybe not Syriana level seriousness, but certainly Bond level seriousness. I'm thinking more early Bond and current Bond, there was a Brosnan Bond or two that exceeded my ability to take them seriously. Bond always was dealing with colorful characters, like Jaws and Oddjob, in colorful places, You Only Live Twice's volcano hideout, etc. Though maybe it depends on where people are willing to draw the line on seriousness.