Nepenthe

I should learn how to do that some day. Maybe start with one shirt. Of course I would need to buy an iron first Goddamn hippies.

Well, it's the only Batman game I've "played" (not enough time to form a real opinion, mind you), so I don't have any references. Mind you, Batman and TR (the originals) are completely different breeds, Batman and later TR games being "fighting" games and older TR games exploration and discovery. Sort of comparing Apples and Oranges. The fist fighting was nice enough, but the constant flailing around of the camera, zooming in and out for "kill cam" effect annoys me in any game. I think my problem is, I really don't care about "interactive movie" effect developers/publishers are trying to push for. I'm sure many gamers appreciate it, I'm just not one of them I dunno, I'd expect to be all over an "interactive movie" game, but the first Batman bored me into tears. Still haven't finished it, probably should. :/ Edit: "first Batman" means Arkham Asylum here, not, say, the gameboy game I did beat a multitude of times in the early 90s.

I've been a broke student for all my life so far, this is the first year that I can actually afford to some real Christmas shopping. Going to be interesting... Got summoned for lunch by my dad today, he'd apparently had a major party yesterday (retired professors still need to entertain visiting dignitaries every now and then) so I got called over to polish up some leftovers. Forgot the Auchentoshan this time, so the visit was a bit dry. Conversely, it rained cats and dogs on the way back... Two farewell parties at work tomorrow (research group and research institute), so need to get the Charles Heidsieck, blueberry muffins, coffee and citron-merengue pies organized at the right moments... instead of playing SWTOR through the night.

I'd also like to point out that apparently neither myself nor Raithe actually took the option of giving the meds to the soldiers (due to the way the mission was set up, I did it because the refugees extorted a promise from me to give it to them in return for the information on their location - figured that between letting the enemy have them or giving it to the refugees, the latter was the better option). There are significant DSP options along the way, I'd like to know if actually giving them to the soldiers is actually DSP worthy (and if it is, is it based on you breaking your promise or the fact you gave it to the soldiers). So yeah, it's a bt more nuanced, and it's a shared side quest between soldiers and smugglers, the refugee alternative feels a lot more suitable as a smuggler (which is what I was playing, anyway). Hurlie, you in the know?

Yes, you're starting from your preconceptions and then using the part of the information available to support it. I've played KOTOR1 this past week, and can tell you that this game is miles ahead of it in how the morality is handled. I have no recent experience of KOTOR2 so I can't compare it to a similar system made by Obsidian, at least not without having a colored version of facts to work with, myself.

Uh, how about you play the quest and get all the relevant background information instead of just pulling stuff that fits your preconception out of your ass? At least half of your suppositions are addressed in the storyline, and I've only played it once with one set of info...

I said most, not all. Seems like a classic example of promoting hysteria with (very) few significant discounts, so that the blood-tasting piranhas go into a shopping frenzy and buy a bunch of stuff at (near-)regular prices... Hardly an unknown phenomenon outside Black Friday, I grant you - and generally seems to work really well.

http://cache.thephoenix.com/secure/uploadedImages/The_Phoenix/Life/Lifestyle_Features/Xmas_Miser_

True, it's hard to compare due to different standards of life, pricing and whatnot, but 50

While I agree with you that AP is worth full price, if you put it to comparison with the quality of other games and run it down side by side with graphics quality, QA and such, is it really worth 70

Especially when most of the deals I see are of the "save 40 $ on something that costs 450 $"... Guess I haven't fully assimilated this consumerism thinking.

It was worth the 70e I paid for it. (You guys are really, really cheap, you know?)

WTF? How are either of those shiny good guy? Or evil, come to that. The circumstances make it a bit clearer, but it's still definitely not a clear black/white divide. Trying to get complex, or at least non-simple morality into a game with a dark/light side divide sure is going to create some... interesting situations. :D

I wouldn't have minded if it was that... but this was "Oh honey, bribe him so we can be together!" And the implication was that the simple fact of HAVING that loving feeling made those two become selfish unrepentant dickholes who'd watch the world fall for their own desires. Meh, that's just because you're used to seeing dark side options that look like Malcador's forum posts (I rofled on Friday while playing KOTOR when I realised this. I wonder if he secretly worked on the game and infiltrated this forum). I like it that DSPs don't mean killing puppies but instead straying from the "emotionless" jedi way. Which is, really, how it should be, remember that whiny **** Anakin's motivations?

True, but Obsidian had the advantage of having the game engine premade for them - while Bethesda have to rewrite much of gembryo for each game. Where Obsidian is better (and where I'm guessing you primarily judge quality) is in the story and getting the immersion right. In Fallout 3 especially I was so annoyed that you had such an illogical construction of civilization, they made the wasteland and the charred landscapes so beautiful, but cities had no means of food production and where too close to one another. This was luckily remedied in Vegas. I'm under the impression that there's also a lot more people in Beth, which would kind of make this a moot point. I mean, seriously? You're saying that they have poor dialogue because they "have to" redo the engine?

Yeah, I think I'm sticking to the European servers, being a bit further inland, so to speak. Can't comment re: wow as the last mmo I've played was text-based, but this does feel like something I'm probably going to play casually for quite a while - not that I have any options for "casual", considering the kind of workload I'm going to have. Tried Jedi Consular and Smuggler and both of them were more fun than I expected, at least/even in the very beginning. Then server (Rogue Moon) went down.

So, there's more German than English servers in Europe. To nobody's surprise (apart from Bioware, maybe), none of the German servers have a queue.

Usually takes combination of all the three, and upon reaching success, the role of the final one will be immediately forgotten.

They tweeted about new EU servers, so I guess I'll try my luck. ... Which wasn't working, since looks like they're enforcing the time limit for me after having let it slip for some others. Oh well, back to the original one.

Well, I thought a securom-less version of Mass Effect was worth 3 euros, even if I could get it for less at some point. ;P

Surely there has to be something more. If I were willing to crack my PS3 OS (which I'm NOT), I could d/l their games for the PS3 also. Those console versions even get more hits on the d/l's then the PC versions. Don't D/L any of them (though normally I'm browsing for cracks for my legit PC versions which are hampered by the anti-piracy measures the companies take, which ironically make me go to the pirates to look for solutions because the companies can't even troubleshoot their own tech problems they created with their DRM as well as the Pirates can), but to focus so strongly on the PC side when the console side is actually hotter right now...shows someone either has their head up their rear end and have NO idea about the true piracy market right now...OR their trying to blow smoke up my rear end and failing. I suspect the real reason is they've KILLED their own PC market with their stupid DRM schemes and now it isn't even worth the money for them to invest in a PC port. I thought we had a separate piracy thread, but since I'm apparently mistaken lets just say that I assume a sold/pirated ratio is a lot more interesting to the publishers than total pirated.

I hate you. I could be playing that, but instead am doing a KOTOR1 marathon after I found my Xonar U1 in a pile of random electronic equipment and thus managed to get 5.1 audio from it. KOTORs don't like HDMI audio!

My condolences. Medical negligence makes me very, very angry, so I can't really write much else.

The water looks really nice in this game, I keep noticing that in particular.

It's not just Vol, though