Nepenthe

Unlike the connoisseur gamers on this forum, who had used it as a last-resort bashing measure since time immemorial.

I havent followed DA2, are you saying that if you dont preorder the game you will be forced to buy some of the NPC's as DLC? Or you wont be able to get those NPC's at all? Elaborate please. Sounds like there's a Stone Prisoner/Zaeed type scheme going on, nobody really knows what the extent of it is (the listing for "exclusive" content in the Signature edition is kind of vague - some of you might remember how a lot of people were under the impression that the Cerberus network was exclusive to the CE?), and unlikely anyone will until the release date.

Not sure EXACTLY what you mean here, but if the gist is "who dares, wins", it's pretty much on the money. Always go for it, just prepare for a fall better than I did (took a year to recover, but I think I'm ok now. At least I'm working five girls at the moment.)

Agree on the latter part, and have to say that the PS3 version at least wasn't that hot either (IIRC either the camera angle or the draw distance kept getting to me. Thankfully I've managed to forget which). The only game I've started playing in the past 5 years and not finished. (In fact, along with Dark Corners of the Earth, which was a hardware issue, one of two for the past 10 years.)

Back at work after no holiday and having spent the weekend writing a job application.

Will do. I've built a rather sizeable backlog over the past month and have no idea when I get to catch up again.

Well, I picked up the whole Company of Heroes set today from the sale.

Clearly argumenting for something that doesn't bother me and bothers other people isn't going to work. I'll yield before my colleague this time. Also, this reminded me of Sorophx's frequent statements:

The political tensions currently in Egypt might tempt them to start lots of shenanigans there.

No, that's exactly what I'm saying, and what they do. If you alpha-strike them with your mage, they will move their aggro to the caster. I, and I believe other people, were talking about the way the enemies initially prioritise the heaviest armoured fighters, instead of directly going after the unarmed and -armored guy.

It's a result of pettiness becoming socially acceptable. A lot of people go 'Baah Baah' like the sheep they are and do it because the neighbors do it. Independent thought has become a rare commodity in today's instant gratification society. Agreed in principle, in this partilcular case I think it's compounded by the fact that you can get a "luxury" product for free with essentially 0 chance for sanctions. And, as we have repeatedly seen even in this forum, it's really easy to rationalise for not paying something... I know a lot of cheap wealthy people - all the reasonably young ones were approaching professional levels as pirates.

I guess I should have qualified my statement with "good plasmas". There used to be two, Panasonic and Pioneer, now, kind of like in Highlander, there is only one. In LCDs at least Samsung and Sony generally can compete with each other...

The production costs are just built differently, so even though the source of energy is free, maintenance, setup and low-efficiency drive the costs up - for now, anyway. At least that's what my energy company tells me, they could be ripping me off for all I know. It's also in short supply in these parts, with a lot of people willing to pay up a little bit of extra for the bad conscience their diesel SUVs give them, which could also be driving the price up.

... Based on your metagame knowledge, you can observe who the mage is? Sure, I can tell who the mage is, you apparently can as well, but in a gameworld were mages are supposed to be sequestered in a tower somewhere (even though there's a rather considerable amount of them still traipsing around). I don't think it's necessary, or even particularly realistic, for every peasant to immediately realise that the unarmored guy with the walking stick can hit them with a firestorm. So yeah, it's entirely based on metagame knowledge, not in-character knowledge...

... And the fact that apparently fewer and fewer companies are making plasma. It's pretty much down to Panasonic now, right? I must have been really unlucky with Plasmas, since I've never seen one I would have preferred over my own Sony W4000 lcd. Anyway, http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/ is a good resource, especially on this side of the pond. I have no idea what their updating frequency is these days, they seem to have slowed down a bit recently.

I dunno, targeting the heaviest armored and armed guy first seems kind of logical to me - especially when the aggro moves to whoever causes major damage contrary to the initial assumption. I'd hate the AI to metagame and attack my mage when he hasn't showed his magical ability yet. So I think that the theory at least is fully sound. I don't think it worked too well, but...

Obviously, if it cost less there would be no coal energy plants and windmills would be everywhere. So how is this exactly news?

Isn't that what this forum is built on? Honestly, I only saw Avatar for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was the kind of chlorine-bleached adventure that always, or generally, becomes hugely popular. I didn't think it was bad, but I didn't find it particularly exceptional either (and visually, I remember being more impressed with the Dark Knight's IMAX scenes), solid three stars. Of course, I could have been just an exceptionally jaded day, I've been unable to watch a lot of movies recently. Still have the Inception blu-ray waiting, I saw it in theatre but I want to see how it scores for repeat watchability (something that I've always been disappointed with Nolan's movies).

I like it too. I think it's a good way of seeing how well you are in control of your character, teammates and abilities. I had tons of trouble with it the first time (died probably as much as with all the other missions combined), but I've been able to breeze through on all subsequent playthroughs.

Agreed. Definitely not a 1:1, or maybe even 1:10 for every pirated unit, but still, it would sell more. The habitual pirates would have to figure a way for actually paying for their entertainment, which would mean that you could probably get your lawn mowed for less.

But(t) it's such an exquisite butt!

Seconded. I prefer the racer side though. No freakin' Rapid Response/Time Trial events with time penalties for hitting stuff. Agreed, hate those, but the hot pursuits make up for them

Can't remember ever playing an RPG were the above was true. Certainly never has been in a Bio game, where dual-wielding warriors have been a win button whenever available. (Celestial Fury + Crom Faeyr? Oh, I'm SO challenged and taxed for my damage output!)