Nepenthe

I've alway got the impression from Rage that it was open and freeroaming. And Bos Hybrid gets the award for actually knowing what he is talking about and still not stating it as an absolute fact!

In fact, the Bioboards have provided me with this excellent picture for all of you whiners:

No. Their initial strategy depends on this, as their control of mass relays makes the "reaping" a walk in the park. As it fails this time around (as do their minions, the collectors), they opt for a direct assault, this time en masse as opposed to just Sovereign and his geth mooks. Clearly they believe that they can do pretty much what they want, and after getting seriously boned by humans twice in a row, lauching a strategic strike on Earth makes sense. It might not be the perfect strategy, but clearly if the Reapers picked the perfect strategy, they could just release a 5-minute CGI movie describing the destruction of the galaxy, no gameplay necessary.

So you shouldn'd be anguished over the loss of your OEM limbs because you can get a cybernatic aftermarket replacement? Disagree!

Id Tech 5 is best suited for action games, not large freeroaming simulators. So it's only logical that Beth uses Gamebryo again, however they certainly modified it so I'm not worried about that aspect. More worried about the quality of writing and quests and stuff. Considering what ID's first game on it is going to be, they apparently disagree with you. On Gamebryo, as Mythbusters have shown us, you can polish poop - it's still poop, though.

So, apart from bitching about the inane bitchers, found the lead-in to the announcement ridiculous, the trailer pretty good and the concept of seeing the trilogy finished exhilarating. Yes, I've really liked both the Mass Effect game so far, yes, I think that Jennifer Hale is good (but still overrated), I actually like Mark Meer's performance and I still think you guys are a sorry bunch of whiners.

Yeah, negative opinions of games are for losers! Why would you ever dislike anything? Yet apparently you hold the opposite to be true: "Yeah, postive opinions of games are for losers! Why would you ever like anything?"

Better a fanboy than a whiner.

Well, I'd say that depends on the general prison regime and what the "alternative" for "unsocial" types is. If there's a basic prison regime where you can feel relatively safe in your incarceration (which I believe is mostly available in minsec federal prisons in the US), a medium regime where you are forced to spend time with nasty people (but only if you misbehave) and Marion USP style "small black hole with an hour of limited sunlight per day" regime, you should generally be ok. Reward good behaviour, punish bad. Not necessary to fry people to make that (further) point. You still make no mention of the fact that they are still alive and active criminal within the system. Drug peddling, killing, a week in the hole means nothing to a guy that has to stay in prison for the rest of his life. He's gonna make his bones, find a place within the existing structure and that means doing favors, the one most often asked is the killing since a guy in a life sentence has no qualms about it. Basically life imprisonment screws the whole concept of rehabilitation for both the sentenced and the others around him. Not sure how the situation would be different to somebody on death row.

Also, humans apparently have a much wider genetic variety coupled with the rather significant numbers the Reapers require for their "project". It's not spelled out, but I think it's at least suggested that they were originally planning to target the Krogan (see Saren's cloning project) but decided that da humiez were 'ard enough for their purposes (and had the necessary genetic profile with no Salarian-created genophage to mess with it...) I'm a lot more concerned by Miranda* than Ashley, thanks! *I want Yvonne Strahovski's honey dripping in my ear, again. Interpret that how you will.

Well, I'd say that depends on the general prison regime and what the "alternative" for "unsocial" types is. If there's a basic prison regime where you can feel relatively safe in your incarceration (which I believe is mostly available in minsec federal prisons in the US), a medium regime where you are forced to spend time with nasty people (but only if you misbehave) and Marion USP style "small black hole with an hour of limited sunlight per day" regime, you should generally be ok. Reward good behaviour, punish bad. Not necessary to fry people to make that (further) point.

Threadsplit?

Apocalypse Now (original 1979 version) on Blu-ray. Astounding stuff, considering the age of the movie (it was one of the two initial surround movies along with Star Wars). Coppola's restoration project's had amazing results, the release is amazing both visually and aurally. Instead of boosting "what you see" on screen, the surround channels are extensively used to show you the stuff you CAN'T see, really placing you in the middle of the action. I can't remember being this impressed by an audio track in a movie since my initial surround experiences. Five stars and two thumbs up.

I'd think even those people would have enough to cry and whine about without having to resort to pulling wild conculsions from random demo videos and then whining about their own random ideas. Game looks to easy on stage demo! PC version of DA2 MUST not have varying camera angles since those weren't shown in an early demo! Do I need to keep going?

Well then answer me why Bio hasn't outsourced Jade Empire 2 to Obsidian despite the interest from both Bio and the EA CEO to do one? Maybe Obsidian isn't interested in doing a Jade Empire 2? Seriously though, I agree with Mkreku, creating this kind of MASS (no pun intended) HYPE for a game that everybody knew they were already making, but suddenly decided to get coy about, is as lame as things can get. Esepcially if it's just an announcement and no release date.

Exactly. It represents the game. Game over. golfclap

Neither of those necessarily means that imprisonment is bad in itself, the problem is more in the way the sentences are carried out in practice and how the society handles people who've served their sentences. Since you reasonably can't execute all criminals (unless that's what you are calling for), these problems would need to be solved both with or without death penalty. Unless the idea is to push criminals further and further from society until they commit a capital offense and can thus be justifiably executed.

Interesting. Yeah, I got the investigation heavy -vibe from this from an earlier preview. Looks like this is going to be a rockstar game I pick up for a change. Maybe I'll even do my first game trade-in for this and get rid of gtaiv.

That's actually a really good point, also on the "so why isn't mech aug clearly inferior to nano aug boo hoo" topic. As in, mech aug is definitely higher maintenance (something brought up by jaime reyes in the first game).

Yes, but what battle, really? With the amount of Reapers shown at the end of ME2, one would think they could easily blow the entire planet to smithereens. I think Lair of the Shadow Broker hints at what the solution is going to be. Surprised by all the whining here,* I think it's been pretty obvious that the abovementioned GondorCallsforAid is the natural ending point of the storyline, with options for cooperation (paragon) and control (renegade). it's nothing ground-breaking on paper, but when has any bio game been? I mean BG1 and BG2 would have seemed pretty damn clich

Possibly the demo is a really bad level, then - I'd hope not, though.

Fair play. I wasn't saying it automatically made you support the death penalty i jsut happen to know it very often changes people's minds. Yeah, and I'm saying that looking at "worst case scenarios" and deciding what the appropriate penalty should be never leads to a good result. I won't go into a lot of detail, but let's just say that my stance on appropriate punishment for criminals is multifaceted. I'm dead set against "kissing up to the masses" with a seemingly harsh criminal justice system, but I also believe that society should not just give up on habitual/professional criminals, which pretty much seems to be the case in nordic countries (and by "Not giving up", I don't mean starting a project to make them feel better about themselves, but to make sure that progressively harsher sanctions either convince them that crime does not, in fact, pay, or failing a reception of this message removes these people from the society.)

Now there's a criticism of Bioware I can fully subscribe to. Along with, "I'm hoping that they again get the (more expensive) collector's editions to customers weeks after the vanilla ones, just like with DAO and ME2!"

I tried the demo of Uncharted 2 and found it to be utterly unengaging. Close to the top of the list of games that I feel like I don't get (or are totally overhyped, depending on how charitable I'm feeling), right along with GTAIV.

I've seen some wishful thinking along those lines, but any connection is vague at best. I'll take my ME without multiplayer, thanks. And mostly concur with Tigranes on the lameness of the video, and think it extends to the whole campaign in general.