Zoraptor

Fortnite is a lot bigger than ME3 though; of EA's properties maybe the Sims and FIFA would come close but that's about it. EA came up with Origin because Steam tried to strongarm them into essentially becoming a subsidiary of Valve on PC- a tactic which worked for smaller players like Paradox who had to drop Connect or be kicked from their most lucrative store. The reason they did it is simple enough, if they sell 5 million copies of a game on Origin it's the financial equivalent of selling more than 7 million on steam even without taking into account them being able to control their own product instead of being beholden to Valve. As for security, let's not forget that apart from the myriad of long term minor issues steam has and had they were also outright hacked, multiple times. On the more fundamental level, all this stuff illustrates perfectly that a lot of PC fans and game franchise fans are actually just steam fans. They want the fripperies and appearance of competition so long as no one offers an actual alternative and so long as any 'competitors' can be shut down by Valve at a moments notice by revoking their right to steam keys or are niche like GOG. There'd be a decent amount of overlap; it's pretty uncool for a 'core PC gamer' to admit to playing Fortnite but also 'core PC gamers' are nowhere near an actual majority of people who game on PC and are a self appointed and self selected group.

Well it has a serious edge over Steam - Deep Silver needs to make like 10%(?) less sales for the same profits. At the same time, exclusivity is the strongest leverage that'll bring people to use Epic store, therefore allowing Epic store to cut more exclusivity deals. They will be paying them directly for the exclusivity as well, I don't think there's any doubt about that. Given the success of Fortnite Epic already has a very large install base to leverage much as Valve had after HL2. I suspect there will be some deep sales on their exclusive titles during the year of exclusivity to really test how committed people are to steam. And let's be honest, PC gamers have not exactly got a stellar record of sticking to boycotts...

I doubt that many companies properly comply with GDPR, to be honest. Well, GOG.com and Steam does. So far as anyone knows. Steam had and has some pretty dodgy wording in the SSA with respect to 3rd parties accessing data, and GOG tried to bring in default fully public profiles less than a month before GDPR would have made such a default option illegal. Hardly anyone wants to follow GDPR properly because it costs money and the more properly you do it the more it costs, and it costs money because you can't monetise your customers so easily, so everyone cuts corners as much as they can. And that's not even the Facebook and Googles of the world whose entire business model is based on selling personalised information to 3rd parties.

I doubt that many companies properly comply with GDPR, to be honest. I thought Clifford was long gone from Epic? The issue with Epic is... well fundamentally it's the issue with PC gaming in microcosm. Many PC gamers love to look down on consoles- while feeling morally superior for choosing to turn an open platform into a closed one and screeching whenever someone dares to compete with steam. And don't get me started on idiots preaching the church of DLSS who complained about checkerboard upscaling and 'fake' 4k on consoles... So the problems with Epic are that they aren't steam, basically, with some weird contortions to justify it. Stores that exist as steam key resellers are 100% competition for steam so it isn't a walled garden and doesn't have exclusives and said stores don't 100% exist at the sufferance of steam; but Epic Store exclusives make them a monopoly (!) rather than competition. Oh, and Epic are also owned- no racism of course, some of their best friends are Chinese- by China and you'll probably be monitored by Winnie the Shi himself (though tencent is a minority owner only). They also have a fair few genuine problems, but then so does everyone else. Not like with all their billions in revenue there aren't literally 10 year old bugs in steam no one has bothered to fix; or the perpetual mythic GOG Galaxy Linux version/ crappy forums/ awful reduced functionality redesign.

Metro Exodus not only has denuvo, it's now Epic Store exclusive*! Have to admit, I kind of like Epic Store. Not because it's good or anything but it's one of the best butthurt generators I've ever seen. Steamtards, RTX fanboys upset that their second raytraced game is gated, everyone is triggered who I like seeing triggered. They just need to buy GOG now and the circle will be complete. *for a year

Would they though? If Hillary runs it would be as The Anointed One again as in 2008 and 2016, and with the full support of the party's hierarchy. You'd have to be very brave or have no asterisks to give/ be outside the hierarchy to take her on seriously knowing that doing so and failing will put you at odds with the people deciding much of your political future. There would also be blatant attempts to keep problematic candidates away from the public and debates and to shield Hillary from them; and let's be frank: they'll label anyone taking her on as being The Russian Candidate and a stooge. So basically what happened in 2016, but on steroids since they seem to have decided the problem in 2016 was not that they foisted a crappy divisive establishment candidate and ran an awful campaign but that they didn't go all in enough with the terrible divisive candidate and awful campaigning.

Yeah. I've seen a lot of people say they think S2 is a big improvement but to me both have been pretty much run of the mill Voyager/ TNG S1 level, which isn't great.

I can't see it happening any time soon. End of the day there is a reason why PCs are designed as they are and why they aren't (generally) set up the same way that consoles are. Most I could see happening some time recently would be selling essentially a 'boxless' PS5/ Xbox type SoC and that won't be as competitive as either console unfortunately. Current gen 1X may use a lot of tricks to claim it's 4k ready but nevertheless it still has considerably better performance than the desktop equivalent 570/580 due to optimisations that you won't have playing the PC version; and the pricing won't have volume advantage either. Having said that, AMD is the only company with a full suite approach of CPU and GPU at the moment (frankly, I'm skeptical of Intel making significant consumer waves even when they do start with the discrete graphics) and AM4/ Ryzen has a fair bit of functionality on the chip that would usually be part of the chipset.

Yeah... Decent APUs should probably kill off dedicated low to mid range graphics cards in notebooks etc and that would hurt nVidia a lot, but there are limitations in how they can be applied in desktops and certainly in terms of getting above mid range even in laptops without some fundamental shifts. The main problem for a classic APU's graphic performance is that the graphics uses system resources and RAM which is slow. The 2400G scales very well with faster RAM but there will be a point at which system RAM will simply be too slow to keep feeding added graphics cores- especially in laptops where you'll often get single channel and slow RAM to save costs. The problems with system RAM are why graphics cards have specialist RAM on their boards, after all- well, except that execrable joke DDR3 1030 and even that at least doesn't use system RAM. So you would have to either change from DDR# to GDDR#/ HBM or put some fast RAM on the chip. Once you do that though you're greatly increasing complexity and price, and instead of an APU you're more or less making a SoC/ NUC instead. Indeed, those solutions are used by Hades Canyon and the PS5. You're also in the situation where if you want new graphics processing you have to buy a new processor as well, fine for laptops but a lot more of a problem for desktops; and in desktop AMD would potentially be doing themselves out of the low to mid range market where they're genuinely competitive. They would also have to deal with potential backlash from hardware makers- AMD would to most practical purposes then be making motherboards and graphics cards themselves, it's unlikely that Gigabyte/ ASUS etc are going to like that. I also have to say that I find his obsession with S curves a bit disingenuous. I mean, he's right in principle but it's a bit... off starting an S curve off with the GTX480 which was simply not a good card but was preceded by some good ones. Not that he should necessarily go all the way back to NV1 or anything, but GPUs have always had generational plateaux where you'd have the tail end of the last generational leap offering smaller improvements, then a big improvement that gets iterated on until it too offers smaller improvements.

The ironic thing is that despite all the collusion talk he won't be going to Trump Tower Moscow as president or privatus any time soon; since despite him wanting to build it for decades it never even got approved.

Western Powers: "We need a system of international justice!" Also Western Powers: "It shouldn't apply to us or our clients!" US: "Hague Invasion Act" To be specific the suppression of Kosovan acts of ethnic cleansing and organ trafficking was because as the occupying power NATO would be responsible for both, and we simply cannot have NATO being prosecuted for war crimes. That isn't good optics, and might lead to people questioning all sorts of things we'd prefer they didn't. Instead we must pretend that nothing happened.

It depends a lot on if aspects of the economy and advancement are tied to a dynamic economy/ player numbers, if so some sort of fudging in the demo would be inevitable as it won't be populated enough to have a 'proper' economy otherwise. You also want people to get an idea of the full range of abilities and experiences. People might complain about a 'World of Cars' type game giving you a demo with a Ferrari when in the full release you start with a Trabant, but it's obvious why they'd have a demo with a Ferrari. And end of the day the idea of a demo or early access or whatever from the game producers' perspective is always to encourage sales. From the players' perspective it's to check if you like it and if it runs OK, but from EA's pov the sole purpose is to generate hype and get people buying the full product rather than providing a realistic appraisal.

I've been replaying TWitcher 3 off and on and... Euphoria really does completely break the game with an alchemy build. I knew people said that it did but I didn't believe the extent until I tried it. I can only imagine how broken it gets with Aerondight and runes.

It was one of their RPGs of the year (3rd place behind Kingmaker and Kingdom Come). So maybe not as Codex approved as 2009 Codex GOTY Dragon Age: Origins, but it still gets a tick. Well, I've bought it since it ticks every box I like...

MacBooks' value is appallingly bad, for sure. The Vaio I have is a Z3 of some sort, so ultraportable and it cost a lot for initial purchase so my view is a bit skewed price wise. I paid a nominal fee for it to cover admin; since Sony had exited the market it had no resale value. And to be fair to Sony Vaios tended to be expensive because they did actually send new models out to here, most laptops sold here are EOL and rejects from the Australian market. And the custom models from Dell/ HP etc were also fricking expensive. It was also way cheaper than the most expensive laptop I've ever used, which was a cool 14,000NZD...

Vaios were expensive though, you paid a lot for the high specs and they sold a lot less of them than a cheap McLaptop. I actually have a 2012 Vaio at the moment, an inherited one from an end of life corporate purchase and it was ludicrously over specced for the time. But it originally cost 3x as much as a decent desktop and despite being overspecced was slower even than the old 2008 core2duo workstations in the lab by a fair bit- and it only got used as a portable workstation a few times. Really nicely put together and it's lasted fantastically (after a MB replacement under warrantee) but a cheap laptop and a modern workstation would have been a better deal at half the price.

Bipedal Iguanadon == :rage: :rage: :rage: You can't get them on their hind legs like that without disarticulating the tail vertebrae!!!!! Plus reducing a magnificent creature to a Cretaceous Arthur Fonzarelli. I'm feeling very triggered at the moment, even more so given who that tweet comes from. Should know better, Natural History Museum.

Spectre/ Meltdown patches affect some things more than that, but you would not generally be doing them on a laptop. For gaming and general usage they're largely irrelevant as the CPU isn't the limiting factor anyway in most cases. All the 6000-9000 series Intels are the same architecture with almost no improvement core/ core apart from clock speed.

I'd say "garbage" and "mediocre" is worlds apart. As for DICE, as far as I know, they treated their employees quite well and supported their games for a fairly long time, which would elevate them above "garbage" in itself. To be fair realistic depiction of WW1 would be boring gameplay, sitting for months in own feces in trenches shooting into darknes slowly getting consumed by some disease from decaying corpses around... Then you get to walk- not run- towards some dudes with machine guns across 100m of barbed wire, craters, debris and bodies to an enemy trench knowing that if you manage to take that trench there are a dozen more behind it. Or if you're Italian you get to attack the Isonzo River 12 times consecutively, because attacking at exactly the same place as previous is the last thing Fritz will expect. Also make sure you have your gas mask on you at all times as well, lest you end your days drowning in your own fluids. Not getting a 'realistic' WW1 fps is actually a pretty good thing. Eastern front was a bit more interesting, also Tanzania and Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's campaign- but no americans so not a viable game setting.

Personally I slide theatrically into my bright orange Nissan Cube- the 'Admiral Yamamoto', proudly emblazoned with the rising sun and rays- via the wound down front window as all manly men do.

EEs do of course have mobile versions? They even, technically, have in app purchases to go with the mobile versions. (Bloody smileys, never sure if someone is being serious when they use them; and where has the classic :rage: smiley gone?)

I think you need to read the treaty itself, or at least a decent executive summary as you've made a fairly critical error: INF despite its abbreviation bans both nuclear and non nuclear land based missiles and launchers in those range categories- which it pretty much has to, or you could just swap warheads on dual use systems or sea based variants. Doesn't actually matter if nuclear tomahawks are all retired because land launchers that can fire conventional ones are banned as well. There isn't any dissent that I've seen that Aegis Ashore MK41 VLS is capable of firing cruise missiles, hence it is 100% banned for land deployment under INF even if it's not intended- pinky swear- to be used to fire them. I actually think the INF is one of the more useless treaties and a certain number of violations are inevitable (a lot of land based missile testing is technically illegal, even when not intended to be fired from land or being used as test object), but the only party that is definitely violating it at the moment is the US.

Maginot Line was a symptom of the problem not the problem itself though. It did its own job well enough, it was just pointless when the Germans attacked around it and your strategic and tactical response was to contemplate your navel for four days then blindly panic. Moribund and ossified command with associated stupid deployment of conventional forces and inability to react was the french problem. Patton also had the fairly unique position of being on the perpetual strategic offense due to disparity of resources and having constant air superiority. It's not wholly wrong even today, but it is wrong enough. The US has used fixed fortifications under different names extensively since WW2 (and before) as everyone does. Some of the forts the US has in Afghanistan have been around considerably longer than the Maginot Line was prior to WW2 at this point. And their forts in Vietnam were one of the few bits of strategy that worked well, since they did regularly draw NVA/ Vier Minh formations out to attack them. Then again I'm making more out of it than intended because I do think Patton is a blowhard, whatever quote is used and from whomever the Trump Wall is a pretty unworkable idea overall.

Volo was on to something... Meh, if you sanction someone they're likely to think you're a fascist (or commie) as point of principle. Russia 1 is for internal consumption, and that sort of propaganda is always designed to enhance your audience's built in prejudices and ignorance reinforced by previous propaganda. Nazi is used for effect because Russians hate nazis, ergo nazi Kanada == bad. It's also, to a certain extent, designed specifically to reduce trust in media so other country's propaganda channels (VoA, RFE/RL, BBC Russia etc) don't work. Not like it doesn't happen in the west either, it's just typically more subtle or appears so since it's tailored to western sensibilities. Most westerners will think that Russia is abrogating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)- when the US has been demonstrably violating it with a deployed system, Aegis Ashore, for 2 years and planned to well before that- because the media are idiots who parrot NATO statements uncritically because anything else is hard work, goes against editorial lines and may get you labelled as a bot or troll; and most people accept it because it fits their prejudices and belief that Russia cannot be trusted and comes from an 'authoritative' source. And, for the few that know and suggest the US has violated it you can deploy the three backstops in sequence: Aegis Ashore doesn't count as it's launcher only no cruise missiles (it counts, launchers are explicitly banned as well as the missiles but you can 95% rely on journos not to check; you also have plenty of analysts outright saying that once the INF is gone CMs will be deployed because they'd be so effective), we're trustworthy when we say we won't deploy cruise missiles and Russia should just Take Our Word For It while they're not trustworthy and we cannot take their word for it; and China isn't bound by it anyway. As if the latter is relevant, China literally cannot hit the mainland US with intermediate range missiles, they can't even hit Hawai'i. You can put money on journos not checking basic geography as well though. If anything the Russian population's position overall is better than the western one, since they tend to think everyone is feeding them tripe including their own media; many westerners are positively proud of believing whatever they're told. As if I needed more reason to think Patton was a blowhard.

I remember buying that ages ago, mostly because screenshots and descriptions reminded me a tad of Might and Magic's. I recall emerging from some tutorial area, walking forward into some forest for a bit and being trounced by some mobster mobs. Then for some reason I never went back to it. I meant to, but...hm. Another disc I should pull out. Normally I'd avoid even minor spoilers if I could, but... That would be the infamous Road to Arnika, and its even more infamous level scaled mobs. A lot of people quit there as completing the first area thoroughly hits the PC level trigger for higher level random mobs on the Road; and those mobs are overleveled; and there are lots of them. Any introduction to Wiz 8 should include a suggestion to avoid combat on the Arnika Road unless you're sure you can win (hide behind buildings and sneak down one side or the other) because otherwise it will be incredibly frustrating only a few hours in.