Zoraptor

They were better in Awakenings, certainly, though better than the darkspawn in Origins ain't saying anything at all. As for whether that thread will be picked up, it seems unlikely given DAI's focus on demons, but who knows. Well, alanschu I guess... Apart from Awakenings they were utterly generic Tolkienesque cliches though, right down to human/ dwarf -> hurlock/ genlock mirroring elf/ ent -> orc/ troll direct from Tolkien himself. They did their job as mooks to the slaughter but that's about the best that can be said of them.

That was the top 50 it was based on. This is Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition with reviews and stuff. (Next will come Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition: Director Admin's Cut, then Codex RPG List: Platinum)

What we really need are some hard figures about desertion rates in the Ukrainian army, apart from the 80% for those in Crimea. We already know much of the police force is gone, but if the eastern part of the army is deserting or starts to desert in large amounts to the rebels then there's trouble. And in 'interesting parallels' news, I note that Ukraine has restricted cut water flow into Crimea. From April 28, but for some mysterious reason there's difficulty finding an english language news report of it, not sure why when western news is so well balanced. Which, I am sure, is completely different from Russia's potential restriction of gas flows if Ukraine doesn't pay in advance, after all, one is an essential for life as we know it and the other is only water. And in "what did you expect you muppets" news Russia cuts the US off from ISIS and the rockets they use to launch military satellites. Which is surprising and underhanded, and an unwonted escalation. Sanctions should only be applied on stuff which isn't useful to us, anything reciprocal is deeply unfair and mean. I don't need a solution, I wouldn't have ended up in that situation in the first place. It's like demanding a solution for a broken motorbike problem where the motorbike has been deliberately disassembled, the solution is: don't break in the first place what you cannot fix.

I'm just glad that there's an authoritative poll from a prestigious institution determining, once and for all, that F2>BG2 and Planescape Torment is the greatest RPG of all time. Will help with arguments with all those- now objectively wrong- people who believe differently. I don't agree with the list wholesale, but it's certainly better than those RPG lists that have CoD- you play the role of a shooter dude, duh- and the like on them. (I actually was going to stick the list into the Random News thread, but decided it was a bit too close to the top 50 one it's based on and which was discussed when it was released. Still, good effort and good resource from the Codex, whatever nits people may have)

Heh, I particularly like how you describe quoting the actual constitution as being "conveniently plausible"- when your "detailed well founded specificities", no doubt, involve not even bothering to have read the document your claims rely on. Hint: if you run around quoting propaganda without checking it is actual factual rather than, well, propaganda you will get bitten on the arse by reality and you will look silly. And you'll deserve it. (That's the reinstated constitution I linked to, btw, the one that they supposedly deposed him with, so no, you can't wriggle your way free on that either. Also, Yuchenko was president in 2004- you know, 'Orange Revolution' dude. But so far as inaccuracies go that is small fry, if symptomatic) Still, it is amazing how 'legal frameworks' suddenly become of paramount importance once the side you favour has done all of their illegal stuff- and immediately before people you don't support do something illegal. Convenient, that. Everything is, spontaneous self defence groups in Maidan, awesome idea and a response to oppression by an unfriendly government, spontaneous self defence groups in Donetsk, ultimate evil and couldn't possibly be a response to an unfriendly government also.

Yes Bruce, I can confirm that you are... confused. From the same post you quoted, two asterisking lines further down And that is why people are convinced you're a troll. I just wish you'd go back to at least putting some effort into it.

Nope. The vote is actually irrelevant, that it was made under duress with a third of the members missing and with Right Sector providing security is simply the cherry on the top that would make the vote invalid under any circumstance. What makes it invalid in the first place is that it was unconstitutional and did not follow the correct procedure by any definition. The constitution of Ukraine is the constitution of Ukraine, like it or loathe it. You need to show how the method used was constitutional. If you cannot, then it was not constitutional. I've shown you the relevant clauses for removing the president, you're free to rebut them. If you can. But wishing it said something different- maybe that the medical grounds was less specific and could be stretched to any absence whatever the cause- is not rebuttal. You won't see me arguing that the separation referenda are constitutional, because they clearly are not. Equally clearly neither was Yanukovich's removal. Fact is fact. You're just going to have to deal with it. People blame the rightists for Odessa for numerous reasons- they clearly drove people into the building, they clearly set it alight, they clearly used a modus operandi that is a signature of the UPA from WW2, and, clearly, the vast majority of those who died were pro Russian. There isn't any serious disputation about that at all, and most tellingly the rump government and its biggest supporters aren't saying diddly about it, and are instead trying to ignore it since they know it's a loser. That's straight propaganda 101, if you're in the wrong put out your spun version then don't talk about it and hope it goes away. It's the same for Mariupol, if they thought they were in the right they'd never shut up about it, as with them saying continually that the referenda are unconstitutional. If they're in the wrong they'll say as little as possible, and hope that the pictures on BBC/ ITV/ AlJ etc of clearly unarmed people getting shot won't do too much damage or get too many to question things.

Alt requires an older, original account being hidden behind a newer one. No actual evidence anyone is doing that. I'm mainly still here because I made predictions at the start as to what would happen and it is interesting seeing if I'm right or not- largely right to this point, though I'm rather less happy about it than I may seem- and I'm always fascinated by propaganda and (other) people's (of course, since I'm immune to such things) massive capacity for self deception when following narrative lines. Plus, for much of the last twenty years I've had this nagging feeling that some time in the future we'd wake up and find that we'd totally and unnecessarily asterisked up the end of the cold war and dealings with Russia with trying to grind them into the dirt. Much as Foch (?) said about WW1 what we had was a twenty year armistice, not a peace, and blaming the other side entirely for that is as moronic now as it was then. And yet again. Unconstitutionally- literally against the provisions of the constitution clauses 108-111- while the rada was protected by the same people who recently burned 40 of their compatriots alive in Odessa, and with a third of its members missing. It'd never be accepted as legal were it not done by 'our guys'.

Yeah, claiming that the government is an interim one dedicated only or even primarily to setting up new elections is one of the more bizarre claims I've seen, especially when the pro coup people are usually quite open about the 'government' doing a load of stuff that is in no way at all related to making new elections and for which they cannot claim any electoral mandate. Loans would usually be OK as you cannot expect an interim government to go bankrupt just because it's interim. In this case even that was dodgy though, because they reneged the agreement with Russia (without paying pack the first loan tranche of the loan, of course- after all, they had nothing to fear from further antagonising the Russians...) and have signed up to an onerous deal with the IMF/ WB that binds any- legitimate- successor government to its long term conditions. That's not the behaviour of an interim government, that's the sort of thing you get from coup governments in Africa- or from the Iraqi Transitional Authority in Iraq, let's disband the Berkut as disbanding the Iraqi army worked sooo well- and it's designed to remake the country quickly and without recourse (except violence) into your image, then slap a 'democratic' stamp on it with elections, post facto but before any of the consequences start showing. Well, in theory, Putin had something to say about the last part. What was required was conciliation, consultation and the other stuff you get when people deal in good faith, but then if we had that Yanukovich would still be caretaker president and any of the deals signed with him and broken by the Maidan types would have stuck. What was got was as about as far from that as it is possible to get. And I too am still somewhat baffled about how people can claim with a straight face that the current government has a mandate for what it is doing but those who supported the democratically elected government and oppose the interim one don't have any reason for unhappiness.

Many will regard it as bad because it is counter to one of the critical factors in a game being an RPG. In an RPG there should be a primacy of the development of the avatar's skill over the player's skill (/having quick reactions), and twitch gameplay is very much about player reaction time. So combat in a typical twitch shooter is all about the skill of the player, a hybrid like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 has it depending a bit on both, and a 'pure' RPG like Fallout or even Baldur's Gate has it be wholly dependant on the avatar's skills- or at least, as much as it can be wholly dependant, the player still has to make the decisions about who to attack for example, but it is entirely the avatars' skills and equipment that determine probability of hitting or being hit. But yeah, it's only subjectively bad, not objectively so.

Their conduct in Iraq was pretty amateurish, to say the least; blundering into the middle of Fallujah and getting themselves killed was utter incompetence as was shooting up a Baghdad round-a-bout and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. That is basically why they aren't called Blackwater any more but are called Greystone/ Xe/ Academi as their reputation was, er, shot by their conduct. But I certainly wouldn't think they'd be doing direct combat in Ukraine for the same reason I don't think there are Russian soldiers there, it'd be a PR disaster for them to be caught and there are enough available fighters to do the fighting without them. I'd suspect they'd mainly be instructor types.

Bro, it's as proven as any 'fact' from the US State Department/ British Foreign Office or Ukrainian government based on intelligence. In this case it's the 'friendly' German intelligence doing the leaking as well as the 'enemy' Russian one, so it's a lot more credible and is not something the BND would make up randomly to make their favoured side look bad. Yeah, if it's the Russians and only the Russians saying so it may well be straight propaganda, if it's the Russians and Germans saying so they could still be wrong, but it doesn't seem likely and it isn't propaganda.

Vandal under the hospital in Santa Monica certainly has some.

Heh, you should have mentioned the Jewish moderator as well... (For those who don't know, all three of them are also members here. They're just a lot less active.)

What's wrong, Infinitron? You've still got that 'Duraframe' guy to get Obsidian news from, after all. It's probably a matter of not having a dedicated PR unit (hence, Paradox for PoE) and having multiple other projects done for publishers and hence also under their PR control. Fargo's two projects are both his own, he can say whatever he likes about them. And in terms of what can broadly be called self promotion comparison to Fargo is like comparing a boxer to Muhammad Ali- he's just very good at it.

Blackwater would certainly explain a penchant for randomly shooting places up, even if they're just instructors. Funny in a way, I thought the accusations from the Russians about Blackwater involvement seemed pretty unlikely (FUD, basically) when they made them last month. I guess the ultimate source was probably the same there as well, intelligence sources. Still, nice to see that Ukraine have found something constructive to spend their 3 billion IMF loan on.

"Twitcher sucks. Plain and simple." No. (They've also sold 7 million+ copies now)

You know where you don't see them? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres have taken place? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres haven't taken place- yet at least? Where there actually are effective, if still relatively lightly armed militia with AKs and balaklavas as in Slovyansk/ Donetsk/ Lugansk protecting people from crowd control via BMP. You have to congratulate the Ukrainians on telling the people that disagree with them that they're going to get shot up and burned alive unless they become a heavily armed mob with enough armament to deter incursions. That's sure to de-escalate things, as is the unconditional support for using BMPs as crowd control from the same westerners who threw a monumental wobbly- big enough for a Richter Moment Magnitude reading- when Yanukovich used asterisking water cannon and tear gas. The BBC- the BBC- had footage of a completely unarmed man getting gunned down by the Ukrainian military in the street, ITV had footage of another. Neither was balaklava wearing or armed. The Ukrainian narrative of the issue is utterly muddled, they still cannot decide what exactly they were doing at the police station, whether they were liberating it or defending it from being liberated. As they insist that they lost only one man and there were at least three dead police shown one can only assume that they were firing on the police themselves, and all the eye witnesses who said the police refused to fire on the crowd and were then shot up by the army for not doing have the correct interpretation. It really is rather depressing to see those cretins in Kiev doing every stupid thing I said they would. I would far rather be wrong about them than right. Again, there have been zero helicopters downed in Mariupol or Odessa. Not a one. And there's been a massacre in each. The only place they've been shot down is where there's an effective deterrence against aggression, ie not where the massacres are taking place. Plus, of course, the only independently verified helicopter shoot down was via small arms, despite the insistence of some that they had to be shot down with rockets. Indeed, the rump government has already changed their story on the first one to be 'shot down' (which was actually almost certainly a spontaneous fuel fire due to bad maintenance) from being hit by a rocket to being hit by a sniper's bullet. Now, we can wait to see what the junta will do to disrupt the referendum. Tanks? Artillery? Chopers? Bombers? Sky's the limit. Most effective tactic would probably be to just laugh at the sidelines, but that's far too smart for the clowns in Kiev.

Please everyone, stop deflecting from the important issue of Mr Ostrovsky being deprived of his iphone for three days. That's far more important than using tanks (OK, BMPs) on civilians- and apparently police who won't "do their duty" and shoot civilians- and triumphantly announcing you've killed twenty of them. Or herding people into buildings and setting them alight, for that matter. It's kind of hilarious though, the rump government can't even get it straight whether the police station was occupied by pro freedom activists or not, and when even the state media outlet of the 51st state is showing video of clearly unarmed people being shot dead in the street by the military you know there's some serious asterisks going down. I'm sure Bashar al-Banderayuk will still be welcomed with open arms though in all the capitals of Europe though. Crowd control by machine gun is only bad if you're an enemy of the west, not a friend. Oh, and Putin going to Crimea to celebrate liberation from German hegemony* is far worse than machine gunning or flambeeing your own population as well, since that gets condemnation from the west while the latter is a 'measured' and 'restrained' response. *and of course to celebrate beating the germans in 1945 as well :smug:

It isn't irrelevant, because citing such examples as Mr Vice is meant to establish moral clarity on the issue- look how these guys treat the free press with disdain! But if others, supposedly more free, are doing much the same then there is no moral clarity, and people should be as outraged or more so than if a bunch of random armed blokes detain someone for three days. You can make anything look bad (or good, for that matter) by tailoring the terms of reference to exclude stuff you don't like and which contradicts your views, indeed it is a particular favourite technique of politicians looking to get the result they want from 'independent' panels. Seeking to redefine everything to a particularly narrow interpretation where (in some cases) even things happening inside Ukraine within the past few months or years are labelled 'irrelevant' or 'deflection' is utterly feeble and no substitute for a proper response. To illustrate why this is utterly feeble argumentation I will declare that everything that is not about Right Sector burning 40 people alive in Odessa as 'deflection' from the True Issue. After all, 40 people dying is far more important than some poor baby being locked up without his iphone for a few days. Ah, I can feel the warm glow of victory on the internet washing over me...

It is most certainly interesting that the 'Codex, den of villainy and casual bigotry that it is has active women, gay and trans members.

I dunno, that's probably a fundamental problem with jedi as a concept- they aren't meant to show or have (most) emotions so are, fundamentally, pretty wooden and boring. And that really is George's problem as well, since he had so much control over the setting that things like saying casual sex was ok for jedi (so long as they didn't love the person, of course. Which is one weird Conservative stereotype of Lieberals that, apparently, exists for real) automatically became canon. He was far more of a broad concept guy and should have left the fine detail to others. I'd agree with whoever it was that said that Palpatine was best acted, but then he had the big advantage of being a pantomine villain ("Where's Sidious" "He's behind you!") and mugging/ winking at the camera in every scene, something none of the others could do.

One of the big problems is that anaesthetics are designed to be used on someone who is lying down, not sitting. When sitting people tend to slump forward, which compresses their lungs (easy to show, sit then lean forward and you'll be able to breathe nowhere near as deeply as if sitting up, standing or lying down) and that makes them far more prone to suffocation from overdoses or even adverse reactions to standard doses. So, you have to pump in the gas, make sure people are unconscious/ kill anyone in non effected areas, disarm external booby traps, make sure bombers won't wake up inconveniently then carry unresponsive people out- and that all takes a lot of time. The problem was not so much with the response, but, as with Beslan, with the chechens getting into the theatre in the first place. As soon as that happened people were inevitably going to die and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Show me on the dolly where Putin touched you... 850 hostages taken, 133 died. Even the worst alternative is 'only' 200 deaths, and that is nowhere near 'all'.

This is games though, and so far as I am aware there is no Twilight video game. And if there is a Twilight game, please do not make me aware of it as I am more than happy to live in ignorance in this one case. We should make a list of games with romance in them for Bruce to sample. I'll start with FEAR2. (Or Fahrenheit, for cringe inducing QTE 'action')

That still isn't proof or even evidence really, since what he's actually quoting is a post election survey and not the election results. The figures don't even match the ones he used earlier. I'm holding out for a certain virile Russian politician. Surely with my posts on an obscure video games board it's only a matter of time until he notices me?