Zoraptor

Fontaine was objectivist 'agnostic'- and probably a plain old sociopath- for sure, but Ryan was not, he was not just a believer by The Believer. In the end Ryan took Fontaine Futuristics because he wanted it and he had the bigger army, not out of righteous indignation at the soiling of his dream, and once he had it he kept it in contravention of his own rules. From a philosophical perspective the Fontlas combination were the logical result of objectivism in the non-abstract, non-perfect 'real' world, Fontaine does not play by the rules in a commercial sense and Atlas does not play by the rules in a violent revolution sense. But Ryan is worse from the philosophical stand point, as he ends up corrupted and not holding to the tenets he purports to believe. At least Fontaine is consistently loyal to his nature... In a more religious sense it's like the devil tempting Eve with an apple. That's what the devil does. But if it were Jesus tempting Eve with the apple that would be a lot worse, as he isn't supposed to do that sort of thing. There's also a similar thing in System Shock 2. The Many is a collective, and supposed to banish want and hurt. Yet while the big cheeses like Korenchkin are perfectly happy being Psi Reavers the plebs clearly aren't happy being hybrids, as they run around saying 'kill me' and actively warning you before they attack. And that's pretty much the experience with communism as applied in the real world.

That was the supposed reason (ie the one Ryan used as a 'legal' justification), yes, but the telling part was that he simply seized all of Fontaine Futuristics for himself once he'd 'won'. Is a Man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says Andrew Ryan, it belongs to him.

"No Gods or Kings, Only Men"- very first sign in B1, iirc. I never quite understand evangelicals. In a way I'm quite happy about that. Because "no dunk in a river will erase what I've done" is perfectly fine theologically, because it's clear that Booker does not actually believe, so has no faith. If you don't believe then a baptism is just a dunk in some water, saying otherwise is the same approach that sees people being converted at gunpoint to save their souls. And as much as I personally dislike Ayn Rand's philosophies the approach in B1 is actually exactly the same. Ryan doesn't follow Rand. He thinks he does, and at the end perhaps he does (paralleled, perhaps, by Booker finding 'faith' in a way at the end) but he has no actual faith or he would not have seized Fontaine Futuristics at barrel of gun for being too successful. That's made explicit by McDonogh's logs. In all Levine's games he takes potshots at extreme ideologies- Anarchism in Thief, Collectivism in SS2, Objectivism in B1- and it's clear that it's the extreme part that he's aiming at, not the belief itself. More than anything though, I could do a better job of dissecting games on a theological basis, and I'm basically agnostic.

Given WW1/ Versailles a war was probable if not inevitable. It might have ended up being vs Stalin rather than with him but the ultimate problem was that WW1 solved few problems and created a whole lot more.

And a bit more on some Squenidos problems wrt Thief. Not surprising that SE is in problems- or requiring such large sales numbers- if they're doing things like spending months making press demos that are incompatible with the base game. Everyone knows that it happens (eg the infamous 'Radiant AI' demo for Oblivion that simply could not happen in the finished game) but the length of time and resources taken...

EA distribute many LucasArts titles- they certainly distributed both KOTORs here. They didn't have any creative involvement though unless you count retroactive via Bioware.

Personally I wouldn't consider it proper to keep a sealed box and download a copy if I intended to sell the box at the end (like buying a cake, downloading a duplicate cake and eating it, then on selling the original), but if it is just to have a nice sealed box sitting on the shelf I have no issue with it.

Pretty good result for them in the end. I still wish they'd started a little bit later once SotA and Torment were done and once a bit more PR groundwork had been set, but they've worked hard for their money, to quote the great philosopher Donna Summers (?), and deserve it. I NEVER DOUBTED YOU LARIAN!

At least in Alpha Protocol I can wear a pimpin' hat with a big bushy beard, but I can't even make Thornton blond or a woman- where's the role playing there? Also it's based on Burn Notice and the bullets fly funny and don't go right where I aim, and it has too much dialogue and timers. It also does so have magic, sometimes when I make a mistake I disappear, which is awesome, or time slows down so I can pop caps into asses! I've never heard of Dues Ex or the others so can't comment on them, are they available on 360?

Dying makes me feel dumb, and I can feel dumb whenever I like. I play games to feel like a God for a brief while. The game clearly does not cater properly to all play styles. Some merchant tempted me in to a warehouse with the promise of lollies and then his friends killed me. I should be able to talk to them and get them to let me go, and give me all their money and stuff too. Next thing you'll tell me I won't be able to talk my way out of fights with rats. For some reason I feel compelled to reply to each line individually in a separate quote box, it's weird. Then why is it marketed as an RPG? Can anyone name a single RPG that doesn't have magic? Games like Skyrim and Oblivion have got it right, lots of character customisation- you know, actually playing a role- and fun stuff like riding around on horses killing stuff. I saw horses in the AoD demo, but I bet I can't ride them. If they want to sell well they need to have voiced dialogue and better graphics, and get rid of that slow and boring combat. Oh look, I stand still while some dude swings at me, then he stands still while I swing at him. Riveting! That's not how reality works. And I want something excellent to happen every time I press a key, not to fall asleep. First person view would be good too as that is needed for proper immersion. I'm only trying to help the developers by pointing all this out. Mr Dweller says he wants feedback, after all.

Our histories are pretty explicit about Freyberg insisting on the Abbey being bombed because he was worried about casualties. It would have needed approval from higher ups who may have been itching to do it anyway, but I'd still attach a fair bit of blame to him. I guess one excuse might be that throughout NA and Sicily there hadn't been much city/ town fighting so there was no experience of a Stalingrad style destruction resulting in good defensive terrain without killing off the enemy but consequences like not being able to use tanks effectively in the town (even given the terrain restrictions) really ought to have been considered. And the same sort of general thing happened regularly in WW1 which Freyberg fought in- massive bombardment to wipe out enemy, enemy not wiped out...

It is a bit bought-you-drink-at-bar, didn't-expect-marriage on the update front. Then again once I've stuck in the money I don't generally read the updates anyway. Virumor Drudanae's clearly contributed in order to get the updates, so he's obviously a warm and fuzzy closet romantic at heart despite his cold and jaded exterior.

I'm playing the demo to something called the Age of Decadence. Can't kill anything, the combat is slow and my diplomat dies all the time, I teleport all over the place like a magician (can't actually play a magician though, or an elf. What sort of RPG is this?) and there's lots and lots of dialogue. Not voiced dialogue though, it's like being back in the 50s. I'm seriously considering making a preorder just so I can post PREORDER CANCELLED on the developer's website in a blaze of righteous fury. And that despite my habit of forgetting to cancel preorders.

Ain't great when you're effectively shutting down a company you paid $400 million for not that long ago. Could have spent a fraction of that to buy Saint's Row- which would fill the GTA shaped hole in EA's portfolio- and other THQ titles at a pretty bargain rate.

Kind of. The battle was winnable in the short term, but no slam dunk. It also would have been a nightmare to supply if held, more so than Malta given the size discrepancy. Militarily speaking the whole Greek intervention was a stupid idea which not only directly wasted resources on an unwinnable campaign but weakened North Africa as well. At Crete there was no air cover to speak of and no heavy weaponry, and it was a disorganised scratch force from the remnants of Greece defending a large area. The big mistake was made by a subordinate without Freyberg's input, and once it had been made there was little anyone could have done in the circumstances. If they had tanks for a counterattack it might have been a different story, but they didn't. If I were to blame Freyberg for anything I'd blame him for exacerbating the mess at Cassino by going overboard on the carpet bombing. That didn't just make things worse for us, but for the others who tried to attack it later. He was also rather over cautious, but then he had something like 10% of our manpower under his command. Heh, given Tobruk I would have expected the reverse order

Don't get EE unless you're terrified of modding, it's more expensive and still bugged and the free mods do as good or better a job of things. Yeah, only difference is that it's a unified download on GG, rather than each being a separate download as on GOG. You can buy them separately at GG as well, I've used excess blue coins or 4/3 deals to get backups of both BGs and IWD2 there and they are literally the GOG installer. They both have sales fairly regularly, if the price is the same get them on GOG though as they actually did the work setting them up.

We don't give F's any more. In school there are only about three (!) grades given now and at uni E is the lowest grade; and if you write your name on the paper you get a D-.

I'm actually watching a documentary about Gallipoli at the moment. Doesn't matter how many times I see stuff about it, I'm always surprised at how much of an absolute farce it actually was. Freyberg won a VC himself in WW1.

Their timing is also a bit unfortunate- they have a publisher association at a time when the memories of the Shadowrun/ HBS/ MS issues are still fresh. And whatever else people may say about how HBS handled things they certainly did damage for anyone bringing a licensed game to the table- even if this KS has directly addressed the most proximal part of that issue in the pitch.

And now we have the intellectual justification for Pirating, I was wondering when someone would make a similar argument. But you are still still stealing and breaking the law, but if you sleep fine at night thats good news Ah, but I didn't break the law. I downloaded a copy of something I already had the right to use for single person licensed use. I didn't make copies of it beyond that, never on sold it while retaining a copy myself and did not allow others to make copies; I never even installed it on multiple computers that I own myself. All I did was treat it exactly as what the publisher says it is, a licence to use rather than a physical good. And spend about five days downloading the thing on dial up. That's the goose/ gander thing. "It's also funny that most publishers argue that they are selling a service, not goods....right up until the moment you want them to act as a service provider. Then they treat your purchase as if it was goods, not a service" pretty much sums it up to a T. If it's a licence then it's a licence, both parties get the benefits of it being a licence as well as the negatives. You cannot have your cake and eat it too- though if you've got good lobbyists and a few pet politicians- or corporate lawyers- you can certainly try. Good lord my ellipses are starting to get ridiculous.

A grade shift would be incremental, ie C+ to C or B-, as a full letter shift is a 15% change of mark either way. And having said that I'd have to grade my grading pretty poorly as well; E is reserved for Did Not Sit, so a +/- margin of error cannot apply on a D- grading.

EA shares have increased by 70% from their 52 week low! Celebrate! (Selective graph data is selective, in other words. Borked Y scale, X scale set to stop at lowest rather than most recent point. I rate this as a D- statistically, with a confidence interval of 95% and margin of error of +/- one grade level)

My attitude is that if publishers are insistent that they're selling a licence rather than a product then that means that format shifting is aOK. After all, a licence to use rather than a perishable product means that you get to use it, and not have to purchase a second licence when it perishes, per the Goose/ Gander doctrine. I downloaded CD2 of IWD2 when something got dropped on the original with not the slightest compunction.

The kobolds man, the kobolds! They're coming out of the goddamned walls! SargeKhalid! DrakeMinsc! I say we stand back and fireball the mine from distance, it's the only way to be sure! Well sir, there's only 3 problems with that, 1, we don't have a fireball, 2 we don't have a fireball and 3, we don't have fireball. Now technically that may be only one problem, but it's so big I thought it worth mentioning three times. I've got two sleeps and a magic missile, and I'm all out of sleeps. .. Game over man, Game over! (I like BG1 well enough otherwise, but it's like saying I liked a meal well enough excepting the compote of dead rodents. Nashkel mines- long, boring, arbitrary enemies that can kill you with a single hit and yield a staggering 6 to 30 odd xp a pop. Probably the single worst area in any RPG I've played. And I still see Kharlie hiding behind every rock, even today months later)

Spartacus has ended up being one of my favourites. Treads the fine line between over the top seriousness and unintentional hilarity, and everyone involved just looks like they're having the best time ever while running around in their posing pouches drenched in food colouring 255.