Zoraptor

The MP I've heard they're definitely going to have is MultiPlatform, but if they're going for that MultiPlayer seems likely too. Triss and Geralt, co-op, kinect multiplay...

The Turkish plane was within Syrian air space and thus fair game, despite all the obfuscation and posturing associated with the event. That was tacitly admitted when the Turks found the plane within Syrian territorial waters, though that particular fact never really got reported much, for some reason.

Oh god yes. Is there any game maker less original than Bethesda? (Sensible money: Fallout Online)

On the other hand I've never understood the love for the hotel level. Sub Thief 1 in terms of atmosphere/ gameplay, sub Shining plot. Oh well, opinions.

Russian and Polish translation sounds good in principle, although it being handled by distributors, which in this case almost certainly means 1C/Cenega, sounds less so, as many Polish/Russian players will likely agree. Wouldn't CDP be more likely for Poles in this case, based on the game being on GOG already?

Depends what you mean by that, really. Germany has the benefit of being the largest economy in Europe and having had monetary policy in Europe reflect its economic realities rather than the larger european one. PIIGS would not be in the shape they are now (or at least not in as bad a shape) if they didn't have exchange rates and the like set to reflect Germany's economy rather than their own. That's the inherent limitation of having a single currency without a single economy and overall fiscal policy so it isn't really Germany that is to blame, but it does (well, did, now that the whole south of Europe is imploding and needing help) get the benefits of the single currency without the drawbacks for a long time. It's like what would have happened if there were a "South Pacific dollar". Australia (and to a lesser extent New Zealand) would do fine out of it, but Fiji/ Tonga/ Samoa would be completely stuffed as NZ's high interest rates and Australia's mining boom pushed the currency way above what their economies could handle. As for the US, the problem there is that the economic growth is still rather tepid and being funded by extensive borrowing, zero interest and money printing- none of which are sustainable in the long term and are only really viable to the extent they are being used because the dollar is the world's reserve currency and no one has interest in crashing it as the collateral damage would be catastrophic.

Oh you know, the usual stuff. Euro crisis, debt burdens, unemployment, quantitative easing; dogmatic ideological responses propping up banks that were so economically cretinous to believe that house prices could never fall etc. Fundamentally, the west doesn't really make much stuff any more- the few places which do like Germany are doing rather better- and has relied on financial services and housing for economic growth while buying fripperies on credit. That's unsustainable and was always going to result in a violent correction at some point. High unemployment and slashed benefits result in lots of poor, bored and angry people which is not exactly a great formula for stability and tolerance.

I'd be absolutely ecstatic to be wrong. Unfortunately for this case we evolve per Darwin, not Lamarck.

I think we'll get a good idea of how much religion and a bunch of -isms really matter in modern western society as the economic stuff continues to unravel. Last time there were really big economic upheavals in europe, well within the last century, we got a whole bunch of extremely unpleasant stuff based on/ using as an excuse religion and isms. In such times anyone demonstrably different is at risk, and always has been. At present a lot of such concerns are ratcheted down by the warm enveloping embrace of the western lifestyle- it's difficult to be Angry when you're comfortable, own iDevices, go out for meals and entertainment several times a week and have everything around you designed to reinforce your sense of superiority. Revolution is for arab asteriskholes, not nice western places that have already evolved to the apex of civilisation, basically, but as soon as you have enough people questioning whether the west really is the apex of civilisation we'll learn whether things have changed fundamentally or it's the same as always just with a nice veneer over the top. Personally, and not without regret, I'm completely in the latter camp. As soon as the comfort goes the basic human tenets of wanting to blame/ punish/ take stuff off Other People will reassert itself in a lot of places.

If possible, I would not have launched the KS on a Friday. There's a reason why politicians like to announce bad news on Fridays and good news on Mondays/ Tuesdays, and many of those factors apply to something like a KS launch as well. Apart from that, seems like a fairly typical successful kickstarter.

There are things like working out who Therese and Jeanette are ahead of time or wondering about how the taxi driver knows so much that could count as puzzles too- though they're more obfuscated (ahahaha) storyline elements.

There's no place to get SS2 legally except 2nd hand. EA owns bits of the game and LGS's insurance company owns other bits and until that is resolved it won't be sold. I've played through the game with the new patch with no problems, so ADAOB ought not to have any either.

They'd be looking at a distributor rather than a publisher, a distributor basically fabricates the DVDs, boxes etc then sends them out to shops and that is the extent of their input. As an example EA manufactures and distributes Valve's physical copies of games. P:E doesn't really strike me as the sort of game you'll see on shelves at Gamestop though, so probably little chance of any retail release anyway.

Yep. That's the burden of existing in a proper judicial system, there's an absolute obligation on those responsible for making and enforcing the rules to follow them themselves. That is perhaps the single most basic and important tenet of the modern legal process and is the underlying bedrock of all quality modern judicial systems. Its abuse is a significant sign of a poorly designed or corrupt judicial system, or one that has been co-opted to serve a particular purpose. Since the prosecutors didn't follow the rules there's zero obligation on Assange to walk himself willingly into a corrupt show trial- but if it were a model prosecution, or even a typical one, there would be. In fact, and ironically, that sort of thing is exactly the sort of reasoning Britain uses when granting asylum to people like Boris Berezovsky.

If he were anyone else the initial dropping of the case would have been The End. Facts are: 1) The allegations were delayed, and made only after the two women found out he had not been exclusive. 2) There was no evidence of animus (rather the opposite in fact) after the incidents but prior to the two women meeting 2a) There was an attempt to hide that lack of animus post accusation, via deleting tweets/ facebook postings 2b) One of the women tried to delete her "how to get revenge on a man" webpage which included making false accusations against him. 3) The initial prosecutor did not want to proceed as the case was so weak but got replaced by someone who had sponsored the legislation used 4) The prosecution leaked everything possible against all precedent- and legality- in what can only have been a deliberate policy. That by itself would get the case terminated in any sensible jurisdiction and criminal charges brought against the prosecutory authorities that did the leaking. 4a) There was various other malfeasance, like the police interviewer knowing one of the accusors well 5) They allowed Assange to leave Sweden- they did not require him to surrender his passport at any time despite the accusations 6) They then issued an Interpol Red Notice, generally used for international drug dealers and the like 7) The single piece of impartial evidence- ie not he said/ she said- that would have supported the accusation lacks his DNA. In summary: yep, the Swedish case is a joke, though a bad one. In any sensible system the prosecution would be facing disbarment or sacking, and the charges would be dismissed summarily. Unfortunately due to the way Euro Warrants work the British court cannot even consider the Swedish prosecutors being bent despite the obvious evidence supporting that, as it's just assumed that fellow Euros must be, by definition, Proper. I understand that people don't like Assange, but that's no reason to throw due process out the window. Due process has the absolute requirement that those responsible for enforcing the laws -ie Sweden's judicial and police authorities- themselves abide by those laws, something they've singularly failed at with all the leaking they've done. Sexual impropriety is the perfect crime to accuse people of, as it brings out all the smoke = fire instincts so that you see plenty of people taking the mere accusation as fact, and as evidence of guilt in and of itself. An accusation by itself is not evidence of anything. Amazingly- as if on cue and to illustrate a point- Barack Obama just walked in and punched me on the nose.

When it comes to listening to fans that is- almost- always damned if you do, damned if you don't. Do listen and you're in danger of falling captive to a vocal minority, don't listen and you're in danger of becoming detached from the very people who are your biggest fans and do a lot of free PR and word of mouth for you. Look at Project Eternity, you have one group who is all for romance and another that hates it with a passion. One group is going to be disappointed and given the nature of the internet they will be vocally disappointed- it's inevitable. I imagine that striking a balance between doing the stuff you want to do, appealing to the right demographics and the people in the community ('fans') is a very difficult balancing act in almost all respects. Probably the only people immune from it are the real niche developers making proper wargames or simulators and the like- groups that have a very narrow fan base and target audience with very specific expectations. I actually think consumers do need to have a look at themselves. I watched and generally enjoyed genre equivalents like TNG and Babyon 5, and when it comes right down to it there was a lot of outright bad storytelling in both of those. Wesley/ Geordi's frequent treknobabble day saving, Bruce Boxleitner winning a war by shouting at super advanced aliens etc. ME2 didn't have the most coherent plot either, what with an imminent threat to earth being destroyed by a single pocket cruiser. The big problem with ME3 was the lack of foreshadowing more than anything, Deus Ex showed that a similar ending can be satisfactory, and there was plenty of closure and pay off for long term story elements in Tuchanka and Rannock. The ending was never going to be Breaking Bad class, yet it seems that many expected something of that quality, set themselves up for it then got angry when their expectations weren't met.

Funny, if I had to find two words to describe Saudi tyrannical and dictatorial would be two of the first, along with terrorist exporting religious zealot nutbars. Let's be frank here, the Swedish case against him is an outright joke. They've leaked immensely from day one which is close to unheard of, and with impunity, and have leaked amongst other things the victim statements of two women they believe- at least in theory- have been the victims of a serious sexual assault. They've cancelled the case, then reinstated it with a more militant prosecutor- so at least one prosecutor thought there was no case to answer. The person who did the police interview with Assange (that got leaked, of course) knew one of the complainants well. The condom he allegedly ripped- the single most crucial bit of impartial and objective evidence- does not contain his DNA. Looking at the Kim Dotcom case we've got going on here, and the Pirate Bay case in Sweden, there isn't much doubt that people will try and do anything including stuff outside the law to cuddle up to the US. We had our police using illegal warrants, transferring stuff to the FBI against judges orders and suborning our equivalent of the NSA/ GCHQ to illegally monitor a bunch of people they shouldn't (ultimately the GCSB and Prime Minister's responsibility, not the police's though). Fortunately we still have an independent judiciary- as opposed to Sweden's largely politically appointed one- so all this has been revealed and the tsunami or media invective has rather reversed its direction.

I don't really know if it's 'provable' in a classic sense, but it is certainly what happened and I suspect pretty much anyone over 20 outside the US will have had similar experiences of releases being arbitrarily delayed to fulfil some obscure schedule. It is, for obvious reasons, not something someone in the US would really notice or be aware of.

Outpost and Big Rigs as being genuinely dreadful/ so buggy they could not be played/ completed, Daggerfall v1 and Descent to Undermountain being a bit better and a few recent examples like Elemental/ Demigod/ Sword of the Stars 2; though of course and to their credit (or our credit really, ohoho) Stardock did offer refunds for their two. Outpost at least had genuinely atrocious and inaccurate claims both in promotional material and theoretically 'impartial' info like reviews, and SOTS2 was barely barely better in terms of offering features that actually existed let alone worked properly, and most of the pre release info from Kerberus and Paradox was if not outright dishonest about as close as possible to it. Mind you, I don't tend to see that as being reason to actually pirate, I'd just refuse to buy anything further from those involved. Didn't actually end up buying SOTS2 though; for once much genuine thanks to Paradox for afflicting it with Valve's Software Console as that saved me 40USD.

Since someone has apparently released a significant patch for System Shock 2 (and Thief 2!) yesterday I'm giving that a try to see what changes have been made. Otherwise have been playing The Witcher 2 again. I think I've got the exact same criticisms as last time I played; it goes for Batman:AA style gameplay but doesn't have the responsiveness required for that which results in boss fights being finicky and thus artificially hard. And I still think it looks far too much like Roche turns up specifically to rescue Letho at one point.

I really don't think EA has that much to do with it. You can maybe blame them for DA2's truncated dev time but that's about it- Bioware has done plenty of 'questionable' and equivalent stuff beforehand, when it was run outright by the Good Doctors. The NWN OC is quite possibly the worst, most cliche and unoriginal story that I've ever experienced 3/4 of -and makes DA2/ ME3 etc look like comparative masterpieces- yet it still had grandiose claims of quality on the box, they claimed you could load your BG2 character into it at one point, it was unstable at release and had dlc before it was called dlc; Jade Empire (and KOTOR, really) ushered in consoles as the primary focus with JE streamlining out almost all the (already limited) charm KOTOR's combat had, and Mass Effect was an RPG lite with sub Gears of War popamole 3rd person gunplay and DA2 style repeating dungeons- all before EA happened on the scene. I actually had a far lower opinion of Bioware over the NWN-KOTOR-JE period than now. I thought DAO was pretty good if a bit bland, ME2 OK and ME3 wildly uneven but decent enough overall (cut that clown *** **** and the end game slogathon and it'd approach good; albeit I never expected a great deal from the ending so was not overly disappointed) while of the earlier three the only one I found above tolerable was KOTOR. Then again I don't hate EA on principle, don't care much about Origin as long as there isn't 3rd party Originworks and- generally- see little point in slagging games or companies off as you just end up sounding like a hater who's gonna hate. There's plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made but the EA-hate/ Bioware have sold out type thing is a bit lazy and does get a bit boring.

Simplicity is best so I'd suggest going for "The Watcher". Then you could have the sequel be "The Watcher 2: Slaughterers of Souls".

I don't care even slightly if there are romances in principle- gay, straight, casual, deep whatever- so long as they're handled well. A properly done, mature relationship- or even just going two people going at it like rabbits in a stressful situation- is fine by me, so long as it's optional. But I'm no fan of 'romances' as currently implemented because they tend far too often to be checkbox lists, both in terms of performing a series of tests to get the nookie reward at the end, and as a tick on a list of fanservice items. Basically, what I definitely don't want to see is the typical Romance Flow Chart of chat x3, deal with (daddy/ trust) issues, fade to black just before end of game; nor the feeling that any character is primarily an excuse to have (a) romance(s) in the game. Opportunities for 'gratuitous' sex as done in something like Fallout/2 fine. Opportunities for development of a 'proper' relationship, fine too. But please, no codependency, no daddy/ trust issues (well, unless they're uniquely handled) and absolutely no pandering just for the sake of it.

That is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If they'd taken the easier option (in retrospect probably the sensible option too) and just done an expandalone style sequel they'd be accused of being stale and derivative and charging full price for Dragon Age 1.1, if they change stuff then they're dumbing down etc. I tend to think that there were two problems, some hubris- the presumption that Changes Were Good and an assumption that they knew what their customers really wanted- and quite a lot of not having enough time. Certainly I could see some of the more egregious story problems and Duplicate Dungeon syndrome being fixed with more time and having a short development cycle makes fixing stuff that goes wrong properly a lot more difficult. I'm not really trying to defend DA2; though it did have some potential improvements they were all too often one step forward, two steps backward in implementation. It was a disappointing game overall for most, though it has its fans. DA3 will tell if they've learned from the experience.

I haven't played TOR personally, but that isn't my experience of the reaction at all. The main relevant criticism I've seen (ie not stuff like "I hate mmos and it should have been KOTOR3", which is fine but is stating a preference rather than being criticism) is that it was good, but not good at the things MMOs need to do to keep subscribers, ie not much for high level peoples/ not enough replayability etc. I've seen a lot of people saying they played through two storylines then cancelled their subscription, from Bioware/ EA's point of view that is definitely bad, but it isn't the sign of a bad game just a 'bad'- well, inappropriate is probably fairer, a whole lot of people thought it was a fine model a few years ago- business model attached to the game. Unethical? I think everyone has a good idea as to the ultimate reason why it was rushed (Mass Effect and Dragon Age productions were overlapping too much, so one or the other had to be either rushed or delayed, no surprise which was chosen) but I'll save unethical for those who outright lie about the stuff they're making, not just the typical PR overegging that goes on for pretty much every game ever made. Ultimately it's a business not an artists' collective, and businesses gonna business; it's what they do.