Zoraptor

That's the Jewish spelling/ transliteration, I think- I've certainly seen {R}Ebekah used as a more, er, literal biblical transliteration of Rebecca. I bet that bracketed R is going to be the registration mark once I post. Right, we'll try curly brackets then...

Some say that Putin picked Medvedev specifically because he wanted someone shorter than him as his successor. Obama is pretty tall though. And that is one depressed looking horse.

The only thing 'ranty' there is the length, else it's just informing the emperor that he is, in fact, wearing no clothes*. *

Nah, the Russians got their revenge for that in 1939 and especially 1945. Now the big butthurt is about the Kurils.

I can't see Bioware going back to D&D for their main line games. They didn't like the nannying from hasbro and don't have to pay any licencing fees on their own IPs; and D&D is no longer the sort of money printing machine Star Wars still manages to be. It's also not worked well on console and is unlikely to have the sort of crossover appeal to the CoD crowd they've been looking for. Could get something from the 2d studio that's now been made part of 'Bioware' in the restructuring after they've finished the Mass Effect equivalent of the Dragon Age facebook game, but I won't be holding my breath.

No potions in combat is fine, imo- your enemies ought to skewer you pdq if you pull one out while fighting. Forcing meditation for potion drinking is a rather poor solution though. Maybe they ran out of buttons on the 360 controller but why they didn't just have a 'belt' system as in tw1 with quaffing allowed out of combat baffles me a bit as the meditation requirement is just make-work as it stands.

G3 actually had about the best use of bloom/ hdr I've seen so the transition to the industry standard several dozen nuclear devices were recently let off nearby/ your eyes are covered in vaseline type in Risen was a disappointment. Shame G3 gives me the worst case of z-fighting I've ever seen at the moment.

Most of the chapter 1 quests do have alternative approaches, though as with pretty much every title it would certainly benefit from some more meaningfully alternative ways of doing a lot of those quests and some time between replays. Some thief skills or similar would add to the variety (not sure if that would fit with the fiction). I'd say that combat is closest to something like Gothic 2 or Risen. It had much the same 'first time I went down the hill I got pwned by a wolf foetus, now I'm one shotting dudes' feeling except you run into proper 'wolves' pretty much from the start (though supposedly the starting difficulty is far easier now), and just as with Gothic you will get stomped in two seconds flat if you get surrounded. I have to say I find entrerix's description a bit... baffling. Much like Gothic (and totally unlike Diablo), button mashing means you're Doing It Wrong as well as Making It Hard On Yourself. And of course you cannot drink potions in combat in TW2.

Russia to take UK to the UNSC in support of 'Chav Spring'; says that Cameron/ Clegg regime has 'lost all legitimacy with its brutal suppression of civilian protesters and the UN must act now!'

The problem with flat taxes and other such 'fair' ideas such as universal Sales Tax/ GST/ VAT is that the costs of living are definitively not flat. Someone on a very low wage has to pay far more of their wage proportionately for essentials and indeed will spend almost all their money every week. Most democratic governments are depressingly short sighted economically. Pay down debt- most expensive first- in the good times so you don't have to sweat the deficits in the bad times. It's hardly rocket science that running deficits in the good times and the bad times is going to lead to problems. It doesn't always mean higher rates- Ireland's and Iceland's actually dropped after getting a downgrade, according to the beeb- though I pretty much agree that it will ultimately in this case despite the other two agencies not downgrading. It seems to really depends on whether it has been expected and factored in previously.

The AR comment is probably fair as pretty much everyone would regard the BAR as a light machine gun rather than an assault rifle and certainly in the modern sense it was far too heavy to be an assault rifle- though one variant (Colt Monitor) certainly comes close wiki suggests it was never used by any military and was still heavier than the StG. The other claim there is suspect though, as the US invented a genuine rocket launched AT weapon (bazooka; copied by the germans as the panzerschreck) first and you'd have to do some funky reasoning to qualify the panzerfaust since it was basically a single use rifle grenade. Now I feel an urge to reinstall Close Combat 2.

They certainly expected people to have played the first game and read the (in-game) books to fully understand the story. But there wasn't that much background that was really needed- perhaps as little as knowing of Brenna alone since 'warring kingdoms of the north fight off powerful empire' largely sets the scene of how the northern kingdoms relate to each other and how they relate to Nilfgard. Most of the characters* are pretty well introduced and developed in game. *Radovid excepted, knowing the background from TW1 definitely helps there.

And the second largest is?

Or change your settings so referrer info is not sent.

He had more than 1 gun (3, iirc, with the other two being 9mm handguns) so reloading was far less an issue. In any case he does not have to deal with hundreds of people looking to kill him. This is not a United 93 type situation where a largish group of people have a long time to deliberate and come to terms with it being us vs them/ him, to the death; and that vs guys with boxcutters. This is a situation where a 'policeman' gathers a bunch of teenagers, and a few adults, together then pulls an assault rifle and opens fire. He doesn't have to deal with hundreds of people, he has to deal with the very small proportion who react to this- slightly unusual- situation by deciding to spontaneously, and uncoordinatedly, charge him. Once they are gone everyone else is- basically- irrelevant since they're in too small groups and far, far too panicked. I'm sure most people think/ hope that they would be the hero who charges the guy with an M14 and takes him out, Arnie style; it's an easy dream to have while sitting in the warm and comfortable glow of a monitor, drinking a coffee and eating a scone.

see, it is good that we spoke up. this way we can see that you clear not know what whitewashing is and that you were, once again, talking out your kiester. Heh. One suspects that were it a Russian history book glossing over Stalin in such a way the attitude would be... somewhat different, especially given the reaction whenever LoF did his not-whitewashing here.

That doesn't really explain why only EA games are pulled, considering that other games do the same thing (see Dirt 3). Don't really know enough about dirt 3 to comment, except to say that at least one other GFWL game whose name escapes me has had a 'buy dlc from steam' button patched in to it. At a guess I would suggest they have a grace period at least until a standard patching cycle is completed, especially so if GFWL still charges for certifying patches.

Rather round the wrong way. Steam wants all DLC for games sold on it to be available 'native' on Steam, so that they can get their cut. Other DD channels aren't effected, only the one which wants compulsory DLC distribution rights. Or in other words it's a specific, and specifically, Steam TOS condition causing the problem, and specific Steam action to remove EA's games. Stick Steam DA2 key into Origin, purchase DLC, problem solved. Next problem to work on, having terrible taste in games (ahahaha).

Ice is black!!! Hitman is using Just For Men!!! Meltdown is a ginger!!! Game is ruined!!! Hope they keep Ira's voice actor, at least!!! I hear Steroid is now German (and/or Russian)!!! I'm so glad it's real time, turn based was only used in the past because old computers suck!!! Looks good for a Wii exclusive!!! Kinect waggle action in JA, awesome!!! One of those is serious.

There was also (presuming the specialist teams wear different gear from default police) the issue of having a bunch of uniformed police running around chasing someone who was also wearing a police uniform. The potential for friendly fire either from other police or from the specialists when they turned up would be very high under those circumstances. And I'd guess that if someone in a police uniform had been shooting at me (and apparently gathering groups around him under the pretense of protecting them) I'd not be quick to trust anyone wearing that uniform in the immediate aftermath.

Ever heard of Ernst Rohm? Hermann Goring was hardly 'conventional' either, though I've never actually checked* whether the cross dressing and such was allied propaganda. But most will take the view that Hitler espoused the 'canon' nazi line on gays which was pretty much the same view he had on everything he found distasteful. *Actually, for all I know Rohm may not have been gay either and it all may have been Hitlerian anti SA slander.

I dunno, codex GD has pretty much convinced me that behind every vocal nazi on the internet there's a tender, repressed and misunderstood soul who just needs to find the right man/ woman to let their real self show.

You defititely should get System Shock Portable then, it's very marginally more complicated then the straight DOSbox versions of MoO and XCOM I have from GG but that's because it's more flexible. Couple of clicks and you're in and I've had no problems on either xp/32 or win7/64.

Is that some kind of wrapper that allows the game to run on modern systems? Or is that a new (modded) version of the actual game? Wrapper basically along with some utilities for sound and the like, similar to the MoO/ XCOM DOSBox versions (all of which work fine on Windows 7/64 for me). There are also resolution increasing and key binding mods- not sure if they're integrated with it now or just compatible with it- to further enhance the experience, the version I have is around three years old. Its legality is a bit unclear, LGS allowed downloads of the SS1 iso prior to their closure (I got it from TTLG back in 2000, before it melted their bandwidth) so it's probably OK until whoever the rights holder is sends a cease and desist, which would probably be a precursor to it being put on GOG anyway.

You can get Xcom off steam, so it's likely legality that's stopping that. You can get it anywhere that isn't GOG, which is why GOG not having it is pretty stupid. And for System Shock there's System Shock Portable.