Zoraptor

I couldn't see anything with him due to the screen jumping around madly. I suspect he's also the hardest boss fight with the all magic build I had. I finished last night, overall impressions extremely positive despite a large number of small issues. I had only one crash in total. Iorveth path spoilers. Will replay taking the other storyline, would also buy TW3 (or an expansion) tomorrow were it available.

I was somewhat peeved at the lengths I had to go to get the patch applied (despite removing all dlcs etc I ended up having to wipe all the witcher 2 directories completely and make sure I was disconnected when installing- it finally decided my version existed, on the third reinstall) but it seems to have provided another performance boost. I am still on Chapter 2. I know a lot of people have said it felt short but it doesn't seem short to me.

Yes, I actually thought that was the Bioware Twist Moment and Roche was deliberately rescuing him rather than just being spectacularly tunnel visioned and incompetent.

USPTO still says Sega owns the trademark, which would usually mean that they own the IP. It's not 100% indicative though and there are plenty of ways that Obsidian could either own it or get it back if not (reversion clause, buyout clause etc). Realistically though there is probably little significance as to who owns the IP as there is little chance of someone stumping up the money for a sequel which makes the whole thing rather moot.

Patch doesn't work for me either. Suspect it may be because I'm using the GOG executable (or because I've got the "No Knockers Plz We're Ockers" version with the censorship 'patched' out) over a retail install. I'm not worried personally as I've had no technical issues to speak of. I agree, that quest felt a bit 'off' in a number of ways. If it had been altered from the original then there is the question of where the trapdoor where you find the bodies leads to (minorish Act 1 path choice spoiler That interpretation makes little sense in the game as shipped though.

They've been used in missile defence for a long time, for burning out sensors on heat seeking missiles.

Since Cryptic is up for sale there's no guarantee Neverwinter will even end up as a D&D title and it may well not. The old Bioware premium modules went bye bye when Hasbro put their foot down over sublicensing of D&D to an EA subsidiary, and they may well retain the same attitude. Or not, if they think it's the only way to make any money off what should be a fairly lucrative licence. Atari has no money. They sold off the bit that made money (Atari Europe) to Namco Bandai and now it's pretty much death spiral time- they were having troubles financing as far back as NWN2 where a german investment firm (BVT; who had somewhat less success in financing Arcania) provided most of the moneys. I'd be surprised if Obsidian at least weren't genuinely very keen to make more D&D titles but you'd be mad or... optimistic to enter a contract with Atari at the moment without guaranteed and preferably independant financing.

Yes, rescuing someone different in the prologue gives the perk. I'm getting a fair number of loading screens, though they are mainly quick loading at least. Nowhere near the number of TW1 though. On the subject of bugs, I'd have difficulty classifying nearly anything I have seen as a genuine bug except a couple of scripting problemsm, I've still had no crashes. There are quite a lot of what I'd term 'nits'- things like being able to get a schematic for Raven's Armour despite it supposably being unique and involving a fair bit of work to get in TW1, not being able to swap between inventory and journal easily and the like, but they really aren't anything greatly significant. The whole potion thing was a bit off as you can make it without getting the special ingredient, which is sitting in my inventory along with the potion, and I didn't even get poisoned in the fight. I only remembered about it once the quest autocompleted when big K bit the dust. It wasn't really a big deal anyway- even the criticisms of the other parts of that encounter were mainly that it's almost trivial to complete once you know what to do in each step- and it is nice that you get a unique journal entry for not drinking it.

Well, I cannot imagine trying to do it Ironman, but I've actually found most encounters to be eminently winable with a bit of care. Some of the encounter design is badly off though: (mild Chapter 1 spoiler ) Not a fan of that one, at all.

Spectre Oil and Swallow. You also go past a bunch of Places of Power on the way there so can get even more health& vigour regen and armour. Quen, then 2-3 quick strikes at a time, roll out of the way and repeat.

I'm still in Chapter 1. In fact I've only just left the town there for the first time. Wish I had more time... Question: Mutagens. I was given one by and it shows up in inventory but the instructions for taking it are a little obtuse. Is that one taken automatically? Because meditate, go to character and 'find an ability slot that takes one' doesn't seem to work as I cannot see any mutagen slots there. Also, slightly annoyed that selling formulae for potions makes them disappear from the alchemy list when brewing since I bothered to check that the formulae were written in the journal before selling them. You'd think Geralt could as easily get his journal out as fish around for individual recipes...

BBC OK?

Calax: I used Aard on the planks, and had to backtrack to find them. When you get close there'll be a brief "look here, important thing to notice" cutscene. Finished the prologue last night. First impressions are generally very positive, despite my gripes at the end. Combat is challenging, reminds me rather of Batman:AA on hard where I'd spend half my time doing dive rolls until I'd managed to whittle the mobs down a bit. It got easier once I worked out that I could dive roll past the basic mooks and backstab them for basically OSK but if you get surrounded you're dead, quick. Did the obligatory Dark Messiah and Aarded some unfortunates off a convenient cliff but couldn't propel people onto the convenient iron maidens and racks of spikes that were lying around. It's still capital B Beautiful, wonderfully detailed and the dialogue is (despite some Mass Effect "I didn't want to say that possibilities") fine to very good. No bugs, no crashes. There's at least one other Easter Egg as well as the Altair one (Prison Break, of all things). If I have one complaint it is... well, I have three really. QTEs. Hatehatehatehate. Does anyone like them? It's gone very console on the interface. I can't say I really like the changes The third one is even more subjective: a feeling that it was designed by committee, a vague feeling that they sat down and decided to bolt together aspects of games they liked and which they thought epitomised the gameplay systems they were aiming for. Unfortunately I tended towards going "Ah, this bits from Batman, this bits from Thief, this bits from DMoMM" rather than appreciating it. Hopefully won't make a difference in the long term and I'll escape the desire to be jumped straight into Thief for my blackjacking guards fix.

Yes. 9600GT = 8800GS and will be even worse given its a mobile component. From the benchmarks I've seen a 5770 is around twice as good as a 8800GT for TW2. Bear in mind though that it seems my cpu was very badly bottlenecking as I've overclocked to 2.66 Ghz and the frame rate is up towards 30fps and fairly stable. That's with most settings at medium (some of the gpu ones high but extraneous guff like motion blur off), no AA, 1440x900 and the only other change is that CPU throttling is now off in bios. I'm relatively happy with that given it's still a five and a half year old computer at its core. And it really does look rather pretty even on mainly medium settings. Yes think that's him. 'Leland' was an Alpha Protocol reference given they seem to have the same framing role and I actually had no idea who he was- initially thought he might be Velerad/ Vincent/ Thaler since just about the first thing said is that we know each other which I thought must mean a returning character. Might be useful as a comparison:

Hmm. Played about twenty minutes, will play more this evening. It is really rather beautiful and I can see why it has previewers drooling over it, but I'm badly in need of overclocking/ frame rate tweaking as I'm getting massive fluctuations (10-70fps; from fraps and vsync off so grain of salt; on an e6400/ win7/ 5770 1GB/ 4GB RAM). Think I'll try to go 266 -> 333 on the FSB and see if it helps, else I'll just have to try and work out which options only put load on the gpu. Got Raven's Armour + Aerondight + another sword which is presumably the Mahakam Rune Blade equivalent imported from my last TW save. Had some comments on other decisions from the first game too. On the negative side I had no idea who the 'Leland' from the framing narrative was until I checked the journal, and it kind of implies that you should know who it was. And I'm apparently a terrible shot with a ballista. Also Australian Puritanism is apparently no barrier to full frontal nudity.

And... installed. Tray motor just went on my DVD so I would like to record my gratitude to whoever thought of the stick-a-bent-paperclip-in-here emergency release hole. Crap censored Aus version despite not even being in that MA15 afflicted country, but at least it means I get to play earlier. Now to see whether the 87,000,000hz I'm missing will actually mean anything. OH GOD IT'S STARTING UP.

I guess sending the Secret Police around to arrest anyone who voted for Armenia worked out for Azerbaijan in the end then, even if it took two years.

[save vs meme: critical fail] What's the matter, Jaesun?

It'll just be the government telling the service providers to send the txt to all the people within range of the cellphone towers in state y, or just everyone in the country. While it could be a precursor to establishing something like a Five Minute Hate it isn't really anything to worry about privacy wise. If the government or service providers are routinely tracking you then they are already doing it and your only real way of avoiding it is not to have a cell phone in the first place.

I went neutral on my first playthrough too, and never questioned whether it was the right decision since both the sides were pretty crap options. Helped the order early on, then decided they were just a bunch of bigoted religious goons. Replayed on the side of the Scoiatel and never questioned that that was the right decision. Don't know if I'd feel the same if I'd picked the Order- fundamentally you should feel pretty stupid if you did pick them, I guess. But it does make a difference from the standard RPG fare where there is almost always the false good/ neutral/ evil trichotomy or good/evil dichotomy and it's flagrantly obvious 99% of the time which is which from the outset. That does happen in TW too of course (Adda, Vincent etc) but it is good at having delayed consequences which stop metagaming the prefect outcome. Stuff up the autopsy and you can be absolutely convinced that you've got the right suspect when you haven't and you only find out about it a lot later.

I always thought the 'point' of Schrodinger's cat was that it was impossible to prove whether it was the act of opening the box (observing) that determined the result (cat alive/ cat dead)- ie impossible to prove whether it was deterministic or not- because you had to observe in order to determine the results. It's a bit of a stupid thought experiment in any case as the cat would be observing itself even if Mr S wasn't.

A lot of people do eat irradiated food, as irradiation is a fairly frequently used and very reliable preservation process. Albeit they don't do it by sticking it next to a compromised nuclear reactor...

That should be the pre rendered cutscenes being nasty I presume, as all the levels/ locations were pre rendered too.

AT LEAST WE'RE BETTER THAN IRAN!!! CELEBRATE OUR ENLIGHTENMENT!!! THEN AGAIN, IRAN IS OK TOO BECAUSE VLACH VLAD TEPES WAS WORSE!!! OH NO BUT GENGHIZ KHAN WAS WORSE THAN VLACH VLAD SO HE'S ACTUALLY OK TOO!!! Good lord above the "at least we're better than" argument is a load of horse excrement. Yeah, I'm a greater humanitarian than Adolf Hitler/ Stalin/ Pol Pot/ Caligula/ Torquemada/ Timur. Wow, such an achievement. I'll just add that to my CV so next time I apply for a job there won't be any dispute about my personal qualities. :1440x900 rolleyes:

Japan has/ had banned milk and farm produce from around the area. I'm not sure if it is still in effect now. But a 'simple' meltdown isn't in quite the same league as what happened at Chernobyl in terms of radiation release. IIRC there was a meltdown at 3 mile island too and they only discovered it when they got around to dismantling the reactor years after the accident as it had very little actual effect beyond melting the fuel.