Zoraptor

Finished second playthrough, went Roche and full on swords. A rather different experience, on the gameplay front I got 2 greater mutagens the whole way through whereas with the magical guy I had them coming out of my ears. I also ran into some bugs and some crashes I didn't get with the release patch, most annoyingly Still liked it a lot, and its many small annoyances remain small and largely ignorable.

They have to, France and Britain have bet the entire organisation's credibility on success. They pretty much have to do anything and everything to win now. Propaganda is as propaganda does. Not like NATO doesn't use it, they just get an acritical reception- how often have they used the "we only killed terrorists today" [..] "can't comment now, we're investigating that incident two days ago" [..] "well, maybe we actually did kill some civilians a few weeks ago, hope Lady Gaga or Pippa's posterior didn't distract you in the meantime"; and it works every time.

You need the save to be in the right place (..\My Documents\The Witcher\saves) and it also has to be from the 'right' place, ie not any old save will do it has to come from- so far as I am aware, based on having 2 eligible saves from each of my Witcher playthroughs- directly before or after the final fight. Of the import items Aerondight at least is pretty useful thanks to the three upgrade slots. I used it well into Chapter 2. The nerfs were clearly carried out for gameplay reasons, much as you end up with Epic Gnolls/ Random Goon who just happens to be Armed With +3 Stuff in Throne of Bhaal or NWN2. The one thing I found really silly was getting a Raven's Armour schematic as a reward when the first game makes it clear that it is a unique item requiring unique parts and assembly technique. Funny that they nerfed the prologue in the new patch, I replayed it the other day and having died a lot on normal first time went through on hard without getting hit at all, except by archers.

As are ambulances, and we know from the friendly fire incidents that NATO had no problem blowing them up. Though I tend to agree otherwise- I've always thought the "[blah] don't fight fair" blather from technologically advanced nations is assinine. Hamas/ Taleban/ Libyans/ Serbs or whoever going out into a nice flat field to fight Israel/ NATO/ NATO/ NATO (golly, NATO fights an awful lot of defensive wars, doesn't it? Reminds me of Rome, who never fought an aggressive war in her history, at least according to her historians) in a 'fair fight' would end with them getting whacked instantly by Apaches, AC130s, cruise missiles etc. Which isn't brave or honourable, it's stupid.

I don't think EA holds the full rights to System Shock in any case which would (potentially) rule it out on a more or less permanent basis and irrespective of whether other EA titles become available. Most of the other residual EA titles were made by companies EA either owned fully at the time or bought outright later, like Bullfrog/ Origin/ Westwood and as such are likely owned EA properties in toto. The same cannot be said for System Shock. Ken Levine apparently tried to buy out the rights to System Shock prior to Irrational being bought by 2k and left the impression that while EA held the trademarks and such, and could potentially make sequels, they did not hold the full rights which were held by [random LGS wind up entities and creditors]. There's also the possibility that any residual royalties could be paid to competitors; 2k, via Irrational and Squeenix, via Eidos; or that permission from them is required to distribute whivh would provide additional legal problems.

Depends on Hasbro, most likely. I tend to suspect that they'd be very happy to be able to licence D&D to someone other than Atari's shambling corpse at this point.

vysnc, most likely. If it's on it the framerate will only reach (typically) 60 or 30 fps for a 60hz digital monitor and there will be little or no variation.

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?