Zoraptor

I've been scrupulously accurate in everything that I've written including noting that it is unlikely that Steam will randomly go Dr Evil and cut off access for teh lulz just that they can- there's just very little practical difference between any discrete activation system be it Steam or SecuROM/ Uniloc mainly because those activation systems are largely inspired by Steam. Haha, oh wow. Post Proof Or Retract [/srs bzns] Where does "Not that it means they will cut off access, just that they can and there's nothing you can do about it if they do" imply that- it's just a simple rephrasing of the SSA quoted above designed specifically to point out that I was not saying exactly what you accuse me of. OK, given the context I admit this did amuse me.

.. Subsonic ammo would seem a very important aspect of playing a stealth route in the game, and would kind of suck if you could only get access through a specific pre-order that's only available in the states.. ermm.gif Stealth pack is international as well- though apparently not if you're buying on PC (don't know if it is available at all on PC).

Said it before, but I bet those who have quick start up times for Steam have it loading at startup/ don't shut it down after a launch rather than having it start on game launch every time- that does make a large difference. Sure there is, you have as much access as Valve (or its partners) decide you have and they can cut it off at any time without legal recourse. To whit: Not that it means they will cut off access, just that they can and there's nothing you can do about it if they do. (Yes, I did not sell my soul to Gamestop or whoever it was)

That isn't a problem unique to Steam, to be fair- a lot of disk check systems add considerable start up time and make it sound like your drive is shaking itself apart as well- and I remember well StalkerCS running 20% faster and losing almost all its crashes and save game corruptions once Tages was removed. I don't particularly dislike Steam per se, I just think there are generally better and less intrusive alternatives both retail and DD. Steamworks on the other hand is an automatic no buy as its tendency to go berserk and do a download install even if you have a retail disk is potentially very expensive.

Oh no, Steam is far better than Ubisoft's effort. And they have at least made an effort to get offline mode working properly even if it doesn't work quite as advertised- iirc the current set up still requires going online periodically (once a month?) even in offline mode though it's certainly better than the old "you must be online to activate offline mode" situation. It's the "online activations I hateses them... I'll get it from Steam" reaction I find incomprehensible since Steam definitively is online activation.

... See, this is why I have trouble taking Steam fans seriously. What, exactly do you think Steam is other than online activation? You still get exactly as many activations as a 3rd party allows you too just in this case it's Sega and Valve rather than Sega and Uniloc (don't believe me? actually read the SSA then). And it's a persistent monitoring system rather than a one off. You're free to pay extra just to buy it off Steam, of course, or in any other way you want, but you need to look at your justification for doing so because frankly it's rubbish. Plus, as I pointed out, the retail may well have the Steamworks option in any case. Just don't import a copy if so because Steam bricks imported serials.

Uniloc Softanchor. Oddly enough they have changed the description since last time I linked to it which was not long ago. Since other titles using Uniloc have a, er, no activation required version available I see no reason not to buy. If it's like FM 2010 then the retail will have either a Steam(works) or a Uniloc installation option so there's probably no need to cancel a physical copy if you're OK with SW. Caveat: I don't own FM 2010 so cannot myself confirm this to be true.

2k Australia/ Irrational Australia is definitely the lead, and had been working on an XCOM title since before Bioshock was released. The 2k Marin thing is because they've stuffed up their namings with 2k Boston returning to Irrational (a name not associated with Bioshock), and they've made the not unreasonable assumption that the Bioshock name appeals more to the typical 360er than Freedom Force or System Shock 2. It's all a bit silly as IG Aus worked on both Bioshocks and suspended their work on their own title (xcom) while they did so but well, marketing. I would not hold my breath for a Firaxis based strategy xcom title.

Petrol prices are high because of taxes which are seen as an easy way to gain revenue much as taxes on ciggies and booze are- they're basically trying to follow the European model. They also use the "well, you like roads, and police? Well then, we need to increase tax on petrol" even though most of the tax on it goes straight to the consolidated (general use) fund and is not ringfenced for use on transport. June isn't a great time to visit as it will be cold, but probably not cold enough to be interesting. Tourist attractions: Milford Sound and Queenstown as listed, whale watching at Kaikoura has a good reputation though you won't always see whales, wine etc around Blenheim (up north) if you like a drop and the Marlborough Sounds is pretty good for scenery. June is too early for skiing, unfortunately, though there will be some snow. If you like scenery the whole West Coast is good, I particularly liked the Haast Pass area (south west coast fairly close to Queenstown/ Milford Sound, one of my favourite drives) and the area from Westport-Punakaiki (central to north West Coast) down to the Fox/ F-J Glaciers, but the weather can be terrible. Christchurch is a pretty decent city though it's hardly a Paris or Rome. Basically there's tons of nice scenery and outdoors type stuff pretty much everywhere, but the whole island has only around a million people so don't expect awesome shopping or anything like that.

I pretty much agree, DD is not a great way to buy under many circumstances, certainly not as good as it 'should' be, and I only buy DD if it has a significant discount- I bought Majesty 2 for the equivalent of 11 NZD when it's 80 retail, for example- or if there's no alternative. I won't be buying AP via DD but probably will end up preordering retail, as when it comes right down to it while I know I will be able to get it cheaper later I don't mind paying full price, on occasion, as the price for games is not unreasonable- I'd blow more money going skiing for a day. A lot of titles never drop below 30$ here (~20USD) so often it is considerably cheaper- or next to impossible if the publisher doesn't think it's worth importing them (eg Call of Pripyat)- to get them any other way. And before most sites got the regional pricing it was a considerably better deal, almost always, to go DD over retail if direct cost was the only consideration.

For those wondering about the download size, IIRC when it was due for an October release GG had a size listed of just over 8GB. I could be wrong though, as I was not seriously considering a download since the bandwidth costs would be astronomical on my 3G connection. You won't be able to get it retail for cheaper in NZ/ Australia, at least not if you want to play soon after release and not for the equivalent of 50USD unless you go for an offshore retailer like cdwow and even then the price is roughly the same rather than being a saving, and their free delivery can take a very long time to arrive. Retail being cheaper is true in a number of places like the UK (except, apparently, when I'm there as they had not a single decent deal last time), but not here.

I think you'll find it's actually third- frequent posting in a game forum saying how you aren't looking forward to it is certainly more boring. Or maybe that's just for the people who have to read it. You were more entertaining when you were post irrelevant oversized gif guy rather than edgy naysayer guy.

Here you go $50 USD download and they even throw in the same free Space Siege deal as Steam too. Also, D2D has the same deal at the same price So far as I can tell it isn't listed on Impulse.

Yeah, they certainly aren't directly equivalent, it was meant more as a comparative rather than as a prescriptive, in that antagonistic 1st and 2nd parties could cooperate in chopping bits off a third without being 'allied' in any real sense.

Why on earth would you be happy about Steamworks foisting itself on everyone? Frankly compulsory Steam is about the only thing which would stop me buying it. Isn't a Steam version (one of which there will definitely be) enough? It won't be Steamworks most likely anyway, as other Digital Distributors have it as a pre-order and they won't sell games with Steamworks since it spams their customers with offers, and AP does not have a multiplayer component so doesn't need the matchmaking.

Wrong again Lof. Focus your attention on Poland and USSR three rows below, hope you will get it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allies_of_Wor..._United_Nations No, he is, at least on that one point, correct, though he could not be more wrong on Katyn itself, and frankly the idea of defending Katyn is baffling in the extreme. The USSR and Nazi Germany were never allied as there is a fundamental difference between a non aggression pact and an alliance (and Wikipedia, poor source as it is, agrees with that distinction)- the M/R Pact had none of the usual features of an alliance such as mutual defence, it was simply an agreement to not attack each other. If agreeing to a partition- the most 'alliance' like part of the agreement- mandates an alliance then Britain and France (and... Poland) were also allied to Germany via the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

I heard that Putin used his powers of mind control, weather manipulation and telekinesis to cause this crash- he has form, what with being Lord Lucan/ Vlad Dracul/ Genghiz Khan/ Attila/ Gaiseric/ Baybers, shooting Kennedy, stealing the Iron Duke, kidnapping the crew of the Marie Celeste, disguising himself as an iceberg to sink the Titanic, disguising himself as James Cameron to make a film based on the sinking of the Titanic, [etc etc]. Of course, I might be wrong, but well, he IS Putin... Or alternatively the pilot decided to try and land at an unsuitable airport (which had minimal aids for instrument only based landings) in conditions of dreadful visibility and crashed on the third attempt at landing having ignored advice to divert, resulting in the tragic death of a bunch of people- admittedly this explanation does smack of conspiracy and :tinfoil: though. On a totally unrelated note, I have no idea whatsoever where Russian feelings that they get blamed for everything without reason comes from, must be the indoctrination I guess...

I dunno, if Iranian warplanes tried overflying the US I can't imagine anything other than 'what were they expecting' once they got shot down, and that would hardly be a sentiment full of 'malice and hate', just the basic reality that if you overfly someone else's country in warplanes without their express permission they have every right to try and shoot you down. Please commence with the verisimilitudes and desist with the falsities.

It really isn't in Russia's best interests to cut off the gas supply, certainly not just to make a point. It costs them a lot of money they can ill afford to miss out on, annoys their customers and, worst, encourages them to find alternatives ultimately reducing the effectiveness of their 'energy muscle', future income and goodwill. It's a bit like having nukes really, everyone knows that they can nuke if they want to but making sure everyone knows this by actually nuking someone is... counter productive. Unfortunately, if they wanted to deal with Ukraine's syphoning/ refusal to pay there wasn't really any alternative to cutting it off. I wouldn't say that I don't believe there was any muscle flexing involved (especially in the timing though for all we know that had to do with when the contract ran out)- it is Putin after all, and he does like flexing his muscles, and obviously I'm not privy to the details of any negotiations- but it's hardly the cut and dry it's often made out to be. As a general point, if you (collective you, not singling anyone out) are actually interested in trying to convince someone that they are being brainwashed by their government it is best to latch onto something genuine rather than something where the reporting in the western media has been obviously biased- otherwise you're actually doing the opposite and convincing them that, yes, everything the west says is rubbish with any truth being purely coincidental.

The resources thing is a perfectly valid view- the 'west' (more properly the west's companies) was perfectly happy to take all sorts of resources for a song and a quick backhander to the half dozen or so people who owned most of Russia in the 90s and the russian government and people could go starve for all they cared. Putin may be an authoritarian and is certainly no Gandhi, but he's so much better than Yeltsin it isn't funny. It's also sad because Russia probably had a good chance of actually becoming a pluralist liberal democracy (or as close as any other western country manages) if it had had a bit of support rather than suspicion, derision and a wholesale rush to grab as much stuff as possible for the least cost possible. But whatever blame the west may get is nothing compared to Yeltsin and the gross stupidity of his rush to sell everything as cheap as possible without so much as a second of thought. It's not that we hate you because "you don't want to give" -- it's that doing crazy **** like cutting off all of Eastern Europe's natural gas supply during winter to put political pressure on your increasingly western-leaning Ukrainian neighbors tends to sit badly with folks. While you would not have got the impression from the western media there was no doubt that (1) Ukraine was not paying its bills and had not been for years, (2) was understating the amount it was using/ siphoning other country's supplies and (3) had a large discount in the first place. In any case Yuchenko was a lame duck long before then- his position was terminal as soon as he had fallen out with Tymoshenko.

Litvinenko. It's almost completely impossible to tell whether he was a good source (certainly the accusation that one of the apartment bombings, albeit one which never exploded, was a set up looked solid, but that is also the one with pre-existing evidence independent of him) or utterly bonkers (Putin is a paedophile and, iirc, a vampire). Certainly the accusations he was making before he died seemed loony albeit not as loony as the British police story of who killed him and how it happened. Yes, Yeltsin was the one who sold Russia to a bunch of oligarchs for a song. Putin spent much of his time as President trying to claw some of it back. I might have some sympathy for the oligarchs if they weren't such a genuinely shady bunch of robber baron wanna-bes who were happy to gouge every rouble out of their country even if it meant reducing it to rubble. IIRC that is one thing which Uncle Joe can't be blamed for as it was Brezhnev (?) who did that, and it did involve a 'land swap' with the Russian SSR getting the Kouban ('mainland' to the east of Crimea) in return. It's certainly a potential problem, probably not in the short term now that Yanukovitch is president, more of Yuchenko might have seen it flare up quickly though

Pretty much spot on. Well, except it's South Ossetia, NO has 'always' been part of Russia. US media coverage of that particular issue was utter, unmitigated garbage, and their coverage of Chechenya was/is scarcely better. Ironically, if there's one thing 'westerners' are happy to defend Gori's most famous son to the hilt on, it's him arbitrarily carving Abkhazia and SO off of Russia and grafting them onto Georgia.

I'd take a stab at Iceland. Come now, if it weren't for the brits (or the ever under appreciated russkies) you'd be speaking francais and saluting le roi Junot.

Heh. I suspect you're going to get Wrath of Dagon dropping by to tell you that you're wrong soon. Fact that Kadyrov fought against RF in the first war is well documented, as is the fact that he's on the official kremlin payroll. Oh yes, I certainly knew that. I'm just slightly amused because that ^^^ is pretty much exactly what I said, in the general case, a month ago and was told that I was wrong (and it was OT/ irrelevant, which it was in that thread so I didn't push it further).

If you want to know what's in a preorder you should ask (1) the publisher or (2) the retailer, ie Sega or better, EBgames themselves. There will be different bonuses in different places and what they will be is at the behest of the retailer or publisher, not the developer. I don't live in the West Island but I'd suspect it would be similar to what we are getting (Stealth pack and a guidebook, apparently)- though that isn't either EB nor CE- but then I too haven't seen a CE actually listed anywhere.