Zoraptor

Halliburton/ Bechtel. They are separate companies, in real life. I don't really see how much political knowledge is necessary, though it does help with spotting references and allusions/ setting the background. Halbech is pretty obviously The Bad Guys and all the real world knowledge gives you is that suspicion a little before it's confirmed. ".." False.

Most common list of complaints about Steam: Bad/ slow internet, 'moral' reasons, capped internet (particularly if Steamworks goes bonkers and decides to download the whole thing off Steam rather than install off the DVD), bloatware/ resource use, loss of control over your software, adware/ monitoring, service outages, forced patching, lack of mod compatibility (some titles), bad TOS, inconsistent offline mode, bad updates breaking your entire games catalogue, slow startup of games, monopolistic practices, no value added, it's a big target for phishing/ account hacking, just one more extraneous thing that can go wrong... I don't necessarily agree with all of those personally, though I do to some extent with most. As I've said, it doesn't really bother me as it just saves me money and I always have more games to play than time to play them- if Bethesda had stuck with a disk check I'd buy, as it is I won't, net effect $90 saved. I must admit to some fascination with why so many people like Steam so much they want everyone else to be forced into using it, as it's a bit of an alien concept to me. If Valve were to be bought, or go bankrupt, then Gabe would be in no position to make good on his promise- if it would be legal anyway, they'd probably need permission from publishers for each title too to vary the terms of their contracts. He can say it, he can even mean it, he could not legally make good on it as under those circumstances the call would simply no longer be his to make, it would be the new owner/ receiver's. It's largely irrelevant as there's no prospect of a receiver or new buyer shutting the service down, they'd be far more likely to turn it into a subscription model or data mine as the captive audience is one of Steam's most valuable features, commercially speaking.

The starforce thing is just plain wrong too. Sure, it might trash your optical drive but there's never been any indication of it monitoring what you were doing and reporting back to the mothership, let alone any other of the (far more popular than Starforce) disk check based systems- they never ask for internet connectivity. Activation based systems are a bit closer, but even then none of them require an always running client. And again the question is begged: Is Steam so good everyone should be forced to use it?

Even with the $10 difference a PC SKU makes more money (per unit sold) than a console one, though not by a huge amount.

I've hit the traffic cap on my fast internet else I might have actually looked for one. Until tomorrow when the cap resets just imagine some slave boy fanning Cleopatra with palm fronds while she reclines eating grapes.

Nothing personal intended, but... See, this is the thing which really annoys me about these arguments. Nobody wants FNV not to be available on Steam at all. All that is wanted is that it isn't available only on Steam. Given that, I'm always tempted to reply to "Steam is awesome" posts by asking: OK, but do you like it so much that you think everyone on PC should be forced to use it? If your answer is no then your defence of Steam is irrelevant. If it's yes then- as Purkake would put it- fanbois_gonna_fan_.gif

Yep, including hard/ recruit and hard/ no ranged weapons. To be clear though: I did hide behind things, I just didn't use them as formal-spacebar-press cover.

I never used cover (I usually just forgot it was an option) and played the game as a "3rd person fps". It was perfectly feasible to do it that way.

The 'junk' characters will include the number values, as hexadecimal. Many programs will interpret these as funny characters, typically rectangles. I haven't used notepad++ much but I'd be surprised if it doesn't have an interpret as hex/ binary or data inspection tool somewhere- otherwise get something like xvi32 (freeware) which has both raw and interpreted data in split windows, and use that. The uninterpreted junk characters after the variablename are usually a long string of zeroes with the actual variable visible as, well, something which isn't zero roughly in the middle. If you're not sure what you are doing make sure you have back ups!

If people said AP had PS2 level graphics what level of hyperbole do those need? At least it'll run on my 4MB Matrox Millenium? Is it coming for Atari 2600? ??? ?

Arcania is also being funded by the same investment group that part funded NWN2. Whether that is included in the 6 million or not isn't clear from what I read, so it could actually be more than that. I suspect JoWood needs to sell millions of copies because their financial position is dodgy rather than just to recoup investment because they should be in profit well short of millions of copies if that's the total cost.

If that's your primary criterion then you'd be far better off buying from Impulse (Stardock) or Gamersgate (Paradox) as neither associated company makes console games at all. I doubt Valve even think of PC as being a platform at all any more. The platform they support is Steam, not PC, as evidenced by the move to Mac and PS3.

It's Steamworks, you can buy it retail/ DVD and (theoretically at least) it will install completely from there up until it gets to the mandatory online verification/ downloading of updates. The only complaint I have with Gamersgate is that I can't buy with my UK credit card, only my NZ one. There's a bunch of games in that sale (MoWs, KBAP, SR2:R) I'd be all over if they did. I'd probably even buy King's Bounty: The Legend again.

FNV will be the first Obsidian game, and Civ 5 the first Firaxis (PC) games I won't buy, both because of Steamworks. Can't say I'm particularly worried about either, I have far more games I want to play than I have time to play them, so it's just money saved.

To quote someone else, whenever something they like is criticised no matter how mildly...

Syriana was cited as similar to/ an inspiration for Alpha Protocol at one stage. And it is 'referenced' (Leland as an off the top of head example).

Sega owns the IP- you can check on the USPTO's search engine, TESS, as trademark ownership is generally an accurate indicator.

The economic system is still working pretty much as intended- it's just that any benefits for the inhabitants has almost always been (and remain) circumstantial and limited to a favoured elite, and it's primarily designed to gain maximum profit for outside parties rather than benefit internal ones.

In terms of the changes of the first iteration I'd suggest the timeline of events suggests a likely reason, especially given that the previous attempt to use their UE3 licence had failed due to lack of a publisher. Whether that would be a matter of 'blame' or 'credit' really depends on what the first iteration was and how it would have been received, which we'll never know. That's pretty much what is meant, I think- since honeycomb is basically a bunch of minimum space hexagons it fits a branching 'cell' structure pretty well as an analogue.

Yo, RPGMasterBoo imma let you finish but the Mongols had the largest empire of all time OF ALL TIME! They also had two successor states make the 19th century, if only barely, blatted the east slavs badly enough that it took centuries for them to recover, conquered China, squished the arabs so badly that they never recovered, set the stage for Safavid Persia, etc etc. Better targets of ire, from a historical perspective are the Aztec and Inca, both important less than a century; Mali which lasted barely longer; the Sioux, the Celts and Vikings who were never organised 'empires'; the Holy Roman Empire (famously none of the three post Chuck the Great) etc.

The full length portrait? There'd be a lot of paintings like that. Wouldn't surprise me if there was a Bond villain with a similar portrait though (Dr No or whoever it was with the stolen Iron Duke portrait hanging on his wall). The equivalent Brayko painting though is a reference to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' cover. (My immediate reaction was actually George Michael/ Club Tropicana, which disturbs me somewhat considering what Michael was wearing in that shot)

I think his point is that you could link AP to Steam as a delivery mechanism even without including it on the DVD. Which is true, to a point, but way more trouble than just including the middleware with the initial release like most every other title does- you'd effectively have to patch it (steamworks/ GfWL) in to allow DLC to become available.

IIRC even if they implemented a quota they be obligated to make it apply to all EU players rather than only English/ British, so much of the problem would still exist.

The Hagia Sophia does have minarets... ...since ~1453

There's nothing contradictory there in the slightest. I suggest a re-read if you're really bothered.