Zoraptor

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.

C'mon gif man, it's not like it's hiding on page 1 or something, it's about 8 posts up the page.

I don't know about not having faith in the project, it may just be that at a point you have to accept that some projects simply are not geared by their structure towards having DLC. Meaningful DLC for a primarily story driven game is a real pain to do well, as evidenced by the generally lukewarm reactions to a lot of the DAO/ ME2 stuff. How could you do meaningful DLC for a game like Alpha Protocol? Sure you can do really basic stuff like add items etc but integrating new missions? Very difficult to do well I would think, and if sales were good a quick turn around sequel would be a better bet IMO. Not on PC I'm afraid. DLC ain't a problem for the consoles because that functionality is pretty much intrinsic, but on PC you need a way to deliver it.