Zoraptor

Jaggies are inevitable in UE3- it's (in)famous for not allowing antialiasing. Personally I prefer things with fewer shaders etc as the current trend of eye searing lashings of bloom making everything look like its been irradiated by Little Boy even if the only light source is a candle and the tendency to make things look like they're been dipped in vegetable oil via over reliance on shaders is one of my pet peeves. I look around and in "real" reality very little stuff is highly polished/ reflective and most stuff is flat lighted, but play a game and, well, everything seems to be shiny/ reflective from carpet to paint to clothing to hair to concrete whether or not it makes the slightest lick of sense. Turn off the film grain, if you haven't already. Utterly pointless effect that sucked up around a third of the fps on my rig- I had the same fps fighting multiple AI in Bioshock in an open area as staring at a blank wall in ME until I turned the grain off.

I'd disagree that it's one of the best DRM schemes although no-one can disagree that it is one of the most popular. I think the popularity mostly comes from the cost/benefit ratio Wals mentioned. The ultimate cause is that if you want to play Valve's games you have to have Steam- for HL2 alone that's an 8 million user base right away, and with Steamworksed games that number will only increase. I'd bet that the vast majority of people who use Steam, much like the vast majority of people who use SecuROM or any other DRM, are pretty much completely ignorant or utterly indifferent to it right up until the point it stuffs something up.

That would be Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines to give it its full title. Excellent RPG (be warned, it's not great as an action game) for PC from 2004, can be got fairly cheap off Steam if you're interested and since it's from 2004 has low system reqs for now. Also still has active development of enhancement/ bug fixing mods. Relevant part if that it had four hubs but there was quite a lot of backtracking between them as the story progressed both in terms of plot critical and optional quests.

IIRC they effectively have to call it Gothic 4 as Piranha Bytes still owns the IP and JW's rights to it consisted of making an expansion for G3, and a sequel and then it all goes back to PB. The Arcania thing is to try and decouple it from the Gothic name (and hence ultimate control by PB) so they can make another sequel if they want.

Same with me, though I'll probably pick up #2 at some stage it's well down the list. Preordered the original, haven't even been tempted by 2 yet despite being offered the lesser collectors edition for half the price of the standard one within a month of its release. Not surprising really, 2k did just about everything in their power to tell their PC buyers to foad short of saying the actual words.

That's a poor example, nobody cares about Belgium (well, except some Belgians). You have to pick a horrible, threatening, example like Russia renaming Kaliningrad back to Koenigsburg and the province to Prussia and how that signals Russia wanting to conquer large sections of Poland and Germany and its expropriation of another country's cultural heritage etc etc. India was just ecstatic about their greatest enemy breaking in half. They could probably have called Bangladesh Bharat without getting much reaction in those circumstances.

The main problem with the current one is its depth, as I understand it- the rig was specialised for drilling to depths which others cannot manage and which makes capping particularly problematic.

Maybe he meant "Macedonia"/ FYROM, Turkey, ?Kosovo and Bulgaria? rather than Finland since the Greeks have, iirc, had objections to all of those doing various Europe-y things at various times. (caveat: not 100% sure on the last two)

That's... wrong, for want of a better term. On two counts. The primary reason Greece is in the trouble it is now is because it's last, conservative government, was grossly corrupt and flagrantly cooked the books/ dropped the proverbial dead cow down the well which understandably also dropped Greece's credibility through the floor and has given them no leeway whatsoever- more people in Greece pay taxes than do in that well known hotbed of anarchism and the, er, United States of America, after all. Everyone knows about the general corruption, it was the book cooking which has precipitated this mess though. Secondly, most actual rioters in Greece tend to be anarchists, though they may be generally Marxist in philosophy as well, rather than classical communists- they are far more liberal and anti-authority than classical communists. LoF, or at least his epersona, would probably not fit in with that.

DLC might be a possibility too, though the exclusivity deals may preclude that.

Depends on what PR system they advocate, really. With Single Transferable Vote the practical differences are that the results given are approximately proportional and that there are multiple MPs per electorate which should, arguably, increase competition in catering to local affairs. MMP OTOH, does basically codifies the MP-Party-Slave relationship.

Nah, that's nationalism- defending everything about your country including the bad parts.

Stealth assault rifles exist- eg the Russian Vintorez. They generally fire specialised subsonic (ie quiet) ammo and have integrated silencers. Arguably stealth RPGs have existed too, the British PIAT in WW2 was a quiet anti tank weapon with basically no firing flash, albeit technically it wasn't an actual RPG and was less effective than the genuine RPGs. And several modern systems have two stage launching that obscures where an RPG has been fired from.

FEAR 2 had no 4:3 support on either console or PC. True story.

Without something other than widescreen, what would widescreen be wider than? [/socrates]

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.