Raithe

It's more of a hold-over from the fact that the "hard-core" gamers who liked in-depth games were the ones that played on the pc.. the console market was geared towards the casual gamer, the "simple" platform jumping / button-mashing fight games type of thing that you could jump in, play 15 minutes or so, then leave without worrying about saving... That's evolving over the past few years.. but I'd say that's where the viewpoint comes from.... I mean, it's still a rarity for a game that was designed for the console takes more then 10 hours to play through once.. while it used to be a rarity for a pc game that fell under that time.. length of gameplay, levels of complexity.. that's what's been shifting of late. That, and precisely what makes up a "casual" gamer compared to a "hard-core" one...

I never seemed to find anything that kicked up from the Wild Wasteland trait for me.. And I never stumbled across a Gauss Rifle at any point.. Lasers, Plasma , and Miniguns oh my, but nary a sight of a Gauss Rifle. Although I did stumble on the Tesla lightning zapper thing...but I didn't really unlimber that until the final Hoover Dam battle.

It amazes me how the difficulty of learning a programming language can vary depending on how well written a book one has. I've always found the interesting point is learning from the examples in a book, and then making the jump to being able to adapt techniques to other situations. Some books can make that easier then others...

I was constantly running close to the carrying capacity. pick up a couple of things and then I was over the limit.. so was fairly constantly having to shuffle off and sell it or stash it.. and plenty of offloading onto companions. Generally tried to make sure I had weapons that used the same ammo type as well.. rather then have hordes of different ammo.

hm, I tended to split mine into 1: Pistol, 3: Shotgun, 4:Melee Weapon, 5:Laser Pistol, 6: Rifle type, 7:Laser/Plasma rifle, 8: Heavy Weapon I'll admit, Pew-Pew with the Meltdown Perk was kind of crazy... especially in enclosed spaces..

Handled post, some grocery shopping, and a few other odds and ends... tried to do a touch more C# revision to kick the plaque away..but my brain seems to have locked in the "mushy" role since this morning. Tried to help explain some basic, reallly basic computer matters to my mother. Okay, my mother is an intelligent woman, she's capable in so many areas.. but computer.. it doesn't register. No matter how simple you make it, how many times you explain it.. it just won't stick. She'll cheerfully admit to this. But trying to explain why saving 30+ silly games to the desktop, installing them from there and never uninstalling and deleting them when she's finished and having her blank stare when I try to show her how to save things to other places... I get many, many stabby pains erupt in my head. When I try to explain about backing up some files.. she gives me a blank look and a "so how do I move to a different folder?" It's.. bizzare. She took to ebay like a duck to water, taking photographs, uploading them, cropping them, using ebay features to organise items... But simple, basic computer matters..and aaargh! It can drive me nearly to the point of eating the keyboard in frustration.

There's using a Chekov's Gun.. There's using a Chekov's freaking Arsenal.. and then there's just widely beating the audience around the head with an obvious plot hook/item.. which happened an awful lot in those books.. What always bugged me with Harry Potter was just how similar the appearance and initial attitude was to the main character in Gaiman's Book of Magic.

Arg, well back from morning labours. Some physical workout is nice, but trying to maneuver beds and furniture around stairways and narrow doors is so much fun. It's not so much the weight as the general awkwardness and lack of a good handholds... Still, having that slight pause for lunch now. Don't know exactly why but having that mix of tired and depressed wave kicking in while my brain is feeling generally mushy rather then sharp and aware.. Get this sorted, then off to post a parcel to a cousin serving in Afghanistan and a few more chores to take care of...

I don't think Hardcore really added much to the general difficulty of the game.. it just added a higher level of annoyance over weight limits... One slightly random thought, does Ceasar's Legion react any differently if the main character is female?

Yeah, the whole.. wonder of the natural world tends to be more of a specific single feature rather then the sort of.. expansive area. I tend to think some place like Iguazu Falls which spreads out and consists of many features.. sort of falls into what I'm thinking of.. While Everest or the like are places within the area..

On a different level of news for those interested in mmo crafting related matters.. this came up in a gamespot news report..

Yeah, the Nile would be one. I was thinking more of the natural features/locations then man-made ones... Victoria Falls maybe.. And it was bugging me that I couldn't put a proper "classification" as to what I was thinking about Edit: Plus the man-made place like Machu Pichu, The Pyramids, Angkor Wat while grand in one sense don't have the same... sprawling, epic-ness . And yes, it really bugs me when I can't verbalise my thoughts properly

For a truly random thing... I was just pondering on those places that could be considered famous locations/areas but aren't actually something specific to a country.. Those places that you can say the name, and it immediately conjures up the image/idea of the place. ie: The Congo, The Amazon, The Black Forest, The Himalayas, The Sahari Desert... possibly the Golden Triangle (but that's an artificial one..) Which led me to trying to consider how many places like that there are in the world.. but my minds pulling a blank. So I thought I'd sit down and try some google-fu and wiki-fu to see what might be there..but then realised I didn't have an accurate way to describe that type of subject to search for. I'm curious as to how people would consider describing that collective group.. or suggestions as to other places that might fall in that type of list....

Hruff. Having that momentary crisis of confidence after going nowhere with some work today. Gives you that total feeling of being a fraud when you have one of those days where your mind just won't grapple with the work properly. Leaves you with the whole "Dang it, I can do this! Why aren't I getting it??!" mental cry. Mayhaps a good nights sleep will see my mind finding the right angle for it manana. I'd just like to be able to get in some work that actually produces something. Still, had some scampi for dinner, then got some reading of the new wheel of time book in tonight. So that was some to the good.

There are good points and not-so-good points about the House of Lords.. Technically, it should provide a certain buffer again knee-jerk, mob driven politics of the short-term variety based on winning popularity..... On the other hand..it can be a certain..heavy opponent of any change. And doesn't provide any real guarantee of competency. Then again, very few elected officials seem to have much competency beyond winning votes and backroom deals. Or maybe I've just become a bit too jaded and cynical about politicians and government buraucrats..

There's always the : "You've helped me work my body.. now how can I help work yours?" approach.... For the high note start to the day...some mysterious person (otherwise known as my sister) accidentally shut the dog in the front room all night.. so there are now two puddles that needed cleaning.... and said canine has reverted to extremely nervous and quiet behaviour...

It's to the south of the Vegas Strip.. the entrance is a manhole cover in the guard booth of a carpark up against a mountain.,..

Nah, I'd kept Westside safe and secure.. and supplied with water.. I had Helios One AND the Hoover Dam supplying power.. I'd basically gone with a lot of good karma, idolized by nearly every group.. but if I have a massive army of Mark 2 Securitons enforcing the peace..and ensuring chaos and loss of life is minimal in the New Vegas area.. even if you're not talking just the Strip.. It's not a huge thing, just ..seems a little jarring that it jumps from "time of chaos was short, loss of life was minimal" to the whole.."massive chaos and people needing treatment swamped.."

That kind of feels too..immediate. They've always seemed to push the long term view of consequences rather then the "immediately after" view. Of course, that's just my perception.

Yeah, I think the Powder Gangers depends on how you deal with the part of the gang that moved into the Vault.. um. 34 was it?

Hm, I got specific mention of how the chaos was minimilised and there was little loss of life around New Vegas one moment.. then it followed up with how Freeside became one of the safest places in the area but outside it was quite dangerous.. followed by how the Followers of the Apocalypse at Fort Mormon (which as you may all recall is in Freeside).. was swamped by the surrounding chaos and troubles and hurt people... Little things like that.. which felt just a tad contradictory to me... Edit: Although I'm wondering if the last has something to do with whether you get Gannon to embrace his past rather then focus on the doctoring side of htings...

Now I really really liked that they did the improved endings for the various factions, locations and characters.. It was one of the missing elements that was such a flaw in FO3... but the trouble is..having seen how they don't always match up with each other.. (ie, one thing saying you minimised chaos in an area causing this effect..while 2 seconds later another faction in the same area has to deal with the utter chaos...) Between that, and that I picked up the Explorer perk at the last..and there were only about 10 or 15 places I hadn't found.. I just can't get into the mood to have another playthrough.. its nearly a week since I finished that first playthrough and I just can't find the oomph to go back again...

The Mind Boggles. Although one part of me wonders just how hard it would be for someone to hack Hansard to do this as a joke.. but yes.. paranoia can run rampant..

Then again, there are parents who picked up games like Grand Theft Auto x for their kids, even though they had the whole age rated mention on the game boxes. Picking up FONV and not seeing the shiney red 18 on the spine of the dvdbox is kind of silly. To me it seems that if parents would check what ratings there are on films before they get them as birthday/christmas presents or the like, they should be capable of checking a computer games rating. Think how many games come with the small "due to violence, gore, etc" warning these days. Sure, a lot of parents seem to be in the whole "computer games are for kids, so why worry about whats on them".. and then they turn around and complain about the corrupting effects games have on kids.. Why have a need to regulate whats on games in a harsher manner then is used to consider film and tv? There's a certain amount of.. nanny-state behind it almost..as if parents don't have the common sense to pay attention and regulate what they let the kids have.. or is it parents just not wanting to deal with that effort and wanting the government to have control so they have someone else to blame? (hm, my point is running all over the place....)

It's always been said both of them were under the effects. And she's always been firm that he was under the effects as much as her. On the one hand it caused a lot of problems to his life as well and he was a fairly decent guy although I didn't really know him that well at the time, and she was always quite firm on how shocked, surprised and kind of horrified over it he was... On the other, his parents and hers had been trying to push them together since they were kids, and he had wanted to be more then just friends. They'd gotten home safely from the party and when he called over later with the "hey, i've kind of got a blank spot over last night and I don't have the single condom in my wallet that I had.. who did I meet up with and what happened?" So I've always had that niggling suspicious edge over it about him. But that could be natural bias over it all.