Raithe

Although BP wasn't even running the oil rig when it had the nice kablooey... The other note of fact, there are several other oil rigs in the gulf there that have been shut down (although these ones are owned by American companies) because they've also admitted that they have no emergency plans in place if a similar accident happened.. Mostly because it's considered to be a rather bizarre accident to happen... Besides standard corporate policy... why is there this big stink over BP's greed causing the disaster? I mean, beyond the fact that it's considered a British company? (although these days nearly half the stockholders are American..)

As opposed to the peaceful, harmonious Brits who just rampaged across the globe and formed the largest empire in history. While no-ones trying to claim the British Empire was all sweetness and light, it's quite bizarre to view it as the end-all of evil. I mean, examine the territories before the Empire came about, and just how many places they were cheerfully commiting slavery, genocide, and general nastiness before the Empire was involved.. Sure there were problems, there was some unfairness, discrimination that bounced around on several levels - but a lot of the Empire was designed on having the "natives" of those territories educated and brought into the process of governing said territories. Since the whole notion of "Empire" became politically incorrect after WW2 and most of the colonies were released to their own rule.. How many of them have dissolved back into the same attitude of tribalism genocide and slavery? Frankly, if the behaviour was going on before the Empire, why do so many people say it has to have the blame for it all starting up once we stepped away from contol? With the British Raj, I always remember the issue of religion and how various important locals made complaints to the Governor over British troops interfering in funeral ceremonies (notably, widows being thrown on the fires). Said locals told the Governor that he was interfering in their traditions. His prompt reply "Gentlemen, let us then follow our traditions. You may follow yours.. and I shall follow mine which include hanging any man who kills a woman." Culture clash at it's best.

Yeah, a bit more expansion on the emails would be nice... For all the oomph about conducting research that gets mentioned at the start, apart from outright "buying" of information, there wasn't that much sneaky research to conduct... It might of have been nice to have several emails that you could have started at points rather then purely reply only... And for all the mail that turned up, there seemed very few you could actually reply to... A few tweaks and enhancements on that would be good for a sequel..

The other side of this that's a little annoying.. is that while BP own the rig.. it was a seperate american company that was in the process of installing another piece of machinery.. and that's what went kablooey. Yet Obama keeps making a firm reference to "British Petroleum" and making sure to highlight the "British" .. it really does make yah feel like the man has some sort of axe to grind...

Bringing back Gamma World.. and Dark Sun.. the only trouble is that its DnD 4e.. which really, really grates on me. <sighs> Much as I liked those worlds (and still have most of the original books stored away), I just can't force myself to face the struggle of 4e system and giving money to WoTC these days.. Throw in the cancellation of the Star Wars rpg.... I think I'm fairly struck off WoTC in general. Which is a shame.

Until you consider that it is an espionage rpg which has little to do with espionage and much more field work (which doesn't degrade the game, but it's still a fact) You can be a spy in the field and do espionage? At least in my opinion you can. It's espionage in the vein of James Bond ... It's cinematic espionage. Gather intel, figure out what the bad guy is up to, stop the bad guy from getting the girl.. or wait.. something along those lines

The A-Team.. was actually much more entertaining then I thought it would be. Some very nice moments, and a few in-jokes. During one sequence where a film smuggled into a psychiatric ward as part of a ploy to break Murdock out..the "film" has the A-team music play, and the introductory credits in the background include "Reginald Barclay".. - Which for those less geeky, was the name of Dwight Schultz (the original Murdock) character in ST:NG... Some very over the top moments, although the whole Tank parachute was a nice standout.. "What's he trying to do, shoot down the drone?" "No, he's trying to fly the tank..."

There's a wonderful counterbalance of things here.. Obama orders the BP chairman to visit the White House.. and uh, excuse me, "orders" a foreign businessman? Add in such things as the failure of America over the whole Exon Valdez oil spill.. and the fines related to that still haven't been payed.. and for slightly more current things, the Bhopal Trial.. The pesticide leaked from the factory, over 15,000 people have died due to it, (although campaigners have put the death toll closer to 25,000) .. and the American Chairman of that company skipped bail, fled the country, and now lives quite happily in America where he gets protected by the government from trial in India... Ain't it a joy?

The tough one is the 3 missions with less then 5 kills and no enemy becoming aware of you... The investigate the warehouse in Taipei is a fun stealth one...

The tux is in the game.. it's just hard to actually see... The fun trip to the party where you identify people through the rifle scope, Mike is automatically wearing a tux. You just don't really see much of it apart from the back of his collar (well, unless you look at the picture under service record).

Omen Deng comments about the "good fieldcraft" for trying to blend in by wearing civilian clothing in the subway station...

Hm, well I had high pistol and martial arts skills for one playthrough, when you meet Championichik and there's that whole Mike: Is that gold medal real? Sukov: He won it for boxing Mike: Cool, I got a couple for shooting and martial arts... I'm guessing that's a moment of reactivity due to skills..

Well.. it might add some interesting twists to the pro-fox hunting lobby here... I blame it on the childhood image of the sneaky/comedy fox that turns up in so many kids cartoons ...All these people who see them as "noble animals" or at least, cute and harmless...

Entrance into Marburg's Villa... and the portrait on the stairs. Mike : "Narcissist much?"

You can build up a fairly decent relationship with Heck without casually offing civilians and going too mad...

It's an interesting choice of art direction.. but until there's more to see I'm not going to make up my mind on whether its bad or good. At least there's a known reasoning behind it... rather then just something thrown in for no reason in particular..

Also get the "Poisoned Cocaine" Intel from Heck if you've done Tapai before Moscow.. that's always useful.

Hm, all the interviews and such have just been ps3 and xbox 360...

I would like to say Tron Evolutions.. since I happen to love the old Tron film, and really enjoyed Tron 2.0 for the inherent fun geekness in it... but.. meh.. Tron Evolutions.. Not coming to a pc. Is it just me or is that a wtf moment? A big Tron game.. and it's not going to be for the pc....

.. Damn it.. now we're going to have to start trying out various combinations of hats, bears, glasses and wear civilian gear just to see what lines actually turn up...

Stick a few gadgets around as you move.. I found a few shock traps placed to be quite useful...

It changes, sometimes its a random women, sometimes it looks like a Deus Vult guy...

That and the new version of D&D totally sucks (although the art is rather damn good). Also, if you give it a squinty eyed view, it almost looks like they've made it similar to WoW for pen n paper time.. so I guess that would both make it simpler, and cause some issues if they try to put it back into a computer game these days....

The arcade in Brayko's mansion.. I swear that's music from Deus Ex playing on a loop... throw in Mina's comment about recognising the music playing over the earpiece...

I'm half wondering when someones going to jump on here and start dancing on the "AP2! AP2!" wagon..