Ummi

When i first heard the news i decided not to buy this game on principle. Then i read that this "spyware" actually just monitors how much people view the ads and well that's something i couldn't care less about. Game's been a load of fun so far I doubt EA actualy needed these advertising dollars to develop BF2142, but if this eventually leads to higher budget games then i really don't mind. Something tells me that companies whos games i like won't put in ads that ruin the setting, cause despite all the fears some people have that simply wouldn't make sense. People are gonna have to buy and play the game to get exposed to these ads, but if the ads ruin immersion then well they might not get enough people to buy the game in the first place.

Checking capacitors is very easy. Just take off the sidepanel and inspect all capacitors on the motherboard. If the caps are bloated or there's even goo coming out of them then the capacitors are bad and a new motherboard is likely needed. Bad capacitors usually means that the computer might crash, not boot or do other weird stuff. Here's a picture of capacitors gone bad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg I've never seen that white powedery stuff on a capacitor but i've seen many motherboards and PSUs with bloated caps and goo all over the place.

That's one thing i really disliked about KOTOR games. I didn't realize how it worked at first. So i gave my party a whole lot of orders at the beginning of combat, pushed space to unpause... and then a few curse words might have slipped out of my mouth. NWN2 better not be like that. I'm even more excited about the game after those positive reviews though. I knew it was gonna be good but now i can't wait. (w00t)

Some bugs in G3 are truly infuriating and are making it more and more difficult for me to enjoy the game. I liberated a town from undead slaying a demon in the process. I then paid gold to fuel the rebuilding efforts. After i returned to the city i was immidiately assaulted by a guard who claimed i had stolen from them... >.< Then i teleported to a location under siege. I was greeted by some friendly rebels and then immidiately was forced to start fighting about 10 orcs at the same time. Unfortunantely the friendlies were neutral to me for some reason so i could target them and my swings would hit them, so would their swings hit me. Now combat in G3 is extremely mobile, you almost can't attack without significant forward movement. Also twohanded weapons have enormous hit arcs. Most orcs like using twohanders and so do some rebels. So imagine my frustration as i'm trying to avoid getting hit not only by orcs but also rebels whom i've been very friendly with throughout the game. But it's not only that. You can't really target anything by yourself, the game decides what you're targeting all by itself depending on who it thinks is closest to your weapon range or something. With 15 guys moving around all over the place i would often get close to one of the rebels. Then the game might decide it's a good target and there would be no way to avoid hitting him cause fast attack sequences can't be stopped. Frankly i'm not very exited about going back to the game at all, cause i've tried that fight about 10 times now.

I think those who have trouble with the copy protection system probably should check their computers first. It might be as simple as a sucky DVD-drive or some software glich or whatever. It's also possible that any problem that someone might have is amplified on a computer that lacks the power or memory to run G3 properly. So when the system is already strained and then copy protection kicks in it might cause some additional lag indeed.

The first fight is just one guy acting stupid. No way does he have to do it like that. First of all the immortality is removed very early in the game. I thought it was as soon as you completed the "tutorial", which i think was before those boars even unless you skipped the first quest that was given. I could be wrong though. Secondly he could have avoided getting hit and stunlocked by moving back. He doesn't have to act like a stupid NPC who i admit are totally helpless against beasts and usually get stunlocked to death. Also he was not required to get up and fight the boar again with his fists, he could have sprinted away, picked up a weapon, a ranged spell or a bow and just killed the boar properly. In the second fight some bugs are displayed. Like i mentioned already NPCs get raped by beasts. Second bug, which i'm not sure is a bug, is that NPCs sometimes don't attack a person or monster who is on a charge like the boar was. Your character can do a similar charge and sometimes other enemies besides your target just stand there doing nothing as you assault one of their mates. I said i'm not sure this is a bug because if they did indeed gang up on you then fighting more than two enemies would be pretty much impossible and it would be extremely difficult to liberate any cities cause those are all big fights.

I ordered my copy on the release day, got it next day and have been playing it ever since. I can offer some impressions. The game runs near perfectly after i tweaked the graphics settings a bit. I reduced High Detail Distance setting to medium, turned off Depth of Field cause it looked plain ugly to me and seemed to affect performance too, and i toned down Anisotropic Filtering but left everything else maxed. Frame rate is smooth and the game only stutters brifly when it has lots of loading to do. My computer has 2GB RAM, C2D E6600 CPU and x1950xtx video though so all that might not tell you much As for the game itself, i quite enjoy exploring the world of G3. It's much more satisfying to go on a random exploring trip in G3 than it was in say Oblivion. There's a constant sense of danger outside towns and there are enough interesting things to find and things to kill. Quests are quite fun to do cause while not exactly groundbreaking they are interesting and varied enough and also give a ton of exp so you don't have to go grinding beasts in the woods like in G2. Of course i kill everything in my path anyway That brings us to the combat problems though. Killing beasts with a sword is a bitch to say the least. My usual tactic when encountering a wild boar used to be running like mad towards the nearest friendly NPCs, then slowly killing the animal with a bow while it raped everything that fought it. When the boar hits you, you go into this *i'm so hurt* animation for a second or so, but the boar attacks again before you recover causing you to become stuck and helpless. However i have discovered that moving around makes you pretty invincible in G3. When you move backwards in combat it's slow and doesn't look like you're nearly fast enough to move away from an attack however it's fast enough for the game and attacks will simply miss you giving you an opportunity to counterattack. It's even possible to escape this "stunlock" by holding down the backwards movement key. There's a problem though. NPCs can also dodge your attacks with this slow backwards motion, but due to the poor visual representation of this dodging it can sometimes cause you to make mistakes. It might seem you should be hitting the enemy while it's actually moving away from you so you miss instead and get counterattacked. I've recently discovered ranged combat which is simply awesome. You can do headshots which does almost double the damage of bodyshots and with a crossbow that can be a lot of damage. I can kill those "stunlock" boars in just two shots now so they never have a chance to work their magic on me any more. However there are also many bugs such as arrows passing through enemies for no apparent reason. Standing on lower or higher ground sometimes makes you totally safe from retaliation while you slaughter everything nearby with a crossbow. It's also possible to kite kill tough enemies quite easily. You take one shot, then run away a bit. The enemy will tire of chasing you immidiately and start walking back. You can then take another shot, run, and so on till your target is dead. Due to these imbalances and bugs advancing in G3 often feels not quite right and cheap because of the shady tactics you're forced to use sometimes. I still enjoy the game quite a lot despite all that. Like i said at first exploring is great fun, quests are fun, following the main story has been ok so far too. If your comp can run it and you like these sort of games then get Gothic 3 at one point

You're quite right. Most expensive cards never offer a very good price/performance ratio. If you have money to blow and want the best then why not get it though Your Oblivion benchmarks are incorrect though. x1900xtx/x1950xtx run Oblivion outdoors 1600x1200 at 22.5 fps while 7950GX2 runs it at almost 30fps average. That's the test i had in mind when i said 7950gx2 will be noticably faster at 1600x1200. With only 30 fps average even that card will stutter sometimes though.

1) HDR is very pretty so yes it's important for me Whatever video card you buy don't get x1900XTX cause the loud cooling will drive you insane, unless you're used to lots of noise. x1950XTX is better and is good enough for most games at 1280x1024, but yes 7950GX2 is noticably more powerful at higher resolutions like 1600x1200 and upwards. 2) Does your video/photo editing involve 3D graphics? If not then you don't need to worry about graphics power there. 3) Yes you need to buy a monitor that has a native resolution of 1600x1200 if you want to play games at that resolution. Everything will look kinda small on a 19" screen at that resolution though, but you might be used to that already. 4) I'm pretty picky when it comes to monitor picture quality and i've been very impressed with my Viewsonic VP930 in games. Colors are very pretty and it has a very fast response time. I've noticed slight pixel noise on my character in WoW in some situations and EVE online galaxy map background didn't look as clean as i would have liked, but those are the only problems i've had with this monitor in games so far. So there are good gaming LCD monitors out there

I recently built a new computer. I have a C2D E6600 on an ASUS P5B. It's not too expensive, but is very powerful. I don't have plans to use Crossfire in the near future so i didn't see the need for a 975x chipset motherboard. Graphics wise i went with RADEON x1950XTX, the most powerful ATI offering out at the moment. I value low noise and this card has pretty quiet cooling when in idle mode. 7950GX2 offers little extra performance at 1280x1024 in most games and is louder. It also drains more power which in turn causes my PSU cooling to be louder, so i decided not to shell out extra cash for that.

I enjoyed both Arcanum and VtM: Bloodlines very very much. They're one of the few RPGs that gave me the same amount of enjoyment and satisfaction as such greats as Fallout and Baldurs Gate games. I'm very sad that Troika is not around any more to make more such games.

Besides looking forward to most hyped PC RPGs i'm very much looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons Tactics for Playstation Portable. Here's a little preview Gamespot preview "Currently scheduled for release in February, Dungeons & Dragons Tactics is a turn-based role-playing game that purportedly boasts the most authentic and comprehensive interpretation of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule set ever to appear in a video game." That pretty much made me want to buy it right there. Graphics look similar to the first NWN and devs are also estimating most gamers will get about 100 hours of gameplay out of it which is pretty insane. I have some doubts about the quality of those 100 hours though, but if the combat is good i don't care what the rest of the game is like as long as it doesn't make me physically sick or something.

LCD monitors display clearest picture at their native resolution. That 20" Dell monitor has a native resolution of 1680x1050. That's insane. Good luck trying to play games at that resolution with old hardware. You badly need an upgrade first. To be honest i'd stick with a lower resolution monitor instead cause there simply is no hardware around that can play a lot of newest games smoothly at that resolution unless you sacrifice some eyecandy. Being forced to lower graphics settings would make such a big screen pretty pointless though.

DnD rules. PC death should not be game over. As long as there's somebody alive in the party who can rez you if you're dead or heal if incapacitated you should be able to continue. Such rules would make most sense in a DnD game IMO.

Your problems sound odd. You have the newest Nvidia drivers right? Blurry picture in games or desktop?

Creative Geforce MX 32MB - that was way back when those were actually good Creative Geforce 4200Ti 64MB Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB - Wasn't the greatest purchase i've ever made. In addition to being almost a nonupgrade compared to the awesome GeForce 4200Ti it also overheated after 15 minutes of gaming cause it had passive cooling. I took it back, paid some extra, and got myself my current gaming card Club3D ATI RADEON x800 PRO 256MB - not exactly high end these days but hey it has served me well for almost two years

There's more to laptops than CPU speed and such. Good looking advertised specs don't always mean a fast laptop. Chipset, memory speed and hard drive speed are all still important just like in case of desktop PCs. A lot of cheap laptops have slow 4200rpm hard drives to cut costs. Size, weight and battery time, also screen size, resolution, brightness and sharpness all need to be considered. If you want to carry your laptop around a lot it better be made of sturdy material or otherwise the weak plastic cheap laptops are made of will wear out and crack eventually. Some people are sensitive to noise since you almost always sit very close to your laptop when working with it. Noisy, low quality cooling can be a pain. Your Acer might be great for you but there can be plenty reasons to buy more expensive laptops that have seemingly weaker specs. I'd recommend something with a Core Duo CPU and ATI x1300 or better graphics chip to the thread starter.

He's not kidding. People in Sweden actually do have 10Mbit connections in their homes. I belive they are one of the most, if not the most advanced country in the world in that regard. The 300GB limit made me laugh btw As for me, my connection is 900Kbit and costs $23/month.

My comp is almost finished. Still needs a better PSU, passive cooling for my video card and an Audigy 2. But right now i have... 3GHz P4 processor with a quiet Zalman cooler Asus P4P800 motherboard 1GB PC3200 memory 160GB Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD RADEON X800 PRO 256MB AGP video card SB Live! 5.1 sound card aluminium case I'm very happy with my PC! ^_^

I'd like to point out they themselves have caused a lot of suffering amongst many other nations and still continue to do so. I don't hold any grudge against the russian people, but it's rather hard for me to admire them either since they still haven't been able to get a decent government and seem to be moving away from democracy.

It was rather horrible indeed. A good story flows so that you don't know what will happen next, but in KOTOR you basically knew everything except the, OMG you're Revan!, part for the majority of the game. A story consisting of travelling to four locations and then killing the bad guy is a perfect recipe for ultimate boredom. I never finished KOTOR because of that. When i finally found the location of the Starforge i was in danger of falling alseep on the keyboard.