Azure79

I'm in the market to upgrade my computer this year. Current one is going on 3 years old. Before I delve into internet research for components, would appreciate whether there might be an optimal time to upgrade this year. Any new generations of CPU, GFX cards coming out that will drop the prices of previous gens? My budget is $1,200 and am looking to upgrade CPU, GFX, RAM and possibly motherboard if the other components call for it. Currently CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz GFX: GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 X 2 MB: NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard Planning to reuse my hard drives, fans, case and powersupply (1000W). Thanks guys and gals!

I still have to get through Demon's Souls. Dark Souls is a definite buy though. Any news on Ninja Gaiden 3? Nvm, googled a demo video. Looks different but good. Hope they were playing on an easy setting. For anyone interested Ninja Gaiden 3 Demo Walkthrough

Holy ****, I can't wait for Arkham City.

Witcher 2 still. Sided with Sociatel. Looks like Act 2 will be completely different. Awesome. Wonder how much it will affect act 3.

I liked playing through Demonstone, which seems like a similar game. Might get it if reviews are favorable.

Can we gain leadership over a herd and direct them in a mad frenzy towards the nearest village?

Importing the Rune Sihil and Moonblade nerfed didn't bother me much. In TW1 I don't think they have actual damage stats for the weapons anyway, just +/- damage percentages based on the basic witcher steel and silver swords. I think the exception was dagger and axe type weapons. Besides they both have 3 upgrade slots. In my first playthrough I was using Moonblade well into act 2 because it was upgraded with three moon runes and that gave it a significant boost to signs. I'm sure Sihil will also be viable for a while if I upgrade with 3 ysgith or fire runes.

Started up a new game and noticed a few new items that also came with the patch. Also the Mahakman Rune Sihil (best sword in TW1) also imported correctly. Gonna play a bit more ruthlessly this time and side with the Sociatel.

Finished my 1st playthrough. Went with Roche because something about his voice and demeanor reminded me of Clive Owen and I apparently can't say no to Clive Owen. I don't even like his movies. Anyways, best game I've played this year so far. I knew this game was going to be good when I found myself looking at siege catapults flinging boulders at a castle for a good 5 minutes. I couldn't believe they went through the trouble of actually animating the loading, firing and reloading of those machines. And that was just in the prelude. The only major complaint I have is the combat and some of the bugs associated with it. Overall it felt uneven. It felt ridiculously difficult in the beginning because you could get stunlocked to death very quickly. Later it felt ridiculously easy thanks to adrenaline + quen. Other times controls seemed to be unresponsive. Geralt would stop attacking despite my hitting the button franticially, not cast signs, not block even though I had full endurance bars, etc. Usually I had to sheath then redraw the sword to fix this. Dunno if anyone else experienced this. Throughout most of the combat, I just wished it flowed more smoothly. Everyone is telling Geralt what an awesome swordsman he is, but I always ended up rolling on the ground and doing strong attacks when I wasn't surrounded. Not that satisfying. But other than that, awesome game. Great story, presentation, intrigue, C&C, graphics, art direction, characters, etc. Starting my second playthrough and making a whole different set of choices.

Have you read the book of the new sun? I concur that The Book of the New Sun is the most interestingly written fantasy-ish fiction I've read. Besides the fact that the more you read of it the less you understand. Funny, I am currently reading this myself. I didn't have any prior knowledge on the book or the author, but the cover caught my eye. Thought it looked purty, so I began to read it. It was interesting so I purchased a copy. Enjoying it so far.

I found DA2 nightmare significantly harder than DAO nightmare. It wasn't for the right reasons though. Mostly one misplaced melee attack could wipe my entire party and apart from the trash mobs, too many enemies had too much HP, making combat less about strategy and more about speed, while still remaining tedious. I did enjoy combat the first time around. I thought the cross class combos were cool and liked the faster combat. However, I've been unable to complete another playthrough just because I don't want to suffer through the tediousness, which includes lots of HP, copy-pasted areas and waves. I tried playing on lower difficulties, but that just seemed to make it not challenging and still tedious. I liked most things about DA2, but they need to step up designing much better combat encounters, much better environments and artwork (I just got through the prologue for Witcher 2 and it makes DA2 look pathetic) and non-combat abilities integrated into gameplay.

I have Witcher 2 ready to go, but then I discovered you can import your save game from Witcher 1. I dont' have one anymore, so I'm playing through Witcher 1 again. I forgot how great this game was. Definitely getting back my game vibe. In chapter 3.

Awesome battle Deraldin. I don't think I've ever taken the guys on in the tent separately outside vanilla BG. I usually have Kivan in my party when I transport to the bandit camp and due to some mix of mods he freaks out when he sees Tazok (understandable) and the battle against the entire camp goes from there. Then all the enemies start swarming. Lots of web, grease, fireballs and other explosions later I have to loot like 50 corpses. I think SCS has a component where the baddies shout for backup so even the guys in the tent swarm out to engage you. I always find that kickass bow (longbow +2?) on one of the bodies.

Come on give them a fighting chance. For that battle I always find it fun to lead them through the cramped ruins using Imoen w/ boots of speed and and potions of invisibility. Then I ambush them. Ok, maybe I'm not giving them a fighting chance, but its still fun. My favorite encounter is the party outside the entrance to the cloakwood mines. I love having Imoen run in there stealthed and drop use the necklace of missiles and then run out...so I cam ambush them again. Actually I just love ambushing. I fight dirty.

I always run run run away from Tarnesh with SCS. I try and get the guards to attack him. No shame when I'm a weak level one character.

Kivan singlehandedly took down in SCS. I recently played BGtutu w/ SCS + other mods with a kensai. Armorless, missile weaponless in BG1 is the only way to go. (I hid behind the tower shields of Khalid and Jaheira a lot)

I didn't know who Drizzt was either. But I saw him chunk those gnolls one after another and decided that I better leave him alone. Ah good times. I had never even heard of D&D and just bought the game because creating a party and traveling around in the wilderness seemed like a fun idea. I thought it would be a game like Diablo. I was wrong but pleasantly surprised. I tried to get my AC as high as possible my first time through. I thought that made it better. Finally gave up and read the manual.

I pre-ordered from GoG. I loved the first Witcher and am really looking to put in some quality time with the second.

My 'why not' guess explanation: TIM has always been on the side of the Reapers. But the Reapers aren't monolithic. The Reaper handling the Collectors was part of a splinter group, going off the reservation with their "human reaper" experiments. TIM, allied with the main horde, was working towards the same goal via a different path-- making Shep into badass zombie cyborg. That he could test this badass zombie cyborg by using it to capture/destroy the work of a rival Reaper faction was a nice bonus. There is, as I see it, a certain similarity between both the Collectors' and Cerberus' pre-ME2 activities (sampling different weird galactic species and experimenting on them, etc.). Ah yes, makes sense. It's the faction that wants to build bigger and bigger reapers versus the faction that wants to build small, flexible Sheperd sized reapers. He is the 'prototype' without knowing it, getting pitted against the evolutionary dinosaurs of Reaperdom. There can be only one I think you guys just cracked the plot twist to the game.

I thought ME2 was an awesome game and definitely a step in the right direction gameplay wise. I played it like a 3rd person shooter with hotkeys for all of Shephard and friends ablities, so I rarely paused. Besides the basic shooting gameplay I liked the nice mix of abilties and their combos, like the warp bomb. Add to that some RPG mechanics and it was great. If they can make the gameplay even smoother while adding back in weapon mods and stuff like they are planning, I think it'll be a lot of fun to play.

I hope there is. A good mix of what worked in DAO and DA2 would make a fun game. I guess it depends on how successful EA thinks DA2 was.

I used to rage when my dad beat me at Pacman on our old Atari. Don't crush his spirit completely when the time comes.

Ate some smoked duck for lunch with rice. It was good Been exercising lately cause I've been getting fat. Went to the gym and did chest and back workout. Deadlifts are hard, but feels awesome when you're done. Did some interval walking/running on the treadmill. Came home. Relaxed. No urge to play video games lately.

My favorites Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 (3 was ok) Megaman 1,2,3 never got to playing the rest. SMB 3 Contra and Super C Guerilla War That game where you can flip gravity and you're a robot Lifeforce Double Dragon 1 and 2 (3 was ok, too short and less epic) Batman Battletoads (I beat this game once and never managed to again. I always died at that stupid water level with the instant death spikes) TMNT 1 and 2 Blastermaster Ironsword NES was a great system. I didn't like Metroid or the Zelda games on NES though. On the SNES, Zelda and Metroid were awesome.

I played Tutu pretty recently (late last year somewhere). What is this with the spawns? I don't remember ever thinking I was running into more spawns than usual. Then again I always play with Tutu now, so I don't even remember if there were less spawns in the original.