Drowsy Emperor

Well so far its not significantly different from Oblivion, just clunkier. And with a lot more mushrooms instead of trees.

Morrowind is weird. I got off the boat and in 2 hours I already have 2000+ gold and full plate mail gear - and I haven't even reached the first town, just walked around and raided a couple of dungeons. There are high value scrolls everywhere, a ton of gear that can be sold for a lot of cash. Even though all the NPC's in the dungeons are named all of them rush me straight away for no reason. I've freed a dozen or so slaves but none of them have anything to say, and I haven't received any compensation, or quests for that matter. Just two in the first town, none in Pelagia...

There's is no way in hell that any new DA title will be like DAO (as old school/hardcore) I don't believe the suits would ever agree to that or they wouldn't have made DA2 so different in the first place.

I suggest they scrap the entire universe and license a decent IP. (and no, not Dungeons and Dragons) Do we really need another Dragon Age game?

There are a few legendary games I never got around to, like SS2, Full Throttle, Freespace 1 and 2 and Wing Commander 3, Morrowind... I'm writing a backlog right now, trying to remember the stuff I skipped. The big screen on my PC killed a lot of games for me, I had to wait for widescreen mods and whatnot.

Dunno, Oblivion and F3 are about the same, except F3 had more novelty value with its setting. Since no one is saying Skyrim is far superior to either I'm not too eager to play it.

Thanks dude, I'll finally get to play System Shock 2. I only played the demo ages ago..

Because, obviously, you need them to fill your virtual shelf. Otherwise, what's the point of having a virtual shelf.

Morrowind on my netbook. It actually runs around 30PFS which is damn impressive for this little thing. I let morrowind optimizer set the view distance. So far the impression is pretty much the same as Oblivion although not as generic. If I finish it like this I'll replay the game with all the fancy mods.

Is this like Deus Ex but with a female lead?

Maybe two games per year out of all the games I play are worth their price tag. This trend of making a game a 5-10 hour movie needs to stop,and I'm not talking about the interactivity but the fire and forget nature of the experience. I was looking at my friends collection of games on steam. He has 330+ titles and yet there aren't even ten games the he spent more than 10 hours playing. Really, what's the point of that? I don't think that's even gaming, that's just using up novelty value and moving on. Many of us do this too and then replay some or other game from the past that we actually enjoy. Real games are like Civlization, Baldur's Gate etc. the stuff you can play and replay for dozens of hours. Anyway I've gone off topic. I guess the point is I don't care much if anyone pirates what today's weak excuse for a game is hitting the top charts. A good game will always, without exception, get my money.

You know, I don't know any other product that's so uniformly expensive and mostly rubbish at the same time as games are. Movies perhaps, but they're a lot cheaper.

I'm guessing some are apathetic, others are the frothy raging kind. Would be funny if some of them actually WERE Scene members I doubt piracy inspires much reaction anymore, by now they ought to know that a cracked release is inevitable. If there is no cracked release that means the game is so ****ty it isn't even worth pirating. Regardless piracy is overblown. Game developers fail because their games fail, and their games fail because they suck - not because they've been pirated.

Since we're calling spades spades... TPB does not have any copyrighted content to remove as they don't host anything bar the torrent information. As such people cannot go there to get illegal asterisks, they can only go there to obtain directions to get (potentially) illegal asterisks. That's why they're still in business. It is good thing to remember that not all TPB's directions lead to illegal asterisks, which might make banning the whole site illegal in itself. At least that's what is currently happening in Finland. If a massage parlor gives legitimate massages, but doesn't stop its therapists from giving a little extra on the side, it can still run the risk of getting shut down. You'd know wouldn't you :D

The Ultima games are the only popular series of RPGs that I haven't played. Can someone give me a real estimate of how playable they are today and is it really worthwhile to play them?

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Dunno why hardware manufacturers bother pushing new graphic cards when we get to use them like 3 times per year. I would add Company of Heroes 2 to the list everyone's mentioned. Not that I'm going to have a PC good enough to play it.

All I could ever take in that genre is Diablo 1 and that's a game you can finish in an evening of play.

Are we still dicussing romaces? Will someone from the dev team please, please comment on the issue already before the BSN hive mind mentality assimilates us all into one droning mass of romance...romance....

It is a pretty unique game, I liked it a lot although I only played the demo at the time. Pity 3D graphics age so badly. I'm trying to play Emperor of the Fading Suns but its a difficult game to learn.

She's not that sort of problem, everyone goes through endless background checks way before they get the opportunity to be a high ranking official. But try banning minarets now like Switzerland did. Or burquas. Point being - she's more likely to hold the side of or at least distance herself from any dispute regarding any islamic issue. If for no other reason then that she'll be under pressure from islamic organizations "to do her part" for them.

You are conveniently ignoring the fact the Nazis were ultra-aggressive nationalists. You can be proud of your country AND accepting of others at the same time, btw. It isn't an either/or scenario. When you choose nationalism without multiculturalism, you are creating conflict. I was merely illustrating that nationalism was just as important to societies that were supposedly adhering to another ideology. Without nationalism nazism would have never been defeated - which shows the extent of the ideas power. As for multiculturalism that depends entirely on your definition of it. Most nations states are multicultural simply because there are a multitude of ethnic minorities living in them. Modern multiculturalism isn't about basic tolerance (which existed long before it, as both idea and practice) its really about the abuse of the idea of tolerance so that minorities can gain special rights and be "more than equal" (without reason or logic) to the native population. Btw for the record, Serbia had (and still has) a muslim minister way before any western country.

Britain, France and Spain were massive colonial empires before nationalism ever rose up - when they conquered the world it wasn't for the glory of their country, that's a label which has been put on by the national romantics of the 1800's. In fact, as you've just proven, we've become so jaded by this view that we think nationalism is some universal force that has always existed and we tend to view dynasties and regions of the past through this prism. But nationalism only played a actual role in the post-napoleon age.. And is was nationalism that created such terms as "the white mans burden" which spurred the imperialism of the Victorian era and thereby spread it through the world. Isn't it interesting that the colonial empires only really started to have major problems keeping the indigenous population in check after 1810? (I know there were problems before of course, but nothing like the scale under the French and English mandate in the middle east for instance or the the 1857 rebellion in India) Here we agree - but is misused because it's so easy to misuse and it can stir such violence and hatred towards any percieved alien influence. Which of course is like crack to a autocratic ruler, as the people focus on percieved external threats rather than the internal ones. Well, enlighten me as to why it's such a good force. I really can't see it. Because it set dozens of nations free from oppression by decadent empires. It reinforces unity and bonds that tie a group of people together while preserving what makes them different and unique. When push comes to shove it is the only idea people will fight and die for making it instrumental for the preservation of any society under external threat. Like when the Soviets had to defeat Nazism - they didn't fight for communism - they fought for mother Russia. You can even see it on the war posters. Its the only idea that inspires a widespread, powerful emotional response, for better or for worse. Ultimately, the question of whether its good or bad is a moot point - its here to stay for the foreseeable future, and quite likely to outlive the current obsession with (bad) cosmopolitanism. As the EU project continues to sink (precisely because its too capitalist in the way the few large states exploit the rest, and not nationalist enough to really treat them all equally) you'll probably be seeing a lot more of it.

You're basically repeating the liberal (and at the same time) socialist slander of nationalism. The fact is that nationalism had a huge role in creating the european state. Without it european countries would never be the states they became - neither as united nor as powerful as they were. What ultimately drove europe into war was the logic of capitalism, the need for constant economic expansion and the fact that certain countries felt left out/disadvantaged in that regard (Germany, Italy, Japan etc.), nationalism was merely used as an excuse to fire up the masses for war. It is a very misused ideology. Modern political theory likes to blame nationalism for everything because its a convenient and simplistic explanation. Also, some basic political terminology needs to be set straight nationalism = the belief that the nation (however it is defined) should be the focal point in the creation of the state/society chauvinism = the belief that ones nation is superior to others Nationalism is often equated with chauvinism by poorly educated people, however the latter is a perversion of nationalism - a true nationalist believes that all nations have basically equal value, and hence has no reason to hate another nation just because its different.

Really, the moment this hobby burst out as a mainstream thing - that was the end of the possibility of a game demanding anything more from a player than what a below average/mediocre person could provide. The bad part is, we still haven't truly reached the bottom.