Drowsy Emperor

I think its not a question of kindness but fear of further escalation if some the rioters get killed. I've seen it happen here as well. Police numbers shrink, while cities at the same time go through a massive population boom so when a full blown riot erupts there is no way to stop it without resorting to extremes which would make the situation even worse. So they essentially let the thing run its course and try to limit the damage.

Rioters seem to be made up of Chav's, and Black folk far as I can tell. So its a poverty thing. ...Ah you said that already.

What is the ethnic composition of the rioters and Tottenham in general.

So the whole brouhaha is that Notch tried to trademark "Scrolls" for game purposes and Bethesda opposed it? Maybe it's me being a lawyer, but that seems like a pretty ****ing reasonable reaction from them. Don't think "scrolls" is/should be trademarkeable. If they can keep someone from trademarking it doesn't that mean they practically trademarked it themselves? I'm not a trademark specialist, but if I understand it correctly it means that you are the only one who can do a particular type of trade under that name (franchise/company name). If you can't get it trademarked it "just" means everybody else can use it too. There seems to be a growing resistance towards letting obvious common day items be registered as trademarks. There seems to be some weird rules about defending your trademarks too, sort of "use it or lose it" and possibly forfeiting it if you don't contest other entities' use of it (waiting for a lawyer to stop by and clarify). But the Bethesda trademark is "Elder Scrolls", how can they even propose to keep someone from using a general English term like "Scrolls"?

So the whole brouhaha is that Notch tried to trademark "Scrolls" for game purposes and Bethesda opposed it? Maybe it's me being a lawyer, but that seems like a pretty ****ing reasonable reaction from them. Don't think "scrolls" is/should be trademarkeable. If they can keep someone from trademarking it doesn't that mean they practically trademarked it themselves?

London calling to the underworld.... The song that plays when you turn on your Blackberry.

Not wholly unexpected given the economic situation.

Ah, well, that I can understand. I'm just waiting for that one last grand RTS/RPG/FPS game to play before I retire. That makes 3 games actually, but you get my drift. Musing// One less if you count the first Witcher as the last word of creative fantasy RPG's. Half Life 3 and Homeworld 3 perhaps as the other two. Fitting somehow as Half Life was the first game I bought.

After doing the things you did with FNV, I'm hardly surprised you're losing interest

So I take it you like your new job at Blizzard PR? Valve not handing out peanuts anymore?

Yup. But it does matter to me. I don't base my purchases on what "everyone else" is going to do. But in the end you'll have your principles and "everyone else" will have a ton of fun That is, if you really really want to play the game in the first place.

IGN doesn't give below 8 to AAA titles. Its against company policy.

Multiplayer is divided into co-op, which is fun (you play the campaign together or against each other), then normal battles (unit selection and fighting) and then clan warfare, where you have to conquer a Japan in a risk like game and the battles are then resolved by the clans fighting them. Sweet. Pity I can't run it.

The AI is still a little retarded but it's much better than the previous game (especially in the campaign). I played a about 50 hours after release and then I haven't really touched it since. It has the charm of the old game, but it's a little too short (200ish turns) and there aren't really any good mods yet - which is what keeps me playing. Have you tried the mulitplayer and whats it like? Is it just unit selection and battle or can you play a campaign game as well?

Has anyone played the new Total War Shogun? I'd like to know what the battle AI is like this time around. The last game I played in the series Medieval II had totally retarded battle AI.

That sounds more like Lemmings.

Not really. I played "Another World" when it was new on the Amiga, but I haven't tried any of his games since. "Another Word" was a rather unique experience though. I played Another World and Heart of Darkness back in the day but this is a bit strange, even for me. It looks like a third person populous type god game, but as to how it works I've no idea. The Xbox360 version is already out...

Can someone enlighten me as to what this is? http://store.steampowered.com/app/33460/

Nothing except that they don't have the money to make groundbreaking, technologically advanced titles in established genres As much as I liked Braid, World of Goo and Plants vs Zombies - they're essentially filler (to me at least).

It remains to be seen if this model becomes the new norm. I hope it doesn't. But what I'm really hoping for is a new groundbreaking game that isn't the sequel to something or other. The real reason I don't/wont play Starcraft II, Diablo III, ME3, Shogun TW 2, CoD xy, DA2 etc. is because they're a souped up rehash of decade old games that I've had my fill with already. I haven't seen a new, non-indie development in the staple PC genre's (FPS, RTS, RPG) in years.

Can't blame it all on them can we? Although they do deserve most of the blame.

There are a lot of people that feel the same way, these are common complaints. If you can live with it, buy it - I won't. But that "I can live with any crap they decide to shove into my mouth - for my money" attitude is what makes the PC suck more and more as a gaming platform.

Fact: having to play online only is partially limiting (limits me to only my desktop PC as there is no quality wi-fi around) potentially annoying (maintenance periods), potentially disruptive (net connection down) and gives me nothing I actually need, while taking away what I consider a staple of PC gameplay - single player offline mode that I've enjoyed for the last decade. Other hoops include: registration, making accounts, limited activations and other irritating time wasters. If it actually achieved anything I might be inclined to put up with it, but the only thing it does is annoy me for my 50$ while my pirate friends plug and play at release day, or a few days after and joke about it too.

Well, we're exchanging facts here. Fact is that anti piracy measures have become insane while actually achieving nothing, and its become a pain in the ass for legitimate users. I've stopped buying newer PC games for that very reason. CD Key and disc-in-drive is the upper limit of annoyance I'm willing to endure.

I don't doubt that D3 will get cracked eventually, but it might actually take a while because the crackers would have to build load/save game feature from scratch. Dunno, SCII was cracked on release day. But that could complicate matters. I don't care either way, never liked Diablo/Titans Quest/Torchlight type games anyway.