Drowsy Emperor

They kicked themselves in the teeth when The gameplay lacks enough variety for the total running time.. I gave up when . I just couldn't bother with them. No DingDong, you can't play as Predator.

It seems beyond incredible for an unarmed man, who is running away to suddenly turn around and charge an armed police officer - after losing the only advantage in such a situation, that being close enough to potentially wrestle for the weapon. Many criminals are both violent and stupid but most have at least enough base cunning to not do something so senseless.

Lucky the kid didn't have a gun when they drove up, he could have shot them dead, heh. It looks like a GTA shootout. No space to run them over so you get out of the car and light them up point blank. What happened to hanging back, warnings over the speakers etc. The area looks deserted, there's no immediate threat to anyone.

They should have rushed the game to the ending at that point, instead they prolonged it for about as much as you've already been playing. Good game, but it really outstays its welcome.

Those things go more towards explaining the cops state of mind than anything else and supports the theory that he pulled the gun because he got scared. Letting him go without any consequences was a bad choice. In the political sense, its a no win situation regardless, but some sort of disciplinary action would have made it look less one sided.

Oh I've said there will be another civil war in the US. All the ingredients are there. I don't know how the lines will break out or how far in the future it is... but it's coming. Not for a long time I think, but it's coming. If Stiglitz is right, and he's been doing political economy for a long time, the top 1% (irrespective of party allegiance since they effectively control both) have been squeezing the system for all its worth for the past 30+ years. The middle class has lost the most, but everyone has lost something barring those at the very top who've increased their income many times over. As a rule, things take a drastic turn for the worse at the point where it doesn't make any difference whether a person will die due to starvation or to being shot. On one hand, the US is far off from that point due to cheap food and the availability of basic sustenance with any paying job, on the other, the 21st century individual has higher basic demands than a 19th century worker. "Clothes on your back, bread on the table and a roof over your head" don't really cut it anymore. One thing is for sure, as long as neo-liberal dogma is controlling the distribution of wealth policy and allowing for uncontested accumulation of capital at the top - the part of the cake available to the rest gets smaller and smaller. This is where I could post a wall of text explaining how in the US economy zero sum economics just does not apply. But no one would read it, it's OT anyway, and I just don't have the energy. *shrug* What I know of political economy I learned at uni, but Stiglitz got a nobel prize for it, so he should know what he's talking about. His book is called "the price of inequality" and I'm currently reading it and recommend it to anyone. He has the benefit of being both a scientist and participating in politics and being quite frank about his experiences in the latter, which is quite rare. Usually people who actively participated in politics are notorious liars and their books (if they're even the ones who wrote them) are no better than toilet paper.

Oh I've said there will be another civil war in the US. All the ingredients are there. I don't know how the lines will break out or how far in the future it is... but it's coming. Not for a long time I think, but it's coming. If Stiglitz is right, and he's been doing political economy for a long time, the top 1% (irrespective of party allegiance since they effectively control both) have been squeezing the system for all its worth for the past 30+ years. The middle class has lost the most, but everyone has lost something barring those at the very top who've increased their income many times over. As a rule, things take a drastic turn for the worse at the point where it doesn't make any difference whether a person will die due to starvation or to being shot. On one hand, the US is far off from that point due to cheap food and the availability of basic sustenance with any paying job, on the other, the 21st century individual has higher basic demands than a 19th century worker. "Clothes on your back, bread on the table and a roof over your head" don't really cut it anymore. One thing is for sure, as long as neo-liberal dogma is controlling the distribution of wealth policy and allowing for uncontested accumulation of capital at the top - the part of the cake available to the rest gets smaller and smaller.

Try turning v-sync off. None of the ES games are really fluid though

You should be thankful that the price of this pent up social aggression is no more than a few buildings. If you ever see the reality of an uprising or a civil war along class and/or racial lines you'll realize what real destruction looks like.

I believe the cop in this situation failed to react properly and helped the situation escalate due to panic. I believe him when he said that there was a physical altercation and I suspect he panicked because he knew he was weaker and reached for his gun. I say panicked because its hard to believe that Brown intended to kill him in the first place, or that happening due to a fistfight. The moment he reached for his gun everything went south because a deadly weapon was introduced in what was already an irrational and explosive situation, with Brown likely believing that he was going to be shot unless he wrestled the gun away from the officer. Make no mistake, in this same situation, a civilian would have been facing manslaughter charges. If you attack me with fists and I pull out a knife and stab you or a gun and shoot you, I escalated the situation and I'm going to jail. The law demands that the use of force in self defense be proportional as much as possible. This should apply to cops as well while recognizing the specifics of this situation and the multitude of things the cop (and Brown) did wrong the chief of which is giving in under pressure, which he's supposed to be better at than the people he's protecting (and arresting).

So its the JRPG model of stats auto-levelling at the pace the game sets? I don't really care much either way. I was perfectly fine with the rare stat improvement of DnD second edition style of IE games. But then those games had the spells (mostly) and skills (not that many) to compensate and provide complexity. And those are much more fun to use than calculating the perfect warrior or mage. The way the third edition of DnD let you raise your stats through the roof ruined much of the game for me. All of a sudden, a mage like Edwin or ranger like Minsc were no longer special by being so good at what they do and the stats, as they relate to human or superhuman capability in a particular field (strength, intellect, in the examples above) no longer meant anything. So the real question is, what you can do with the abilities that DAI provides you with.

The underclass doesn't like being the underclass, nothing new there. As inequality rises further, and even the mirage of vertical mobility disappears, so will these events become both worse and more frequent.

I watched the video and its basically the same thing. They copied so much they could probably get sued over it After so many years I was hoping for something more I guess. And yes, it is too dark

You're playing a beta or something?

It looks and sounds like DK2. Even the graphics don't seem to be much better. I don't know why no one seems to be able to build a competent spiritual sequel to that game.

That's because it is. It just follows the old game design logic of presenting the player with extremely hard obstacles (although much of the difficulty is the result of the game not explaining anything) and forcing endless repetition until you breeze through it. Like an old platformer basically, inside a 90's action game (tanky controls). Combined with the utterly nonsensical and disconnected japanese style of storytelling and the old horror style gameplay (random puzzles thrown in a la Resident Evil). Even some of the sound effects seem to be recycled from those types of games. In other words, a japanese game through and through, clinging to long since abandoned design ideas (outside japan). It also looks fairly bad on the PC even with resolution mods. For the life of me I can't see the appeal. I consider grind and content padding (through forced repetition) a cardinal sin in game design but the japanese seem to revel in it. For the 70 hours I spent playing Persona 3 FES, I believe story content constituted about 15 and the rest was constant, never ending combat. I beat that game, hung up my controller, and told them to go to hell. Haven't played a japanese game since, and won't until Ueda does something new.

I got bored of Far Cry 3 in about 2 days. No real motivation to go through all the sandbox stuff. Steam sales have started

The fact that gaming press opposed so vehemently such a common sense thing as stating who "paid" for their article just goes to show GamerGate was right all along. The big developers and the press should be grateful. The systematic abuse of review scores would eventually lead to both undermining the press itself and the industry crashing when a string of poor quality but well advertised big budget titles simultaneously bombs. That theory isn't mine but Steven Spielberg's and George Lucas's regarding Hollywood focus on blockbusters. No reason not to apply it to games as well.

Yes but his comment applied to another competitor in the tourney and people found out about it. Now its no longer just about his right to free speech but the reputation of the tournament itself, from the point of view of the organizers.

So are you suggesting that its not possible to be competitive or play in MP game without saying you will rape someone? Because the issue isn't about competitiveness or the concept of what defines a MP game but rather the usage of certain words. I actually agree. It doesn't matter what he meant, there have to be certain standards for behavior in any official competition. I'm tired of all the "badass" posing and vulgar **** talk in multiplayer games. You're sitting in a chair and pushing a mouse around - you aren't Muhammad Ali to go shooting your mouth off to random strangers (as if he'd do that in the first place).

In other news: this is a recent UN vote. Observe which countries voted no

Oh but he was only 12 years old? Tell that to Michael Landsberry ...... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cops-id-12-year-old-gunman-sparks-middle-school-shooting-nevada-article-1.1496283 Common sense dictates that you can't follow the same protocol for a child as you would for a gangbanger if you want to have a sane society in the future. Else everyone ends up living in fear or everyone else and their children. The first mistake was to order him to put his hands up as if they're dealing with a responsible adult instead of approaching the situation in a more casual, diplomatic manner. A case of a kid shooting up someone, intentionally or unintentionally, happens once in a while. As do a ton of other freak accidents. The greatest majority of children, far more so than adults, will never do such a thing. But they will do irresponsible things like what happened here and it is the responsibility of the adults to sort that mess out, not to add to it.

Had to look him up. So he's the man behind Mafia... that was a seriously well made game. His current project looks interesting too.

Yeah I was just talking with a friend over the phone about DA2 and he said the same thing. Apparently everyone is still having nightmares about that cave. While I'm familiar with EA's policies, and somewhat certain that Bioware wouldn't have released it in this state if it were up to them, it is the game journalists who should be most ashamed. The scores are embarrassingly high for a game in this state.

Tried a bit more DA2. EA really butchered this game. I just got to Kirkwall and half the city is made of the same repeating texture. Basically, what little quality models they made they used up on characters and armor because of the constant close up shots, everything else is straight out of 2003. To make matters worse, the game seems to be terribly optimized. Its strangling my laptop quad core CPU (intel i7 3632QM) , taking it all the way to 95c and beyond leading to throttling. By comparison a few weeks ago I was playing Alien Isolation completely maxed out at around 80 or so degrees. The people that control EA must really hate computer games. Anything that can't be made on FIFA's schedule seems to be beyond their comprehension. So I'd rather stop playing it than to potentially slaughter my CPU/GPU.