Drowsy Emperor

What he used to have were some chemical weapons that were given to him or that he bought from the US and used during the war with Iran. Apart from the obvious hypocrisy of accusing him of having something they sold him in the first place, the fact that he had them at some point doesn't lead to conclusion that he would actually use them against the US. By the time the US attacked Iraq he had nothing. The lie was twofold: 1) He had and was producing WMD's in significant quantities 2) Those WMD's are a threat to the US and the "free world".

In my 10 minutes of trying out DSII, I'd say its about as bad a port. The graphics look better though.

I was talking about the first one. I just have DAII in reserve.

First impression of Dark Souls after beating the beginning boss. This may be the most over-hyped game (by players) that I've played. On the audio visual side, the graphics are horribly muddy. Can't see what I'm doing half the time because the camera is hugging an ugly wall texture. What I do see looks bad. The underlying design is good but the textures and such are crap. The controls are slow and unresponsive, the UI and inventory is typical console mess of various screens. So between wrestling with the camera (I fought the camera more than the boss) and the controls the game becomes thrice as hard as it should be, even though its already hard enough. The way its hard though, is not particularly clever. Its just makes enemies respawn and doesn't checkpoint often. Combined with low health and high enemy damage output the game forces you to learn its fighting system or die endlessly. Even so the fight with the boss ended up being a game of getting behind him to stab at his testicles. Nothing clever or interesting. On top of all of that the game adds confusion to difficulty by not explaining its core concepts which I had to look up on the wiki. Stuff like humanity, kindling etc. I believe the success of this game, which is nothing more than a return to old mechanics seen in previous third person action games is due to a quasi "revolt" on the part of the players. Its "hardcore" (which is another word for stupidly difficult) therefore is so much more cool than today's "noob" games. In reality, its a typical japanese game, a flimsy story with gameplay stuck mechanically firmly in the past. I'll play it more before making up my mind

The media that simply reports what the government presents them is called state media in the service of state propaganda. When the media decides to do something independent that doesn't sit well with the government they simply tell them to destroy what they have "or else". http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/31/footage-released-guardian-editors-snowden-hard-drives-gchq

How is this different from US conduct in Iraq, Afghanistan etc.? At least Putin has an excuse given these countries NATO ambitions and the fact that they share a border with Russia. I don't see Russia's military bases all over the world or them intervening halfway across the planet on account of "national security". The west dismisses anything Russian on account of simple racism. They're the enemy so anything they say is automatically misguided at best, flat out lies at worst. Please, you're capable of better arguments surely.

This Totalbiscuit video mentions something about disabling stuff at device manager to get controller to work, you might want to give it a try. It's around 9 minutes in the video. I got it working. My PS2 converter had 2 slots for Dualshock gamepad's and the game was defaulting to one which apparently doesn't work.

Top game review of DSII on Steam:

This Totalbiscuit video mentions something about disabling stuff at device manager to get controller to work, you might want to give it a try. It's around 9 minutes in the video. That's one of the first things I tried. Didn't work. >

I tried Dark Souls again but even after much fiddling the game doesn't recognize my gamepad (PS2 gamepad over USB converter) which works with everything else. It doesn't work with Dark Souls II either which is a port as ****ty as the first one. That they couldn't build a respectable PC interface is a disgrace.

You conveniently side-stepped the fact that the western media flat out lied, or supported the state enforced propaganda lie that Saddam Hussein had WMD as they have many times before and since. I've been following the Ukraine crisis closely and there is no significant difference between the two media sides. Western media has their propaganda, the Russians have theirs, but the west is supporting an illegitimate side and breaking international law so their media is recruited to provide support for the whole charade and is therefore less reliable. The Russians could afford to tell more of the truth seeing as how it wins them points in the international community.

To be fair, some of the classics had lots of repetitive, filler combat too. I'm on an IWD2 playthrough, and it's starting to wear me down. IWD1 had much better variety; things were changing frequently enough to keep it interesting. It's really too bad they didn't have the time and budget to do that, and had to build length by throwing mob after mob of goblins/orcs/Aurilites/ice trolls etc. at you. If there was a mod that removed 80% of the combat I'd apply it. I never could finish IWD2 for the same reasons. The original IWD was far more playable but, being used to characters that speak and better stories I played it late and with great reluctance. I'm not sorry I did, although I would say that the best thing IWD had was art design. BG gets a free pass because its the first one in the series and I was weaned on it. The thing is, in IE games you could storm through much of the filler combat with a good application of haste and fireball spells. Even without those, it was generally quick. While playing DAO I had this feeling that the combat dragged on forever and that encounters tended to go one right after the other with pauses that were too short.

Bioware is good at necromancy, they've been bringing back Carth Onasi in one form or another for more than a decade.

Yes, Stalker and Solaris changed me as well. Stalker in particular. Mirror as well. I've seen a lot of films before and since but I've yet to find anything as powerful. El Dia de la Bestia is totally wacky, in a good way. It reminded me of the Jodorowsky type absurdity which I enjoy a lot. El Comunidad is as good, if not better.

I guess the Russian troops are hard to see cos' Saddam's WMD's are in the way.

Riddick games are indeed excellent.

Alas, PoE already has two design decisions which I consider pitfalls at this point in my gaming "career": using tolkinesque races and having generic fantasy art design (although better than some other generic fantasy games). I suppose those two could be summed up as having a generic fantasy setting. I'm so tired of these things when I see them in a game I just sigh with resignation. And no, throwing a few new ideas on a stale base doesn't help. An elf is still an elf, a dwarf is still a dwarf and its all been done to death. Fantasy has become a contradiction, a word so wide in meaning but you could practically build an ISO standard around the end product. Why do I say this? Because we knew nothing of PoE even as it was funded other than the promise of a familiar gameplay model. Apart from that it could have been anything and I guess I expected something new and familiar at the same time.

Tarkovsky is my favorite director, anything by him is good and his best work can only be described as transcendent. That said, he's hardly underrated or lesser known.. For a less known director I recommend the spaniard Alexis De La Iglesia. His black comedies, "La Comunidad", "El Crimen Ferpecto" and "El Dia de la Bestia" are ingenious.

I loved that stuff. It took me so long to find the Incal, with only the first album being available in Serbia in wide circulation. The other series are a decline in quality and ideas IMO. And art, but then there is only one Jean Giraud.

I enjoyed it during Belgrade FEST (movie festival). I like the leading actor as well, particularly in the movie Adam's Apples. He's somewhat of a rising star now.

Really ? No mention of Jews being ethnically cleansed, maybe a Soviet Union reborn while you were at it ? I bet 213374U kicks dogs and is a Manchester United fan too! It is well known that 2133 is the internet vanguard of God Emperor Putin. His will be done! ...I like Manchester United

Evidence suggests that that is the last thing the US wants- after all, the self appointed non democratic coup putsch junta etcetc regime has (re)commenced their "anti terror" operations the day following visits by the CIA chief and Joe Biden. Hardly seems that they have been urging restraint... *Could have been Zico or even Pele, not sure Samuel Huntington proposed the split up of Ukraine back in the 90's. If he "proposes" it, that means the US is working on it and satisfied with the outcome. I'm not thrilled by the idea of splitting up Ukraine.The best possible outcome would be for the Kiev junta to be deposed and statewide elections held. Don't ask me how, because with each passing day they become more entrenched.

OSCE observers abused their "neutral" "observer" status during the Kosovo war to place locators on Serbian army positions for NATO. I hope they throw him in prison to rot.

PoE doesn't really innovate. The whole game was sold on the premise of being like some other games, of offering the same type of experience. So innovation can't really its defining feature. It can't hope to surpass the scale of Baldur's Gate II although it may gun for the narrative quality of PST. I doubt it'll surpass either, but that doesn't make it any less worth playing.

Well that's even less likely to pop up nowadays. I stumbled on this interesting article: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20130415/190441/BioShock_Infinites_Combat_Mechanics_Regression.php Its a long but well written explanation on how shooter's became dumber (through BS Infinite). This pic made me lol.