Drowsy Emperor

The UT sniper was the most fun weapon in any FPS period. Fun > realism every time. and the great soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDHxiDA1Y6s

If you don't have Blackwell, the bundle is available the Bundle in a Box pay what you want bundle with a few other games. http://bundle-in-a-box.com/ I heard of Blackwell but is it really worth it? The time, not the money. I doubt it could be any cheaper than this.

Alan Wake dirt cheap on Steam

I have the core rulebook and Gatecrashing. But I'd rather have some noob who doesn't know what EP is take them, or someone who'll actually use them since no one I know is really into sci fi PnP.

True. Its the best UT and the best multiplayer shooter ever made. When I play it for a week or two with those speed modifiers I start twitching in real life. But I'm absolute murder in any FPS at that point. This is why CoD and the rest of them are like a cold shower for me. The character always drags in everything he does, all the weapons are the same uninteresting crap, the awful leveling systems give people who play the game all the time additional advantages (as if they need them?). Or in Battlefield? Camping a broken spot in the map and chucking grenades in the same place for hours racking up kills for nothing. When you perfectly calculate the trajectory of a flak cannon grenade in a low gravity game and smack a player into gibs as he's jumping between two buildings in Morpheus, you know you're the real deal and that you're playing a FPS.

Sadly the criminals are the first to arrive when the Schengen is implemented. I don't know what its like in other Balkan and EE countries but the police here is more efficient than you'd think at first glance. The criminals obviously go where they'll have an easier time. Another thing to consider is that even when the borders are open many honest people don't have enough money, connections, don't speak any of the major european languages etc. to actually cross the border and find a job. It takes serious money to settle in an EU country! None of which is a problem for criminals. The middle class is hit the worst, because the EU has their jobs covered by its own population so those who end up going are desperate people, criminals, manual laborers, unqualified workers... This leads to a skewered perspective of people from those countries. The bias is definitely there. I remember chatting to a US woman. She thought I was living in the US. When I told here where I was from she said: studying or in jail?

Tim Schafer is a man of great ideas, a true visionary in some respects. I have a lot of respect for him ever since I played Psychonauts. But its as Hurlshot said. The gameplay of Psychonauts was pure mediocrity, and Stacking wasn't much better. The theme and ideas are always well above what the competition does, but the mechanics are weak. A turn based strategy is a game completely dominated by mechanics. Everything else is just icing on top. And the game the lead designer for Massive Chalice made has a collective 75% on Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/iron-brigade Which given today's low standards (notice even the glowing IGN review couldn't save it) is pretty bad. I don't consider this one worth backing.

That's true. If you were thorough as well, you could more or less see everything in one playthrough. However I still played it 3 times as the story is so good, its worth experiencing again from time to time. Baldur's Gate 2, on the other hand, I usually replay for the gameplay and the expectation of seeing something I haven't seen before. Which has happened every time I played it.

Turns out I was an idiot over the Civ V thing. The expansion is listed under the DLC content - so its all there in fact.

I have that solved for me. By being broke.

I wouldn't have guessed Serbia would be high tier. Maybe on CS servers, its still a very popular game in these parts.

Naah, not really. When you've got a somewhat dull game that you can still get good enough hours on before losing interest completely, at that point you might not regret buying the game, but playing the game Well we can't exactly accuse Bioware or Bethesda of not playing fair. With their games you know exactly (within a small margin of error) what to expect. This is why I don't play them anymore. I'm off big commercial RPG's for the foreseeable future. Waiting for the first wave of Kickstarter RPG's. When I saw the gameplay trailer for Shadowrun I understood how much I miss playing non-pretentious isometric strategy RPG's.

Romans are the original fascists The modern Italians are just weak pretenders.

The important thing is that you've got your money's worth. I'm completely uninterested in playing Skyrim, or any other Bethesda game after Oblivion/Fallout 3. Bioware games are full of originality by comparison.

I have no idea what the point of a swastika would be anywhere in europe other than as a way to get other people to think yоu're neo nazi. Except this guy: Photoshop or clueless, we'll never know

I played it. Its not bad, but Gemini Rue (from the same guys) is better.

I always get the urge to load up my save, but this exact thing consistently happens to me everytime, so thanks for pushing that load off another few months for me as well. I had that experience with Oblivion... after the first 20 or so hours. So many things to do, but none of them worth doing.

Truth is that a certain level of unemployment is seen as beneficial- and that the social fabric of most western countries is unsustainable as it stands. First part is because unemployment- and especially low wage/ skill unemployment- keeps down wage demands and costs and ensures that productivity gains do not have to be passed on to the (replaceable) workforce. If the workforce weren't replaceable the balance of power shifts and superprofits become a thing of the past. Second part is because most western countries are at or below population replacement thresholds and face the prospect of having an ageing population wanting pensions but fewer people paying the taxes needed to fund them. 'Solution' is to import more people of working age*. It's a stupid solution because you cannot keep increasing population forever, but politicians gonna politicise and there ain't any hard decision (like upping the pension age) a politician won't put off if they can get away with it. *And frankly, there are jobs that westerners count as beneath them. When I was in the UK in 2005 I ended up working with a bunch of Ukrainian/ Romanian/ Bulgarian people because they could not get enough British people to fill the vacancies- and those they did get were frequently unreliable and did not last. The imports worked harder and were more reliable, and were probably cheaper, too. Sure but the next logical question is: why are they imported from countries where there is a high level of illiteracy, where the social norms are completely at odds with what "europe" stands for and where there's reason to assume there may be political issues as well - and last of all terrorism. Obviously I'm talking about northern africa and the middle east. There's a lot of dislike for eastern europeans in europe, but I don't think anyone is going to dispute that its easier to integrate Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc than, well, anyone else. All eastern block countries have decent general education and populations acclimated to living in large cities.

Hitler is long dead. It's time to reclaim the symbols that his regime perverted instead of engaging in Politically Correct self-flagellation. Go, Finland! No. Just no. Hitler was a gigantic monster, and the swastika is a symbol of that. It should continue to remind us of how important it is to be vigilant against evil. You also still have extremist groups using it to spread their hateful messages. Political correctness has nothing to do with it. If there was some big Buddhist movement to reclaim the symbol, I might get behind that. But I doubt you are Buddhist. Its also used in Hinduism, IIRC. And of course was a symbol of good luck in the west up to the adoption by the Nazi party, first use documented in Greece IIRC in the 8th century . Amazing how easily a symbol can be perverted in many ways. And a tile design in Roman houses. History has a sense of humor too.

I played through the first 3 missions of XCOM: Enemy Unknown While I'm still inclined to like the game (so far) its not making the best first impression. The technical issues: 1. There are a lot of scenes zooming in to very low resolution textures. We're talking about Half Life 1 type textures. 2. The facial animations and facial renderings are quite average Gameplay issues: 1. Arbitrary cover. Only two types without clear benefits. I never know exactly how good my chances are of not getting hit. 2. Linear missions on small maps. 3. Inability to use strategy because the game forces you to stumble around until the aliens show up. 4. Limited tactics when they do show up. Shoot, Grenade, Flank, take cover - rinse, repeat. 4. Limited equipment options. I had a man bleed to death because I chose to take a grenade instead of a medpack (why do I even have to choose?) Sid Meier once said that what makes strategy games enjoyable is "interesting choices". So far, there were none to be made. Every mission consisted of going from cover to cover (stumbling blindly really) and waiting for the aliens to show up. There is no way to really exploit positioning or surprise - a key feature in any small unit tactics game - its technically completely irrelevant where your men are in a firefight as long as they're in one of two locations - half shield/full shield. Full shield locations are scarce and often destructible, so most of the time you're not able to stack the odds meaningfully in your favor, which is the whole purpose of tactics and strategy.

Dunno, but its all the same game and they come out so frequently I don't know how come people get excited over it again and again. I stopped playing them with World at War.

Done with my SMAC game. Sister Miriam of the Believers has achieved conquest victory! Santiago and Lal were really obstinate, I had to fight them down to one base each, so I ended up with 30+ bases. I was gunning for a diplomatic victory but the appropriate tech wasn't discovered by the time Lal surrendered. Santiago could have had me there because she got her hands on needlejet technology. Luckily for me she only ever built one or two before I took over. 213% AC Rating

Seriously, I'm salivating. I want to play this so bad

Why won't they TAKE ALL MY MONEEEY. I like it. The terrain is a bit rough, but everything else is spot on. The premise is cool as well.

If you're really willing to get into some advanced strategies look up Velocyrix's guide on GameFAQ's. My game as Sister Miriam is proceeding well. I'm currently at war with both of the remaining factions, but the war with Lal is really a standstill because he's impotent and because I don't have enough troops to fight him with on that continent. Also he hasn't terraformed anything so I'm fighting the mindworms more than I'm fighting him. On the other hand, the war with Santiago is proceeding fine. She's going to be a tough cookie, all her troops are elite and she's got missile tech, but without orbital spaceflight thankfully. My commando gatling rovers are charging through Santiago's continent, so at least the fight isn't hampering my economy on on my territory. I've got both Deirdre and Zakharov researching for me so they should come up with Orbital Spaceflight before Santiago does.