Pidesco

Called it again. The only thing I didn't predict was Ghana passing the group stage ahead of Serbia. I really didn't expect Serbia to lose against Australia, nor did I expect Ghana without Essien to get anywhere.

I don't think either Mueller or Torres will influence anything. Villa and Klose are where it's at. Anyway, the match will hinge on the midfielders and I'm curious to see the battle between Ozil and Spain's magical midfield and I don't see how the forwards will be able to influence proceedings all that much. Let's see my predictions fall apart, now.

Well, Germany has been playing surprisingly positive football, which makes everything a bit weird as it makes them on paper the most likely team to fold in the next game, especially after trouncing Argentina in the manner that they did. However, Germany are, traditionally, the ultimate world cup team in terms of outlook and mentality, which makes me unsure of whether to pronounce Germany's elimination against Spain inevitable. It's a real inversion in the parts, having Germany playing the role of the potential bottler, with Spain turning into the pragmatist Cup winner. I'm predicting that it will be kind of a similar situation to the 98 semi final between France and Croatia where the Croats lost despite playing the better football. If Spain wins it all I can see them becoming the new France in terms of competence and smugness. With that in mind, I'd rather see Holland win the World Cup even if they're not playing the exuberant football of yore. With all this said, I'm predicting Spain to win the World Cup by beating Germany and Holland in scrappy wins. Too bad, too, because if both Spain and Holland decided to throw caution into the wind, we could have a hell of a beautiful football final.

I saw Porcupine Trees, Nisennenmondai, Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba, Them Crooked Vultures, Killswitch Engage, Meshuggah, Patti Smith and Band, Pavement, The National, C

I arrived in Portugal at around 10pm today, and it was over 30

Wasting Away A low budget comedy zombie movie from the point of view of the zombies. Absolutely hilarious at times

Germany peaked too early. Both Spain and Holland with good squads performing underwhelmingly look like typical world cup winners.

The Swiss are really, really awful. They played like Portugal did in qualifying.

Apparently, that's a contact center for Bioware's MMO, not a development house.

At first I didn't know he was quite so deadly, and figured my unarmed skills might be enough.

Interesting stuff from The Guardian Notice how uneven the possible brackets towards the quarters are and can be.

Parkour.

Depends on what you mean by no combat. Do you mean all points into, say, Technical Aptitude, Stealth and Toughness? That's the only way in which you'd have a character who is unskilled at every kind of combat (4 guns, gadgets, martial arts). If that's the case, I'd say: (1) By going out of your way to create a character which is deliberately and radically poor at combat, well, you're asking for the game to hand you a smackdown; (2) Having no skills still doesn't prevent you from using weapons; Shadow Operative is king here, and you should have Brilliance as well, which gives you a huge advantage in outmaneuvring Brayko. Stealth to avoid his knives, get behind him, lob an incendiary grenade and explosion grenade (time it so 2nd explodes when his armour is down) and slam assault rifle at him. He's gone. I haven't done this, since I never made such a character, but once I did beat him on Hard with Stealth, grenades and SMGs alone, with zero skills in SMGs. So it was pretty close, I just had Overclock to help. In Veteran, I made a character who, by the time I reached Brayko, had maxed out Stealth and Technical Aptitude, while Martial Arts was about halfway in. I couldn't get near him with such skills because as soon as he took out his knives he'd knock off, at the very least, half my health. And the game was designed for such a character, by the way. It was downright easy, in fact. Except for the boss fights, of course. If it wasn't for the stealth glitch in that fight, I probably wouldn't have gotten through it. And even then it took ages to ping away at his health with the pistol.

How do you beat Brayko if you have created a stealth/no combat character?

All this talk about the graphics being gorgeous has me salivating for some screenies.

Who do you want Spain to get in the second round?

He's absolutely right, and it really surprised in a bad way that Alpha Protocol had boss fights like Brayko's.

NK world champions! Probably fake but awesome.

North Korea obviously didn't study Portugal tactics and mentality as they should. Portugal generally fares better against more open, attacking teams, than teams that close down and play ugly football. Frustration and limited strikers are generally Portugal's two big flaws, and North Korea proceeded to ignore them. Looking at how Portugal were performing before the first goal, North Korea might have stolen a point if they had been less adventurous. Still, kudos to the Koreans who kept running like madmen even when down by five goals. Also, it's been two years since last I saw Portugal producing this sort of silky moves. Feels nice even if against much weaker opposition.

Alan Parker - 10 Albatross - 11 Ali Shaheed - 10 Conrad Marburg - 9 Grigori Pazinhov - 10 Henry Leland - 10 Hong Shi - 11 Konstantin Brayko - 11 Madison Saint James - 1 Mina Tang - 10 (+1) Omen Deng - 11 Ronald Sung - 10 SIE - 11 Scarlet Lake - 13 Sean Darcy - 9 (-1) Sergei Surkov - 8 Sis - 12 Steven Heck - 12 Yancy Westridge - 10

Holland is starting to look like a contender. Theoretical quality, underwhelming performance, wins nevertheless. All the markings of a World Cup winner.

It's not failure when even your defeats move millions and millions of pounds.

While England will probably be underwhelming, I'm predicting the US to disappoint as well.

Yep...

Oh look, a TTLGer. Welcome!