Pidesco

Not that I know of. He's only 30. But I'm not talking about just one game. It seems like every game they play Portugal performs as if it needs a first class goal scorer, and that shouldn't happen. Not every single game. Even against lesser teams during qualifying Portugal struggled with the goal scoring, and not because of the lack of a pure forward, but rather from a difficulty in creating enough chances, which, with these players is just unacceptable. Also, while Nuno Gomes was never a particularly good player, he seems to come up with the goods at major tournaments, and I think he did that again at Euro 2008 even if he just scored one goal. He was an essential part of a few of the goals Portugal scored and generally was one of the better attackers in Portugal's campaign. So, if you ask me a lack of a true goalscorer was one of Portugal's lesser weaknesses. Dodgy defending, and a mediocre goalie were the real causes of Portugal's early exit.

Going away? They're not going anywhere. I don't think the lack of a true goalscorer should really be such a big problem for Portugal. With the type of speedy, massively skilled attackers we've always had, Portugal should, in theory, be able to score more goals than it actually does. A Thierry Henry isn't necessary to score sitters now is it? Scolari's Portugal, even at its best, always had a problem with creating speed in its attacking movement. I mean, Deco's long range passing was great, but at Bar

While Scolari is a good leader of men, he really is a crap coach. He singlehandedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at Euro 2004, didn't manage to get Portugal to play one single decent game in the 2006 World Cup, despite playing against such illustrious opponents as Iran or even freaking Angola, and couldn't get a defense composed of Bosingwa, Pepe, Ricardo Carvalho, and Paulo Ferreira to even defend competently. Chelsea is going to be a laughing stock next season. I yearn for the day when Mourinho will coach Portugal.

Portugal's defense is really dropping the ball. Which with these players is just unforgivable. And some kind of coaching feat. I haven't seen Scolari's Portugal play with a properly organized defense yet. And I'm not just talking about Euro 2008.

I saw this coming from a mile away.

Xard already posted that.

One very important thing I'm wondering about, especially because of the overland map, is how large will each area be and whether loading times are being improved. Will the overland map be akin to BG where each area will be fixed and huge, or more like Fallout where you can wonder around and stop anywhere in locations of varying size?

^Because you suck.

Of course.

I don't. Notice how I mentioned Oblivions stealth which includes both interaction and skillchecks, all of them are important. Bioshock's shooting was horribly easy but that doesn't mean that the idea of shooting in games is bad. Similarly, it had no meaningfull relation to the game since it lacked being tied to a skill, but that doesn't mean that the minigame wasn't fun and fitted in the game (unless you are a Yatzhee style nitpicker). I'm pretty sure that the path was closed for me a few times. Oh, I'm not in any way against mini games. If they're done well and are properly integrated with the actual game, I like them. If they suck and feel like padding for the actual game, then I don't like them. And actually, when I said that the pipe game didn't have any meaningful relation with the game, I wasn't talking about skill checks. I was talking about the fact that the rest of game freezes while you do the hacking, and its completely free to do the hacking.

Sounds good. I might just give it a go in a few weeks. Does the mod change Portugal in any way?

Jiggletech.

I really don't see how such a markedly obese Australian person is going to hunt anyone down.

I like how Moatilliatta's post assumes that there is only one definition of fun, and that that definition obviously only includes player skill and not skillchecks. Because player skill is inherently and fundamentally better that character skillchecks. Also, Bioshock's pipe minigame, was horribly easy, and completely devoid of any meaningful relation to the actual core gameplay. By the way, as far as I know, it was always possible to finish that minigame. The path was never closed. As for SS2's hacking minigame, while not particularly interesting in and of itself, it actually affected the rest of the gameplay in an important way. Also, it depended more or less exclusively on your character's hacking and cyberaffinity skills.

Portugal [0] v Germany [1] Croatia [2] v Turkey [1] Netherlands [2] v Russia [0] Spain [0] v Italy [2]

Moroder.

Holland will be eliminated by Italy in the semis. 1-0

My oracle business is going down the crapper.

We be jammin'!

Those are some pretty grainy textures. Van der Loo's head looked a bit more detailed than that.

Does that mean you were peeing out the window?

And here I was, thinking that a game's quality depended mostly on the gameplay. Crazy! Shallowness FTW!

That song makes me want to kill babies.

I'd like to take some screenies during combat, but I'm generally too busy to press the screenshot key.

Actually, if you re-read that sentence, you can very much turn the scene into a sexual one. And it will be better than DMC4 So the demo's good, hun? Might give it a try later. Are you using the keyboard or a gamepad? Gamepad. And I own a sweet one too.