Keyrock

Watch Dogs is pretty cool. Chicago is a great backdrop, not Hong Kong great, but a big step up from Libery City and lightyears better than Steelport. My biggest complaint right now is about car chases. Maybe I simply haven't found a car fast enough yet, but I suspect the game has rubber banding since it seems it's physically impossible to simply outrun the cops, you have to hack things to stop the pursuit.

Grateful Dead ~ Scarlet Begonias "Once in a while you get shown the light In the strangest of places if you look at it right" Still one of the best lyrics ever written some 30 years later.

Wait... what? Ellen Page is certainly not unattractive, but she's not exactly a bombshell either. Who is it that's beating off to nude Ellen Page pictures?

I am only a messenger, Leferd. Just a simple, humble, unassuming messenger. Is it so wrong of me to spread the word about high quality teas to the masses so that they, even the lowliest of the low, may enjoy the delicious, refined, sophisticated, taste of high quality teas? Is it so wrong of me to try to empower the downtrodden plebians to enjoy the exquisite pleasures of the gentiles? I only wish to empower the masses, Leferd. I only wish to empower the masses. Do not misake me for a prophet or a God, I am but a messenger of good taste.

Grateful Dead ~ Estimated Prophet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl7jV2YvpDA

Salud. Though like Picard, I don't know if I can trust a man who champions blended tea from the New World served in *shudders* tea bags for convenience. This is akin to serving pre-ground coffee or frozen orange juice concentrate. I understand yor reservations, Leferd, and you are right to doubt. I cannot presume you would take my truths... I am sorry, awfully presumptious of me, my teachings, as fact without trying the deliciousness, the glory, NEIGH, THE SPLENDOR of Bigelow Earl Grey tea for thyself. I do not doubt that the old country has teas to not only rival, but maybe even surpass what the fine folks in Fairfield, Connecticut put together for our refined drinking pleasure. However, us colonists can only strive to duplicate the sublime, fragrant, splendiforous bouquet of true Earl Grey flavour known... NEIGH, FAMOUS, throughout the old world. Here is the url. They may be new world, but the attention to quality is nothing short of the highest the old world has to offer.

If you're mixing copious amounts of sugar and/or milk into you tea, OBVIOUSLY your tea is not palatable to stand on its own. A real, refined gentleman drinks their teas either straight or very lightly sweetened. /raises nose to signify superiority

I'm beginning to think that I simply get highly superior Earl Grey than all you poor, unfortunate, downtrodden serfs (I pitty all you underpriveleged, uneducated barbarians). Do yourselves a favor and splurge for Bigelow teas. I, as a member of the glorious, highly priveleged, Connecticut class not only get Bigelow teas fresh (they're in seales individual bags so they'll be fresh anywhere), but get them cheaper than other, far inferior peasant brands. On a serious note, I will eventually move the **** out of Connecticut because I'm tired of going through ****ty winters. Hopefully wherever I move (likely Virginia or Tennessee) I can get Bigelow teas. If not, I'll have my folks send me several cases at a time so that I can drink the best, like the beourgeoisie member that I am. I cannot allow myself to drink inferior teas like the common plebian folk. I want all you, highly inferior, peasants to know, I feel for you and I'm praying for you to get halfway decent teas into your miserable lives, because that's the kind of magnanimous, charitable man I am. You're welcome.

Maybe ya'll been tryin' some bunk-ass counterfeit Earl Grey tea. Ya'll need to try some Bigelow Earl Greay team. Maybe it's just proximity, since Bigelow teas are made right here in the overpriced state of Connecticut, though all the packets are individually sealed, which leads me to believe that Bigelow Earl Grey teas are just higher quality. Regardless, I've tried other brands, and none of them came even close. Bigelow Earl Grey teas have a nice sharp bite that hits you hard then fades away clean, leaving you with the nice smooth, yet pronounced, black tea taste.

Heathen! Burn him! Burn the unbeliever!

Hey folks, I may not be British (I'm an American citizen, but I'm Polish by birth), but I'm a very big tea drinker. I generally tend to gravitate toward two varieties of tea: 1) Earl Grey - A black team spiced with bergamot, an oil derived from orange peels that gives the tea a good bit of bite. 2) Oolong - A rather gentle tea with a very pleasant. but very subtle flavor. If you go to a Chinese restaurant, this is the tea you usually get served there. I generally stick with those tea varieties, what I'm wondering is what tea varieties others drink, and why? I want to expand my tea drinking repertoire, but I don't want to do so blindly.

I share your sentiment. It also causes my inner fanboy to stir... Vishera is still "fast enough", especially outside of games, but fast enough isn't a very compelling selling point sadly, people even prefer Pentiums, i3 and other feature crippled chips thanks to the i7 nimbus. I'm perfectly happy with mine, because in demanding contemporary games it's still my GPU that limits the options, and in older games (which I play most of the time) it does not matter. When programming business applications, the Vishera is somewhere between i5 and i7 territory performance wise, and it behaves more predictable than an i7 (Hyperthreading). So Vishera's performance is not an issue for me personally. While I am a fan of efficient, modern technology, and Vishera's perf / W is not good, when deciding between AMD and Intel, the following arguments are enough for me to prefer the underdog: David vs Goliath, monopoly, business practices and - less and less important at AMD sadly - company principles. An 8 core Excavator on FM2+ I'd prefer over Vishera, it would provide a very solid, modern platform. Oh, and in 20nm pretty please... :/ Regarding the iGPU: The Iris Pro is rare, expensive, and uses brute force over know-how to achieve its performace, made possible thanks to Intel's ever present process node advantage. I'm not convinced it is a real contender to AMD's and nVidia's offerings, seeing Intel's long history of GPU fails. Haswell has the first iGPUs produced by Intel that, apparently, can now play back HD content without sync issues. And maybe, just maybe (haven't tested one yet), they can correctly guess the resolution of displays/projectors connected by VGA now, because Ivy Bridge couldn't: One of the laptops I use at work has an Ivy Bridge i5, and every time I start it up on an external display (because when plug'n'play-ing, chances are 0% of the following happening), it is a gamble whether that slouch will offer the full resolution or even correct screen ratio on the external display. And it can power two monitors at most (internal + 1, or VGA + DP), while my trusty Llano workhorse of the same manufacturer has no problems of driving multiple displays or recognizing a VGA display's properties. So, if Intel's Haswell GPU featureset has indeed reached the two better IHVs, it is a first, and they have years of proving ahead until they can be considered a serious contender in the GPU space, feature- and technologywise. You make good points, but I'm not enough of a AMD fan to buy a clearly inferior "good enough" product in lieu of a clearly superior product. Sure, there are some processes where AMD's 8 physical cores (even if they are 4 modules that share an FPU between each module's 2 cores) beat an i5's 4 cores and even an i7s 4 physical and 8 virtual cores, but those real world situations are few and far between. AMD's cores are so far behind Intel's cores, in terms of IPC, that they need to get into the 5+ GHz regions to compete with Intel's 3.5-4 Ghz cores and that's at 220W (yikes!) vs. 80-90W. The high-end Visheras run so hot that it's REQUIRED to get an aftermarket cooler (water-cooled recommended) for anything more demanding than web browsing. That's just crazy. Intel hes a very clear and decisive fabrication advantage. it's sad, but it's true. In the long run, this may all be a moot point, since I think ARM is going to take x86's lunch money, even on desktops, eventually, and if Intel doesn't do like Nvidia did a while ago and AMD is starting to do now, they will be lefty out in the cold, fabrication advantage or not. ARM is simply a more efficient architecture. Even Intel's massive fabrication advantage can't completely make up ARM's massive performance per watt advantage, particularly in the highly lucrative mobile sector. Eventually, ARM chips will get powerful enough to power desktops as well as mobile devices and servers (in large clusters). This is going to happen sooner than people think. I know x86 has the advantage of supporting legacy stuff that may be too much trouble to port to ARM, but that will eventually disappear, especially if Windows ceases to be the dominant platform (and this is already happening in servers).

Eh, I can't (and won't) blame them for trying to get out of that political mess. I can (and will) blame them for trying to rip off their customers though. Especially since the former is only speculation. So far nothing I've heard from a purely gaming perspective properly justifies these "Redux" versions. Here's to hoping they clarify things a bit, preferably soon before the backlash reaches truly epic proportions. As far as I'm concerned, and this goes for almost all situations, the customer is on his or her own and should make an informed purchase (or lack of). If they don't, and impulse buy, then shame on them. If you, as a customer, don't do research before you buy, then I have no compassion for you whatsoever. Deal with it. (note: I'm using 'you' as directed toward potential uninformed customer, not as an attack at marelooke him/herself) Like I wrote before, these games, which are available separately, or as a packge, don't make much sense for many people. If you already own Last Light on PC there is really no reason to buy this Redux version. Whatever AI improvements they make are likely minor. If you already own 2033, then it's a judgement call. Is the imprevement in engine and graphics, as well as whatever minor AI improvements and Linux version, worth it to you? For someone like me, who owns neither game, it's very much worth it. That said, it would be cool if Deep Silver offered a discount to people who own one or both of the games already.

Football Manager 2014 - aka - The game that will take over your life. Don't buy this, you'll never do anything else again. Nooooooooo! Don't do it! Is on sale at 75% off. I scooped it up because: a) Another game to play on my upcoming SteamOS Machine (because it has Linux support) b) I'm already a hermit and don't have much of a social life anyway

I'm thinking the All American June Cleaver-esque wife winds up getting "killed" which sends Aiden down a path of revenge which leads him into a much deeper conspiracy way over his head. Near the end it's revealed that June Cleaver didn't get killed at all, in fact she's the main villain of the story and has been manipulating Aiden all along for sinister reasons that don't really make any sense at all, but it's all good because SHOCKING PLOT TWIST! I'd buy 10 hours of that for 60 bucks All the DLC too Ubisoft Soulless Executive - "We're glad you feel that way, Mr. ShadySands. If you don't mind, may I call you Shady? (/does not wait for ShadySands to answer) We, here at Ubisoft, are committed to giving you, our valued customer, the best value for their hard earned dollar. That's why we'd like to offer you, Shady, this Season Pass package. For the low low discount price of $19.95, you, our dearly valued customer, will be treated to all the DLC content we release after the game... except the content we deem later to not be part of the Season Pass package. Let me assure you, Shady, that the value of this package, if bought separately, will far exceed the low low asking price of $19.95. We offer you, our valued customer, this deal because we are committed to offering you the highest gaming value around."

I was Team Green for a very long time. Phenom II 940 BE was my last AMD processor. I still remember the glory days of my Opteron 160 overclocked by 800 MHz on stock cooling (and never breaking a sweat), absolutely demolishing any Intel processor of that time in the same price area code, even somewhat more expensive chips. Sadly, AMD simply has nothing to offer me in the segment I'm looking to buy right now. Anyway, we'll find out soon either way. I have a plan and a backup plan. One way or another I'm buying a CPU the first week of June. It will either be a i7-4790K or a Xeon E3-1230v3. I will be playing games on my SteamOS Monster Machine the second week of June, that is written in stone.

I'm thinking the All American June Cleaver-esque wife winds up getting "killed" which sends Aiden down a path of revenge which leads him into a much deeper conspiracy way over his head. Near the end it's revealed that June Cleaver didn't get killed at all, in fact she's the main villain of the story and has been manipulating Aiden all along for sinister reasons that don't really make any sense at all, but it's all good because SHOCKING PLOT TWIST!

I imagine those kids either get kidnapped or killed. At least, that's standard vengeful protagonist backstory. Edit: I won't be able to play my copy until tomorrow, or late night tonight (I took tomorrow off, so I can stay up if I want). My copy is just a slip of paper that came with my video card with a code on it. I redeemed it and Uplay will activate the game when it officially releases. I wish it would at least let me pre-load the game so I won't have to wait an hour or two while it downloads tonight/tomorrow. All good, I'll just play Gothic 3 and Sleeping Dogs until then.

Good on them. I guess it's at least some consolation for their Olympic disappointment. Congrats Russia.

If Devil's Canyon does indeed get pushed back my backup plan will be to get the Xeon E3-1230v3 that Slink talked about some months back. No useless IGP, 3.3GHz clock, turbo to 3.7GHz, the extra cache and hyperthreading of an i7 while priced like an i5. Locked, so no (easy) overclocking, but if I plan to sell the chip in the future then I won't OC it anyway as I wouldn't feel good selling someone a chip that ran aqbove stock speeds. Then I just keep that until Broadwell comes out in the Spring of 2015 (or whenever that happens). So, while I was initially upset when I saw the rumors, I have a backup plan and if Devil's Canyon gets pushed back it's no big deal. Edit: Whoa, my 780Ti came with a cool poster. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a Qunari? It's not branaded as Dragon Age anything, so maybe not? Maybe it's a demon centaur or something?

Sweet. Is that a console version or did it activate on Uplay (I'm assuming the PC version requires Uplay)?

RPG Codex interview with Colin, Adam, George, and Jeremy of the Torment team. Great read. This, in particular, made me very happy They had stated their intention to allow a combat-free playthrough previously, but it's good to see it reiterated here. I fully intend to do a pacifist playthrough my first time through.

Watch Dogs is out already? i thought it wasn't until tomorrow?

That's what the mute button is for. I muted the video 30 seconds in. I don't know how you managed to stomach 5 whole minutes. I would have thrown my laptop out of the window much sooner than that.

The graphics look fine as far as I'm oncerned. They're not groundbreaking, but Piranha Bytes have never been known for bleeding edge graphics anyhow.