Agiel

KAL Flight 007, just saying. As for the Kirov vs a single Ticonderoga class Guided Missile Cruiser, that's a mere 20 Shipwreck missiles against a Kitano Circus of 122 Standard Missiles. And that is if they manage to bypass at least twelve F/A-18E/F Superhornets armed with as many as twelve AIM-120B/C AMRAAMs, which outclasses any air-launched weapon in service with the RuAF.

The Phalanx is a completely autonomous CIWS that is generally turned off in proximity of friendly aircraft. Such an incident is no more embarrassing than a West German student pilot penetrating Soviet air space in a Cessna and landing in Red Square: http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/rust.html?c=y&page=1

Inspired by Giant Bomb's Vinny Caravella's attempt to finally beat Dark Souls, I have decided to soldier on with that game as well with the aide of my friend, DSCfix, and a Black Knight Halberd which is allows me to hit like a truck. I last left off just having just gotten to Anor Londo. We've made a lot of progress since then, having gotten the Lordvessel and defeated Seath the Scaleless, in the process getting the Moonlight Greatsword, and of course, me being a big From fan, I couldn't *not* use a sword called "Moonlight." My pyromancer/sorceress character, Laure de Marais. However with only 16 vitality at level 85, I can't take nearly as much as I can give.

The internet's efforts to get me to download her viruses has reached new heights, as while I attempt to download and install AVG Anti-virus, I'm confronted with this page. Behold them inundating me with "Download now" buttons:

As the resident military aviation dork, I happened across something rather interesting. A comic wherein various military aircraft are anthropomorphised into young ladies in high school called "Flight Highschool". It is a Korean "Manhwa," so no need reading it assbackwards right-to-left. For those who don't get the joke, the E-8 JSTARS is a battle-management aircraft with an incredibly powerful Synthetic Aperture Radar that does for ground targets what AWACS does for targets in the air (in other words, it's the plane that tells ground-attack aircraft: "Yo dawg, there's a Motor Rifle Division moving in from that direction, go bust 'em.") As for the GAU-8, see this:

Well movies are largely considered a legitimate art form, and they range from the Ingmar Bergman's Persona to the insanely dumb Transformers. Studying fine arts in my uni, one of my professors once told me: "Art is the world "fart" without the letter 'f'". By his definition, art is basically anything that comes out of you. Whether or not it's a "good" piece of art is a whole nother can of worms.

Oldie, but goodie.

Should be noted that the idea that the French aren't grateful for the US couldn't be further from the truth: Some French paratroopers put 101st and 82nd Airborne patches on their personal effects to pay homage to the units that were so critical to the liberation of France, as well as the paratrooper outfit they owe their lineage to.

Let us not forget the mechanised infantry concept embodied by the Panzergrenadiere that forever changed the face of modern ground warfare. I'd argue that the Germans didn't need more Tigers and Panthers, they needed more Hanomags so that their troops weren't stuck riding in horse-drawn carriages half the time.

Hopping back into Shogun 2, having not picked up Rome 2 due to lack of interest in that theater and time period as compared to the Sengoku Jidai and the Napoleonic Wars (though from what my friends have told me of Rome 2, Shogun 2 remains CA's high watermark by quite a margin). Playing with the Radious mod as the Uesugi, tear-assing around northern Honshu with my corps of Sohei and Warrior Nuns before lining up the pieces for unseating the Ashikaga Shogunate. That said, I do find the RNG of Shogun 2 to be quite infuriating at times, particularly in regards to retainers as I'm trying to kit-out Uesugi Kenshin with the ones that I feel befitting for the greatest Daimyo of Sengoku-era Japan.

I believe the developers have gone on record and said that from their research of colonial Boston, New York, and New Jersey, their renditions of those cities are 3 times bigger than they actually were in those times. Though if they had gone with a much more true-to-life design they would have been far less interesting places to traverse than Middle-age Jerusalem or Renaissance Venice.

Wrong. This isn't an action game, I can pause any time I want, therefore there is absolutely no drawback to the controllable camera. No one in their right mind who had the budget and time to make a game fully 3D would not do so. A forced isometric view with a forced camera angle only impairs what you can design and how you can display it on screen, designers in general don't like to have limitations on what they can design. What do they say about common sense at the Friendly Arm again? Oh that's right, they say most of the posters on this forum don't have any. The funny part being 'A well made and properly done 3D camera' has yet to be made... IN 15 YEARS. Play some games from the last decade please. Or are you insinuating the Witcher 2, Dark Souls, Dragon Age (especially the newest one), hell even X-Com from a couple years ago which all have rotatable cameras at the least didn't do it at least "well". Hell X-Com of those I just listed had the worst camera of the lot and it was the only one that forced isometric view on you. Go play a Drakensang game or something for christ sake. I would say Dark Souls and Demon's Souls' cameras had a nasty tendency to obstruct your view on the odd boss fight at the worst of times (coming from someone who really liked both games). Otherwise I completely agree with you, though I'd go a bit further to say that the lack of an "on the ground" camera would sometimes lead you to sending an operative to somewhere where they didn't quite have the LOS you wanted. When I first played Dragon Age: Origins, I originally thought that I would play it from the top-down perspective almost exclusively, which was an idea I discarded after an hour or so since it was actually easier to keep track of things as (to borrow American football terms) a Quarterback rather than a coach. Which is not to say I never used the top-down camera ever again; far from it, it's handy for plotting where you're going to plant your AOEs.

Well the irony is that in this day and age, revolutions tend to happen when things are getting better, not when they are at their worst. When people don't have to worry about scraping by anymore, they have the time and energy to organise and take stock of the situation, both past and present. I guess that's the perverse genius of Kim-il Sung and his progeny; keep the people starved of protein so that their bodies feed on their minds for sustenance, then they'll believe anything you say.

While EYE looked fantastic, in a narrative and gameplay sense it was a schizophrenic mess. That said, if I were the head of a big-name game company and those devs applied for a job for me, I'd hire them in a heartbeat, but not before I asked them in the interview: "So what did you learn from making 'EYE?'"

My dentist was surprised when I told him that the one who yanked my tooth as a kid didn't knock me out. Back when I was still in junior high ~2000-2001ish, my mom took me to this one relatively upscale dentist to have some teeth extracted. Of course, me being a big wuss I was shaking in my britches through the whole ordeal when one of the assistants came in and told me "Don't worry, our best *hand* extraction specialist will be taking care of you." I remember thinking to myself: "'Don't worry?' I have every reason to worry!" Indeed, some Brawn Hilda-type woman comes in the room, immediately holds me down, and simply pushes my teeth in until they give way. She does this for two more teeth. While this usually lasts for only 5 seconds per tooth, on the fourth she takes 3 minutes all the while I'm thrashing in the chair. Eventually she takes a look at the x-ray and says non-nonchalantly: "Oh, that was a permanent tooth."

I'd pretty much bet my life on the idea that if they had a big publisher behind them and a $150 million+ budget Obsidian would have gone on to make Eternity a game that matched the likes of Skyrim and Dragon Age 3 in scale and production values.

Largely because today's graphics can "fill in the blanks" of RPGs of yore. I think it would be fair to say that when cRPGs of the 90's came out they kind of supplanted the old pen and paper RPGs since the players no longer had to rely upon figurines or their own imaginations to complete the visual and aural experience of their fantastic adventures (especially with NWN when friends could play their campaigns in a totally 3D world with the great toolbox it had).

Had a wisdom tooth pulled out today. My dentist believes mine to be exceptionally difficult to remove, and has opted to "monitor" the remaining one in the hopes it doesn't become a problem in the immediate future. Unlike the last round, I haven't had a debilitating bout of pain necessitating taking some oxycodone yet, and the swelling is imperceptible at the moment. Fingers crossed that stays that way.

It apparently will be on our beloved PCs. Whether or not Ubisoft pulls a Grand Theft Auto V and put it off for another 6 months is another matter (that said, Ubisoft has been pretty good about simultaneous platform releases for their last few AAA titles like Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3, and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier). That it is being made by the folks behind World in Conflict is one of the biggest reasons I'm chomping at the bit for this.

Seconded. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are amazing. II figured no self-respecting PC gamer couldn't *not* have at least one of the two *really* good entries in the series in their games library.

No doubt STALKER should be on the top of the "to-play" list if you haven't played it already. Far Cry 3 is a great game. Some people have their reservations about the story, but I think it works well enough. If anything, I'm miffed that Ubisoft has decided to run with the mechanics of Assassin's Creed in the open-world part of the game. ArmA 3 multiplayer in Conquest mode can work as an open world shooter. Don't let it intimidate you, there are servers that don't demand that you were an operator with the 1st SFOD-D to join the game (though finding a group of friends to help ease you in can't hurt either). That said, with lingering net-code and performance issues, I myself can't play it in long sittings over a weekend. As is the case with most of Bohemia's catalogue, give it a couple more months to stew before jumping in.

My roommate from Sophomore year who is now undergoing OCS for the Navy also showed me this gem from the Armed Forces Television and Radio (known as "A-Farts" by those in the military). If you ever wanted to know the virtues of Special Power of Attorney over General Power of Attorney:

Not funny, but something pretty cool nonetheless: Though I fail to see how the lyrics of Creep are relevant to the content of this animation.

Absolut Citron as part of a delicious Sea Breeze in the precious time before the dead of winter sets upon us. That and the occasional Limona Corona.

...and eSim Games, the developers of Steel Beasts has been contracted by the Australian, Danish, Swedish, and Czech militaries as well as West Point faculty to produce realistic simulation software to train tank gunners, commanders, and platoon leaders. And while tanks like the M1A2 and the Leopard 2 are very impressive machines, it isn't difficult to come across information to help one make an educated guess about their true capabilities and this information isn't as terribly sensitive as say, what the avionics are like in a Eurofighter Typhoon. It's why there are extremely realistic simulators of the F-16, the A-10C, and the Ka-50 are out there for civilians to toy around with. The capabilities of the T-80U are also quite well-known by western militaries; the British were able to purchase examples for their own testing purposes (passing it on to the US and Germany as well) and the Russians gave some to South Korea to pay off debts from Soviet times. Is there some variance in the data they have? To be sure. As I've said, the only way they can get solid numbers is if they managed to gather all those vehicles in one sterile testing environment. Is it as big as say plus or minus 250mm RHAe for a given value? Doubtful.