Agiel

Lana. Lana? Lana! LANAAAAAA!!!!

A Panzer Dragoon-type game. Now there's almost a reason for me to get an Xbox One.

Boris Vallejo incidentally married one of his favourite models, Julie Bell, a former competitive body-builder who also became a respected oil painter of the same subject matter. Their two sons have also followed in their footsteps as well.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-meals-win-wars/276448/ Fantastic article from the Atlantic about the little stuff.

Well, I found out about a B-movie featuring Sean Connery that I intend to watch so it wasn't a complete waste. Made by the same guy who made Deliverance, and nearly ruined his career in the process.

Watching replays and shoutcasts will go a long way to learning the game (and short of playing actual games, is the best way to learn). As was the case with Starcraft 2, 1v1s and 2v2s are where it's at for balanced, pure skill games (I nominally only do 3v3s and 4v4s for the sake that its faster to level up with them). And some tips I hand out to new players (of which now that the game is in open beta there are a whole lot of) include: -Map control, map control, map control. There really is no point in turtling up in your base as its reasonably well defended for most of he game already. If you don't control more than half of the map at any given moment, as George Clooney said, "(you're) in a tight spot." -It's generally a much better idea to dedicate your manpower at the start of the game to building a strong core force of infantry rather than building fuel OPs (the ones already on the map give you more fuel anyways). After all, assuming an equally, or more skilled opponent, the thought has probably crossed his or her mind as well. Speaking of which... -The single most important component of your forces is infantry. Sure they're not as flashy as heavy Panzers or the "Gods of War", but the former by themselves will struggle against large mobs of conscripts supported by AT guns, and the latter counts for little without a strong core force to keep the enemy at arm's length (also the hole artillery can open up in an enemy's defenses amounts to jack if there's no one to capitalise on it). -Always be attacking. While augmenting your capabilities, you should also be trying to subtract from your opponent's as well. Keep in mind the sectors you can decap to cut off your opponent from crucial fuel and munitions take less time to de-cap than the resource sectors themselves. -This one may come down to preference, but I abide by it all the same: "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." -General George S. Patton.

What about mankinis? Can we have male characters wearing mankinis? Raise ya Sean Connery from Zardoz.

Having read through what was at a glance about 1/4 through the original post before doubling over laughing, I'll try to offer my thoughts on the matter. I play just about every kind of game under the sun. MMO with stripperific outfits? Story-based FPSes? Deep cRPGs? Even hardcore mil-sims I play them all. As a sex-positive feminist, while the industry certainly shouldn't inundate it with, rule of sexy has its place in the medium of video games. I greatly admire George Kamitani for his work on Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and there are hardly lead designers who are as involved with the artistic side as they are with the gameplay design side in the industry, and as an artist myself, I can feel for him when someone harangues him over his art. And honestly, sometimes the whole crusade against stripperific outfits reeks of people trying to gain progressive cred on the internet. Take for instance this topic on the Torment: ToN suggestions forum (you may need to be a backer to see it). Someone complains about a lady character showing a bit of cleavage in an arctic environment, while conveniently ignoring the male character right next to her that's utterly shirtless (both designs are totally fine in my book). There are feminist causes over the medium much worth fighting for. For instance, out of morbid curiosity (alas, it shall be the end of me one of these days), I tried to gauge 4chan's opinions on the Anita Sarkeesian affair. The result left me dry-heaving all over my monitor.

My money's on a private firing. Plane's an old Frogfoot, hung up on chains, in weird looking colours. Don't know what that missile is, but anything legit would be rigged to travel further before exploding. And that target looks pretty much pointless. No measuring devices, place looks like a junkyard more than a firing range. Su-34 Fullback strike fighter actually from the looks of it (side-by-side pilot/co-pilot cackpit, nose that looks like a platypus'). And when has the Russian aerospace been known for exceptional OSHA compliance?

The Russians notoriously keep the shiniest toys to themselves (to an even more blatant degree than other major arms supplier nations) as stated in my talk on "Monkey Models". A Russian arms expert I've talked to seems to think that the Russians were more easily able to part with this system given that they believe the performance of the SA-21 to far surpass that of the SA-10. While the older system is indeed very capable to this day, western powers have been acquainted to its capabilities for quite some time (the Bulgarians brought one with them to a Red Flag exercise), and without a sufficient IADS in depth (mid-range SA-17s and SA-15s and short-range SA-19s and MANPADS), the thing is asking for a HARM up its tailpipe (even since the introduction of SAMs, anti-air artillery remains the largest killer of military aircraft by a large margin). That said, it's unlikely the Israelis will touch it in the near future, as it would mean killing a whole lot of Russian advisors and involving them further in the conflict. You are indeed correct that the Russians have been quite wary about how their export equipment performs (hence the re-branding of the T-72BU as the T-90 in the aftermath of Desert Storm). Another interesting thing: Iran previously claimed to have purchased an SA-10 battery from Belarus, going so far as to parade the TEL during the 2010 Gulf Blockade crisis. However, a defense analyst took a closer look at the photos and deduced the "TEL" to actually be 55 gallon drums welded together and mounted on a generic heavy lifter truck.

Still kind of amazes me the same console that played Oblivion back in 2006 can still play Skyrim of 2011 (albeit in a much more diminished capacity than if you were on the PC). Makes me think the engineers in charge of optimisation for game companies are being lazy.

Lol. Whut? "Horde" it's not about numbers, its just name. Our name. Too long to explain, read better this. Said BD goes by the more popular title "Jihad".

The huge influx of Russian weaponry and no obvious way of paying for all of it in a timely fashion by Assad would likely mean the loyalist Syrians will be completely in Russia's pocket in the incredibly unlikely event Assad comes out of this only a *little* bit less worse for wear. Think Cold War Poland, DDR, and Czechoslovakia for the type of relationship Assad will have with Russia if he manages comes out of this mess in one piece. That said, the Russians' naval base in Tartus lies in a firmly Alawite region of Syria, so a balkanised Syria will do little to harm Russian strategic interests (Iran and Hezbollah? Different story).

Fixed. Freudian slip there Just a shame someone other than Relic now has the rights to the IP

Homeworld Homeworld: Cataclysm Homeworld 2 Company of Heroes Dawn of War Dawn of War 2 (noticed a pattern yet?) The Void/Turgor Pathologic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Jane's F-15 Jane's Longbow 2 Jane's F/A-18 Falcon 4.0 Arcanum Icewind Dale 2 Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Silent Hunter 3 Sins of a Solar Empire

An online poll sort of uses a skewed sample. People savvy about gaming will likely have PCs powerful enough to handle BF4 on their machines. I suspect you'd get a far different result if they polled random people walking into a Gamestop or Best Buy or other electronic retailer.

That "Brevik" gets a "++" for Norway on that list is rather disturbing, and probably tells me a little too much about the attitudes held on 4chan.

Might I suggest Stanislaw Lem? Some of my favourites by him are The Cyberiad, The Star Diaries, and The Futurological Congress.

From the Steel Beasts forums: Been spending my time with it in between sessions of the Wargame: AirLand Battle and Company of Heroes 2 beta. Hope to post a game diary of my efforts in the M1A1, the Leopard 2A4, and the Leopard 2A6 soon.

I adored Arcanum, but despite some broad similarities (fantasy world on the verge or in the midst of industrialisation), the general air I've gotten from the developers and Sawyer's Formspring is that P:E will have a far more serious tone and what humour that will be in it will be in-universe rather than meta or based on references to pop culture (which Arcanum was out the ass with, not that I minded it).

The thing I'm most happy seeing return is Relic's tradition of putting great unit dialogue in the game. Just this last game playing as the Ostheer, I heard two golden ones I hadn't heard before: "I'm worried that I won't be allowed to like Tchaikovsky anymore." "WHAT THE F*** DOES 'URA' MEAN?!" Though my favourite so far is: "Can't wait to get back to the west. Those amies always complain about the might of our piospam."

Was about to go into Russia's own nationalist groups that spout the line of preserving "slavic purity" in the face of the Uzbek and other Turkic "Untermenschen" invaders... but...

Don Matrick just did an interview outside of the presentation. No always-online for this. Have to wonder if Microsoft refrained from giving a solid release date to revise the machine to take this out after the Orth debacle.

Back when the 360 was still under wraps, I have heard the name "Next-Box" being tossed around. As for an always on console (or always on gaming for that matter), it's a future I have no doubt will come. However, it's a future that's a long, long, long ways off (not until broadband internet and the computer/router connectivity is as reliable as cable television and land-line phones are, which is to say the developed world at large is nowhere near that state). Hell, in the US there are kids who do their homework in McDonalds because they can get free high speed wi-fi there as opposed to the 56k garbage in their own homes. That said, on the off chance the new Xbox does involve something like that (or as equally egregious), how Microsoft would spin it would put the motto "Peace is war, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" to shame in terms of absurdity.