Gorgon

It is true. It's declassified whitehouse tapes among other things. It was always going to come out. The gruesome thing about it of course is that the Vietnamese were ready to sign a deal and an immensely destructive bombing campaign went on needlessly because of Nixon's backhand dealings.

I'm not saying it's right, it's just how it is. No one ever backs down from a territorial dispute. In any event that would make the question whether the Falklands are part of Britan and what the islanders think is once again irrelevant.

There is an inherent problem with legal and traditional claims to lands in that they are historically always settled with violence. Besides, who is going to be the judge and who will accept a verdict that goes against them. There is usually no right or wrong just winners and losers. The problem for the Falklanders? is that they don't posess the military strength to protect their sovereignty. One could argue that the minimum prerequisite for a country is some ability to do just that.

Steam does not set prices for other publisher's games, competition between services won't drive down prices. The UK Steam price for Tomb Raider is 260 DKK, there's not more competition. Amazon UK is selling Tomb Raider for 195 DKK, but the same Austrian company's website is selling it for 373 DKK, and prices in Germany aren't that much different to that price. I believe publishers and Steam have had region locked games in the past, if this becomes more widespread they will do it more, and they'll probably blame it on the various incidents that have been happening within the resale market. Lets take Tomb Raider as a forinstance. Steam pricing comes to 373 DKK, no costs associated with distribution other than maintenance of STEAM servers. Random web search finds the game at 246 DKK if you pick it up at your game store. Should not be possible if not for publishers still subsidising brick and mortar outlets. STEAM has built up a monopoly of convenience from their customer base, for all the sales it's still missing one vital component : competition. You can get the game at competitive prices but only when they decide. Re sale of game keys brings competition back into the equation which is good for consumers. A game loses its 'new car smell' after x ammount of months and it's not worth what publishers think it is anymore. We need something to remind them of that. The used games market could be regulated to be more fair to pubishers, I would agree on that, but it serves an important purpose.

Could you expand on what you mean by this? Outside of the fact you don't get a physical copy , I haven't noticed the new games seeming more expensive (in the US, I mean) via Steam. Is it the non-US Steam market you're referring to? I know that's often a big contention point, but I thought the non-US high prices often applied to even non-Steam gaming as well. Lets take Tomb Raider as a forinstance. Steam pricing comes to 373 DKK, no costs associated with distribution other than maintenance of STEAM servers. Random web search finds the game at 246 DKK if you pick it up at your game store. Should not be possible if not for publishers still subsidising brick and mortar outlets. STEAM has built up a monopoly of convenience from their customer base, for all the sales it's still missing one vital component : competition. You can get the game at competitive prices but only when they decide. Re sale of game keys brings competition back into the equation which is good for consumers.

It's also steak and blowjob day which makes Pi a really hard sell by comparison. The site is down, probably drowned in requests. http://www.steakandbj.org/

Not demonstrated that this is the norm rather than an anomaly for these kinds of sites. The reason they exist I reckon is because of regional pricing and the potential for huge savings during sales. If you buy a new game at normal pricing you are getting screwed by STEAM guaranteed. Not strange that it would motivate people to exploit the sales and pricing as much as they are able.

Human Revolution didn't have QTE melee, they were canned animations like stealth kills in most games now. My opinion on it is that well, it's certainly better than bad melee gameplay, especially since it's optional. Tomb Raider on the other hand is full of QTE. Imagine I said Hitman absolution instead

And they were introduced as improvements. You actually bought skills that made melee suck. QTEs worked wonderfully in all the jumping puzzles and various tumbling actions but they just didn't know when to stop.

Finished Tomb Raider in a day. Not bad. Overall very enjoyable but also let down by Eidos not bothering with a real melee system but QTEing their way out of it just like DX Human Revolution. This made the boss fights in particular really annoying to get past. Press ▲ to not die, then press ▀ to counter but only after the eyesore prompt in the middle of the screen turns red, and if you don't know what ▀ corresponds to on the PC you're **** out of luck. When did it become ok to reduce combat to a series of tests judging your ability to follow directions shown on the screen ?. Fortunately you could just shoot most everything else, but the fear of getting caught up in a QTE and not knowing what buttons to mash was constant. Ironically it worked just fine when you had just two or three attack and evade moves in the begining.

Yes, that too.

Controllers are only good at one thing: melee action. Every time you have to aim at something you want a mouse. They are also responsible for the great pestilence of button mashing quicktime events which hit game development nearly a decade ago and is still going strong. Press 'E' repeatedly to not die... this is not gameplay, but it's more tolerable with a controller I suppose.

Does anyone have the new Tomb Raider with the AMD hair that supposedly doesn't suck quite so badly and is a bit farcry 3 ish with hunting and weapon mods etc ?

The All Blacks are the very definition of heterosexual manliness

Worked in a resturant when I was just starting UNI and one of the Chefs was similarly very offended at being called an Australian, which would naturally make us all forget on purpose. It seems to be especially important to white Europeans who moved there a couple of hundred years ago. I guess everyone wants to belong somewhere. ---

Word is they spent all their dev hours on borderlands 2. Crying shame that is.

Levels I guess. I always thought the arenas were the most challenging. Close quaters lots of tactics necessary to survive, so I would wind up 3-5 levels higher than the current main quest average level for playing the arenas untill i beat them. Another reason the level system ruins the game.

The basic problem is that there are 50 gun levels so when you find one you like it's good for 3 or 4 more levels and then it's obsolete and you might never find one exactly like it. That and it's too easy (it get's harder once you beat the game and unlock new difficulty levels, but that doesn't really count) and there is no PVP action. There really ought to be a PVP arena in a shooting MMO.

Do you mean screw up socially in games. Does anyone really care about that ?. If you mean IRL, I don't see how gaming could help protect you against the vageries of reality. Other than not having to deal with it for a while.

It's easy to forget that all the power grabs Chaves did, wrong as they were, originated in a right wing coup attempt that would have left the country no better off. Having the presidents residence under siege tends to leave one paranoid. Castro either deported or imprisoned his enemies, does not in any way compare to two of history's greatest mass murderers. He also successfully created an infrastructure which remains today and which the Cuban people are quite proud of, even if they don't enjoy our political fredoms.

You should become Russians. 13%. Beat that with a stick.

Depends on whether the war is deemed to be of vital narional interest. Say it isnt an optioal land grabbimg venture or that it isnt viewed that way.

Another Dane. Yes... I see. It's all going according to plan.

Did that recently. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't boot. The HDD that is. Turns out I took out one of those tiny jumper thingies that forced my SSD to be the master drive and there is no little reference diagram on the thing. I finally got boot, but my tertiary storage drive is nolonger detected. I'm also fresh out of jumpers. Slow and easy wins the day.

That's how you undermine the home front. I wouldn't assume it would work unless public opinion was a factor. If it can be supressed or supplanted by nationalistic fervor casualties can be absorbed indefinitely. Of course if you can successfully make yourself more trouble than you are worth the opposing side might still lose interest.