Gorgon

Nothing seems to happen to them when I shoot at them, maybe it needs better than pistol shots.

Smooth code I guess. Although I have been getting sporadic slowdowns that weren't there before, which is strange. Doesn't seem to matter whether the screen is busy or not. Also can anyone spoil me on a way back into vault 101. I want a certain item I forgot to bring with me. There's an access panel but it can't be activated, bug or something I did or didn't do.

I agree that Shivering Isles is underrated, the voice acting and art direction are miles better than Oblivion.

I assume you've read "The Trouble With Lichen?" No, but you made me google it.

Buildwise, the first time I got to lv4 with a build that tried to do everything and not enough points, this time started off buying a lot of boring stat improvements in the easy first few levels, At lv 6 now I have Intelligence 9, and I chose that perk that grants 3 extra points per level, so now I have 21, or 22 points to distribute every time level up, that really helps getting either Science or lockpick high enough to be worthwhile, theres even spares to throw away on things like barter and speech. I tagged, small arms, repair, and sneak this time around.

I don't play with any points in mele, but can you sneak up on people and take them down silently with sneak attacks. I only found one silenced gun so far, and it was so weak I tossed it. I have a pretty high sneak skill, 50 or so, and I find it hard getting very close to targets, in any case you usually wouldn't want to get close to a ghoul, or to a group of enemies, smarter to stay with some cover. I have to say I don't miss indoor maps, or an exhaustive lengthy journal that you don't read anyway. I think you can place markers with text, tried it by accident, forgot how to.

That would include you not being able to take a bullet in the brain and survive, and involve a lot of reloading. The combat is too easy on Normal though, no question about it. Haven't tried hard. Although I came out spitting bile about the game, I still played it for 8 hours last night. That's a good indication that it doesn't suck as much as I thought initially. It's better than Oblivion I agree. You could do worse if you were looking for an RPG shooter.

It does play like a bethesta game, with the notable difference that the combat makes more sense. The quests don't hold your hand quite as much either. I took one that looked like a standard mule contract, turns out the employers' family had been murdered, I return to take a rest in town, and now the employer is dead, all I have are a few clues to killers whereabouts, not at any of those spots though. I'm halfway wondering if it's a bug. The minigames are hard. I mean they are obviously stat based, but the lockpicking appears completely random. No way to tell if you are doing the right thing or not, either it works or the pick breaks. I suppose you get more clues with a higher hacking skill, so far I haven't been successful once.

I like the game better now that I'm trudging around in the wilderness shooting things with a minigun. The combat mechanics and the stealth work ok.

I dunno, I was supposed to save this old lady from a bunch of roaches, I went in bat swinging, and hit her in the noggin killing her in one blow, not intentionally, I guess I should have used the aiming system. After that the grease haired rocker outside, her son, who recruited me for this particular quest, seemed to be permanently stuck in a loop, going, 'hurry shes right inside there, hurry shes right inside there, hurry shes right inside there'. I decided it would be best to put him out of his misery. All in all I don't think they would be happy to see me.

I bought the game anyway, I guess I'm just stupid. Key mapping is broken again, I take that as a big screw you to the pc gamers. Pipboy can be remapped, but it can only be closed with tab, and since you need it for everything... No arrow keys for me. Middlemouse minimizes the game, this could just be my mouse I guess. Now I have to figure out how to cram as much of the essential commands into the remaining usable mouse buttons, and look at the damn keyboard every time I need to do something. In the short space of time I have been playing, all the PCS I have talked to have pissed me off, I guess the speech dialogue will eventually dwindle to the usual universal Bethesta bot. I can't wait. Nothing is worse than too much bad voice acting. Can't make any definitive judgments, having barely finished the tutorial, but it ain't looking good.

One can't predict the rate of innovation, but it would be rather foolish to put all our eggs in that basket. I think we are back to a basic truth about humanity, we don't live long enough to bother about issues that will arise two generations down the line. We can worry, were good at that, but actually make choices here and now that will directly affect our economies, such gestures are usually in the token category.

I find this game terrifying and I

I've hit a bit of a snag. Anyone.

Ok, how much are you going to pay us again.

I wonder who decided that most of the short swords had to look like wooden toy swords painted gray.

No you bum, earn your own.

It's not getting my money.

The truism that in war the truth is the first casualty applies. Of course the US tries to avoid civilian death, but if they happen to screw the pooch it's not like they are going to come out and admit it. They are just going to say 'we don't know, they could have been insurgents'. Point of fact, it's happened that way in Iraq a couple of times already. The level of indiscriminacy is lower than say for instance in Gaza, when Israel carries out its policy of assassinations, or 'targeted killings' as they like to call them. Simply because A, the US has easy access, and B the question of hearts and minds can't be ignored.

Aren't we forgetting that the constant 'look behind you' scares in Doom 3 were bloody annoying. I much prefer them coming out of vents, or the ceiling, or the corridor ahead, it preserves some believability.

Or like Morrowind, where you trek around for a few days having fun exploring and eventually lose all interest because everything is essentially the same only different.

Some of the perks appear to grant dialogue options and there appears to be a lot of them. So if you don't buy dialogue perks, a lot of the options won't be available. I don't see why you would need special training to talk to people. I mean, one or two of those would be acceptable, but it really looks like there's too many.

Go there fetch that, give to NPC here. Can't have computer games without it.

I could take offence to that, given I have friends in the US Army. They do give a damn. But that's not really what you mean. You mean the organisation. However, as I've just explained, there's a massive organisation which tries to minimise civilian casualties. moreover you can bet that if you could come up with a way to entirely remove civilian casualties they'd buy it immediately. You'd be a millionairre. Whereas a terrorist would have no use for such a device. They NEED to kill civilians to scare the bojangles out of people. I should also point out that according to the Syrians, the attack wasn't an air strike. It was a special forces team. Makes it rather less likely that those killed where civilians (although clearly far from impossible). Ref n00bo's question, I don't know what constitutes an unlawful combatant, but I think it is something to do with wearing a uniform, and not including persons wearing the red cross or red crescent. Sounds like a nice device, but really isn't that a rather childish hypothetical. War, military operations, they costs lives, innocents lives too. You do what you can, but accept it as the price of achieving an objective. If you were merely trying to show that they weren't as bad as the terrorists, well, it's not that hard being better than a terrorist, no browny points for that achievement alone. Of course it's in Syrias interest to prove that the US slaughtered a kindergarten to achieve its aim, but one would be just as foolish to accept an official US military version of what happened.