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AC2 is way better than AC1 so far. Ezio is a better character, and really the whole pace of the plot is moving nicely. I'm only about 5 hours in, but I'm enjoying it and hopefully it will keep me engaged throughout.

Are we still talking about video games here?

Decided to pick up a copy of Assassin's Creed 2 and play it. So far so good.

I think the simple answer is it is turn-based.

I now the unemployment numbers are skewed and all that, and I don't give any president credit for this, but it looks like unemployment is going down, even if it is slow. We are adding jobs every month. In fact the economy as a whole has been steadily recovering. This is coming from a guy who went through a foreclosure and has a terrible credit score, by the way. Again, I don't actually give the federal government credit for the recovery, I give it to the people of our country.

That isn't a picture of the US. Again I'm amazed at your laziness, it would not be very hard to find a picture of a black person affected by Sandy in the US.

It amazes me that this is a political issue. Climate change is happening, we should be doing what we can to prepare and prevent. Leave the party rhetoric at the underwater doorway.

My wife has had her cheerleaders work two recent McD's re-openings. I think Iowa is a bit out of the way for them, but you might want to check with the local school about such things. Congrats

It has long been surmised that it is a flaw in his programming. While the volobot was extremely advanced for its time, it has had trouble adapting to new forum software.

Yeah, Romney's brief trip around Europe during the Olympics didn't go very well apparently. It's a small sample size, but it still doesn't bode well for his term if he wins.

See my problem is I think both Romney and Obama will continue to make the federal government bigger, which I frown upon tremendously. So I really dislike both parties. But I do see civil rights as the biggest issue out there, and only one of these guys has actually taken a stance against discrimination. I took the quiz on the libertarian homepage, and I seem to be a centrist. Oh, and the libertarian party does not seem very enamored with Romney.

I have faith in Prosper!

Welcome back GD I tend to simply avoid hard alcohol. I'm sure I would enjoy a nice bourbon, but I drank enough crap in college that I have no desire for it. I prefer to have a good quality beer here and there instead. Plus with the recent health scare my wife had, I've really been avoiding anything that is too tough on the body. Speaking of health, I made lentils for the first time the other night, and they came out fantastic. I washed them, then simmered them with nonfat, low sodium chicken broth and a splash of cooking wine for about 30 minutes. I added in some cayenne pepper for good measure, and it tasted great. I put it over rice and peas, and served it with some naan fresh out of the oven. One of the better dinners I've made.

Anubite, I think you are taking things a bit too seriously here. This was a good discussion on the criteria needed for a bad game, and I appreciate you going to great lengths to explain your perspective. Nepenthe was simply keeping things light, which is always a good thing. We are talking about video games here, it isn't really serious business. It's a fun hobby for us, as is discussing them online. Also, Volo is Volo. As a new poster it is hard to understand, but he's kind of like the crotchety old man of the forums that yells at everyone to get off his lawn. You will get used to him, or just put him on ignore.

Some think they need love. How do they know they need love? Stop being so certain. Do you know you need love because you feel you need it? How does one feel they need love? Clearly its you deciding you need it over feelings felt. Why would you want to keep those feelings? Can't they be the opposite and you still not want them? You say you don't want love but it is a necessity. So it's somehow not your fault you feel the way you do and yet you think love will change things? Shouldn't you believe that change coming from within is apart from change from outside? Or do you believe in love affecting both out and in. Why don't you let your love affect you then? Can it not be advantageous to feel as you do and act as you want without assuming you're right to act? If you have to assume you're right, then no amount of reasoning would of mattered anyway. Why take things on love? Why!

I definitely agree that The Wire is a better show, the long term character development has been some of the best I've seen.

Well I doubt many developers actively pursue brain deadening their games. But it is very difficult to make a game that really appeals to the hardcore fans but still manages to attract the much larger casual (not a very good term, I know, but I try not to belittle people) audience. I think Bioware failed with DA2, but the ME trilogy as a whole satisfied me and I plan on giving whatever they do next a careful look. Every once in awhile we get a developer willing to take some risks, like Firaxis with Xcom, and it can be enough to give me some hope. Still, I worry that the sales of Xcom will simply backup my worst fears.

So Skyrim is an example of a good RPG?

There are a lot of problems with your analogy, but the main thing I want to say is that Bioware is a business, and they aren't going to grow by simply releasing 90's style RPG's. I think you are overestimating the amount of people interested in such games. Heck, Project Eternity is targeting that audience, and people are even paying way over market price for the game, but they still only managed to get 80,000 people to pay for it. That just doesn't come close to the numbers of more mainstream titles. We might as well go take a swim in a tar pit at this point

Anubite, you seem to be very passionate about this, and I appreciate you taking the time to go into great detail with your responses. Comparing Dragon Age 2 to a recent Adam Sandler film actually seems pretty fitting. I do think you should work the target audience into your lists though. I'm more prone to agree with your rating of DA2 as a bad game because it seems like it missed its audience. That's why I typically say Bioware has changed its target demographic, it is no longer going after the people that bought Baldur's Gate. However a game like Starcraft 2 and MW3 seem to be designed very successfully for a certain audience, and so are harder to justify as bad games.

I completely agree with the first part of your sentence. It is comfortable that you can watch any episode of Law and Order and not be confused about the cast and plot progression. As for it not being very dark, I disagree quite a bit. There are extremely disturbing storylines in all the L&O series, although SVU tends to take the cake. The Wire is great because i doesn't hold anything back, but I also don't mind a show that uses some subtlety, which network television obviously dictates. Also I've seen quite a few Law and Order episodes that don't end on a happy note. Hung juries, lesser charges, etc. I'm three seasons into The Wire and the first two seasons have actually wrapped up pretty nicely at the end, so I don't see a huge difference in terms of verdicts. The big difference might be that corruption within the police force is rarely a storyline in L&O, while it is front and center in The Wire. But I still think there are plenty of favorable comparisons between the two shows.

I'll take a cut of that

It could be the end of the Monkey Island franchise, that's pretty horrible at least. Actually I'm guessing Disney will be more willing to license out a property like that than Lucasarts was.

You guys have really weird opinions of Law & Order. Thankfully for me they don't reflect the views of the general public, as it was an immensely popular series that went 20 seasons and has spawned extremely popular spin-offs. Criminal Intent is my favorite, and SVU is a close second, although it can be hard to watch. I'm enjoying The Wire tremendously, but I fail to see how it is insulting to compare it to one of the longest running crime dramas ever created.

Well, there're tree rings too : http://wattsupwithth...s-in-ther-data/ The problem with claiming scientific consensus is that academics are overwhelmingly leftist, and thus can't be trusted on issues touching public policy. They have a huge confirmation bias. Plus I remember the Y2K panic and the alarmism over Kuwait oil fires, and I'm still waiting for Krezack's giant solar flare to destroy civilization. It's more concerning that there is a real lack of academics on the right. Academics by definition are highly educated, so it should concern the right that few academics support rightwing policies.