Hurlshort

Atheists apparently have waged war on Christmas! http://news.yahoo.com/atheist-messages-dis...-194651974.html Honestly this reminds me of the little snot nosed kid who tries to ruin the magic of Santa for everyone else. You don't need to be religious to enjoy the holidays.

And if that's really all you took away from the game, then you missed a lot. I think there were some cool sidekicks or something. As I said, it was years ago and I'm an old man with way too many other things on my mind. It's a game, I enjoyed it, I'm not really sure what else I should have taken away from it.

Seconded.

It pays quite a lot of attention to it, actually. So far it has really bridged the two games, while setting the groundwork for TOR. But I think you and I have very different opinions of the KotOR 2 story. I played it years ago and have a very faint memory of the plot and characters. I remember enjoying it immensely, but I couldn't really expand on any of the details. I was an Exile, I fought a lot of sith, I lost my connection to the force but blah blah blah I recovered it and became a badass. Kreia was an old chick who was manipulating me and then we fought at the end. That's about it. Anyways, the book has covered that well enough to satisfy my crusty memory.

I guess I haven't really looked at the book from a female perspective. But I also don't have much in the way of expectations when I read these types of books. So anyone in on the first wave? I'm guessing you had to preorder on day one to get in today. I'm still hoping I will get in by Thursday.

One or two people mention it here, and it isn't particularly well rated. Somewhat amused that even the people who gave it a good rating made it sound pretty bad. Hey, I'm not going to tout it as a strong piece of literature either. It's a pretty basic book. If you aren't into the games, I can't imagine why you would read it, actually. It's pulp fiction that gives a nice little background story on a video game. Oner, I did notice you were dissecting the blog and I agree with your point. When I read that section of the book I didn't see any problem with the exchange. I haven't actually read the blog, it sounds a bit pretentious for my tastes. edit: Looking over the thread, I think Oblarg is the only one dissecting this stuff.

You guys are dissecting this stuff like it is serious literature. I barely remember the main plot points of KotOR 2, and nothing I've read of the Revan novel feels out of place. Lighten up, it's Star Wars, it's about lightsabers and guns that go pew pew. I don't remember spending much time in college literature classes studying trashy sci-fi novels, and I think there was a good reason for that.

I started reading the Revan novel last night. I don't see what the drama was about, it's a very nice bridge between the two KotOR games. I was delighted to read an exchange between Atris and Revan early on. It's also doing a good job of setting the stage for TOR. But I'm also not one to split hairs over how the Force works and all that. I'm just about a third of the way through it right now.

Publishers and developers are always going to butt head with second hand sales, it's the nature of the business.

The problem with your argument is that it should mean that indie games are less pirated than big budget DRM filled games. The evidence shows nothing of the sort, with some indie studios claiming that 90% of the people playing their games pirated them. Even the Humble Indie Bundle that was offered for 0.01 cent was pirated by about 25% of the players. That's insane.

I agree that we are experiencing a great period of indie development. The success stories of Minecraft and Braid has really inspired a whole slew of folks to go for the indie dream. But the piracy still sucks for those indie developers. They are usually only asking for a few bucks and their hard work still gets ripped off with way too much regularity. Piracy must be extremely frustrating for an indie developer. Don't give me any bull about free advertising either.

Yeah, I think the servers are pretty well prepared. Origin and the customer support are another concern. But hey, it's always good to remember patience with MMO launches.

Yeah, I hung up, reset my password, and that seemed to work. It's definitely concerning that customer service is this bad before the game is even released. Technically they should have way less volume to deal with right now. I did get excited to hear my Guild server is assigned. I will be adventuring on Corellia Run

What's wrong? Someone stole your sweetroll? Yeah, I had a student use that arrow in the knee line on me the other day for being late to class.

Based on my preorders, I'm guessing I won't get an email until Wednesday or Thursday for early access. I have one code from September and one in October. I was charged for my Collector's Edition, so hopefully that will ship out in the next couple days. I'm actually on hold with customer support, I'm locked out of my account because of a security code problem. I've been on hold an hour, what the heck?

I bought a Roku a few days ago, and it's a pretty nifty device. I've been trying to figure out a way to move away from cable TV the last few months. It costs about $70 a month, and I barely use it. My wife, unfortunately, is quite attached to it. Her big complain with streaming services is the lack of local news in the morning, and the lack of any programming from Bravo. Bravo has all those Real Housewife shows, and she is addicted. They are terrible, but let's not judge too harshly, we all play some fairly embarrassing video games here. So the Roku has quite a few streaming channels, and it makes accessing Netflix and Hulu+ very easy. It didn't allow me to cancel cable completely, but I compromised with my wife and cancelled all our non-basic channels, which saved about $15 a month. I also cancelled my Tivo subscription, which was another $15 a month. We can use the cable company box as a DVR, it's a piece of junk compared to Tivo, but it works well enough. The Roku itself was $80 and there is no monthly fees, so it will pay for itself rather quickly. The kids programming is also pretty great, and that's important in my house. That extra $15 I was paying was really just to get a few kids shows, and now I can stream stuff for free. One weird thing I noticed is this HBO Go service looks great and has a lot of good stuff to stream, but apparently you have to pay for a cable subscription to HBO to get it to work. That seems crazy. Why would I need to subscribe to a cable channel to watch stuff online? Ah well, I have enough movie options anyways.

I'm definitely having trouble focusing on much with TOR just around the corner. I ended up playing a few rounds of Battlefield 3. I got teamkilled a few times, one time for jumping in a helicopter that I saw a person in, and then bailing when I realized he wanted me to fly it. I guess this bothered him, so he opened up on me. Then I was killed in a jeep for driving off without someone. I was actually going to pick up a few folks who were running up ahead, but whatever. Hardcore servers are hardcore! I might go back to Mafia II for a bit, at least the cars in the 50's are a lot more fun.

So once the publishers have your private information, what criminal enterprise are you worried they will undertake? I agree with you about the invasive software, but I'm more worried about hackers getting it than anything the publishers themselves do. Also, when you buy a hardcopy Steamworks game, it does install off the disk, it just uses Steam as the installer. That's why it is traditionally much faster to install that way.

Hmm, if you liked Total Overdose, did you ever play Just Cause 2?

That was simply hilarious. That was awesome! That guy is my hero.

Everything I've heard is that it is awesome, but you are better off getting Saints Row 2 cheap and figuring out if it's your type of game. It's heavy on the lampoonery.

Yeah, I get that they are trying to capture a Goodfellas or Casino type story, but the main character just doesn't have the charm of a young Ray Liota or Robert De Niro. You rooted for those guys even though they were in some messed up stuff. It's a big departure from the original, where you were just a cabbie mixed up with the wrong people.

I played a bit more of Mafia II last night. It's a beautiful game with solid game play and voice acting, but I still struggle with the fact my character is a total douche.

Thanks Volourn, that genuinely makes me feel better about my situation.

Look, this is a thread about piracy. People keep trying to bring DRM into the argument. That isn't necessary. Forget trying to justify piracy. These are video games, there is never a justification for taking them without permission. Give it up. We can happily discuss all the crappy DRM out there. I will rail about Ubisoft's crappy choices right alongside everyone. But at no point does DRM justify piracy. We have many avenues to fight DRM. We can stop buying the products, that's the big one. We can sign petitions. We can whine on the internet. All of those are actually effective, I have a hard time believing Ubisoft isn't rethinking their handling of the PC market. They may pull out entirely, but hopefully other publishers will take note of their failure. Pirating doesn't help the cause at all. It just fulfills a selfish desire to play the game.