Hurlshort

Picked up L4Dead, and I expect you peoples to drag me through a couple rounds. I'll be the one screaming through it.

H&R Block is offering a lot of good deals this year, it seems. Turbotax made all those things pretty easy when they happened to me, and they offer some online live support too.

no fine? cool... personally, i'm not into giving the government an interest free loan for a year, at least, not one that big. this year the loan is mine, i.e., i am going to owe about $600. my mortgage interest shot way up, but the HELOC interest actually went down and my wife worked the whole year instead of only 3 months, all of which totally changed our tax picture. we need to adjust our deductions, a task that is difficult to do when your income changes drastically from one year to the next. i probably ought to simply put more towards retirement, which helps with the tax liability anyway... taks I've been trying to convince my wife for years to fix her paycheck so that they take less out every month, but they make it pretty complicated in her school district. Still, I'd much rather get money back than have to pay anything at the end of the year, it's comforting to know that I will get some money right when my property tax bill is due. Even with our income being consistent over the years, figuring out the deductions is more math than I am comfortable with. I went with turbotax, been using them for about 10 years and it is always a breeze.

If you want to level fast, go play Vanguard, then go back to any MMO and it will feel fast in comparison. If you want to kill stuff faster, you might want to try Age of Conan.

Upgrading can be a tricky proposition even for someone who is comfortable with a PC. Sure, adding a stick of RAM isn't too hard, but there are a lot of questions you have to answer just buying the right stick of RAM, and then you might have complications with the OS reading it right. Nevermind adding a new chipset or mobo! The computer industry has made this stuff extremely complicated If I want to get a new videocard, I have to do a ton of research ahead of time to make sure I get the best bang for my buck, and the entire market changes every few months! So yeah, upgrading is not for everyone.

Yeah you are bro. OK sis, i will be your bro then. ah, I see what you did there.

Yeah you are bro. Dear son, Sorry, I slept around a lot. He is your bro.

Finished my taxes, whoo! I'm getting about $4300 back. Half of that goes to my property taxes and then the rest will pay off some debt.

But how will a new generation change the way games play?

It seems like folks are assuming if you say "consoles are good" it means you are saying "PC's are dead" It IS possible to enjoy both people.

You're not talking about the one made by Pandemic, right? I'd assume he is. It does look rather fantastic. Seems like they are going for a Chronicles of Riddick style that might work very well for the Dark Knight.

I think it's more like "the only two companies raking in piles of cash are Valve and Blizzard."

So do you feel then as though you are in agreement with the OP? That the console is going to fade away and we are going to return to a more generalized approach to home computing? Understand, I am not arguing with you directly, except to say that such reasoning flys in the face of everything we've been told about pc vs console game development. I understand what he said in opposite direction, you do not need PC anymore to do all the fancy thingies you were able to do few years ago, now you can make all of it on a gaming console aswell... I'm not really taking any one side on a console/PC debate here, I'm really saying that down the road it won't matter. There will be one box, and it will control everything. Even your appliances. And it will say things like "I'm afraid I can't let you do that" Seriously though, technology is going to plateau at some point, and the constant stream of upgraded hardware for the PC will turn into a trickle. So I think a good question to ask is, what is the difference between the console experience and the PC gaming experience? If I play my PC with a controller and sit on a couch, is it still a PC?

Isn't "one box that controls everything" just a wordy way of saying pc though? A console is a game optimized computer, still a computer, but one with a very specific purpose. Going back to a general purpose "one box that controls everything" is going right back to the pc again. If that approach didn't generate sufficient reveune for game devs and pubs before, why is it going to do so in 2 or three years? But consoles are no longer serving a very specific purpose. My 360 plays movies, and not just from DVD's, it streams them over the internet now. It works as a social networking platform. I can create chat rooms and sen messages to people. The only drawback is the lack of a keyboard, but with a headset I can send it over voice chat.

Eventually I think you'll just have one box that controls everything. But thank goodness there isn't a new generation of consoles coming out soon. The current gen is excellent and has plenty of life left in it. I think the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube generation was way too short as is.

Hmmm, not visually. For a 2D isometric game FO:T is pretty good-looking, especially the environments and vehicles. JA2, and I love it JA2, is extremely ugly by comparison. I wasn't thinking in this day and age that any big commercial outfit would pick up an engine as dated as FO:T. Just wondered if it would be feasible for skilled modders to MacGuyver it. Cheers MC Have you tried the 1.13 mod? It enhances the resolution of JA2, making it tremendously better looking. It was like playing a new game for me when I installed it.

I understand your complaints Deadly, I really do. I didn't say "Every Bethesda game is the pinnacle of excellence." But they haven't been horrible, and that is backed up by the only real thing that matters in business, sales. They have an audience, that audience buys their games, and that audience has even expanded over the years. You are putting forth an opinion, and I'm not trying to tell you it is wrong, I'm just asking you to see that there are enough people that disagree with you to make it a minority opinion. People enjoyed Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Arena, and Redguard. They were playable, garnered solid reviews, and generated solid sales. So I expected Fallout 3 to be all three of those things.

What a weird list. All that really shows is which arenas do a good job (or overinflate) keeping track of blocked shots and hits.

It would be a pretty drastic departure from JA2, sure, but I can see it working on a few levels. First off, VATS works well, much better than I imagined. The basic idea of JA combat is you have a merc with certain skills firing at enemies, and VATS isn't a big leap from that. Implementing squads would be the major difficulty. But I imagine that the possibility exists that you could jump from one character to another in VATS. The explosives, traps, and lockpicking stuff all fit into the JA world very well. Implementing a strategic layer, such as taking over sectors, training militia, and allowing mercs to heal and repair could be possible. Imagine if every town you help became a base for your mercs, allowing them to do those things. Bigtown is actually a decent example, you helped strengthened that town, protected it from mutants, and got them to defend it themselves. Anyways, this is just a little fanboy fantasy, there isn't any real chance of it happening. I don't see why anyone would use the Fallout Tactics engine for a new JA game. JA2 ver. 1.13 is already better than FO:T.

Actually, I wasn't concerned about Bethesda handling Fallout at all. They've never made a horrible game. Sure, there games are often flawed and their storytelling and dialogue are usually lacking, but at worst I figured we'd have a solid post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore. I was still surprised at how fantastic the game turned out though.

I'd buy it. As long as it kept all the features of Jag 2 rather than streamlining the **** out of it. Hell yeah. It's not like we are going to see any other JA3's.

He did get 59 politicians to unanimously agree to something. That is pretty amazing.

It's kinda like cutting off a guy's private parts and then banning him from sex. The first action pretty much guaranteed that, no need for the second.

It did, a lifetime ban. On Illinois public service offices only. But it might as well be a ban on political office forever, nobody is going to touch the guy now.

Well it actually got a lot attention, in Germany at least. Not so sure if this will be the case for the rest of the world too, however. It seems like it is picking up steam in the US, but it's mostly word of mouth press, which is free. I just meant the other companies blow a huge amount on commercials and banners.