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The exploding reactor bit is perfectly plausible and we've effectively seen reactors exploding (as a common usage definition) even if the reactor core itself wasn't breached. And while there cannot be a nuclear explosion in the classical sense there is plenty of potential for something equivalent to a "dirty bomb" in superheated (plutono-) uranic slag hitting a water source directly. I'd agree that "nuclear explosion" really should not be used though. No, we haven't seen reactors exploding, effectively or otherwise. Hydrogen explosions happened inside the reactor building but not within the reactor proper, meaning that until today, containment structures hadn't been damaged and emergency cooling operations hadn't been compromised. This is just an instance of "common usage" expressions being misleading in a situation where there's no excuse for a lack of rigor. Being precise doesn't require convoluted technical explanations and said lack of rigor contributes to misinformation in a subject that's already controversial enough. That's why we have professional journalists to begin with, don't you think? Unfortunately, we may yet see an actual reactor explosion as the process you mention follows the Japanese inability to prevent a full meltdown. We don't need that to have a serious disaster though, apparently a fire getting out of hand at one of the now-exposed spent fuel cooling pools is a likely possibility as well, and it would no doubt further deteriorate working conditions on site. Fun.

Yeah, I wouldn't put any stock on what that clown says - the man is pretty much a political corpse even in his own party, thankfully, and watching him would be comical were it not for the fact that he's the president. Political will has very little to do with it, there's a bunch of stuff related to the march 2004 Madrid attacks which for some reason Zapatero's government has no interest in investigating but the judiciary is nonetheless carrying the case forward. From what's been made available, it looks like Fuentes has been talking tough and threatening to disclose big names he could have been involved with since 2006... never to act on those threats. Call me na

^ Yeah, I was really impressed by their reaction. Inspiring, to say the least. As far as I know, not even then a nuclear explosion could happen. "Enriched" uranium (~3% U-235) used in light water reactors simply cannot cause a nuclear explosion (for reference, weapons grade uranium is ~80% U-235 though lower concentrations are viable). This can't be stressed enough because I've been hearing talk these last few days of "nuclear explosions" and "exploding reactors". I hate when mainstream journalists can't seem to grasp simple concepts like the difference between an explosion in a nuclear facility and a nuclear explosion, and the fact that an actual nuclear explosion is the result of overcoming incredible technical challenges rather than a fortuitous event. And now this cluster**** is at the very least, going to cause delays in the decision making process as it pertains to nuclear power and energy policy. I wonder what could have been the consequences if instead of a NPP, the quake and tsunami had hit a hydroelectric dam.

I know about Messi's HGH treatment, but other than that...?

It does. Which begs the question why the demo doesn't show any of that, and is locked to "normal" difficulty. It may be that they've done with DA2 what they did with ME2, where the depth of the combat gameplay isn't immediately apparent. From what folks are posting, that may well be the case. I like action games well enough and some of the things I've read are very interesting (LOS aggro, physically avoiding attacks), but encounter design systematically based on waves and no friendly fire are serious turnoffs for me. Also it looks like they have finally given up on balancing a game that uses the same ruleset for the player and enemy NPCs - I can't say I like "boss mob" shenanigans, but I guess it's forgivable if the end result is fun. I wonder if they are planning on releasing a toolset. From what I read on the Bioboards, enabling FF is not as simple as editing a 2DA.

If it was advertised as an action game, then it fails even harder. ME2 and God of War are action games. DA2 is a party-based mongrel with a stripped down gameplay that relies on an autoattack function that was apparently left out (\o/). I know that so long as the game requires you to do anything more complicated than A,A,A,A,A to win, you'll claim it's "tactical" and dismiss all criticisms by fiat, but saying it's so doesn't make it so. Compare to JA or SS for reference of what "tactical gameplay" looks like. @Tale: can you comment on encounter design?

DAO had some combat lag issues that were introduced (or made worse) by patch 1.04, regardless of hardware apparently. In my experience such issues were directly linked to the amount of NPCs in a given cell, were they involved in combat or not. I'd rather they had fixed the issue than just sidestepped it but I don't know what's worse, lagged and unresponsive combat or enemies being magically dropped on top of your party. Having played the demo and reading Laidlaw's comparisons of combat in DAO and DA2, the impression I got is that enemies are indeed weaker overall. *shrug*

Only... it's not really fast-paced or meant to compare against BG or NWN. The difference with combat in DAO is that enemies are even weaker this time around (DAO was apparently too difficult), and it sports some really retarded, animu-inspired combat animations, giving it the appearance of a faster pace - all in the vein of "button -> AWESOME!" edit: I just checked, and some cooldowns have been halved. Never was too fond of cooldowns tbh, but weaker enemies and ridiculous animations contribute to the feeling of faster combat more than ability spam, I think.

Might be that what they want the product to be is based on what the product was advertised as? (DaRk HeROiC & tactical gameplay) Sure, buying into the hype is the player's fault but why market the game as something it's not?

Yeah, Van Persie shouldn't have been sent off. You shouldn't red card a guy for something so silly, and most certainly not when there may be doubts that he's actually heard the offside being called. And I agree about Alves. Scrawny diving piece of **** is always the first to pick a fight after he fouls someone, and somehow he manages to get away with it most of the time. Bad calls on the ref's part for sure. None of that however changes the fact that Arsenal did bugger all throughout the match. Nada, zilch, nothing. Their only goal was scored by a Barcelona player in the only corner kick they got. Maybe one or two shots on the goal. They chose to play cowardly, to live off the advantage they had from the first leg, and they paid for it. And rightly so, I might add. Messi's goal was just brilliant, and I'm a Real fan. Oh well.

You don't think if they made a game in a setting where that could work, they'd try? Yvonne Strahovski:

The romances and the linearity in his movies. Yeah, it's not like Bio games have ever been anything but linear, and chock full of cringe-worthy romance. So it may be true that Bio is the Michael Bay of games, but it's certainly nothing new.

Oh, I agree. Jail is a waste of resources and not guaranteed to rehabilitate. I'll tell you what's cheaper to deal with these hooligans: It's also time-proven method, you see.

Yeah, because every time a drunkard makes a mess, it's everyone's fault, but his. Therefore, everyone must pay, but him. And so they do.

Shut up fool, he's him. He has a different constitution, a different brain, a different heart. What you see is obviously his tiger blood.

Agreed. Probabilities of yet another Trek movie being any good were pretty small as well, but the facelift did work, surprisingly enough. So as long as the probabilty is non-zero (Uwe Boll directing for example), I'm not against a sequel. What I'd really like to see though is new stuff that compares favorably to the masterpieces of the past. After watching Repo Men, I'm increasingly convinced that there's something very wrong at the core of the (sci-fi) filmmaking business. Is talent a thing of the past or what? What I don't see is how a crappy sequel or spinoff reflects on the original, though. Same as with the automatic trashing of sequels of cult games, me no understand.

That's... eye opening. Throughout DAO I had the feeling that they had set the right stage to tell some tragic, dark tales... and then they had gone out of their way to introduce a HeRoIC (read: win-win) way of solving quests that reversed that effort completely. Connor is a good example of this. You can have his mother sacrifice herself to perform a dangerous ritual that can save her son. Or you could risk going to the Circle to get them to do the safer version of the ritual. Only... there is no such risk. Apparently all the abomination aspires to is turning his uncle into the court's buffoon and isn't threatened at all by the heroes' actions, so it'll wait patiently for you to go get some reinforcements. Hell, you can solve the rest of the plots before going back and dealing with it and despite the sense of urgency you get through the quest, nothing ever happens. Eamon doesn't kick the bucket. Undead hordes don't ravage the countryside. The kid stays patiently in his room. This effectively renders Isolde's sacrifice meaningless. The scene of the bargain offered by the desire demon is similarly cheapened. You can learn the single most overpowered specialization in the game from her, for the fair and reasonable price of an innocent's soul. Or you could, you know, unlock the specialization for that and subsequent playthroughs and then reload the game and be a hero (a dark hero if you become a blood mage). Same with the Reaver spec, etc. The game is full of these cheap choices that allow for the player to win all scenarios no matter what, paving the way for an "optimal" way through the game, and a suitably chirpy epilogue. Of course you can still roleplay and purposefully make calls that get people killed needlessly, but then when you are told by Alistair that "there could have been another way!", you know he's telling the truth. He's not na

Good to know that you can handle the whole Obsidz boards experience. Funny though, that you felt the need to take a potshot and call names. Shows how strongly you don't care.

Hmm, no. Poker is a completely different game with a strong component of randomness and where body language reading can provide the edge. Also, previous hands don't directly define subsequent rounds and so patterns are much less important. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse game you could have chosen to compare with. At any rate, I don't see how being a FIDE master (and I'm going to grant the benefit of doubt and assume you're not just pulling stuff out your ass) is interchangeable with being a cognitive scientist and therefore an authority on the matter. Would you let Lance Armstrong perform heart surgery on you? Perhaps you'd like to cite some actual authorities. You know, so you have something more solid to stand on than "bull**** moran" and "no U". http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguide...89TJCB47VF1HDQ9 ^Not an academic piece by any means, but illustrates what I'm saying. See, I'm not just "speculating". Is pattern recognition "memory" in the same sense as reciting a bunch of historical dates? Probably not. Is it "reasoning" in the sense of solving problems one has no familiarity with? Nope, it's not that either. I was wrong to say there's no skill involved in playing chess. Mostly because I can't very well define what constitutes "skill", without falling back to the notion of success and building on top of that. And since some players consistently win and others consistently lose, there is definitely a degree of "skill" involved. Whatever that may be. Irrelevant. Apples aren't oranges. Grom already made this argument, btw. Read the chess discussion part and how sophistication isn't necessary for complexity. DA2, judging from the demo, is neither sophisticated nor complex. [citation needed] I'm inclined to believe otherwise, given that intelligence is an important factor in a person's character. http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/ (not to be taken too seriously!) "No true Scotsman..." It's also circular logic. Good entertainment will attract many people. It attracts many people because it's good. That says very little about the quality of whatever it is you're talking about. Semantics. "Defined" vs "influenced", "affected" and "reflected on". Pivotal design decisions affect the essence of a game. Traditional RPG conventions were getting in the way of the enjoyment of the game for many people, as revealed by datamining, so they had to go. Or so said Laidlaw. Good point. Maybe indeed. So then we're left with Grom's point that Bio simply has drawn all the wrong conclusions, in light of their changes to the game. Heh.

"You are wrong because I say so. Also, my dad can beat up your dad." Thanks man. Everything is clear now. Next.

Chess is essentially pattern recognition. You can perhaps recognize a pattern if you haven't seen it before, but having played a gazillon games and being familiar with the most common patterns is what distinguishes top-ranked players from amateurs. In high-level games, reasoning and branch pruning heuristics may play a bigger role as players go out of their way to seek less analyzed scenarios, but other than that, yeah, it's memory.

Chess is a game where a small number of simple rules can produce a huge variety of situations - that's a degree of complexity that's absent from modern day games. At any rate, chess can take a lifetime to master because it's essentially a memory game, not one of skill. Masters memorize thousands of structures and how the game will develop depending on the move so they can play two or three turns ahead of the game, that's how they can play n games simultaneously against lower-ranked opponents and beat them relatively effortlessly. So, I'm going to say, not terribly relevant. Complexity has no inherent value, you say. Once again, I'm underwhelmed by your not-so-insightful remarks, considering that I'm not arguing for greater complexity for complexity's sake. I know that no single element has inherent value, as they are simply tools at the game designer's disposal. A deliberate lack of complexity can be as bad as a deliberate excess, as is the case with salt. You have come to like simple things (false btw, what you are hinting at is your preference for emergent complexity, as your chess example shows) Good for you. I like fiddly stuff. It's a sloppy rebuttal too because I didn't say smart(-er) people necessarily enjoy more complex games, either, which is what you disputed. Look at the *other* side of the curve. Smooth Grom, real smooth.

Cool story bro. Now, re-read my post and try to compose a response that isn't a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived insult (PROTIP: the meat* of the argument is in the proportions and how dumbing down is a deliberate effort supported by customer behavior studies, to expand their potential target segment, not that people who enjoy BW games are stupid). Didn't I say I'd settle for their cinematic shooters? Yes, yes I did. I'm not crying over the spilled milk. I eat more Whoppers than filet mignons in a year, anyway. *pun not intended

Yes. And? I'm not sure how looking at actual player data is a bad thing. And, how about you read the rest of my post and the post I made afterwards making my position clear -and why I don't like the result of their datamining- instead of trying to put me in my place? The real complaint is that it's simpler to get rid of the curve altogether, than make an approachable game with scaling difficulty and progressive complexity. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...2454-Easy-Games No, but it's a rule of thumb that tends to work better than approaching anything and everything with wide-eyed innocence and high expectations. Do you accept that stupid(-er) people prefer simpler entertainment formulas? Do you accept that the distribution of intelligence in a given sample follows a gaussian distribution? DA2 is, by virtue of being defined by conclusions drawn from customer behavior analysis, a lowest common denominator game. This doesn't mean DA2 will be a thoroughly unenjoyable piece of **** with no redeeming qualities whatsoever - rather, it means that BioEA would rather serve Whoppers than filet mignons, because demand for the former is bigger and they understandably want to make more money in a business where filet mignons and Whoppers are priced equally.

I'd be more inclined to believe that were it not for the fact that the huge step backwards that is DA2 (as far as what I want to see in RPGs goes) is the result, among other things, of datamining influencing the development process. As a result of the realization that I hold "fringe views" wrt computer games in general and RPGs in particular, coupled with the de facto democratization of design decisions adopted by Bio, I have given up all hope that they will make the kind of game I want, and will have to settle for their cinematic shooters at best, and perhaps the MMO. I no longer feel like collaborating with them for anything. Do you see yet why I don't appreciate their efforts to make me use their bastardized Facebook? And tinfoil hats are, like, so 90's.