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I'd hit it.

Blah blah do you have an argument or are you just going to attack my use of the word "bourgeoisie"? Especially since I haven't used it?Blah blah the bourgeoisie this the anti-communists that. Do you have an argument or are you just going to keep repeating the same boring rhetoric forever?

Can you stop sounding like a broken record? "the bourgeoisie this, the bourgeoisie that". Seriously, it's not only tedious as **** to read, it's also completely vacuous. Do you have a bot to write your posts for you? Not at all... unless you are part of the bourgeoisie, of course.

@Rostere: Gorbachev made the "right" decisions, with which objectives in mind? Dissolution of the Soviet Union? Avoiding the use of force to keep the people of the Republics in line? Preserving the Soviet state at any cost? Those are mutually incompatible -- the dissolution was most certainly NOT his intention, and the others were his duties as HOS. He may have been morally in the right, but he failed as a (Soviet) manager. So because it was the local elites that finally initiated the disintegration of the USSR, they were a necessary and sufficient element? Are you familiar with the concept of catalysis? Also, the referendum called for a new reformed federal Soviet Union, but it didn't clearly ask whether the Union should be dissolved altogether or kept as it was, if choosing "no"; the wording was confusing and open to interpretation. Doesn't matter, anyway. If "the People" really liked the Soviet system better, they would have switched back one way or another. But the only place where this has even remotely happened is Belarus. That should have read "Zionist", my bad. I'm not too good at this whole Marxist-Leninist inflammatory rhetoric thing. Precisely. Now compare it with the 1990 Russian election where political parties other than the CPSU were banned, a portion of the seats were reserved for party candidates, and in spite of Glasnost, the media was still a state apparatus. I wonder what the OSCE ratings for that one would have been, heh.

As I said, I was just being silly and taking your idea that "anything they add to this, it isn't X-Com" literally. TFTD had some weird **** that didn't fit very well with the canon established in the first game, too. Wasn't that sort of the point though, that people cared about the gameplay mechanics, not the cannon? What people care about and what things aren't always one and the same... Seriously though, if what defines X-Com for people is mechanics alone, then JA = XCOM. edit: So... consider it a spinoff. Problem solved!

You mean I have failed to establish a causal link in your eyes. Unfortunately, that's not a problem I can solve, as history is not a mathematical science. However, I could just as easily assert that the destruction of the Armada had absolutely no relevance in the decline of the Spanish Empire, and you couldn't really disprove that negative -- after all, the USN recovered from Pearl Harbor and went on to win the war in the Pacific. I guess it just comes to choosing which explanation you think is more plausible; whether the fall of the USSR was the result of a massive conspiracy perpetrated by the corrupt revisionist counter-revolutionary elements in the higher echelons of the Party and their imperialist Jewish overlords, or simply the result of an economy that couldn't compete, coupled with an incompetent leadership, mismanagement and a critical lack of foresight and strategic planning that her enemies knew how to use. So those were "free and fair", huh? How free and fair compared to the last Russian elections? I thought that was a "right-wing dictatorship". Which one is it?

As I said, I was just being silly and taking your idea that "anything they add to this, it isn't X-Com" literally. TFTD had some weird **** that didn't fit very well with the canon established in the first game, too.

Possibly because technical limitations didn't allow for much more. I'm going to be even sillier than usual, and say that since TFTD played mostly underwater, it wasn't X-Com, either. X-Com was about the iso, turn-based, squad tactics as much as it was about sci-fi, molecular control, and the horror atmosphere inspired by playing night missions against the remains of ancient alien civilizations that use people to make yummy shakes in their vats. If they can make a squad-based shooter that incorporates aspects from outside the actual mission gameplay (research, UFOpedia, base and budget management, randomized environments, etc), it could be nerdgasm. If not, well, I suppose we'll at least recognize the Chrysalids. Oh, wait. It's going to be cross-platform... nevermind then.

Exactly what kind? Interested to know. I mean, anything more than obvious stuff with trade relations, and missile positioning? It mostly had to do with the inability of Soviet economy to a) cope with the domestic increase in grain demand (production had remained almost constant from 1965), forcing the Soviet Union to be the first importer globally, b) sustain its superpower status, and c) use its huge industrial sector competitively to export anything but weapons (the market for those was down), restricting its exports to raw materials only. The US took advantage of this by, among other things, pressuring Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices down, thus hitting hard the #1 source of hard currency for the Soviets, and instituting a grain embargo which, while ineffective at starving the Soviets into submission, did drive up the prices they paid for it. Measures were also adopted to prevent Soviet gas imports to Europe, further strangulating an already strained economy. And don't forget that mess called Afghanistan. The economic troubles and widespread disillusion were what prompted Gorbachev to try his hand at reform... and we all know how that turned out. lof would have you believe that the Sowjetunion was close to functional autarky and that huge military operations cost no money as Soviet armies were conscripted. He'd also place the blame for the fall of his workers' utopia on rootless cosmopolitans and the corrupt neo-bourgeois Soviet elite (this rhetoric should ring familiar, no?). But as with most things he posts, the reality is simply other. I posted more or less the same on another thread already, btw. If you are interested in the topic, try to find works that focus on the geopolitics of oil throughout the 20th century.

That's a fairly liberal use of the phrase "right-wing dictatorship", bud.

What, you mean that Gorbachev was an incompetent on purpose? Interesting theory.

Regardless of the hopelessly romantic prism through which you are reviewing history, are you sure that using this guy as an example of what you are saying is a good idea? The guy who peacefully dismantled the Soviet Union? Yes, that might be quite the good example. Yeah, only that wasn't his intention by any stretch of the imagination -- American geopolitical and economic machinations were much more decisive in leading to the collapse of the USSR than he was. As a statesman, Gorbachev was pretty terrible, and he's actually a better example of what Hades said than of your own thesis. Of course, we love him because he sucked at being a bloodthirsty, power-crazed communist dictator, but that's a different story...

Regardless of the hopelessly romantic prism through which you are reviewing history, are you sure that using this guy as an example of what you are saying is a good idea?

I know Kung Fu.

True in the strict sense that you haven't posted "it's justifiable for them to do that" but, in fact, false: That statement makes it clear that Hamas targeting Israeli civilians is, in your mind, less reprehensible than Israel targeting Palestinian civilians. You don't need to specifically state that Hamas firing rockets in the general direction of Israeli cities is "ok", but you are implicitly justifying it as "rising against their oppressors". Otherwise, it would be inconsequential whether they were doing it in "self-defense" or just for kicks. Something is either justifiable or unjustifiable, but not both depending on whether it's the workers of the world rising up against the tyranny of the petite-bourgeoisie, or the neo-colonialist white dogs keeping the third world down. Pick one.

Because they tend to support Israel? Unless you are sticking to some outdated and awfully exclusive international socialist definition of "left-wing", I don't see your point. Well, I do, but not in this context.

Yeah, with great amounts of "professional narrative", no doubt. lololol

AvP had squadies? He may have been referring to Gearbox's Alien: Colonial Marines. As for the game in question, I'll just wait and see. Most cross-platform shooters are turds without any redeeming qualities, though. So chances are Morgy will get his fix. \o/

They are bad in that you are no longer hearing the actor's own voice and inflections. I remember how surprised I was to discover how much acting is a voice work thing when I started watching movies in English, that I had previously seen dubbed. Other than that, no, they aren't so bad... if you don't mind re-interpretations. As for your original question, I think it's the publisher's call whether to commission localized VOs or not. So your chances of finding out would probably be better if you directed your questions to whoever is distributing the game in your country, instead.

...whoa.

Because excellent AI isn't cost-effective. People would rather have shiny graphics, cool interfaces, interesting gameplay mechanics, and any number of other more visible things, than an AI that can kick their asses without cheating if they aren't paying attention, and most importantly, surprise the player and adapt to changing conditions. Depending on the type of game, AI can also be quite processor intensive. And then there's modding. If people really want better AI and the game deserves it, the modding community will eventually produce an AI overhaul for those that do want it, which places it even lower on the dev priority scale.

ORLY? Further, I'm thinking that if the US leveled Spain, chances are the rest of the EU would thank them for freeing them from such an economic dead weight...

That's cute. Aren't you the one suffering from the "imperialist propaganda!" knee-jerk response to anything that doesn't agree with your prefab views on Russia? Suggest you start taking your own advice.

Err... Czechoslovakia was dismantled after Hitler made use of "ethnic tensions" (and a good deal of intimidation) to get Slovaks to declare independence from Czechoslovakia. Britain and France had only been involved in the Sudetenland question, and there were no clauses in the Munich Agreement that allowed for German occupation of the remainder of the country. While I understand and agree with your clarification about the M-R pact not being a "proper" alliance, the Munich Agreement just isn't the same -- one was meant to split the spoils of a planned war, while the other was, at least on paper, meant to avoid war.

1) I stand by my original statement that conventional forces alone aren't enough to completely defeat guerrilla warfare, without breaking the laws of war one way or another, generally by incurring in genocide and invariably targeting non-combatants. There's a wealth of historical examples to support this, too. In this regard, the Taliban show how, despite being in front of a multinational coalition that includes what is without a doubt the best military in the world, force alone (and what could possibly be construed as war crimes) haven't done nearly enough. You may think we are "winning", but I'm led to believe otherwise by what I've read (including, but not limited to, the links I posted). 2) The Napoleonic campaigns are quite vast in scope, and we could perhaps discuss them in a different thread altogether. What I was taught however, is that Napoleon's field armies had been generally undefeated (lol Russia) up until the Peninsular War... and that British successes in Spain and Portugal were made possible thanks in large part to the crippling effects that irregulars had on French forces. Then again, it's perfectly possible that what I was taught overinflated the importance action of guerrillas in detriment of British accomplishments... but "guerrilla" is a Spanish loanword, after all. On whether it's "ungrateful" to disparage British aid... that would require me to examine an alternate historical scenario where Spain had been more "frenchified". I'm not too impressed by our last 200 years of history, so let's not get too deep into that. And let's not forget that the British Empire seldom did anything out of the kindness of HM's heart. 3) I don't give a flying **** about who you are IRL. On the internet, I try to treat everyone (roughly) equally, but I expect people making what appear to be somewhat serious claims to provide at least a modicum of supporting evidence. So don't take it as a personal offense if I don't take your word as gospel... because I wouldn't expect you of all people to do the same with my posts. And again, I'd like you tell me where I've stated or insinuated that I'm an authority on anything. You may not be too fond of my posting style, but I never dodge, and am not afraid to admit I'm wrong -- for me it's not my ego on the line, and the sole notion brings a smile to my face. If you got the impression that I think I'm infallible... well, I can't really help you with that. Think about it: the only reason I keep participating in these boards is because I never stop learning things from people here. Take that as you will. 4) Yay, another e-fisticuffs. I've lost count now. You'd think that after the first few dozens, I would have learnt that it's actually not worth it. Sigh.