213374U

Funny how everything is a "crisis" or a "catastrophe" these days...

The thing is, this isn't about "beliefs". It's about hard, provable facts. If you aren't willing to accept that your views might be flawed or incomplete, there is no point in your posting anything here. We can do without your enlightening and unquestionable dogmas, thank you very much. Wow, it must be great to possess such a degree of certainty on issues that most experts, analysts, and assorted brainiacs can't seem to agree on. Or maybe it's just not as simple as 2+2. Oh? You think here we argue out of our asses or what? Please, step down from your high horse and post your "long list". And even when you do, keep in mind that for every article and book published, chances are you can find a hundred others that claim the opposite. How come? You have probably "heard it all too many times before". This last comment shows how open-minded and well-thought your opinions are. I'm not American. We don't even have Fox News here. But yeah, I must be your typical right-wing, Fox News-worshipping nutjob, just because it's so much easier to picture the world in black and white.

What the hell. People can freely post nonsense but when I call them on it I get censored? How about you prune that as well? Get real. Okay, let's try again. Lol. I think your attitude and style of discussion might be better suited for religious threads. There, you can just spout off some random doctrine that doesn't need to be proven or demonstrated whatsoever, and then you can stick your fingers in your ears and go "lalala I'm not listening" when you get a reply you don't agree with. Good stuff. There. Is that better?

Lol. Anyone stupid enough to fall for that deserves whatever it's coming to them. The fact that he's the most prolific author of craptastic movies of late is completely irrelevant.

Eh... okay. I'm fairly sure that after this brief yet intense homoerotic interlude it's a good time to rerail the thread. It is random because I might be put to death without actually being guilty. It doesn't matter if the chaces are one in ten or one in a hundred million. The feeling people get from that is that the system can't be trusted, and that not getting caught at all is much better than being cleared of any alleged offenses. I can tell you I'd be quite pissed if someone close to me was executed "by accident". Quite pissed, as in willing to become militant. You can't have a system that won't make mistakes, and it's pretty dumb to design a system that *will* make mistakes that *can't* be rectified. I have been deeply impressed by your mastery of the obvious, let me tell you; death penalty will certainly not instantly cause mass rioting. Death penalty is, however, pointless and counterproductive from every perspective. True. That's probably the biggest problem with forced labour, and it's a point often brought up. That, however, is already happening with the prices of labor in Eastern Europe and Asia. So I'd rather have local inmates do those jobs and save the state some money that can be used to improve social services and public infrastructures, than allow truly free competition and lose to foreign slave labour.

Lol justice Lol good and evil Death penalty is stupidly flawed as a concept, and is, in fact, an incentive for people not to obey the law. I mean, if there's a (remote) chance that I might be randomly killed by the state, what's the point in being a rightful, law-abiding citizen? After all, there's no guarantee I'm not going to be punished as if I had broken the law, in a very drastic and quite permanent way. Also, death penalty is a waste of valuable resources. Why kill criminals when you can have them build the Four Gorges Dam? Sadly, forced labor is terribly underrated. A human being is only human as far as he is able (and most importantly, willing) to act as such (the problem here lies in defining "human" from a moral standpoint, but that's a different issue). Otherwise, he's no human being, but simply a base animal. Human rights don't generally apply to animals, save in extreme examples of legislative idiocy. The idea that just because one is born a Homo sapiens sapiens one has a number of rights that can't be revoked under any circumstances is almost as ludicrous as it is random. Oh, hey Hades, just give it up man. It was somewhat funny for the first seven thousand posts or so, but not anymore, really. Go Judge Volo! GO!

1. 22. Or was it 23? Can't quite remember... 2. Depends. I don't have a favorite color. 3. Fulfilling my physiological needs. Yeah, you know you want to fulfill your physiological needs with me, baby. 4. I'll listen to anything but hip-hop. 5. Anything not overly pretentious or any of that pseudo-intellectual crap that seems to be so trendy these days. 6. Video what? 7. Personal magnetism. 8. Lack of willpower. 9. "An optimist is a misinformed pessimist." That being said, I'm probably just histrionically cynical.

Not cringe-worthy, but merely unremarkable. Bland, boring. Not even the "b00bies" make up for it. I'm sure you can find better uses for your money. And FOT was infinitely better.

Any character which you can raise her Interrupt skill high enough will pretty much own the game. That skill is so imbalanced it's ridiculous. I used to train Interrupt by sneaking up on an enemy that was around a corner, and getting back around the corner before they could react, without actually killing them. I used this method in Hammer and Sickle though, so I can't assure it would work in S^2/3. It should, since the engine and mechanics are the same. Since Interrupt controls not only your ability to interrupt the enemy but also your chances of not being interrupted, it's pretty much the best ability in the game and can make any character a killing machine. I made a ninja type that specialised in stealth, throwing and melee, and with his maxed out interrupt, I could solo most missions...

Aw, crap. I guess China won't be going to war with the US over the last oil deposits then.

Yep. It's anticlimactic, at least if you want to think that the PC is the center of the plot, but this is debatable. And no, it's not cliched. There's a difference between that story not being the first to ever end like that, and it being a cliche.

That's the cabbie. He is supposed to be Caine himself. White Wolf later retconned the whole thing in some novel, explaining he's actually some antediluvian posing as Caine or something equally lame.

LOL, forgot about that!

I thought it was pretty cool. I sure as hell didn't expect that.

This comment and the others regarding sex and cop killing make me guess you are not familiar with the setting. You see, the WoD isn't a merry place. New vampires are only created with the purpose of being pawns in the power plays of the elders... that's how the setting works. The Camarilla is the losing side in the fight for power in LA, so it makes perfect sense that siding with them gets you blown to pieces by some "hippie a$$hole" (who incidentally is implied to be one of the oldest vampires around, even more than Lacroix). I say kudos to Troika for having the balls to write unconventional endings that mesh so well with the general theme and feel of the setting. But hey, I guess I'm just grumpy seeing how they went out of business. Obviously people like their games trite and well cliched, with endings so terribly predictable that you can guess how it's going to end from chapter one. And I'm not being sarcastic here. As for the sex, meh. It's just an option. Very little room for love and typical romancing in this setting, though. Getting VV to become obsessed with you would be the closest you can get, I'd say. The cop killing thing, I can agree with. While humans are often regarded as little more than cattle, you should be given the choice not to kill anyone. After all, not every vampire is a psycho killer. To me, the ever increasing focus on combat of the game as the story progresses is one of its biggest flaws.

The X-COMs using the S^2/S^3/H&S engine... goodness. Mus? wins the thread.

Outwars - with coop support. The game was easy enough to tweak so you could play the solo missions with friends, and it was a blast. The concept could produce an awesome game with today's tech.

Ah, of course. Say, did I tell you about that time the dog ate my homework?

You bought both KotORs. Lol you

Looks nice enough. I'd have waited to post the pic until the skin had healed, though. I guess it might. You know how rabid some folks can be when discussing religion...

The problem with this is that "interesting good games" is a subjective notion. And given the sales volume of EA, it would seem that a lot of people would disagree with your idea of what makes an "interesting good game".

And that's incompatible with making games how exactly? Say it ain't so!

IWD 1&2 BG2 - coop! NWN - Darkness over Daggerford Yes, I live in the past.

Got the IWD package, and it works like a charm. Sucks that they didn't bother to put everything in one DVD, though. The lack of a paper manual isn't too nice either. But for

Yes. Toggleable hoods and fancy Jedi robes are a must.