Enoch

I'd imagine that even commoners would be taught to recognize magic-users by their toothed-condom hats.

Now buying AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for $2.50.

I don't know Pax River, but the map tells me that it would probably be a challenge, as you'd be coming from the south side of DC to the north-- you'd probably have to do at least 1/3rd of the Beltway every day. (I do know Aspen Hill-- I sometimes shop at the Home Depot there.) Being outside the Beltway certainly helps, though-- if you're coming from the right direction, it's much much easier to commute to the Aspen Hill area than it is to downtown. I'd consider looking up around Frederick, if you don't mind a bit of a drive. I don't know what land values are up there, but they have to be cheaper than they are in Montgomery County. The area around there is pretty rural, and the town itself is nice to walk around in. (The wife and I actually had our wedding near there.) I-270 gets trafficy, but you can probably do the drive on back roads if you want to. (But watch out for the speed cameras.)

It's not just the initial enemy selection that bothered me. It's a combination of that, the "make everyone an idiot" button (i.e., the Taunt ability), and the fact that combatants can run right through lines of enemies like greased pigs to pursue their chosen targets. I couldn't help envisioning how great the combat could have been if tactical positioning had some consequences, and if, in place of Taunting, warriors had some more logical "Defend that Guy" abilities. Tangent: My ideal system of RTwP small-group, pseudo-Medieval combat would be focused mainly on facing-- essentially, everyone gets Rogue-like sneak attacks when the opponent isn't focused on defending from them. For a non-heroic character, flanked essentially means dead. (And even Heroes have some trouble with it.) Set up a "Tactics" like system of called plays (line of battle, paired off back-to-back, outward-facing circle, etc.), and let each character class accrue abilities that reinforce this mechanic (broad sweeps, shield maneuvers, D&D-like evasion and AoOs, etc.). DA:O combat was just close enough to this for me to lament what was missing.

This thread has gotten far too metally. And now, looking for an antidote, I'm frustrated that I can't find a decent youtube of the original recording of the Modern Jazz Quartet's "Django." (Seriously, this was the best I could find, and the sound quality sucks. How are people supposed to appreciate how awesome John Lewis' piano playing was from that?)

Skip Subject Zero if you can. I think she's actually unskippable. You have to recruit the first batch of companions (IIRC, Moridin, Garrus, and Subject Zero) before you get the message from Martin Sheen about the in-progress Collector attack on whatever-that-colony-is-called. I agree that, generally, she's not someone you'd want on your spaceship, but the mission to recruit her is one of the more fun ones, IMO. Some of those fights against the prison guards are pretty challenging, owing mostly to how the battlefields are laid out-- very tough to get a safe cover position that isn't immediately flanked.

Aw, Washington ain't so bad. And if it is, I've met people who commute all the way in from West Virginia. Anyhow, congratulations on the offer-- even if you don't accept it, it's a nice compliment on your work.

Valve presumably has more freedom to discount their own titles. I assume that, when it's stuff from another company, the publisher has to agree to any pricing changes.

Ugh. I really despised managing the threat mechanic in DA:O. I mean, it worked, after a fashion, to create defined roles for the party members, but it's just soooooo gamey, without the slightest whiff of verisimilitude. From every enemy's basic "I should hit the guy wrapped in impenetrable steel first!" assumption to the talent (only known to people fighting on your side) allowing warriors to successfully "taunt" each and every possible opponent (regardless of their discipline, experience, or inability to understand spoken language), it was just wrong all over. It made every fight feel like the opponents were just graphical representations of the same AI algorithm (and a bad one, at that) rather than a group of (possibly) thinking beings going about combat in a sensible fashion. By the time I was through the game once, not a single fight went by where I didn't think about how much more satisfying the game would be with a system of proper tactical positioning, zones of control, etc., in place of all that "threat" nonsense. (It would even work great with the "Tactics" menus, if they incorporated some party-wide defensive formations-- "If # of melee enemies > X, Use Diamond formation.") My continued rage about the idiocy of this system is probably the biggest reason why I don't have any interest in playing through DA:O again, or in buying any of the add-ons. It's also the biggest reason why I'm in firm "wait and see" territory with regard to the sequel.

Huh. I could've sworn that the first guy you talk to outside of town tells you that Legion infiltration was to blame right off the bat. Or maybe I just surmised that. Either way, finding the actual orders didn't feel like much of a revelation to me.

The atmosphere in Searchlight was fun, and the NCR ghouls made for good opponents, but the payoff was disappointing. I was hoping for more when I finally got into that firehouse. No interesting story reveals about the town's history or how the Legion messed it up, and the one bit of good loot (the unique fire axe) is too easy to miss and not particularly useful for non-melee characters.

Wait-- there are people who finish a golf game without drinking at least 3 beers in the process??!!! That's gotta be against some rule or another. I play roughly annually. I am roughly awful. But I can see the appeal, in that I don't remember the hundred-plus lousy-to-mundane shots. I remember how it feels that 1-time-in-10 when I actually hit a shot that looks like it belongs on a golf course. I don't come home and say "I shot a 116." I say "I parred the 13th Hole!!" That's a rare high, and I can understand the temptation to chase it. It's too time-consuming, expensive, and demanding of patience for me to make a serious pursuit of golf competence, but in different circumstances, I could have fun doing so.

Almost certainly: ME3, Dungeon Seige 3 Wait and see, but probably yes: DA2, Skyrim, Portal 2 Wait and see, but probably not until it's quite cheap: Witcher 2, Diablo 3.

I'm hoping that won't be necessary, but if the mechanic's estimate exceeds the deductible on our collision coverage, I may have to make a call.

So I was also stuck in the NJ blizzard that Syr and Krook mentioned. My parents' house got about a foot and a half of snow yesterday. This afternoon, my wife and I drove from their house back home to Maryland. But along the way, I made a bad decision. I was driving on the Garden State Parkway-- at this particular part of the road, it's only 2 lanes each way, divided by a concrete barrier. We were in the left lane for some reason, and I spotted a patch of slush/packed ice in the lane in front of us. I slowed down, but figured that I could cruise through it OK without changing into the (clear) right lane. Oops. I controlled the ensuing skid reasonably well, but managed to slide sideways into the concrete divider with a pronounced "bump" (not a "crash"). There didn't appear to be any damage to the car, as the dividers flare outwards at the bottom, and the car was perfectly parallel to the divider at the time of impact. The tires/wheels were the only part of the car making contact. After a very quick "everything looks normal" check, I drove on a bit so as to not be parked in the middle of the road. The car didn't seem to be handling any different, and I got out and inspected everything I knew how to as quickly as I could. So, we continued onward. A little while later, though, we were driving a good deal faster on a more thoroughly cleared highway (the snowfall was concentrated at the coastline, so as we worked our way inland, the roads got better), and I noticed that the periodic side-to-side lurches in the car were not necessarily corresponding with the (frequent) wind gusts. Clearly, that collision caused something (bent wheel rim? wheel alignment issues? something in the suspension system?) to get out-of-whack, such that, when driving at highway speeds, it felt as if a strong gust of wind was pushing the car to one way or another every with some regularity (maybe 2 or 3 times per minute). It wasn't anything so strong as to push the car out of its lane, but the feeling was unsettling. Luckily, the effect was hardly noticeably at all at sub-60MPH speeds. So, we made it home safely, watching all of the other cars whiz by us as we tooled along, doing 55 in the far-right lane of I-95. There is, of course, a trip to the mechanic in my very near future.

Fair enough-- previews are largely a product of junket journalism, where the developer flies the press in, loads them up with swag and free food, and doesn't give repeat invites to those who don't toe the company line. (Although the most recently linked item was an interview, not a preview. You can't really fault the interviewer for faithfully relaying what the Bioware employees said, or the Biowarians for pitching the game in whatever way their marketing department thinks is best.)

I didn't know there was going to be savegame import. That's nice-- I'd like to preserve my "protagonist is dead, Al is a destitute loser, Morrigan can piss right off" end-state, if possible. Although I was far too sick of the gameplay mechanics by the time I trudged through the endgame sequence to bother with the Expansion or any of the DLCs (beyond Shale).

I like the timed dialogue in AP, and I really liked how they generally abandoned the RPG-dialogue trope of everything cycling back to "so, what else did you want to talk about?" The careful implementation of both in ME3 could be an interesting improvement. Have game conversations actually sound like a conversation that you might have. (Well, if you were on a spaceship, talking with a psychokinetic alien lizard who wants to get into your pants.) Of course, the worst thing about ME3 dialogue was that the game mechanics tended to override roleplaying. The player was rewarded primarily for accruing one of 'jerk' or 'sap' points, to the exclusion of the other. This renders the 'middle' choice of the basic 'Bioware three' a non-option, and, for the majority of choices, renders the selection between the remaining two down to a single binary choice made a character creation. AP had a little of this, in that most of the reputational rewards were based on having either very high or very low rep with a character or faction. But at least you got to make a mostly-independent decision with regard to each faction, without worrying about whether it'll affect your abilities to convince wholly unrelated individuals later in the game. (Edit: It also wasn't always clear which of the stance responses would increase or decrease your reputation with the faction/person in question-- in ME, you know that 'sap' is up and 'jerk' is down.)

Just bought Pirates! and Super Meat Boy for a grand total of $6.24.

Felt like something a little slower-paced than usual, so I spent a while playing the Monkey Island 2 remake last night. I've also got my second F:NV character going, and I've been meaning to dive back into Civ5 to see how it plays after the recent mega-patch.

I made a trio of fruitcakes last year, using a technique similar to what Raithe is talking about. I soaked the fruit in dark rum rather than brandy, added lots of citrus zest, used some hard cider as the primary liquid in the batter, and skipped all the marzipan/icing. And I did prepare them a few weeks in advance, and kept them moist by brushing with brandy twice a week.

I think Gaider's response is a bit dodgy, because it pre-supposes that all the character abilities and encounter design are set in stone. Friendly Fire only has huge effects on difficulty if a lot of classes feature core abilities with AoE damage/incapacitation, and if the majority of your combat gameplay is going to consist of "being outnumbered by weaker enemies." It's not that hard to imagine a team-based tactical RPG where the decision whether to make party members immune to party-cast AoE abilities or not wouldn't have all that much effect on overall difficulty. (It would be a very different game from DA:O, but possibly different in a good way-- the repetitive crowds of generic mooks were not a high point of my experience in Ferelden.)

I've had a reasonably stable trip through New Vegas. But I've just tried twice and have been unable to get through the endgame slides without a freakin' crash. Of all the things that can go wrong with the game, the ****ing endgame slides??!!! Edit: Make that three tries.

Another entertaining thing about the Bucs-Skins game: That final touchdown probably should never have happenened. So the botched PAT was a nice touch of karma. As for Tampa, generally, I know the schedule (DET, SEA, @NO) favors them down the stretch, relative to the other NFC contenders. But I just don't think they're going to be healthy enough to make a push. In the last 3 games, they've lost 6 starters for the remainder of the season-- G Davin Joseph and S Cody Grimm against BAL, CB Aqib Talib and C Jeff Faine against ATL, and DT Gerald McCoy and LB Quincy Black yesterday against Washington. It's going to take at least 10 wins to get a wildcard spot in the NFC, and with that many guys out, I think it's a stretch to see them winning 2 of their last 3 games, even against weak opposition. The Bucs have put together an unexpectedly promising season, though. Freeman looks like a solid starting QB-- with Blount, Williams, and Benn, it looks like they have the foundations of a nice offense. They need some more on the OL and at scattered spots all over the defense, but they're a team on the rise.

I could see Baltimore taking the Pats out. SD played them close, too. The Falcons have a couple games' advantage on the rest of the NFC, so they're likely to get a first-round playoff bye. But I agree with Hurl that there isn't much separating the NFC contenders. The Falcons aren't measurably better than Philly (who beat them pretty bad), the Saints (who took them to OT in the first meeting, and would've won if their kicker hadn't honked a 29-yard FG), or the Giants.