Enoch

The only explanation that comes anywhere near making sense to me is that TIM set the whole thing up (probably through Miranda) to test your readiness. (I'd guess that Wilson thought he was selling you out to somebody who happened to be a covert Cerberus op.) Really, why else would there be a freakin' pistol in a drawer 20 feet from your operating table? Mordin's only upgrade (beyond the one that lets you survive the Seeker swarms) is a boost to his own omni-tool. Of course, since you can't upgrade anything until you bring him on-board, I think it's implied that he has a role in the implementation all the upgrades.

A thought: Once we know that the Collectors are behind the colony abductions, and given that we know that they live an area accessible only via the Omega-4 Relay, why doesn't somebody (Cerberus or the Alliance) simply post a bunch of warships around said Relay to stop any ships that come out of it? Even a monitoring probe of some kind would probably be effective to give some warning.

The AI only cheats if your difficulty is above the 2/3 level or so. Its only the last handful of top levels it cheats. The low and mid levels it follows the same ruleset as the player. And even at the highest levels, the Civ4 AI cheating is straightforward-- it gets a few starting advantages (units and techs) and gets a % discount on everything (research, production, upkeep costs, food necessary for city growth, trade rates with other AIs, etc.) relative to the human player.

It's probably too spoilerific to happen, but the promo I want to see is one complete conversation, done twice. Pick one that highlights both responses to the player's stance choice, and some feedback from earlier player action (high/low influence, stealth/force approach to the mission, completeness of intelligence dossiers). Show the NPC's reaction to an aggressive approach by a Thorton who just gunned down a few dozen guards, who is hated by the NPC's faction, and who prefers to spend his cash on shotguns instead of intelligence. Then show the same conversation with a suave Thorton who just slipped by everybody unnoticed, who has different factional alliances, and who already knows all the NPC's dirty little secrets.

This is so crazy nit-picky, but I hope that they make a new texture for that retaining wall off to the right side in the distance. (The interlocked "+" shapes) Along the Potomac in DC, and along a few of the highways in the area, you see retaining walls exactly like that-- it's one of the little details that made FO3's environment seem authentic to a DC-area gamer like me. Now, that kind of wall design might be more commonplace than I'm aware of, but I associate it pretty closely with the DC area, and it would feel out of place were it to be popping up in post-apoc Nevada.

Yeah, without the upgrade, I had to pick up and re-position my mouse to scan all the way from the N to S poles of a planet. With the upgrade, I can do an entire sweep and stay within my allotted desk real estate. It's lame design, but it does have an effect.

I'd bet there is a ton of it right in your back yard! The snow around here has been melting and collecting dirt for 3 weeks. Most of what's left has been salted, sanded, and scooped off the street. I ain't eatin that.

Take him with you on the Garrus recruitment mission-- he does interact with the Blue Suns.

He's not even memorable enough for you to get his name right! (It's Jacob.)

Drinking a modified Rye Club Cocktail. Mixed up about 3 parts rye with 1 part Cointreau, stirred over ice, added a few dashes of orange bitters to a martini glass, and poured it in. Garnished with a twist of lemon peel. The recipe I've seen omits the lemon peel, and calls for a slightly sweeter mix served in an old fashioned glass over shaved ice. But who has shaved ice handy? The end result is little sweet for my tastes, but I like the combined citrus-peel highlights of the Cointreau, bitters, and lemon peel. And the rye makes for an interesting base spirit.

Portal made be want to puke. I still loved it. Looking forward to the sequel.

Reave is very nice, if you don't have Warp or Incinerate.

I think the point wasn't about ME2 generally. Rather about ME2, played on Insanity difficulty-- with the health and protections of enemies ramped up so high, all the combats turn into tests of one's endurance and patience.

There was community interplay in FO2? Other than Vault City-Gecko (which is probably better described as one divided community), and a few interdependencies in the 'conclusions' slideshow, I can't seem to recall any.

If that's directed at me, yes I have. Although it was a long time ago, when my free time was considerably less constrained (i.e., college). At one point about 5 years ago, I replayed most of it. I got through nearly all of SoA, went off to do that big ol' temple that ToB added, and the playthrough died somewhere in there. BG2 had the advantage of a compelling antagonist and some interesting mysteries. I had no real reason to care about the figures presented as antagonists in the opening of The Witcher. (They stole some stuff from people who claim to know me but who I don't remember, and killed some kid I just met. I'm supposed to risk my life for that?) And I found the party micro-management in the Infinity Engine to be more entertaining than The Witcher's "click on the enemy, then click again when the cursor turns orange."

I only got a little further than that before I decided that I wasn't having any fun. I found the whole "combat as a rythm game" thing tedious-- not interesting enough to be satisfying on a tactical level, and not fun or challenging enough to be satisfying on a 'action game' level-- and didn't consider the writing/setting/story/characters interesting enough to keep playing in spite of the tedium.

Yeah, the second SMG is a fine weapon. I already looked up which mission you find that one on (it's Tali's recruitment), so that I can go do it as soon as it becomes available. Oh, and thanks, Deraldin. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to go listen to my teammates' various daddy issues, but I didn't want to risk missing anything by running off and doing missions instead of chatting with them. Quick chat to get their ship upgrade option, and then I'll "Investigate" further if and when I feel like it.

Any hilarity was unintentional. JNPC = joinable non-player character.

Question for replaying: Is going through all the personal introduction/backstory dialogues with the JNPCs necessary in order for them to broach the topic of the loyalty mission? Or do the loyalty missions just come up at a certain point in the storyline? While I'm not as desperate to skip over dialogues as I was when replaying ME1, going through the life stories of some of the characters again has the potential to get rather tiresome. Also, I forgot how terrible the feel was of the basic machine pistol. Ugh-- now I remember why my first character initially used the heavy pistol almost exclusively.

I read it as a product for Sega internally, so that they could get an independent assessments of the game's strengths and weaknesses, and gauge what the early gamer/community reaction would likely be. Sorta the way that film producers sometimes do test screenings upon which they base the marketing for their films.

There are lots of steps in the process of developing a series. HBO did indeed acquire the rights back in '07, but that didn't necessarily mean that they were going to go through with filming and broadcasting it. The decision yesterday was the final "green light" for full production of the first season, so it qualifies a big news.

Even if true, it's going to be cherry-picked data on one of many possible ailments.

Hehe... the guy lurking around the corner with the flamethrower is a bit of a pain in the rear First door is sort of easy. Sprint is your friend. If you have barrier or similar, it can be quite useful when approaching the door to be sealed. The second one (to the right of the middle door?) is not too bad either, but a bit of care is needed when those regenerating krogans show up. Incinerate works wonders on them. Or headshots with a sniper rifle. The third door where the corridor has a "bent", is where dirty tactics are needed. I draw out the guy with the flamer and then abuse the weird physics of corridor corners in the Mass Effect universe to fill the guys shoulder/arm with bullets while his flames can't touch me. Edit: Never understimate the powers of team mates. They are expendable decoys, you are not. Fun Fact: Overload-- which is otherwise useless on un-shielded organic enemies-- makes dudes with flamethrowers explode. I started a new game last night-- an Infiltrator on Hardcore. Midway through Freedom's Progress, and I've already died twice. Those exploding Dog-Bots are a lot harder with an Armor bar.

You don't even need Throw to be upgraded much, if you're playing on a difficulty below the point where the Husks get defenses. The recharge is so quick once it's been upgraded, it's just a matter of Pause, Target, Throw, Wait 1.5 secs, Repeat.

Fired up some Civ4:BTS yesterday. Decided to go with the "Terra" map script, which sets up the world with 2 main continents and all the Civs starting out on the larger one. It's not my favorite map type-- a little too favorable to the human player, who is the only one with the meta-knowledge to rush to Optics and Astronomy to colonize the New World-- but I felt like playing a game where you're packed in tight with your rivals. And I am a little out-of-practice, so playing on a favorable map type should balance that out without having to drop down from my normal Monarch difficulty level. "Random Leader" gave me Franklin Roosevelt, and the map put a lot of forests around my capital and Gandhi a short way off to the NW-- ideal for an early rush if I can secure Copper or Horses. Copper was a whiff, so I took a gamble and worked on cranking out Workers and a Barracks while researching Animal Husbandry. That paid off: a Horse resource popped up within Washington's workable area. As soon as I had The Wheel to get a road over to it, I had 3 Workers chopping all those forests into Barracks-boosted Chariots. Gandhi still hadn't adopted Slavery, which meant that he couldn't rush-build extra defenders, and that he didn't have the tech to find Copper with which to make Spearmen. I overbuilt my force a bit (10 Chariots), and easily rolled over the 3 Archers he had defending his 2 cities. (He had a 4th Archer in the wild, but Delhi fell before it could threaten Washington.) I razed Bombay and kept Delhi, which was the Buddhist Holy City. (Another nice benefit-- Gandhi was the only Buddhist, and most of the civs he had contacted were already Hindu or Jewish, so they all disliked him enough that I didn't get any "You declared War on our friend" diplomatic demerits.) A stack of 7-10 Axemen or Chariots is by far the best Wonder of the World you can build in the Ancient Age. The problem now is that my nearest neighbor is Julius Caesar. That means about 1000 years of diplomatic ass-kissing to keep his Prats pointed in a different direction. Still, the elimination of Gandhi does give us both plenty of room to expand peacefully, and the AI usually doesn't gear up for war until it has run out of room to send settlers to.