Enoch

Think of it this way: How quickly and effectively did the community of gamers come up with ideal build orders in Starcraft II? Or ideal character builds based on the changes that roll out with a WoW expansion or patch? For all the planning that algorithm writers do, the community of users is always going to find inefficiencies that they didn't anticipate. The weirder DARPA stuff that gets publicly released is one of the things that occasionally makes me think that the hassle of getting a TS clearance could be worthwhile. Then I remember that I'm an attorney specializing a federal budgetary and accounting law, and realize that they wouldn't have any reason to let me near the cool stuff anyway. And handling classified documents is a huge pain in the arse, anyway.

There are two bottles of it in my fridge at present. A local favorite-- their brewery is only about an hour's drive away. Have you tried their Gonzo Imperial Porter? Goooood stuff. Cheers!

Is that a euphemism? Has to be. We all know that Bok's system is of such intensity that it can only be kept at sub-meltdown temperatures with rapidly circulated unicorn blood.

I will say that I really didn't start to enjoy the stuff until I was nearly 25. Most of the booze generally proffered to youth is awful, and I was enough of a social recluse that I wasn't often invited to parties where a lot of drinking was going on. But my tastes changed a bit sometime in my 20s, as I started enjoying bitter/sour/toasted flavors more. And I discovered that beer doesn't have to taste like the beer generally served at undergraduate parties or the somewhat-better-but-still-rather-weak-willed lagers that my parents prefer, that wine doesn't have to taste like the champagne my grandmother likes, and that whisky can be quite enjoyable if you buy the ones that aren't on the bottom-two shelves at the liquor store. Anyhow, no stories of recent excess for me. The 3 bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale exceeded the recommended dosage in the linked article (BTW, who on Earth considers a half-pint of beer a serving??), but nowhere close to the point of drunkenness. Just chatting with the wife, eating some spicy shrimp and cheese grits, and playing some games.

Garrus is indeed one of their better characters, but I do wonder whether they're out of ideas. His character arc in ME2 was almost exactly the same as his character arc in ME1. It was well executed, but I can't help but feeling that the guy needs some depth beyond repeating the "Good Cop v. Vigilante Who Gets Results" debate again.

Meaningless chit chat may be void of content, but as a matter of social signals, it is certainly not meaningless. And being "that antisocial dude" in an office is not a good way to ensure job security (or happiness, for that matter).

Gotta die of something.

I'm sorry, but there isn't a word of that that makes any sense at all. We get that BG1-2 are closer to your subjective preferences. But arbitrarily investing importance in ill-defined terms like "craftsmanship," "genre identity," "lineage," and "cohesion" doesn't bring your preferences into the realm of the objectively confirmable. What I get from your argument is "my subjective preference for BG is justified because [a bunch of nonsense I just made up]" Monte's critique makes sense to me, for a gamer with his perspective. Although I don't agree 100% with it, I do share elements of that perspective, and I understand where he's coming from.

Ah, you're right-- it is "Occurrence," not "Incident." Should've double-checked on that. And of course I wasn't being serious. But the joke grew out of (IMO) a serious critique. One of my frustrations with ME1 was that even the Paragonist of Paragon Sheps still got all huffy at the Council for having the reaction that any rational and responsible galactic leader would (i.e., not believing Shep's mysterious psychic vision). Combined with how heavyhanded the game was in trying to make the player dislike both the Turian Councildude and Ambassador Udina, the nonconformist in me developed a perverse affection for these characters. Yeah, they're both cookie-cutter "stonewalling bureaucratic ****" stereotypes and aren't really worth the emotional investment, but I get something of a kick out of rebelling when a game pushes so hard on hackneyed emotional buttons. I pity these characters for what the writers are doing to them rather than resent them for what they're doing to Shepard. I'll play ME3, and I'll probably enjoy it. But, rather than cheering Shep on, I'll be resignedly nodding my head when the Councildude and/or Udina get their inevitable comeuppence.

While I spent most of ME2 quietly rooting for him to be proven right, with Shep running through an elaborate self-delusion, egged on by credulous moonbat conspiracy theorists like TIM and Anderson. Sadly, they probably put too much supporting evidence to make this the case, outside of pulling a full-on Newhart or "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" ending.

Yeah, I think of the character creation process for M&M 6-8 more as creating one bizarre 4-headed beast than as creating a party of adventurers. Also: Knight, Paladin, Druid, Sorcerer.

The nostalgia factor is strong for me with these titles, but here's my shot at an objective rundown: M&M 6 is really grindy and features some pretty broken mechanics. The story is transparent (with one significant twist that it shares with every other M&M game) and none of the characters are all too memorable. But it scratches a lot of the retro-CRPG itches-- satisfying ability progression, good loot, lots of diverse environments, and a few interesting puzzles (along with some unfortunate button-hunting puzzles). It was also the first CRPG I played where the Fly spell wasn't an abstraction-- it actually meant soaring majestically over the landscape, which was a huge draw. Flying around, dropping meteor swarms on crowds of enemies is easily the most fun thing you can do in the game. (It's also really overpowered.) M&M 7 is probably a better game, in that it fixed some of the broken mechanics and it presented the player with a good/evil story decision to make (a binary choice, but still better than nothing, and there are some neat consequences built into the choice-- different character abilities open up, and towns aligned with the opposite group will become hostile when you pick a side). It also included one of the best card-based minigames ever. Both titles are available GoG, and I think they're priced the same. But M&M 6 comes with M&Ms 1-5 included. (And M&M 4-5 is worthwhile. When both games are installed, your party can travel between the two settings, and complete a broader over-arching main quest that encompasses both worlds. It's my go-to netbook time-killer.)

It's also easy to economize your criss-crossing of maps if you have played the game before and know which quests require you to go where. When you're doing it for the first time and just figuring all that stuff out, though, you're going to end up making a lot more trips through monster-spawn territory.

Depends on how you feel about swamps What is it with swamps and grindy RPG combat, anyway? The Witcher, NWN 2 (SoZ, too), Wizardry 8, and various Might & Magic games all featured swampy areas whose chief characteristic was trying the player's patience with waves of repetitive fights.

Eh, the combat in The Witcher is basically Dance Dance RPG-- click in rhythm when the cursor lights up. Between that and making sure that you pick the right "style" for whatever you're facing, there isn't much to it. And walking through the whole of the swamp area even once (not optional) passes my threshold for "unnecessarily grindy." As for the sequel, I'm pretty ambivalent about the original (my reasons for liking the portions of it that I got through are pretty balanced with my reasons for disliking it), and my CPU is (just barely) below the minimum specs. So I'll revisit whether it's a worthwhile title to grab sometime in the future.

Yeah, unless you go down the JRPG rabbit hole, the cupboard is pretty bare. Apart from what has already been mentioned, you have Might and Magic 6 & 7, Return to Krondor, and Lands of Lore 2 & 3 to pick from in that time period. Edit: If you count re-releases, add Wizardry Gold, which was a 1996 update of 1992's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (which was a damn fine game).

They would... when and if they got around to it. Given the scale of their mission and the complexity of the rules they have to operate under, the IRS is redonkulously overworked. (Plus, people who don't pay their taxes aren't usually the type who get "wages." Payroll deductions take care of that issue pretty well. It's the self-employed, the independent contractors, the "arseloads of investment income" taxpayers, and the "ridiculous maze of off-shore shell corporations" taxpayers who cause the most trouble.) Oh yes they view the self-employed as real "enemies of the people". In fact I know a guy who owned a small electronics company who made one small seemingly innocuous mistake. Three years later, after that company had shut down the IRS came calling and the small mistake made in good faith cost that man his entire life savings. The IRS is a monster. I did not mean to imply any deceit or malice on the part of the parties listed. Simply that, on the aggregate, non-payment of taxes due is larger problem within those populations.

They would... when and if they got around to it. Given the scale of their mission and the complexity of the rules they have to operate under, the IRS is redonkulously overworked. (Plus, people who don't pay their taxes aren't usually the type who get "wages." Payroll deductions take care of that issue pretty well. It's the self-employed, the independent contractors, the "arseloads of investment income" taxpayers, and the "ridiculous maze of off-shore shell corporations" taxpayers who cause the most trouble.) In terms of return on investment, more IRS funding to hire more agents and conduct more audits would be one of the better expenditures the U.S. gov't could make. But, shockingly, that particular line-item tends to not be all that popular in Congress. "I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization" -- Oliver Wendel Holmes

On another note, I've finally gotten around to playing some of Dead Money tonight. Completed the "recruit everybody" phase. The characters and the setting have my interest, and I do appreciate what being stripped of all my inventory crutches brings to the game. But I have to say that I'm not generally a fan of what they're trying to do thus far. Simply put, I don't enjoy horror elements in games. If a game rushes me or scares me, that increases my stress level, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish when I'm playing a game. The toxic cloud's "incentive to hurry" is a gentle prod, but it does make me rush about more quickly than I would like. (Well, it did until I figured out how to get stimpaks out of the vending machines.)

Well, for certain parts of the development process (specifically, VO recording), there's probably some economy of scale to doing a lot of it at once.

I don't know of any studies or surveys that confirm this, but an impression that was relayed to me from an insightful person I know who has travelled broadly is that there is a very strong correlation between places with downward-trending economic/social/political development and places with a high incidence and extent of belief in conspiracy theories. Russia was one of his key examples-- it has much higher levels of technical education and developed infrastructure than in the Third World, generally, but the quality of life is deteriorating considerably. When so much of the population believes in outlandish conspiracies (as well as superstitions, bizarrely incorrect accounts of history, confirmably false medical beliefs, and the like), people regard their fates as out of their hands and don't invest in the betterment of themselves, their families, or their property. The extent of this kind of magical thinking in Siberia, Central Asia, and parts of the Middle East is staggering. (Again, a secondhand impression/opinion.)

I don't really think of "multiple quest outcomes" as including outcomes where you did the same thing for the same person, but were slightly less successful or less efficient in how you did it. (In addition to your example, I'll add being spotted by guards on a few of the Thieves' or Brotherhood quests.) There's no decision on the part of the player to do a mission differently-- you're just not rewarded as well because you didn't achieve all of the quest's sub-objectives.

Hey, "swords with swords" is an under-explored fantasy concept/theme. Overall, I am disappointed by the dearth of Skyrim jokes based on the modern verb usage of the work "rim."

Yeah, Mako combat becomes trivial the minute you figure out that your cannon fires at the speed of light, while every opponent weapon that offers any kind of threat travels veeeeerrrrrryyyy ssslllooowwwlllyyy. Turn broadside to the enemy, tap the "drive backwards" button every 5 seconds, and you're invincible.

I think the general consensus is that both the vehicles were lousy gameplay elements, for different reasons. You can make a case for either one being less lousy than the other, but the only thing they really added to the game is the general sense that the planets/environments were bigger and more impressive than what the player gets from the core "shoot people from behind conveniently placed bulletproof crates" sequences.