Gorth

Not 'did', but about to 'do' when I get home form work. To boldly go where no Gorth has gone before. I'm going to take my PC monitor apart, rip out the PCB and bake it in the oven. Recipe's found on various hardware forums suggests 8 minutes at 200C, then left to cool for about an hour. That's going to be interesting

I actually bought PS:T because of the cover art

Heh, just having finished my play through of DA:O, the bolded hit home for me. Denerim's supposed to be the New York or Los Angeles of Ferelden, so to speak. Crowds of people wherever you look. Instead, there's like a handful of folks standing around, but the place is otherwise deserted. If Assassin's Creed does one thing well, it's the atmosphere of the cities. They really do feel like actual cities full of people, rather than just an empty space. The weird thing about Denerim is that small backwood town Lothering appears to have more people in it simply by virtue of the blight refugees... Blight refugees that Denerim never, apparently, gets. But there are also other aspects - virtually no merchants? Virtually no people walking through? I tend to ignore these things - its a game after all (and not a game of DENERIM: THE FANTASY CITY SIMULATOR). But it does leave an oddness if you think too much about it. I wonder if it isn't the same issue that FO:NV ran into? I.e. engine (who am I kidding, read: 'console') limitations, where it's only possible to have a limited number of actors in any given location without blowing the memory constraints? The designers may have wanted to add hundreds of people, but it would never run on small memory configurations.

Planet scanning was awful. That's being nice to it. The moon buggy game became tedious after a while, but I'm not sure how things work at Bioware. Sometimes, it's like rather than improving things with potential they throw in the towel and just toss it out, replace it with other filler (i.e. planet scanning). The search, grab and run stuff in ME3 was actually a decent compromise and I'll admit I enjoying the getting out of a system by a hairs breadth on occasion before the Reapers got me. I think they could have run with the moon buggy idea though and expanded on it. As for combat, after having played all 3 game back to back, I don't find that ME2&3 compares very well to 1. Something about the larger, open spaces, the feeling (illusion?) of physics being at play etc. just creates a much better experience, even if enemy AI probably was better in ME3. What we need is a ME Redux pinching the best of all 3

Finally got to put 3-4 hours into the game, playing around with 2 characters, one 'good' Han Solo wannabe (what I always wanted to play in kotor before the silly game castrated him and turned him into a whimpy jedi) and a sith inquisitor just for the pyrotechnics. Game looks nice, but Jebus, the combat is bad. It is everything that prevented me from liking Warhammer Online despite being a fan of the setting for 25 years. I could have sworn that TOR is just a graphics mod running on top of the Warhammer engine. It feels like exactly the same game. Griping about the mind numbing combat aside, it at least looks nice and oozes money thrown at it. Voice acting between mediocre and good (didn't run into anything bad). Visuals are nice, making you wish they had put that kind of stuff into a single player game with good crpg mechanics. What I haven't really gotten to yet (and what really matters for me) is the story bits. I realise I need to focus one character at time and persevere for a bit and progress through at least some of it to get a fair impression.

Tallinn isn't really the first thing that springs to mind when planning a trip to Europe... That sounds like me and Los Angeles. I've been transiting through the airport several times, but would love to stop and spend a week there some day

The answer was... I'm just too obscure

Those seeking more torment... Feel the pain

Start of old thread End of old thread What can change the nature of a thread?...

Yeah, sucks when you try to make a profit off corruption. The Greek system that was, was almost as corrupt as the Berlusconi government (funny story, Danish journalists found a Danish railroad train that had mysteriously disappeared, despite being bought and paid through Danish tax payer money. Turned out that Berlusconi had given it to Ghadaffi as a gift to celebrate his 40th anniversary as a dictator). I think they will moan and whinge and try to blackmail EU for a while to avoid having to touch those Russian money laundering accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if the kickback and bribes are substantial and the government officials wouldn't want to miss out on it.

Checking out some of those old saved links, I clicked on Globus - Preliator and ended up with the irresistible urge to declare war on somebody. After a brief game of EU III I went looking for the DVD and found a live concert from Wembley on Amazon UK and bought it. While waiting for it to arrive, I checked out some of the "related" videos just to see if I could find something interesting. Found a few. Can't say I've ever heard any of them before. Two Steps From Hell - Blackheart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrE2Qr1FMU

Doesn't sound as fun as going around and beating up a few deviants... Joking aside, my current host country doesn't exactly have a stellar human rights record. For fun, look up the referendum of 1967 (which later resulted in the aboriginal population being "reclassified" from 'Flora and Fauna' to 'Human Beings').

No need to I think. Morgoth is just a bit on the grumpy side. It happens People who has been around "forever" know each others quirks and when to just smile and nod and when not. Still waiting (impatiently) for Q3 to show up so I can get EU IV... Diplomacy (aka Lying and Cheating with style).

Having experienced both cyclones and earthquakes up close and personal, I have to disappoint you, they are somewhat overrated Never tried the tsunami thing though.

Damn, so much for my fuzzy memory (I blame old age) >_

Expectations can be a hard thing to manage (I work in software development), so in some ways it probably does come down to what you were expecting/hoping for. For me, it was the equivalent of those old movies from the 60's and 70's where they show a few extra minutes after the final credits, with bloopers, goof ups and off stage camera showing the crew having a good time "off the record". If you expected something "profound", then odds are indeed that you might be very disappointed.

Isabella and Zevran were both Antivan, weren't they? I'm going to be very disappointed if DA3 doesn't take place in Antiva

It's those you don't notice that worries me.

One of the advantages of living in suburbia and being a stranger to your neighbours, unless they show up with torches and pitchforks, you can pretty much not give a damn about appearances

Hey, alanschu, time for a pay rise (it said something including internal candidates for the position)

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Usually indicates bad RAM or bad HDD (if your system is installed correct and drivers up to date).

Who says I have to be either or? I can enjoy being a misogynist in a video game without going around and insulting the opposite sex once I put the keyboard aside. I love playing Carmageddon, but I never even considered running over that baby stroller on the sidewalk the last time I drove past one (didn't even think '10 points' or whatever). She may or may not have a point, but she is doing it all wrong (to use gamer terminology), when borders between fiction and reality starts getting blurred.

Still running around in 'The Strip' in the Citadel DLC. Found a Tower of Hanoi arcade game. Shepard: "Tower of Hanoi... I think *not*" Survived the party too (and the hangovers). All good fun.

You could argue, that the entire discussion is based on an Association Fallacy right from the premise. One market segment appears to be homophobic, misogynist chauvinistic games. One market segment seems to be predominantly aimed at a male audience. Conclusion: Male gamers are homophobic, misogynistic chauvinists. Honestly, there are days when politically correct BS gets too much and I wish a pox upon those who wishes to mess with my escapist fantasies. Seriously, what is it with people who want to change the colour of curtains to match the wallpaper in my home? Get your own damn curtains and paint the walls whichever colour you like.

I don't know. Twilight seemed to do pretty well. If the guys in there were a "girls dream" of a guy, I can only conclude that girls wants guys to look and act like girls... Of course, no guy worth his testosterone would like to be caught dead watching it Maybe it's because of the comfort inherent in familiarity?