Gorth

Those two things are what bothered me the most on OWB. Heck, probably the only two things that really bothered me in it (playing a sneaky character in my first game of FO:NV). Lobotomites with a perception/detection ability that leaves sniffer dogs green with envy is silly in an unfunny way. Edit: The one thing it reminded me of was the mutated hillbillies in Point Lookout which were equally silly with their headshot immunity and magic bullet soaking capability.

Spent most of the weekend cooped up indoors. Damn weather just too unstable in Brisbane. Sort of completely out of the blue taking the BOM (weather forecast guys) by surprise. More than 22000 lightning strikes just the first half of Saturday and 30000 homes without electricity (I was lucky, got to keep my electricity all weekend long). Just about all of them fixed up with power again by the electricity company here on the Monday morning. Most of the flooded areas are dried up too. Edit: According to the morning news, it was more than 100000 lightning strikes and 100000 homes without power over the weekend. That's a lot of flashing lights

Slightly tangential, but I think XCOM is a good example of the problems that the gaming industry is up against if they want to stay in business. I still haven't found the motivation to finish off the last parts of the temple ship, because I simply don't care. It's that strange thing trying to balance gloss and packaging versus content. The cinematics are nice, but once the initial impression wears off, you are left with a very shallow game, which literally is just a small subset of the original. Games with great cinematics tends to become forgettable whereas games with great mechanics tends to become classics (IMO). Tells more about today's market than the developers really, when the need for so much 'cinematics' and "risk management" is considered necessary to have a fighting chance of selling something to a wider audience.

Sounds like the cascading alliances thing in Europa Universalis III. You better do a lot of research (or be an almighty military power) before declaring war on even the smallest of miniature realms.

I believe (if I remember correctly from my own installation) that you first install the game (don't try to activate) and then run the official patch. After running (and installing the patch) it should not be necessary to activate it online.

Seems like we have crossed from bad joke to bad taste. Closed.

Who knows. All I know, no matter what, he survives, even if he's been lobotomized. Cause in Gaider's last novel, they found a cure for that, being possessed. It's a cop out in order to give feynriel a role, since he has VERY unique and kind of extreme powers in the lore. You'll probably run into him in a tower in Val Royaux (sp?), where he'll offer you to control magic, destroy magic or synthesis... to become magic

It probably also got a 'free pass' because there was the chance of it getting explained later in ME3, so while it was a bit silly, people could still rationalize it with "it will probably make sense eventually". Could be something as simple as Reapers modelling new young Reapers on particularly adaptive/successful species (Reaper "evolution") to something more outlandish.

If I had to point out a single written text that actually impacted my way of thinking, it would be Platos cave allegory (from "The Republic"). A real eye opener and food for thought.

When I bought my 182, I could actually squeeze my computer inside it (barely), but with what appears to be the new standard size for high end gfx cards and liquid cooled motherboard etc. I ended up with having to have HDD trays standing on the desk next to the case, as well as a lot of the cabling and hoses that just doesn't fit in there. My "stuff" probably takes up one and a half 182 case So yeah, something about twice the size of my current case would do. I've got 4 more HDD's (for a grand total of 10 once installed) in their packaging waiting to get attached to a new PCI SATA3 card.

It does sort of require you to get an ipad (or some other portable entertainment system) though

Cullen? The whiny templar stuck in the circle tower in DA:O?? Now people really start to scare me!!!

As my profile says (somewhere), I'm a Cognac fan. It's not the kind of stuff you get drunk in (normally), it's just tasty and I enjoy it every now and then. Especially if I feel like rewarding myself... or consolation... or encouragement... or to celebrate.... or... you get the point. Being somewhat resistant to the intoxicating effects of alcohol, I resort to the strong stuff when needing to get drunk for the sake of getting drunk. That only happens once, maybe twice a year though The worst "excess" is the beer or two we get at work at the end of the week. I love chocolate, but I rarely buy it. Mostly because I just can't keep my hands off it. I swear I hear it calling my name constantly and something to the effect of "Eat me!".

Over $400 and it doesn't even include any of the basic case fans in the package? ...not that it doesn't look nice. It's all liquid cooled. I don't need the "fan club"

I seem to remember reading somewhere that something else was planned for the overall story arch, but got changed between ME2 and ME3, so what looked like the start of story archs in ME2 ended up not being used in ME3 (adding to some of the overall confusion). Something about the human shaped Reaper and dark matter that actually mattered

It's been years since I could squeeze my hardware into a PC case. My old Antec P182 (yes, it predates the P183) is just not up to keeping it all inside. Shopping around a bit, I ran into this beauty, Lian Li Black PC-D8000 It's not available until the end of the month though, so it gives me a few more weeks to look around. It would be nice if I could for once have all my stuff (except the external radiator) in a box that I could close and keep some of the dust out of While looking around, I saw this one Lian Li Black PC-CK101 HTPC Chassis Kind of adorable, but not really my thing Ah well, I'll find the proverbial fitting shoe eventually.

I used to butt heads with Volo all the time. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it is that made him no longer bother me. Seeing your post makes me wonder if in large part I see Volo's hyperbole as being rather satirical. Reading Volo's posts is a bit like watching a parliamentary debate. You need to peel off several layers of "window dressing" to get to the actual message underneath and then address that instead taking it at surface value.

Yeah, people want to have their pie (chart) and eat it... Nothing like executive summaries in powerpoint format

Thanks for the link I agree that parts of it sounds promising, but I worry about the constant talk about multiplayer. Singleplayer is what interests me and effort spent on parts of no interest to me, detracts from overall expectations. "Waiter, there are multiplayer bits in my soup, please take it back the kitchen and complain to the chef!". With 50 days still to go, I'll keep an eye on it for a while. The more multiplayer focused it sounds, the more I'll lose interest though.

On the ipad, yes. Being a radical fundamentalist, I prefer the paper version of White Dwarf. Just imaging the Book of Grudges on Kindle???

Finished 'Small Gods'. Great story with an actual ending. Game developers take note! Started reading the latest Dan Abnett paperback release, 'Salvations Reach' (a Gaunts Ghosts novel). Ended up reading in my bed until 5:30 in the morning. Not good. It's going to be a long day today >_

My local motorcycle dealer didn't offer me anything like that when I got a new battery recently. I was just happy that he offered to help me getting rid of it in a "responsible" way (instead of the landfill). Maybe I should have bargained.

Yugoslavia disagrees So does ETA and IRA. Catalonia is considering independence from Spain undoing the old union of Aragon and Castile, Belgium has always been a fragile construct and Liga Norte still wants to apply big scissors to Italy and cut it in half. Ossetia definitely didn't want to be part of Georgia and the Faroe Islands still entertain notions of independence from Denmark (until somebody puts up a balance sheet and shows them the price of independence that is). Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes separation happens peacefully (like the Czecks and Slovaks) and sometimes not so peacefully (a lot of others).

My experience with project managers is also mostly in a corporate, project oriented environment, but I'm not sure the production guys in games development are a 1:1 translation of the role. Seems like the manage communication, schedules and stuff like that alright, but they also deal with a lot of "external" things, like coordinating stuff with external supplies, like contractors, voice actors, recording studios, whatever. Project leads sounds more like the guys who have the clout to make decisions and call the shots when stuff needs to be cut, changed or the whip cracked to make people hurry up and meet their scheduled targets. Would be interesting to observe a typical workday in the office

I thought that was why Liara was there? She is in her own words considered a child amongst her people. Doesn't stop Shepard of course I've been playing a bit of ME2 recently, trying out the bunch of DLC's I purchased. Overlord was sort of Ok, although it doesn't get anywhere near the Geth Collective in ME3 (which was damn good IMO). I just finished Lair of the Shadowbroker and while I hate boss fights passionately, some of the other bits of the DLC was good. Especially the dossier. No idea who wrote the little stories in there, but the guy gets a 'Like' from Gorth. Mirandas online dating attempts and Grunts search history were particularly funny.. I still don't own ME1, but the genesis interactive comic thingy sort of gave the rundown of key events I suppose? Can't remember having seen much else in reviews and youtube vids.