Amentep

Watched PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Hadn't watched in awhile, and I'd forgotten a lot of the beginning (prior to them getting into the church). I thought the idea of good and evil through the lens of theoretical physics was interesting. Dennis Dun's character has some really weird actions/reactions and the film and the female lead is sadly underdeveloped (but the same could be said for most of the characters, who don't really know one another prior to the film and the running time hasn't the ability to develop them). Later I watched THE SWARM, 1970s Killer Bee movie, infamous for being one of the top critical and box-office failures of its time. Its interesting because the first 2/3rds of the film aren't awful (mind you, they're not good either, but entertaining in a 70s disaster flick way) but there are some leaps in logic that leave the viewer scratching their head. Unfortunately this is a signpost of things to come, as the last 1/3rd of the film takes all leave of its senses and presents quite possibly one of the goofiest and far fetched conflagration of events ever put to celluloid. At 2 hrs and 30 min its about 40 minutes too long (possibly more; the original theatrical version was just under two hours but isn't available anymore).

Prince Charles is in line with his son Prince William after him AFAIK. Some observations from my (limited) experience with the UK (from visiting) - Scottish people speak English in a way that you will recognize as English but not actually understand. It sounds nothing like the pretend Scottish that shows up in movies and television from the UK and you will need someone to translate English for you. Roundabouts actually make a lot more sense for lower traffic roads than stop signs. People drive on the motorway really fast. The thickness of fog is not exaggerated. Be prepared to feel disembodied. Until you are known at the local pub, be aware that walking in by yourself will be accompanied by death stares. Place names in Wales are actually longer than some of the places in Wales.

My experience with ME and ME2 was that I enjoyed playing FemShep more than ManShep. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Surely, you'll need a bowler? I have a friend who moved to the UK (the catch is his wife is from England) and I've known a few people who've been stationed there over the years. They all seem to like or liked it while they were there.

Looks good to me so far. Can't wait to see how it looks in motion.

Doesn't Street Fighter Ken dye his hair (hence the thick black eyebrows)? And isn't he part Japanese?

Well CrossGen did go out of business. All of their assets/IPs were bought by Disney. Disney recently bought Marvel. Marvel just teased at Comic-Con International they were reviving CrossGen's titles.

Wouldnt' really surprise me. The franchise has been heading in the ludicrous direction, content-wise, for a while. FO4: Moonbase Alpha. Can't wait. Don't you mean ?

Didn't play the first one; see no reason to change that with the second.

Yeah they've said repeatedly the PC combat isn't changing - its hard to believe how much argument is coming about the "dumbing" down of PC games over this though...

I beat TOB once. I also beat BG1 once (and had to cheat to do that... ) Got a bit further in Lego Harry Potter over the weekend.

Well, not anymore.

So tell me Vol, where exactly were you when I was playing Dragon Age? Because in those three cases the first time I played I almost lost my party (and did totally in the fourth case) and I don't remember you being there. But thanks for the compliment on my gaming skills (even if you overestimate them)!

Yeah, I'd forgotten about that, that did make groin shots useful. Not sure how that could translate into a non-turn based game.

Going for the eye was quite useful but that was it, really. I don't think I've ever aimed for anything else in Fallout and Fallout 2.. except maybe.. the head. It was useful, but as Thorton_AP pointed out you got an insta kill out of it a lot of times if you hit. And in my experience when I blinded them and not kill them, they ran away.

I don't think its been officially classed as "tyte" yet, though, so maybe there's hope? I'm actually pretty sure Alvin said the game is tyte. The game is going to get canceled Oops...

Most of the time I didn't. Even when I went to cripple a leg from a running opponent, most of the time (after the beginning of the game at least) I killed them by blowing their leg off. Would be nice if there was a reason to subdue opponents or something that came out of crippling them if you played that way, but there just isn't. To be fair though, there really isn't a reason to shoot for the extremities in the other FO games either. At least my experience was injuring an arm, leg, blinding or knocking a weapon out of their hands usually resulted in them trying to run, which then cued up the tedium of chasing them down.

Starfish - the makers of Elminage - made an earlier DS Wizardry title. That said there seem to be a few companies doing "Wizardry like" games in Japan as well (and a few come out here like Class of Heroes or The Dark Spire).

Have your NPCs run into the bonfire in the first attack, have them run outside of the circle in the second attack, have them separated in the dungeon in the infiltration when the skeletons get triggered. I got killed though once in gate area, my team separated and triggered all the darkspawn in the area, who proceeded to bash me.

I don't think its been officially classed as "tyte" yet, though, so maybe there's hope?

As I understand it, the original Sir-Tech games were hugely popular in Japan and the name was licensed by a number of companies over the years for a variety of Wizardry "side story" games (Tales of the Forsaken land was actually made by Racdyn/Racjin, published by Atlus in the US. I'm not 100% certain it was Atlus who published it in Japan though). From what I've read, IPM Inc. bought the rights to the Wizardry name from Sir-Tech and are planning what they call a "Wizardry Renaissance". Since IPM isn't a developer their games are being developed by other companies. Genterprise is doing the DS game "Wizardry: Pledge of Life" while Acquire seem to be doing the game released on the PS3 ("Wizardry: Dungeon of Imprisoned Souls"?). Their parent company is a MMO maker and I believe a Wizardry MMO is planned as well.

I confess I may very well be a failure at the mathematics I trained in since its been ten years (almost 11) since I did jack-all with it (but I can always impress people with the degree, none the less). I will say that in my previous foray in the thread with WoD, I got the nagging feeling that we're talking at cross purposes; ie he and I (and we in general) are not setting the issue the same way in our minds and thus not finding a common ground to discuss. But I couldn't pinpoint where I think the communication problem lays and without going totally to mathematical notation so we don't get lost in semantics, I'm not sure how to resolve the issue.

If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "not you" winning amid players of the lottery than that's true. If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "some other person" who bought the same amount of lottery tickets for the same lottery, then that's not true as you each would have the same chance. Or, lets say you are A1 and all the lottery players in the world are A2, A3, A4....An and each person bought one ticket and the odds are calculated that there is a 1/105 chance to win. Then chance of winning is the same for A1, A2, A3, A4....An so the chance of A1 winning is the same as An. So the chance of "you" (A1) winning is the same as "some other person" (An) But the chance of "you" (A1) winning is much less than the rest of the group (which stands at An-1/105 IIRC).

Not in the contest that said person is entering. That said, he kinda takes that into account in the fact that calculating the odds of one person winning requires calculating their odds against other members in the contest. And to be technical, the chances of SOMEBODY winning are 1. The chances of somebody winning are 1 only if every combination of lottery number has been purchased (otherwise someone would be winning the lottery every time the lottery is done). A smaller scale version of this: Lets say out of a deck of cards the Ace of Spades is the winning card; you'd need 52 people picking cards to insure a winner. Lets say you have 27 people, then each person has a 1 in 52 chance of being a winner, but there's a 27/52 chance that the winner is actually still in the deck.

Wizardry has always been a beloved franchise in Japan, they've done a lot of upgraded ports of the game, a PS2 game which from what I've heard was actually quite good (and had certainly a better and cleaner art direction than the awful one of Wiz 8, though I know most won't agree with me) and there's also another title that's been developed for next-gen (though we should actually call them 'now-gen' but let's leave this semantics debate to some other topics) consoles. I liked Wizardry: Tale of a Forsaken Land "okay". Its battle system was superior to Wiz8 IMO, but it had its own sorta weird elements I didn't like. Still I enjoy games of its type and wish more would come out (I've been slowly working through Class of Heroes for a few months off and on). Am excited about Tactics Ogre remake, never though I'd see the day to be honest.