osmosisch

Greg 'wikipedia' Brown

Oh, for sure! I consciously only quoted the part that I had anything to say about, which is that I prefer being able to play all my stuff on one machine. And with PC games I have more than enough confidence in the Power of Nerd that I think the games I find fun to replay will remain playable in perpetuity. Especially with first dosbox and then gog.com showing that this process has a lot of appeal to a lot of people. All the online checks built into current Ubi games and the like are definitely a danger in this dimension, which is why I don't buy them.

Huh. Did you read the Illuminatus! trilogy? That's been my ultimate '60s book so far. The glowing praise got me to order this btw.

Yes, but who wants to keep old hardware around if it's not necessary? When I want to play Master of Magic I don't need to dust off my Pentium 1. Modern consoles have been working on this though, with the Virtual Console and such.

I'm with Tycho on this one. In general if they can't see you and you're not making noise they will lose track of you. I tend to only use silenced weapons so this may be more noticeable to me. Great screenshots btw. I've been posting mine on Steam, I should take the time to put them in here also.

I'll second that BeyondPod is extremely worth it. I was stubbornly still using Google Listen and was shocked at how much better BeyondPod was when I tried it.

The best part of getting it in a steam sale is that it comes with those promo weapons (silenced shotgun, rocket crossbow, double-barreled sawnoff). Still my favourite loadout, though the bolt-action sniper rifle gives it a run for its money.

Looks like Whitey got sorted with no help from me (I blame timezones). Added you too Jon.

Took me quite a while but I finally finished it. I just had to realise that I should allow myself to skim the at times achingly dull chapters about The Leviathan and its ecology, naming scheme etc. and enjoy the great writing in the character interactions and lyrical descriptions of the dissolution of Ahab and his crew along with the whales they capture. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected going in, and there is just some absolutely transcendent parts in there. The most obvious is of course "to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." But there's a lot more stuff in there to love. Exploring the symbolism and biblical references definitely also added a lot of enjoyment for me. I have to say that the tie-ins to Evidence are not so obvious. I'd probably have to reread that again to figure out what and where really echoes Moby Dick. But nevertheless, I'm happy that this got me to give that classic my time.

Invite sent.

I've noticed no great difference but LoL is definitely trying harder to improve their community.

So far Chris only seems to enjoy Far Cry moments that involve things rolling down steep inclines!

Oh man that steam cleaner is awesome, thanks.

I've got a bazillion dota2 keys to give out, my steam id is in my profile.

They are smart enough to realise this for sure. You can tell from the writing. It's just that your average player doesn't care or even finds that it adds to the charm. Check the URL (unless you admined that in). The Steam economy isn't based on games btw, it's based on hats, keys and earbuds. See also this awesome blog post by Valve's economist.

Unless I misunderstood, you at least didn't figure out the combat far enough to realise that upgrading weapons has a much, much greater effect on your damage output than increasing your stats! That's a pretty common mistake though. Either way, the later bosses do have a lot more health but they are all eminently beatable without leveling up. It just requires a lot more skill than most people are prepared to acquire (including myself I'll be the first to admit). Only the Four Kings are a possible exception.

I wouldn't call Zen nonfiction personally.

100 years is such a strange book to me. I read it, enjoyed the scenes and characters, and on finishing put it down and thought "well that left no lasting impression on me at all." A very weird experience to have after reading such a well-regarded novel. In general I tend to really enjoy books where stuff just happens for no particular reason, but usually there tends to be more of a message or payoff. This book just felt random and confusing. I blame myself, really.

I'm always surprised when I see people use their desktop for anything. My windows are always using 100% screen real estate so I never even see the desktop.

Are these statements meant to be connected? Dark souls requires zero grinding. Unless you see having to retry a section that you failed at to be a form of grinding.

Personally I'm not seeing any compelling reasons in the future to switch from my Master PC Gaming Race habits.

As usual the 'geek got your back: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4390/carcassonne-hunters-and-gatherers I thought of this too late for the holidays, but if you're ever in a situation where you want a group of non-gamer people to enjoy a game together, Dixit is the best I've found. It's all about predicting and interpreting people's interpretation of pieces of art. Really fun.

But in that case there is no need to experience the full thrust because you already have internalised that message.

We definitely agree on the point that linear definitely does not equal bad. As far as SpecOps' linearity goes, I keep coming back to the point that as far as the writer is concerned putting the game down and walking away (narratively potentially equivalent with Walker giving up and going home/calling in the cavalry) is a valid 'ending' to the game. That's not an ultimately minor choice, I think. That tangentially leads me to ask the question whether there's a difference between putting down a book and quitting a game.

Slightly disagree, Orv. When they can express affection it already becomes awesome. It's all uphill from there though until puberty.