Nappi

Intel SSD of a friend of mine self-destruct in less than a year, so you are probably fucked no matter what.

Yeah. I'd think that a system where the chance of hitting (secretly) depended on the past events would be even more confusing to people than the correct way of calculating probabilities.

I don't understand this point at all. The chances of you missing/failing three times in a row is 0.8 %, isn't it? How will ones chances "end up being something like 20 %"? And as said, random(0, 100) < 80 ensures the 80 % probability over time.

Most people probably interpret statements like "This operation has 99 % success rate" as "There is no risk whatsoever, but don't sue us if your internals are already rigged to explode" and not as "Every hundredth patient dies". Same goes for things like "I'm 95 % sure about this". So yeah.. people's understanding of probabilities is fucked, and I can totally see how some players can't understand how the guy can miss a shot if he has a 90 % chance to hit. As for the original question, I'm with The Claw on this one. While pretty much every scene in Uncharted was carefully crafted to maximize awesomeness, I rarely felt anything at all because I knew there wasn't anything unique with my experience. But when I was running away the first super mutant I had encountered in Fallout 3 and accidentally led him into a village where it slaughtered most of the inhabitants, I was awestruck. Can this really happen? Or that time when I was closing in on a downed UFO in XCOM without encountering any resistance and then all at once I was attacked by Mutons, Sectoid Commanders and a Cyber disc. You remember that? Of course not, because that experience was mine!

I don't remember the details all that well anymore, maybe someone else can elaborate. Most of the characters were definitely augmented in one way or another. As I recall there wasn't much debate whether this was right/wrong or good/bad; people already took it for granted. The augmentations of course caused a great divide between those who could afford augmentations and those who could not. Augmented people were also highly specialized. By far the most fascinating part of Neuromancer, however, is its depiction of the internet / world wide web / hacking in 1984. Some of the aspects of the cyberspace (a term which Gibson himself coined, as far as I know) are eerily similar to what we have now, while others are simply laughable in retrospect. I can heartily recommend the book for that aspect alone, even if it's not the best introduction to the subject of posthumanism.

You can ram the opponents as well. An there are not too many obligatory races and karaoke sessions.

There is an achievement for consuming 10 types of foods and drinks. Probably not more variety than that. Also, I find it very hard to believe that a Chinese food vendor would yell "FOOD ON A STICK!"

I assume you are looking for non-fiction? Can't help you there. As for fiction. The only books on transhumanism that I have read are the first two thirds of the William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. I can highly recommend checking out Neuromancer.

Most multiplatform games will of course support Xbox controller. If you like RPGs and if you haven't done so already, you should check out The Witcher 2. It's an awesome game and should work fine with a controller. Sleeping Dogs was also very enjoyable on PC with a gamepad.

I enjoyed this game to the extent that I actually finished it (which is increasingly rare for me nowadays). I think the game got most of the open word stuff right: the city was interesting and not too large, the cops were easy enough to get rid of, all the missions were relatively short, you actually gained something from playing the side-missions, etc. I also liked the fact that non-combat missions were sprinkled throughout the story, similar to Mafia games. The only thing I can think of that I really disliked was the hospital system. Why can't I just restart after a failed drug bust like I would do with other missions?

Good to hear. While "Wizard" played no small part in my decision to buy the book, I find Nikola Tesla truly fascinating.

That was what I was thinking the entire time I was playing Magicka. I ordered a book today

Probably 30 to 40, counting the ones that I have played less than an hour just to check what they are like. Many of them are less interesting games of various (mostly indie game) bundles, but there are a lot of exciting big titles as well. All of them were on sale when I got them. It seems that the discounts lower not only the price, but also the value of the games for me. For example, I almost quit playing the original Mass Effect after just a couple of hours because I found it a bit boring. I remember thinking something along the lines of "Fuck it. It was only 3.70 €." Had I paid 40 € for the game, I would have given it at least 10 hours or so before thinking whether or not I shoudl quit. I eventually gave the game another chance, and I'm glad I did because Mass Effect is one of the more enjoyable video game series in a long time.

Turn based movement is already artificial and limiting, so I don't think that is an exceptionally good argument against gun&run limitation in a game like XCOM. Board games have silly artificial rules, because they wouldn't work otherwise. The developers probably played a fair amount with the ruleset before arriving at this limitation. My guess is that had they allowed moving after shooting, then move > overwatch > (next turn) > shoot > fall back tactic would have been way too powerful or something.

Yes. Adynod, the smiley is right: you should be angry, not sad.

Shooting concludes the turn for that soldier. There might be a perk/promotion that lets you move after shooting, but I'm not sure. I actually like the system, because it forces you to be more careful with unit placement.

I completed five or so dungeons of Darksiders II and I suspect that I will never touch the game again. I was expecting a great Zelda like adventure, but I soon realized that I simply wasn't having any fun playing the game. It's a real shame as well, because the ingredients (Zelda, Prince of Persia, God of War...) were right.

I apologise in advance for my continued inability to comment on the contents of the podcast, or the book, as I have not yet had time to read any of the novels. Is it really necessary to have separate threads for pre- and post-podcast discussions for the same book? The discussion related to the first book was actually divided between three threads, which is simply ridiculous. I'm sure a better solution can be arrived at. Also, did you decide on whether to announce the titles two months in advance or will you stick to one month warning?

I'm already intrigued by the fantasy/sci-fi setting, but I will only back this project if the final game will be called An Old School RPG or An Old School RPG: Origins.

My motherboard supports Smart Response Technology, which means that I can use my SSD as a cache and not worry about how to distribute files over different drives. I have used it from the start so I can't really compare performances between SRT enabled and disabled or between pure SSD and SSD-SRT. It is fast, and that is enough for me. Worth considering I guess.

A friend of mine was in a similar situation some time ago, that is the processor was bottle-necking the graphics card performance. Ivy Bridge i5 (whatever the current model number is) and a new motherboard did wonders for the performance. And yeah, from what I have understood, for most users i7 is not worth the price difference over the corresponding i5 model. Also, make sure that you buy one of those motherboards where the heatsinks looks like ammo clips. Those are rad.

Tropico is a very interesting game in that respect. My goal was always to make the lives of the inhabitants as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. I soon found out that this is achieved by building lots of mines and/or tobacco, coffee and sugar plantations early on. When that investment started paying off, I could focus on the necessary infrastructure to support my petty society. In fact, one of my most memorable video game moments was in Tropico 3: My economy was booming, relatively speaking anyway, and I had a serious shortage of work force. To solve this problem, I issued an open doors policy in my immigration office. The nationalist faction soon grew pissed because of the filthy foreigners had stolen their work and women, or whatever. The situation got quite bad. Finally, my advisor Penultimo suggested that I should issue an order of rebranding all the immigrants with local names, so that the nationalist wouldn't know who to hate anymore. I agreed to this plan and it actually worked perfectly... for a while. The immigrants were absolutely enraged. Now all of this was obviously scripted as hell and presented in quite a goofy way. Still, I was completely shocked to discover how easy it was for me to strip a large group of people of their identity just to silence a bunch of dickheads. Like I said, I always tried to think what was the best for my people. Still, I somehow had managed to distance myself of the hundred or so inhabitants of the island enough that it didn't even occur to me how sick and gruel the plan I had agreed on was. I don't know if this was what the developers had aimed for. It was very impressive nevertheless.

That was poor wording from my part. I meant something along the lines of eventually being able to identify the best solutions out of, say, five possibilities for dealing with one particular situation. By puzzles, I was referring to situations like "Oh, he could take that one out easily, but then that other alien would be able flank him the next turn." I'm sure that the original XCOM was full of situations like that as well, but based on the little I have seen, I got the impression that it more like "If I move 7 steps instead of 5, I have 7.5% more cover but I can only take one shot at 53% as opposed to two shots at 40%." I don't think I have the time or courage to try to master that kind of system. I also consider the dynamic battlefield and randomness an extremely positive thing, by the way.

First off: I'm a first time listener of 3MA who has never played the original XCOM. I picked this episode because I liked what I had seen of XCOM: Enemy Unknown so far. Very interesting discussion (even if it turned into a very specific UI rant and straight up bug reporting at one point). It was fascinating to notice how much our views on some of the subjects differed. For instance, I really like the tight squad, the cover system and the two movement limit in the new game, because it means that the battles are laid out as sort of puzzles. The limited number of possible moves each turn gives me hope that, one day, I can "master" this game. I was actually under the impression that this was how the original game worked as well. When watching the Idle Thumbs XCOM stream, I was completely put off by the wide open areas (what a waste of space) and the action point system. The game seemed to be much less about solving puzzles and much more about probability theory and simple trial-and-error*. The faster pace of the missions is definitely big improvement in my opinion. Getting out of the skyranger alone seemed to take 5-10 minutes in the original. I also can't see why I would like to control 10+ squad members. The controls have never been a big issue for me in slow-paced or turn-based games. I have even toyed with the idea of playing Enemy Unknown (PC) in front of the TV with a gamepad. I'm sure I had something else to say as well, but I can't remember it anymore. Anyway, excellent cast guys! *Again, I have not played the original and my impression may be completely wrong.

Yeah. Hold left or right on d-pad.