ethanThomas

I have nothing else to add.

So apparently Manhunt 2 is coming to the PC in all it's AO-rated, uncut glory. I'm curious to see if there will be any media controversy or whether it will pass under the radar since it's a digital distribution only release. I thought the first Manhunt was kinda interesting, so I might check out the second one once the price drops a bit.

Personally I just loaded up the whole segment before I started watching, this allowed me to easily skip over the grindy bits.

I'm looking for some RPG goodness, but I have little interest in swords and/or sorcery. Any recommendations? Games like this I'm already aware of: Fallout franchise KOTOR I&II Mass Effect Arcanum (it's admittedly half fantasy, but the steampunk was neat-o) Alpha Protocol (not out yet of course)

I just completed a light side play-through with the mod installed. There are no extremely major additions as far as I can tell, just a lot of minor scenes added in here and there. The only significant addition is the HK droid factory and I found that to be a slow and difficult slog even on easy. The mod doesn't really address any of the issues raised by the Idle Thumbs review. I don't think this should be terribly surprising since the issues raised are pretty fundamental issues for the game and are way beyond the scope of a fairly straightforward content restoration mod. If you've never played KOTOR II and want to, or if your planning on revisiting the game anyway the mod is certainly worth installing. It doesn't offer any fundamental changes to the game, so if you hated KOTOR II initially or have played it through once or twice and got your fill, the mod really has nothing to offer you. The Team Gizka mod looks to be significantly more ambitious, but we'll see if they're ever able to finish. Also the 'open' beta wasn't really intended to be open, from what I understand it was leaked by one of the beta testers much to the annoyance of the Gizka dudes.

I would actually warn you away from Watchmen. Not because I think it's bad or anything, but rather I think you will get a lot more out of it if you wait until you become more versed in the cliches and archetypes of superhero comics. I really Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. It's a nice bit of crazy, but it's not everyone's cup of tea so I'd recommend trying to borrow the first book or two from a friend if you can (Morrison's run fills 6 trades, if you're curious).

Some of the fine gentlemen at Giant Bomb did one of their quick looks for this game if anyone's curious: http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-majesty-2/17-1442/

I've been playing it a bit recently. I can't play in very long increments because the game doesn't run very consistently on my computer and low framerate + first person perspective = Other than that I really like it, at it's best Cryostasis feels like a cross between Condemned and Bioshock. The linear first person brawler bits from Condemned plus the exploring a decrepit waterlogged (also icy, very icy) environment trying to piece together what happened to the previous occupants from Bioshock.

Didn't we tie for second in the cyborg drawing contest? Nappi won and chose the Cyborg Mouse of Awesome, and I had already bought DOW II. So in theory the code should be yours, right?

I think part of the reason 1up went to the grades system is to avoid these sort of quibbles about numbers, but wouldn't a B equate to more like 85%, and an A be 95%? (A+ being 100%) From what I've heard, Neversoft has gotten much better at doing the note-tracking. So if you're trying to decide what game to buy, at this point the only thing that really matters is which track-list interests you more.

The overall vibe I got from the RB: Beatles review was that it was kind of easy and doesn't really do anything new. GH5, while not ultra-innovative, nevertheless added some cool new party friendly features and has more challenges to offer up for the experienced player.

Have you guys figured out how you're going to give away the RE5 code yet? Also, did toblix ever get his DOW II code from the old cyborg contest?

He's just being silly. Just a fair warning, STALKER generally needs to be played in large chunks to be really enjoyable. This might be obvious, but I'd strongly recommend playing a fair bit of Shadow of Chernobyl before picking up Clear Sky, just to make sure you like the radioactive open-world hellhole that GSC has to offer. If you do decide to pick up Clear Sky, keep in mind that it's very much Shadow of Chernobyl 1.5 and that a fair number of areas from SoC get reused. I don't want to scare you off CS, but just make sure you have realistic expectations going in.

I can't offer any great tech support, but I'd reinstall the game, reapply all the patches, and make sure I've got all the latest drivers for my video card. Try running vanilla STALKER and seeing if the issues are still there, if they're not then you might just be better off playing STALKER mod-less. The Complete 2009 mod has some great improvements for the game, but I don't think it's essential to enjoying the game. If none of that helps, then I can only hope you will find solace in this image:

I think this might fix your problem if you want to give the upgraded shaders another shot: go into user.ltx and change the r2_sun_near and r2_sun_near_border to this: r2_sun_near 20 r2_sun_near_border 1