Irishjohn

Giantbomb is going to have interesting coverage of the game's development: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/hands-on-bastion/2513/ (note at the end about their approach and why they subsequently won't review it) I am intrigued but it's so early at this stage who knows what it will actually be like?

Every time you visit that site it throws up an ad for the game. You're probably right, but if so then they're letting marketing guys write a lot of posts like that. Either way, Blizzard are completely in love with their own "lore."

This thread is a good example of Blizzard self-delusion: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/628254665 I must say I enjoyed the story for a while but the characters weren't even strong enough to keep it going in a "so bad it's good" way. Tosh is the most annoying character I've encountered in a while. A black guy, with dreadlocks!!! Seriously? Is that some kind of a fucking joke? I did like the pre-rendered cutscenes very much, and I wish there had been more of them.

Nuts. I know that feeling! Let us know. Forbin, if it's down to the two of us we may as well wait until next week?

Yeah, it looks really sweet, and I like the design too. But it's just so bloody big...

I should really ask the thread for clarification: should my previous post be in gaming, not multiplayer networking? I don't mean to be clogging up the wrong thread.

The balance stuff is interesting. I'm becoming a decent Bronze player, though there's no sign of promotion. Down where I play, to be honest when I meet a Zerg player I'm usually confident that if I can just get an expansion and tech to Thors, it'll be game over. I'm sure I'll be humbled often when I start playing at higher levels, if I ever get there, but right now I'm doing great with bio-balls + medic and occasionally teching up like a lunatic. Thing is, what I'm trying to get at is this: I might never get out of Bronze, hypothetically. But I still enjoy the game. Especially a few months from now, people still playing the game will have a base level of skill. In theory, it'll either be more difficult to get promoted or much easier to be relegated. How does this balance stuff affect people with my skill level, or have we just got considerably bigger problems to deal with, so it's less of an issue? I personally feel that Terran has major advantages, even at low levels.

Cheers, the Envy 15 is coming in at that price, the Envy 14 a little more. Card on the 15 is a Radeon 5830, card on the 14 is a Radeon 5650. Price seems like a sweet spot for people like me who are willing to spend a bit more on a laptop. I spent over two grand on the Macbook I'm using but I'm done with Apple, their hardware has been hugely problematic, and especially with my interest in games there's not much reason to pay an extra 700 dollars for the class of laptop I want. Sorry, mini-rant over.

That sounds promising to me. I downloaded Scott Pilgrim because my girlfriend agreed to play it with me after seeing the movie. I had forgotten how much fun beat-em-ups can be. I'm more interested in Shank as a result.

That's great, thanks for the link! My laptop will be my only PC. I basically play games on my laptop and on consoles. I'm not unrealistic, but my 2008 Macbook Pro running Win 7 on Boot Camp has held up surprisingly well. It's only starting to show its age now. I just want an i5 processor driven laptop with a graphics card that is half decent. The card on my current computer has 256megs attached and it soldiers on. I was looking at Dell Studio XPS laptops and HP Envy laptops. They satisfy the look-good-in-meeting requirement and they seem in good shape for my gaming needs. I'm thinking of getting the Envy 14, because it has decent battery life (for my needs) on the integrated graphics. The 15, though a nicer size for me, can't switch graphics, though it does have a better graphics card. My questions here have just reflected my confusion as to which build of these computers I should be aiming for. Thanks to you, I no longer feel a compulsion to upgrade to an i7. I know that Asus have laptops with Nvidia Optimus that would be great for me for less money, but I'm still inclined to save up and get an Envy. It probably sounds crazy as I could build a desktop and get a thin and light for travel with the money, but I do a lot of travelling between countries. If I get a job in London next year the desktop is not going to make the journey, the laptop will.

Sounds good for me, too.

Rock on. I'm still deciding over whether to even play it on hard. I know I'll be fine for a lot of the campaign but the thought of a couple of missions near the end, particularly , I hated that one even on normal.

Well, I've seen nutty Protoss builds of six Warpgates all wrapped around three pylons to power them. The result is an absolutely crazy amount of zealots and it's tough to defend against. We'll have to see how it plays out though.

It's funny, I'm saved by the fact that I didn't comment on forums much until I was older anyway, and to be honest, this is the first forum I've ever participated in regularly. As for real life... growing up in Ireland and living in Texas can be nice. Nobody here knows about all the evidence I provided of being a real life irritant self. Also, I am crazy excited about Diablo 3 also (completely on topic).

The game comes in three parts. The first part is actually about space farmers. The second part is about space truckers. The third part is a prequel focused on a blonde kid under the age of ten who is really good at "pod racing" or some other nondescript crap. I'm waiting to see how this affects siege tanks too. I was playing a game yesterday and ONE siege tank defending my base with zero tech upgrades owned the crap out of a bunch of marines and marauders with no medivac support.

Thanks for all the advice, it's appreciated! Since I started using hotkeys reasonably well, I've won about 30 out of 40 games in Bronze league. I'll definitely try and start pushing out more. Actually, I was a little intimidated, which was ridiculous. I've been doing great since I started getting more aggressive. I'll just need to learn how to be successful doing that against higher ranked players.

I had a lot of fun as well. I need advanced Terran players to give me advice too! I tried a bit of scouting with my scans but all I saw was "holy crap I am boned." Didn't mean to cheese it a bit in the 3 man game, I just figured when I saw Jennoa was going to be revealed it was my only chance to go for it. We should make it a regular thing.

I'm cool with whatever. If people were committed to logging in and playing games at least a couple of days a week, we could have a longer term Thumbs league. Custom tournaments between friends would be cool. I know it's been addressed in this thread, but has anyone heard anything about Blizzard removing these region barriers? It sucks that we have to split into two groups to play each other.

I have won a couple of games recently and I'm not sure if people have been disconnected or are just quitting and not bothering to say good game or whatever. I played a Zerg player yesterday who just quit when he saw a Thor of mine. I know Zerg have huge problems once Terrans tech up that far, but looking at the replay, he could easily have beaten me. Weird. People still up for the FFA tomorrow night? I'll be online, anyway.

Awwww, why hate on the Sierra games? Then again I'm not going to try and claim you're wrong about them being unintuitive. That's why we had the hint books with the magic pen. It was half the fun. ORIGINAL DLC.

I am also a wuss. I didn't even try hard! I'm tempted to go back and try after some multiplayer, though.

Cheers, I appreciate the advice. I was mostly concerned about the laptop being decent in a year's time. It has to last at least two years. I see that Metro 2033 recommends a quad processor, but maybe it's not that well optimized? Maybe it's just for the 3D play, and I have zero interest in that anyway. Thanks though, I'll pay more attention to the graphics cards from now on.

I did, when I thought I might swing the desktop+laptop arrangement. It seems like a great laptop but I really just need a bit more screen real estate, for various work reasons and general use than for games alone. I'm basically looking at getting a laptop in the next couple of months that I can bring into meetings and use for spreadsheets and everything but still rock out for the video games at home. I was just completely confused by the comparison in top turbo speeds, where the i5 seems faster but has half the L3 cache. I knew about pc specs in 1996, but now I am a baby.

Cheers, thanks for the advice mate. I'm afraid I'm laptop only for the foreseeable future but I'll check out the site.

I liked the editing, and it was cool to see Edgar Wright take the Spaced stuff to the next level. I really liked the video game references in that series. Overall though, I just didn't get into the movie as much as I thought I would. It's weird... there was so much stuff in the movie that I liked but I just wasn't into it as much as I thought I would be. Maybe I'm a bit over Michael Cera being Michael Cera. I'm not really sure what it is.