Korax

I think, therefore I Thumb? To Thumb, or not to Thumb? No Thumb is an island?

I'd say the latter is most likely. If you had a love interest in ME1, the desk in your quarters has a picture of them on it. If you choose a new lover, the picture ends up face-down, implying to me that you've given up on that relationship. If you stay faithful, what is normally the sex scene is replaced by one that has you looking wistfully at the picture for a few seconds.

Uh...

Is it the LOADING message that breaks it for you? I found that those kind of kept me in the experience. Instead of it being a generic background or even blank screen with the icon, it maintained continuity with what I was doing. I transition to a planet, and it shows the shuttle landing there. I dock at a spaceport, and it shows the airlock decontamination process. I take a truck out to the wastes of Tuchanka, and it shows the path taken to get there. It's a lot less jarring than a black screen with a small, animated icon in the corner to let me know that something's still going on.

I'm playing on 360, and it's been really good. As said earlier, long elevators are replaced by loading screens. I've only seen pop-in at one spot, for about half a second. And, with a couple exceptions, the framerate is pretty solid.

I've had both an enemy and a squad member get stuck in walls when recovering from knockdown. And it's probably not so much of a bug, but there have been a few times when my female Shepard has used male Shepard barks when finding upgrades (the "I could use this" type ones).

You get an explanation for it after a couple of story missions. I don't know whether or not you'll like it, but you'll get one. I was playing through the "Rescue the Convict" quest again, and a second look reveals it to be one of the most egregious examples of the disparity of what characters can do in- and out-of-cutscene:

The repair tool didn't overheat in BC1. At least not in single player. I didn't play too much BC1 multiplayer. As for the engine, it's DICE's own Frostbite engine, created for BC1. It was updated to sort of a v1.5 for BF1943, and BC2 will have more improvements on that. The main bullet point seems to be the destructible buildings. I can't think of many multiplayer shooters that allow complete annihilation of structures, and the ability to blow apart walls to make paths or find enemies adds an interesting wrinkle. There's also the squad mechanics. As far as I can remember, only BC1 and BF2142 had any sort of squad combat.

I'm liking all the little things that were put in for people who are paying more close attention or doing more exploration of the spaces. There are the obvious examples of the fish tank and ship models, there have been a few other things that make me smile. If you had a love interest in the first game, there's a picture of them on your desk, and if you pursue a romantic relationship with a different character this time around, the picture ends up turned face-down. The space hamster, a nice nod to D&D/Baldur's gate. When you recruit Zaeed, you can visit the cargo hold he's taken up residence in. There you can fiddle with the trash compactor and eject cubes of garbage into space. And, of course, there's the alien porn magazine:

Two things that I'm starting to hate, now that I'm playing on Insanity: After a few side missions, you're forced to complete the next story mission. You can't use the galaxy map because the Illusive Man wants to talk to you, and as soon as you talk, the mission starts. I end up stuck with whatever I've got at the time, instead of being able to make preparations and maybe do a few more side missions to improve my character's abilities. Not being able to buy medi-gel. At least, I haven't been able to find a place that sells medi-gel. Now I'm pretty much stuck in a difficult spot with only 3 doses of gel instead of the 6 or 7 I can normally carry. I know I can hammer my way through if I could just heal my squad a couple more times, but no, not enough gel.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! Fighting the first Collector Praetorian on "Insanity" is brutal. I must have spent at least an hour on him alone. I finally beat him by having him chase me around a large piece of cover while my squad used their powers from the other side of the arena. The other mission shave been tough, but all the Collector ones are going to require some powerful biotics. Now I'm trying to decide whether I want to press on or sacrifice the time spent and just start a new biotic character.

Just finished and HOLY SHIT. To avoid spoilers, I won't say much more than this: it's an extremely good idea to buy ship upgrades and do the crew loyalty missions. I can't wait to see how my actions in this one play out in ME3. EDIT: Oh, and nice little feature: after the credits, you can drop back into the game to clean up any outstanding missions or galaxy exploration.

I've come to expect this from any new game that I expect to have popular multiplayer. They underestimate the server load, and it takes a few days to correct. The good thing is that this probably means that most problems will have been corrected by the time the actual release comes around.

You do get told that due to the integration of your cybernetic modifications, your attitude will affect the healing of the scars. After a little while, however, you can purchase an upgrade for the medical bay that you can use to remove the scars permanently. I don't know if they get worse, but I'm quite high up on the Paragon side, and they're almost completely gone. I was also a bit surprised at Legion's story.

Did anyone else find the Subject Zero reveal to be painfully obvious?

Tracking information tells me that my copy is at a processing center within an hour's drive of where I live. I am getting restless.

I believe you do it by taking out a Venom bad guy only with regular melee attacks, no Batarang. i12an9S10gY

I hate you so much.

No auto-spawn is good. Also: It'll be nice not to have a completely gimped Infected team if you can't fill out all 8 slots.

That mess was fixed a couple weeks after the DLC hit. Now you just have to re-insert the bonus disc. An update will download and you can reinstall BDtS, download PS, and everything works.

Fair enough, but I'd venture to say that while the US was definitely a major consideration, it might not have been the target market.

Yeah, it could be a lot better. I've had a few problems of my own, and in searching for solutions, I've seen a lot of things that come down to insufficient memory.

I just finished watching the excellent TV adaptations of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and Colour of Magic/Light Fantastic. If you enjoyed the books, you'll probably like them. And for those in the US, NetFlix has both available for instant streaming.

I've also recently begun, after a couple of false starts since its release. I agree that the story seems to be a bit unexplained, but I suspect that since Geralt is supposed to have amnesia, all the important bits will eventually be explained. The developers may have also been operating under the assumption that most people who bought the game would already be familiar with the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.

I definitely remember Josip and French Chick - both supposedly died when I went to help the Underground escapees, but I never had anything more than a "they were killed, I swear." It may not have been all nine (I was too busy trying not to die to get an accurate count), but there were most certainly first-half friends there.