JonCole

Grande Creamo Light with an extra shot of espresso and two baked Jodkins to go.

Shavanaman.

Huh, I guess you're right. They're probably deciding book by book... it took them years (five, to be exact) to release Time of Contempt, I guess we should count ourselves lucky that this next one is coming sooner.

Yeah, there are no plans to translate any books beyond The Time of Contempt which came out this year. I actually mentioned my interest in this series in this other thread, burned through it in similar fashion. It's really quite good, and I actually thought the translations were better than Erkki suggests (though nowhere near perfect, obviously). I come to the series from a unique perspective - I've actually not played any of the games. So now I'm going into the series with all of this background, which is pretty much the exact opposite situation as most games. What I mean is that amnesia is usually a mechanic to wipe away the past (or obscure it) and make the character more or less a cipher for the player. A game might play with amnesia, as it seems to in The Witcher, by having previous events play a part in the proceedings. I just find it interesting that playing through the game, I'll likely play it as Geralt rather than make Geralt be me. Or not necessarily be me, but have an element of originality that makes your Geralt feel unique. Haven't had an experience quite like that before in a game.

If you're going to use it to record voice (rather than music or something) a pop filter is quite useful. Not necessary by any means, but makes things sound a lot nicer on the whole.

You're definitely right, these are not cheap components. I was just trying to point out that they didn't exist at the advent of Steam Box rumors, and they exist now. AMD Steam Box is certainly likely, although the specs couldn't imitate consoles so closely otherwise the higher min. specs of PC games due to lack of optimization could really bite the Steam Box in the ass. That said, by all means I'd love to see AMD stuff a crapload of stream processors into a small die and get really solid graphics in a small package, but Iris Pro is already bundled up and ready to go which is why it seems more immediately safe for a product such as this. In any case, I can't really see something like this being "cheap" or ~$500 while still being able to play recent games.

So stoked.

Caution: the most recent sets of PS3 bundles only come with 30-day PS+ subs. The Uncharted 3 bundle does still come with a year of Plus, but you're splitting hairs on value when you could just get a GTAV bundle and resell the GTAV when you're done with it since Uncharted 3 comes with + now

What is true now and wasn't around the time of the original Steam Box rumor is that Intel's has a new chipset, Haswell, with HD 5200 integrated graphics called "Iris Pro". It's really a quite significant step over Intel 3000/4000 graphics from Sandy/Ivy Bridge, delivering 720p medium/high gaming on relatively baseline games like Tomb Raider and Grid 2. It's basically on par with Nvidia's 650M GPU, which is basically ridiculous for a chip specifically designed for high-end laptops like the MBP. Plus, it shares a <50W TDP with the Haswell chip, meaning the power usage (especially idle) is way lower than discrete or even integrated competitors. The thing that made me most incredulous about initial rumors is that it'd be able to play anything more significant than 5-year old AAA games and 2D games. With Haswell/Iris Pro, Steam Box seems much closer to reality. Here's some reading on Iris Pro, if you're interested - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested

Those two months of PS+ kick the shit out of the US offerings, though this month is still pretty good compared to other months past - Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection, Ico, Galaga Legions DX, GTA: Liberty City Stories (PSP/PSV), Rayman Origins (PSV).

Sully was basically an afterthought. They could have easily created his role in the game using exclusively B-roll from the 3 Uncharted PS3 games.

Agreed with pretty much all of this, though I had a slightly better opinion of the game overall to the point where I'd recommend it to Uncharted fans and people just looking for something to play on Vita specifically. I really liked Chase and I thought Dante was a little more believable/fit in better than characters like Chloe or Flynn. Though I must say I found the Vita-specific controls generally annoying, especially the gyroscope sniper aiming.

D&D: Chronicles of Mystara, Trine 1/2, Guacamelee, ilomilo (I think this is Windows 8 only), any of those Lego games, Renegade Ops are all pretty good and don't require a high degree of video game experience.

Ah, forgot about Poliwrath, you're right. Though I must say I've never considered using it because it's Fighting moveset is kinda crappy, not a big fan of Submission (which you'd need to use a Move Tutor to get) or the fighting TMs like Focus Blast or Low Kick. I might give it more thought if they added Cross Chop, Force Palm, Jump Kick, Sky Uppercut, or some high accuracy STAB to the moveset either by Move Tutor or Egg Moves. That said, I might give this Water/Fighting guy if he does have something a little more Fighting-forward in its moveset. It's a fairly decent type combo, as far as resistance coverage is concerned.

That sounds right, that would make it so every starter is vulnerable to one of the types of the others. That said, Grass/Dark is well worn with the easily procured Gen III's Shiftry and Cacturne, while the other two class combinations have only been used before in Legendary Pokemon making them a little more novel. I'll probably end up picking one of those two, I imagine.

I highly enjoyed my reading of Daemon, by Daniel Suarez. Listened to it twice, the first time on my own and the second time along with my girlfriend. The narrator, Jeff Gurner, has done quite a few audiobooks and I've actually picked up further books that he's read simply because he did them. The thing he's best at in my mind is doing voices that don't sound overly forced, but allow you to differentiate between characters quite easily and make the reading more entertaining. I'm also endlessly chugging away on Game of Thrones, which is also narrated quite well though not in the same acted fashion as Daemon.

MMO's were briefly mentioned earlier, but I'll toss in a recommendation for Guild Wars 2. I'm not a big MMO guy myself so having a pay once, play forever type game is perfect for me. It's got a pretty good story and pretty much every element of the game is able to be played with a party. I also recommend Trine/Trine 2, played a lot of those with my girlfriend.

I haven't been keeping up because I still play on XBLA and now also on Vita, but I was thinking about getting back into the swing of it. Problem is I like to be a little warmed up before I do a daily challenge because I don't want to crash and burn in the first couple levels, but if I play a 20 minute game or something I often quit because the peak was too high to start right from the beginning again. So I only ever do the daily challenge if I've played a couple of mediocre games first, which is kinda dumb.

If you have difficulties dealing with Windows 8's new UI or simply don't prefer it, you can use utilities to restore the Windows 7 UI or put the desktop mode to the forefront. I often hear Classic Shell and Start8 mentioned positively most often.

Really enjoyed that panel, mostly just because the enthusiasm in the room is invigorating. It was so fun to watch the people's faces in the room as the Kickstarter trailer ran because those are truly the people that Inafune was talking about when he said people were waiting for this.

Everyone on the Idle Thumbs forums are hella Cate Blanchett.

9 quick commandments for cohabitating with a manbaby

Oh god, that is ridiculous.

I'm happy with my Dell Vostro laptop, though I will say that drivers and whatnot are a huge pain in the ass when installing a new OS. I said this in the other computer-related thread, but I was thinking about upgrading to Windows 8 and one of the Dell community members has assembled this document as a rough guide to OS installation on a Dell laptop. It's a goddamn nightmare - http://philipyip.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/windows-reinstallation-guide-10-08-2013.pdf

Your requirements are fairly unusual. Laptops at that price generally don't have discrete graphics because Intel 3000/4000/5000 are more than sufficient for Windows 8 and 1080p video rendering so there's no need for much more until you get closer to $800-1000. One place I'd look is perhaps refurbished business-class laptops from Dell, Lenovo, or Toshiba, as they often have discrete GPUs that may be capable of what you're looking for. I'd normally recommend Slickdeals, but I did a casual search of recent popular computer deals and virtually none of them in the past 6 months meet your needs. I usually like to make a couple recommendations for topics like this, but due to the unusual nature of your request I only have one. It goes a little above your $400-500 limit ($530 isn't too bad, right?), but otherwise seems to meet all your requirements except maybe Saint's Row at 60fps. That's going to be super hard for an open-world game like that, but you'll definitely have 30+ at Medium with this laptop. You could also do a little bit of upgrading in the future to make it more than just adequate - upgrading the RAM to 8GB and swapping in a SSD (you could use the included drive down the road in an external USB 3.0 case) would do this laptop wonders. Anyways, here you go - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314119