JonCole

Ivy Bridge - associated chipset (Panther Point) natively supports USB 3.0, better power efficiency, significantly better integrated video performance (HD 3000 -> HD 4000) So, if you can get Sandy Bridge significantly cheaper, don't worry about it considering you're sure to have discrete graphics. But I haven't seen big gulfs in price between them, except at the lower end. Panther Point boards have the same socket so newer boards = better with no real disadvantages.

Yeah, throw me into the pro-Samsung SSD camp. The fact that they produce both the microcontroller and the NAND is a pretty comforting concept as far as quality control goes.

Well, it's already been said a few times, but I'll say it again - futureproofing isn't really a thing. It's worth getting the most modern parts possible rather than older parts simply for their relative lifespan, but make no mistake in thinking that your PC will be top shelf for years to come. If I had any advice for you, it'd be to invest in exactly what you want (regardless of price) for the following items - case, power supply, cooling. Those things are multigenerational in their usefulness and can last for 5+ years each, which is something you can't say about most other parts in the PC. A high wattage, power-efficient (80 Plus Gold), modular PSU is one of the best things you could buy for making your box both upgradeable and easily modified without having to fiddle with too much. More specifically put, I'd personally rather get an i3 as Tycho suggests with a whisper quiet cooler and slick case than a more expensive i5 or i7.

You get most of the benefits of an SSD when you install the system files on it. Many people just grab a 128GB SSD to run the OS and a few critical games then relegate the rest of the games to a secondary storage drive.

Eh... an i3 is perfectly capable, but for this budget I think an i5 is a no-brainer. The most critical bit of information not included in this guide is the resolution you'll be running games at. If it's 1080p or below, you'd really see diminishing returns for any video card more expensive than $300 and few substantive differences between a $200 card and $300 card. If you want the PC to be truly quiet, you could easily sink a lot of cash into quiet cooling solutions. Grab a Noctua CPU cooler + a couple SilenX fans and you'll be out of $150 in a jiffy.

I could use this too. I frequently see a year for $50, but that barely qualifies as a deal since they increased the price to $60 a year ago or so.

Yeah, if you watch the X-Com Idle Thumbs Twitch stream you actually get a pretty excellent argument (from JP and Evan, IIRC) for why randomness is so important in games. I can't really sum up what they said, but for me it's just this quality for being able to play the same kind of game for so long while still feeling the sense of discovery and systemic cohesion. Also, I don't know why you would want randomness to have a "valuable" effect in a "noticeable" way. I think the point of randomness in many cases is so there's a veil in front of the game's mechanic elements like the level design.

Man, I hate when I do something for 30 hours and it begins to feel a little boring. How incredibly disappointing. On a completely unrelated note, just finished the alien base and two of my guys got killed. I cannot express my sadness.

A deal pretty much anyone could like (well, if you live in the US and like your PC) - enter code SQRLUVOC at checkout for any digital download for a PC game and get 25% off. Things I'm considering using this with - Civ V: Gods and Kings for $22.50 Borderlands 2 Season Pass for $22.50 Battlefield 3 Premium for $37.50

Seems like water is deadly when it's a) freezing cold or b ) at the edge of a map. Otherwise, it tends to be below waist height and not deadly at all. Not very well signaled either way.

Just play Rayman Origins (if you haven't already) and a fair amount of Nintendo rose color will fall from your eyes. At least that's what happened to me.

Well, that was super helpful and funny as fuck. I'm a poor piece of shit so I'm definitely going to be playing the old XCOM in lieu of the new one until BF at least. Thanks!

In the area I used to live in Central FL, you could easily get a 2500+ square foot house for $1000 a month. Nuts. But yeah, I have a friend who recently moved to SF and was looking for apartments at a rate of 2 or 3 per night and didn't manage to find one for several weeks. Even then, it was hardly a good deal.

I've got 344 games on Steam and have only played 71 of them. I have a ton of games on XBLA and PSN that I've never played, probably around 30 if I had to guess. I have about another 30 boxed games for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, GC, and DS that I've yet to play. That being said, I've followed a fairly strict rule to not buy games that I'm not going to immediately play. Having made that decision, I'm only ever decreasing my backlog which is a step up from it growing out of proportion formerly.

So Nintendo announced their eShop schedule for the rest of the year and the most notable inclusions by my estimation are the full-game downloads for Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Ocarina of Time 3D, and Star Fox 3D. The one thing that I will likely always be annoyed with Nintendo about is their total lack of price sensitivity (meaning there's a big $40 price tag on all of those titles). Hell, even Microsoft and Sony decrease the pricing on their old Games on Demand-type stuff after a little while, though always lagging behind retail. I know Nintendo first-party titles always sell like gangbusters, but I can't help but believe they'd make more money after dropping the prices on their titles a year or more after release and build consumer satisfaction.

My secondary is a Gunzerker at 10. I'd be up for some Thumbs games.

Golden keys are great for when you hit that seemingly loot-centered-game-specific problem of not having any weapons strong enough for certain areas/enemy types all of the sudden, which would normally necessitate either grinding levels or farming for better gear. That said, the items are usually good enough that you'll end up relying on them for a good couple levels unless you're getting some great drops incidentally. For some reason, I've hit a weird brick wall of motivation on this game recently. I was plowing through two or three levels every night when it first came out, but I've been moving between 27-29 this whole week without a lot of vigor. I wonder if it's due to the weird pace at which the game doles out sidequest content, or what. Anyone else having this problem?

I brought my laptop to work and played this on my lunch break. Jaysus.

Being the stupid idiot I am, I decided to listen to the Idle Thumbs guys talk about how awesome this game is and then proceed to watch the Twitch archived stream of Chris playing. That on it's own isn't the stupid part, the fact that I was fully prepared to not buy this game until I did all of that is. Yeah, between GW2 and Borderlands 2 I really needed something else to timesink my whole goddamn life.

This post is copied word for word from DOTA forums. Spam.

That Metaphysics article is super goddamn fascinating. Makes me want to try out that big HD texture pack and revisit that game. I put at least 300 odd hours into that game when it first came out and really got very little of that flavor.

Well that's mildly horrifying.

I actually have all three books they discussed on my backlog shelf - so, should I wait until after reading them before I listen or should I listen first?

I don't really get how this is supposed to be exciting for me. There are already hundreds of games on Steam that are probably worth my time that I will never get to, why would I care to vote other games I'll likely never play into the store? Maybe that's cynical, but it's hard to get interested in something that provides me essentially no benefit.

Well, I think we're kind of in agreement. If you know these dudes and already are interested in the site, it might do something (like it did for me) to make you more excited. If not, I don't think this is AAA documentary stuff by any stretch and really won't (so far) do anything to rope in new people.