Gwardinen

That said, "new" is a relative term here. All the heroes so far have just been converted from Dota, so we have no way of knowing how often new heroes will be added once the original roster has been completed. Indeed, I don't know if there has been official word that new heroes will be added.

Holy crap the Rome Total War and Civ IV pieces totally sent my brain back in time. This pretty much does it for me too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-gI_pFog0

In a similar vein, Warren Ellis' "Superhuman Trilogy", a set of three independent stories that look at the concept of superhumans from different perspectives, is pretty great - Black Summer, No Hero and Supergod.

That's a British thing, Rodi. Jerusalem has long since existed as a "concept" to Britain, rather than a place - it comes from the belief that certain sects of Christianity (notably the Church of England) took up that Jesus would return to create a new Jerusalem, and sprang forth into the idea of Jerusalem actually just meaning a place of peace and love. One of the most famous and best loved hymns in the country is actually just a sung version of a poem by William Blake that includes the lines: "I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land."

Are the new maps not playable in versus or something? That would be a bizarre decision. I've honestly never seen the difference between campaign and versus modes, other than the obvious. It's the same thing except easier (because there's no need to give a fair shot to the AI) and with half as many people, isn't it?

How is the answer to that question not obvious to you people? Screw the drunk guy having more meat or already being marinated, if you eat Hawking you might gain his power. I'd eat a dude if it made me able to decode the universe. Salka's sudden anti-chicken leanings are hilarious to me, though. Dumb chickens deserve what they get!

I know that They will come to take away my gamer card for saying this, but I never finished Psychonauts. I'm tempted, now that you've said that, Rodi, but honestly I remember the game as being rather annoying to play in sections so I don't know if I can realistically be bothered to do so. Kind of a Christopher Nolan kick there, Nappi! Were you going for a theme off Dark Knight Rises or do you just think he's usually good at endings? I remember the Prestige as having an ok ending, though I can't drag the specifics out of my mind right now. "Reveal" endings are usually fine by me, upon reflection. The Ocean's Eleven model of "and here's how it was all going down" is pretty acceptable, but in some way it feels like a cop out. In terms of the care taken to set it up, of course, I can imagine it can often be pretty difficult, so I'm not trying to disparage anyone's work on something like that. It's just that it feels like it isn't necessarily actually an ending, so much as a clever retelling of the story in short form that happens to be the last thing (or near enough) that the audience reads/sees. Maybe I'm splitting hairs now, or maybe I'm desperate to retain my crotchety old man-esque right to complain, but there is something about that that doesn't quite fulfill my desire for a great ending. I also didn't see Memento (I know, I'm terrible again) but Inception didn't really seem like it had an ending either. It had a hanging question. Which is fine, that didn't annoy me at all like it did some people. I also thought that it was blown out of proportion in comparison to the rest of the film (much as Mass Effect 3's ending later was), but again it wasn't in any way fulfilling to me. If anything, that kind of ending seems like a tacit admission that endings are difficult and perhaps the most elegant way to handle them most of the time is just to sidestep them. That's kind of what both the "reveal" and the "or is it?" ending types are. I can't remember why, but I already thought I was probably going to read a couple of Vonnegut's books, so perhaps I'll get on to the Sirens of Titan (so to speak) and get back to you on that one.

At a guess, that also springs from the "write what you know" movement mentioned earlier. Family is one of the most common human experiences, which both means it's likely to be something the writer has experienced and means it's likely to be something the potential audience has experienced. Makes it an obvious common ground to interact with. Not to mention, family is something that significantly shapes the worldview of many people. Even the lack of family, or having a comparatively "normal" family can have a profound impact on someone. Same kinda reason why there are so many pieces of art dedicated to romantic relationships. That said, I do understand your frustration. Sometimes I want to read something that has relevance to my life, and sometimes I want to read something that introduces me to something entirely new.

Honestly the Dark Knight Rises mostly just strengthened my belief that doing endings well (both in terms of a single film/book/game/whatever and any kind of series) is the fucking hardest thing in the world. I can't remember the last time I experienced an ending that didn't dissatisfy me in some way. Edit: Actually, if anyone has an example or two of an ending they consider really solid, I'd like to hear it. I'm curious as to whether this is something that springs from my own perspective or just a general rule.

I'd probably be interested. We could do Versus mode so that eight people can play in one server. Also playing as the Infected is hilarious anyway.

I'm pretty excited for FTL, but not so much because it's a roguelike. I've yet to really get into one of them, but the FTL demo did allow me a glimpse into why some people might.

The issue with vassal Mayors is that you get an opinion malus for different government type, don't you? I actually specifically switched the holder of one of my vassal counties from a Lord Mayor to an Earl at one point to avoid the pretty serious opinion penalty. I think it was a good -30 or something.

I love living vicariously. It's the best kind of living. Other than "large", obviously.

Same here, which reminds me to recommend Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples! It is a new series that is described as Romeo & Juliet meets Star Wars meets Game of Thrones. I don't know if you really need to know any more than that, but frankly the author alone makes this worth trying anyway. I absolutely adored Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, and so far Saga isn't disappointing either (though it's building fairly slowly).

I'm amazed no one has suggested the obvious. Move to Berlin. But yeah, modulating your intake of something like caffeine is probably a good first step even if you turn out not to be allergic to it. Caffeine makes your body act weirdly in a bunch of ways. I also pitch in my +1 on the idea that stress, anxiety and panic attacks can be oddly subtle and don't necessarily correlate with your conscious mindset at the time. I went through a period recently in which I had what I am now fairly sure were minor anxiety attacks several times, but I didn't realise that's what they were or what had caused them until months later. This may not really be possible for you, but if you could avoid working seven days a week, I doubt that would be bad for you from a health perspective. Everyone benefits from downtime.

Got back into CK2 in a big way last night. Just wanted to try the Duke of Munster that the LP was done with briefly, a few turns later I realised it was 3:40am and I was now king of Ireland and, somewhat bizarrely, Italy. Taking advantage of crusades can be interesting! Sadly I was counting on England to still be a fractured mess by the time I united Ireland. It is not so. The English king is actually quite powerful, and is causing me problems as I try to carve out some of Scotland and Wales for myself. I had been shooting for that Empire of Britannia Gormongous mentioned... we'll see if that plan changes. Perhaps I should just work on reclaiming the rest of Italy from the Muslims.

According to Dota 2 Wiki, Leshrac's Diabolic Edict "can damage invisible heroes if they are within the area of effect" - so probably.

It's funny how cyclical my relationship with the cracking community has become. A decade or so ago, I would buy games legitimately and then download No-CD cracks for them so that I didn't have to keep swapping discs in and out of my PC. Then there was a brief golden age in which companies began to patch their own games to not require discs in drive, or in some other way the PC standard became not requiring physical media all the time, and now we've gone back to having a bizarre and inconvenient DRM solution. So, once again, I often turn to the crackers to crack my legitimate PC games so that I don't have to deal with that shit. Yes, even Uplay and GFWL are fully cracked. Obviously. Because there is no DRM system that actually works. They're all just inconveniences. As I believe Gabe Newell has said, the way you get people not to pirate games is by giving them value, not trying to enforce your will upon them. I'm not trying to say pirates are some kind of moral authority, or that developers and publishers don't have a right to try to protect their product, but sometimes you have to be realistic. Catch more flies with honey, and all that.

I thought about reading that series a few times but couldn't find any descriptions of it that didn't pretty much just say "modern day vampires are cool, right?" Always felt like there might have been something more. Maybe I'll look into it again. Also, yes, the whole Court of Owls thing was pretty lacklustre. Honestly most of the New 52 started out fairly strong and have begun to meander. Even Aquaman and Animal Man, which took heroes I barely knew about, let alone cared about, and made them genuinely intriguing and piqued my curiosity for them outside of just superhero action sequences, have started to lose my interest. I'll keep reading everything with Superman in it, though, because I'm a fanboy.

I think it may have actually lost me my Assassin's Creed: Revelations save. I was about two thirds of the way through, intending to finish it before AC3 is released. I really have no interest in replaying all of that because this has been the weakest game in the series for me in some senses anyway. I will probably YouTube skim the rest of the game to make sure I'm not missing anything major, and wait for AC3.

I got all three of the main Dawn of War 2 games for £7.50 - even already owning vanilla DoW2, it was still a great deal. I plan to do coop campaigns with Dibs and another friend of mine, but I'd also be very interested in playing the Last Stand mode with people. Everyone loves cooperative survival modes!

I continue to curse your very existence. That said, if you somehow get an "invite-a-friend" style thing, please consider me your greatest supporter.

? That would be a fucking genius twist. Wasn't really expecting to engage in this discussion, but that sentence caused me to make a bit of a "huh?" face. I don't understand that perspective at all, since members of our species have also killed each other for thousands of generations but most people have no problem considering murder "wrong" and trying to prevent it. I'm not implying a perspective on eating meat, just noting that the logic does not seem to hold up there.

Has anyone tried the Game of Thrones mod, by the way? I've heard conflicting views on whether it's worthwhile.

Yeah there's no way you come out of that rabbit hole clean.