SplaTtzZ

My mate's father owns a couple of guns, mainly a shotgun and .22; i think he keeps them around because they're family heirlooms. Occasionally he takes them out at a gun club and shoots targets or clay pigeons. In Australia the laws are pretty specific: guns have to be kept under lock and key, and there's no way you can get automatic weapons. Handguns can be pretty difficult to get as well, you have to be registered with a gun club and pass a bunch of restrictions before you can own one, or any gun. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like in the states all you need to do is walk off the street. I myself have fired a gun, and have also been shot by a gun. I tend to agree with the consensus here that a society is better off with very strict gun laws or no guns (for civilians) at all. I wouldn't be surprised however, if Australia starts mimicing the US gun laws soon. We're becoming more americanised by the day, I've seen it a lot in the business world. Like these new IR laws, they're really starting to give me the shits.

What I don't understand is why Christians, by their nature supposed to follow the New Testament, go so far out of their way to defend the Old Testament myths, like Genesis, when it clearly has nothing to with them. All you have to do is compare each halve of the Bible to see a myriad of contradictions between the two; if anything it should be Jews defending the idea of creationism, since it's really their book that started it off. Why evangelicals get so hung up on the idea of creationism is beyond me; when even christ himself refutes alot of what's in the Old Testament. As an aside, It was funny the way they displayed those 3 changing images on screen, with the creepy voiceover; it was exactly like they were trying to hypnotise people.

Just a word of advice, though you propably already know, component is better for real high-def output, though at lower levels vga is basically the same. The two are both better than composite or s-video really. If you buy a 360 make sure you use component cables, it should come with them. I'm pretty happy with my 360, more so than the PS3 which i bought and then returned; theres no good games out for it yet, and in Aus you have to pay an extra 400 dollars over the price of the 360. It's such a ripoff. Your 360 won't be able to play high-def dvds though unless you buy that add-on DVD player. So don't expect any DVD's played on your normal 360 to be better than any other DVD player around the place. If you want true high definition DVD's you'll need to get a Blu-ray DVD player from Sony or the Toshiba/Samsung HD-DVD players, which is what the 360 is working with. I've seen true high-definition at stores and it really does look amazing; like looking out a window or something. They're too expensive for me at the moment though.

Call me persistent I think it's mostly because I'm on holidays from uni and don't really feel like doing any homework or study, so I play games instead. I think the environments of Stalker are worthy of mention, and I find the whole topic of Chernobyl quite fascinating. I think that's why I gave it the benefit of doubt and played it for so long. And I don't really have a problem with the fps genre as such, I like rpg's more; but an fps is fine so long as it is immersive and fun. Stalker tries to mix rpg and fps and just fails completely. It should be more like Deus Ex or System Shock 2, which are far better examples of an fps/rpg combination.

I feel pretty disappointed with this game. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are pretty good, i really like the setting and the environments and the premise of the story is great; but it's completely let down by being just another average shooter, with crappy A.I, a broken quest system and redundant rpg elements. Like the side quests; just what the hell is the point of them? I go out and find some stupid artifact, get my reward of 500 rubles and a bottle of vodka; a day later the same quest is still there. Don't even bother doing side quests; the chances of finding something useful or getting a good reward are very slim. And money: I'm in the NPP right now and have over 250,000 rubles. What the hell am I supposed to spend it on? Money is completely pointless. I have a nice Dragunov rifle, but I'll be damned if i can find any ammo for it at any traders. I don't even need to buy what little they offer anymore, I can find everything I need off the myriad of corpses that litter the game world. I also think the storyline is pretty stupid. I mean, Amnesia? Come on, haven't we advanced beyond this cliche already? Without a good story or difficult combat this game is pointless; I think I'd have more fun visiting the 'zone' myself and contracting cancer. They hyped this game up so much, and barely delivered on 10% of it. As an example I read in an article a few years ago that Stalkers would follow this grand AI routine. So if you got a quest to find an artifact, another Stalker or group of Stalkers might also have the same quest. So you could run along and find the artifact; or maybe wait and ambush the Stalkers who are also trying to get it. The developers claimed a 'living breathing world' and that other Stalkers would have the same needs and wants as you might. So far the only sign I've seen of this is that groups of Stalkers will randomly wander around into other zones and get mutilated by anomalies or mauled by mutants. If they somehow manage to survive they find some ridiculous camp site and sit around playing guitar until they are all dead by some hellish denizen of the zone. The most advanced AI i've seen in the game is the fact that human enemies take cover; and that blind dogs will run away unless there is 3 or more of them, then they will try to run behind or to the sides of you and bite. It seems to me that in terms of AI, or even interactivity in fps's, we really haven't progressed much beyond Doom 1 & 2. Basically, enemies just rush you, only now it might be from the side instead of head on. Maybe I'm only seeing the glass half empty or am biased by the hype surrounding Stalker. I imagine that coding Ai is very dificult; and my experience in the area is very small. Maybe someone from the Dark Mod team can enlighten me. Have we advanced much over the years in terms of Artificial Intelligence? How much time is spent on AI within a games development life cycle? is it enough? Is the Ai really fantastic and I'm just stupid? Or do other areas of the game limit the AI's capabilities? it just seems that I have yet to play a game that i can trully say 'wow, the enemy is really clever!'. Games like Far Cry and FEAR came close, but i felt they were still limited in their scope. And Stalkers Ai is just pointless; to me this really brings down the games worth, because without the amazing AI its just like half life 2 only slower.

This reminds of me of those AOL search entries that were leaked onto the internet; it was hilarious to see some of the random combinations people would type in their search engines. And just what the hell is a holophonic haircut?

1. Torment 2. Baldur's Gate II 3. Thief 2 4. Medieval 2 5. Baldur's Gate I Undying was awesome as well; I'm looking forward to Jericho. I actually liked the Icewind Dale series, and Monkey Island of course too.

Nyarlathotep, what you say makes perfect sense. However it is my understanding (and is what I was taught) that the Rapture will only ever occur once all living souls on the planet have either heard of or had the chance to seek Jesus Christ as their saviour. Doesn't really make much sense to me now, and it didn't make any sense back when I was told that is what would occur. I think it's more just a convenient excuse to bypass the question 'What about all the innocent souls who don't know who Jesus is? Say natives in the wilds of Papua New Guinea or something.' It also doesn't really help explain what will happen to people before Christ was born, or natives who died pre-colonial America or any number of similar cases; I suppose they all just burn in hell. Anyway my point is that the rapture isn't scary to Christians because everyone will have already had their chance supposedly; and only deserving and worthy christians will enter the kingdom of heaven. Seems like there's alot of holes in the theory, but thats what non-demoninational christians told me; I don't think it's representative of Catholic canon though. I've often found the 2 'sects' to be remarkably different in their views.

Heh, I daresay the reason that the other 80% of Christians don't believe in the rapture is so they can stay behind and 'make sure' that everyone else does. Trust me, I've got a completely reliable source regarding this matter, it's all here in these books. Wow, they even made a video game about this crap.

Reminds me of 'F.E.A.R'. Game devs just think up a cool sounding name and then rack their brains to develop an acronym for it. Honestly, why bother? FEAR would be just as good as F.E.A.R, STALKER would be just as good S.T.A.L.K.E.R, even better in my opinion. I had high hopes for Stalker, but knowing that's what the title means is making me second-guess myself. Maybe it makes more sense in Ukrainian or Russian or whatever?

I actually have Vista running on one of my computers right now; I can't really see much of a difference between it and XP, beyond some superficial eye candy stuff. It has this gadget sidebar which I don't really see the point of, and the 3D switch between windows tool is nice but I still don't really use it. Then it has some absolutely ridiculous features, like 'user account control', where it basically asks you every time you do something if that is what you actually wanted to do. Put a CD in, and you basically get a message screaming "ZOMG did you really, really, REALLY want to put a cd in your cd-rom drive!?1?! It could contain VIRUSES or NUCLEAR LAUNCH CODES OR SOMETHING!!!!" before you have to tell it to shutup. This basically happens everytime you run a program, every time you install something, every time you change settings, every time you scratch your arse. Ok so maybe I'm exagerating just a little bit, but that feature really pissed me off. It's useless, and I shudder to think what casual users who might not know how to turn it off would do. Also alot of my games either don't work or have become unstable. Added to this is the fact that Vista really seems to take more RAM to run itself than XP ever did; the nice bells and whistles which are basically useless probably add to this problem. It apparently doesn't like shutting down either, preferring to go into 'sleep' mode, another thing I find annoying. IMO Vista isn't worth its price, at least not for the moment. In the future though I can see it and its API's and directX becoming pretty important for games and gaming. I'd like to buy a new realease game that supports Vista and see how it runs, I can't imagine there'd be many problems, cos it is at least as stable as XP with some games I run.

Yeah I always thought it was pretty common for game companies to 'bribe' to get better reviews,particularly larger magazines; mostly because there is a bit of grey area in what constitutes a bribe. It happens in the movie industry doesn't it? Never heard of a company bribing a mag to lower a competitors games' score though, I daresay that breaches the Trade Practices Act in Aus and the ACCC would be all over EA. Though perhaps they don't have much interest in the industry? I wouldn't bank on that though, and I don't think EA would either. In my opinion it's quite plausible that Supreme Commander is only worth a 5/10; it's just a remake of Total Annihilation, they didn't even upgrade the graphics.

I liked Equilibrium the most. I thought it was the most innovative and suspenseful of any FM I played; only problem was it was so small, and doesn't have much replay value.

If you're going to argue that religion is a bad thing and should be dismantled, you might as well argue that human cultures are bad and therefore shouldn't exist either. Religion is basically just another form of human culture, it has its norms values and rituals just like any other. People who have a religious culture will act differently, feel differently and think differently to others without one. If we dismantle all human culture and live together as one big happy family, well then we'll have a utopia where nothing happens. As domarius said, conflict is what provides interest to our world, even to romance novels. I for one couldn't live without conflict, and I've always thought the Old Testament idea of heaven to be boring; I reckon Valhalla would be more fun. So if culture and religion bring more conflict in the world, i could argue that they're making it a more interesting place. I've always seen scientific method as a form of rational thinking, but also in itself a human culture that has its flaws. Imagine, for a moment, that Oddity's argument in a prior thread could be proven and that black people were inferior mentally to white people; from a rational standpoint there is no reason for them to exist anymore; they should be wiped out and replaced by beings with higher mental prowess that are more innovative and creative, and therefore better geared towards improving the state of living humans. Science has the ability to create even more human suffering than religion, i would argue that one is just as 'bad' as the other. Added to this is the fact that humans have a tendency to be irrational at times, and that many people do not understand the 'scientific method'. What use is astrophysics to a plumber? Does he need to have a rational, methodical way of thinking to do his job? Humans need to have an organised society with figureheads to lead us, so instead of a high priest we'll have a professor. Instead of the pope telling us gravity is the hand of god, we'll have a professor telling us its physics. What, to the common person who might understand neither, is the difference? Science and its methods have a lot in common with religion; they're both human cultures that are vulnerable to human flaws and irrationality, and human ignorance. I think you're wrong if you think science is going to solve the world's problems; we'll just have more creative and spectacular ways to kill each other, perhaps even the entire planet! 2000 years ago religion was the way forward, today science is. I wonder what it will be in a few thousand years time, povided we even last that long?

Colleen McCollough's books are all about the fall of Republican Rome, and the rise of the Roman Empire. They're very long and some people might find them tedious books, but I enjoyed them alot and found them very interesting; and I was happily surprised at the level of historical accuracy and detail in each book (you can even obtain a Bibliography for them) and the author, who is fairly famous in Australia, was awarded an honoury degree from a prominent university for her work. The books do have quite a steep learning curve, and i found myself constantly referring to the massive appendix; but once i got going i thoroughly enjoyed them. On the subject of Sharpe; I particularly liked the depiction and descriptiveness of the battles in the Harlequin series, and even though the Sharpe series is set in another era, they still have the same vivid action sequences. It's hard to say what book would be the best to begin at, I found Sharpe's Eagle, about the battle of Talavera and the first Sharpe novel that Cornwell wrote; to be as good as the one i started reading at, Sharpe's Fortress, which was a prequel written later on. I'd say you're best to start at either Sharpe's Triumph or Fortress, or Sharpe's Tiger, though I myself have yet to read that one.

I've recently been reading alot of Bernard Cornwell myself. I'm about halfway through the Sharpe series of books, and they really are quite interesting, particularly if you don't know much about early 19th century Europe and warfare. Cornwell started with Sharpe's Eagles, but i'd recommend buying the books in chronological order, beginning with Sharpe's Tiger and the battle with the Tippoo Sultan. But if you wanted you could really pick up the series from any one of the books, as cornwell does a pretty good job of fluently recapping Sharpes previous exploits in each book. The series is largely aimed at detailing the exploits of Sir Arthur Wellesley, from India to the Peninsula Wars and finally culminating in the Battle of Waterloo. As such, most of the main battles, particularly in the Peninsula, are ones that the Duke of Wellington fought in or commanded. But there are also a few extra ones; like the Battle of Trafalgar that I'm reading about at the moment, in Sharpe's Trafalgar. One thing that I sometimes find annoying about Cornwell's books is that the protagonists all tend to be the same across each series. Most seemed to be plagued with indecisiveness (ala Hamlet), and are constantly switching between motives and objectives. I think it is a little forgiveable in some cases, in that his characters often have to be present at a wide range of true historical events, rather than focusing on set of objectives and missing out on history. It just bugs me a little that in each Sharpe book Sharpe finds some new woman who he instantly falls in love with and vows to live with her happily ever after and never be a soldier again, but then something happens and it all goes to hell, que next book. It reminds me of James Bond. Still, Cornwell at least does write well and the history in his books is always interesting, and they're are a far cry above the Wheel of Time series thats for sure. I'd highly recommend the Sharpe series, as well as Cornwell's latest books: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman and the Lords of the North. I found these alot more enjoyable than the Warlord Chronicles about King Arthur, and more on par with the Harlequin series. Instead of being about Britons fighting Saxons etc. its about the Angles and Saxons fighting against the Invasion of the Danes, and the exploits of Kind Aelfred the Great, the main king responsible for uniting a large swaithe of Britain under Angle-Saxon rule. On the topic of Historical Novels; I've always enjoyed reading the ones where you can appreciate that the authors have done alot of work towards ensuring historical accuracy, but have also tried to make the story as interesting as possible. I think Cornwell pulls this off admirably with most of his novels, and the only other author I've read that also achieves this is Colleen McCoullough with the Masters of Rome series. I've also found alternate history novels to be very interesting too. I shall have to read some of Turtledove's work as I've seen them at book stores but wasn't sure if they were any good or not. On the same topic, a whle bakc Interplay and Black Isle released an RPG game called Lionheart that played around a bit with the history of the crusades and renaissance. You got to meet Shakespeare and DaVinci and Torquemada; but it had this decided fantasy feel with demons and angels and magic. It was basically a flop and the companies ended up going broke without really even finishing it; but I always thought the premise was sound and would make an interesting theme for a game.

Heh, I'd play multiplayer with you guys but I'm unsure about connection speeeds from Europe to Australia. But i always thought you could pause in the multiplayer games; I'm sure i remember seeing it somewhere that the host can pause whenever he likes and also assign that ability to other players. Sparhawk if your looking for some extra tools that might add more life to the game you should try looking for a group called TeamBG. I'm not sure if they're still around but a while back they had a website devoted to developing tools for the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. They had things like savegame editors, you could create items, creatures and even areas, and edit all your characters statistics etc. They also had custom items, races and kits available. I think alot of their stuff can be found at www.sorcerers.net Much of the items can be used for cheating and whatnot, but i remember i used one savegame editor to change my assassin's appearance from his normal avatar to the model used by the shadow thief assassins; it looked awesome. You can make your characters look like Bodhi, Irenicus, Sarevok or even a goblin. I can't think how hard it would be to solo the Baldur's Gate games. I mean, christ, how the hell would you fight Abazigail in ToB as just a lowly friggin thief? Hell I had trouble using 4 fighters and 2 mages, i don't even want to think what it would be like trying to do it on my own. It'd probably take 3 times longer to finish the series. Nyarlathotep, Torment is hard to find but well worth it if you like epic rpgs.

I too thought Call of Cthulhu was pretty good. Thats not to say that Condemned was bad, i played it on 360 and got up to the orchard house, and it was pretty good, but Call of Cthulhu and the movie se7en were better. Only thing that bugged me was the fact that Cthulhu could've been so much more. I really liked the concept of your character losing their sanity, and their were times in the game when it got pretty atmospheric because your character was breathing so hard and his vision was blurring; however i don't think they implemented this feature to it's full extent. I would have liked it if your charcter started seeing visions, hearing voices, and randomly shooting at shadows. I only died of insanity once in the game, and it was a pretty random event. All that happened was his hands clenched in front of his face and a red mist rose in the screen; I actually would have preferred it if he grabbed his revolver and blew his brains out, it would have made the game that much more disturbing and creepy. That said; i never really used the morphine that your character has access to, so maybe that might have spun him out more. I don't think Cthulhu got the credit it deserved, as it did try to do something new. I hope they make a sequel of some sort and really expand upon the character being not only physically affected by his environment, but mentally as well. The game, for example, has vision blurring to simulate your character being afraid of heights and suffering from vertigo, which was a pretty cool effect. Overall I connected much more with Cthulhu's main character than with Condemned's one.

Oh man don't get me started on Robert Jordan; I've read ten Wheel of Time books, and I reckon they were the biggest waste of time. Jordan basically copies what Frank Herbert did in one book and somehow manages to drag that out over a series of books that looks nowhere near completion. You might as well just read Dune. First 3 WoT books were ok, the 1st being the best, but after 3 it went downhill and got terribly repetitive. I'd much rather read Pratchett. At the moment I'm reading Bernard Cornwell, namely the 'Sharpe' series, which i find interesting because I don't know very much about 19th century Great Britain. Though i think this series might end up dragging out a litle too long as well. I like historical novels the most , or at least fictions that try to remain factual and true to history. Some of the best books I've read were the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough; great historical novels about Marius, Sulla, Caesar and Octavian. I found them to be very accurate and true to historical sources, they were also very long and comprehensive. And if anyone is interested in 3rd Reich history I'd reccomend reading Albert Speer's Memoirs of the Third Reich; it offered really interesting insights into the major players of the era. Some British Television is trying to pass off Speer as being deeply involved in the holocaust, but I thought his book and his character were fairly sincere. Very interesting reading.

Have you seen any good locations yet? And are there any NPC's who are neutral or allies?

Heh, I read this article as well. I thought the vampire explanation was a bit redundant, as most modern literature on vampires shows that when they bite they don't necessarily have to kill you or turn you into one of them. Anne Rice has that idea; but if I recall correctly it harks way back to Bram Stoker in the orginal Dracula. I thought the ghost one was pretty good though. How he uses Newton's laws to explain why ghosts could not exist; because if they aren't corporeal, and can pass through walls, then they would inevitably fall through the earth, and would not be able to walk across the ground. The Thermodynamics explanation of those cold drafts in haunted houses wasn't bad either. The best though was the section on zombies, and how there is a certain poison from shellfish or something that voodoo priests use to turn people almost completely braindead but retain their motor functions.

I didn't even get a slip of paper about advertisements with my copy of bf2142. I've played the game for a few days, and haven't seen any advertisements at all. DICE released a statement saying that the programs used only worked online whilst BF2142 was running, that they do not detract from game performance, and all data collected (which is only info on how long a player looks at an advertisment) is kept anonymous. One would have thought that in-game adverising should provide EA with another source of income and hence lessen the price of its games; but nowing EA's track record i suppose we can kiss that idea goodbye. This isn't the first time it has been done either, SWAT 4 uses IGA stuff to advertise online as well.

Make sure you head into the sewers beneath the Copper Coronet to get the sentient sword, Lylarcor. I dunno why, but I never got tired of that sword screamin "Boo-Yah!!" everytime I hit something with it. And you can actually converse with it; some of the conversations you can have are pretty funny.

Whilst I'd agree that IWD had nowhere near as good a storyline as BG I & II or the character interaction, I would think its going a little too far to describe it as merely a hack and slash comparable to Dungeon Siege. For starters IWD actually had dialogue for their characters, and IMO it had a better storyline than more modern games like Oblivion. True, its not as good as Baldur's Gate, but BG II could basically be the Mecca for RPGs. If it was a toss-up between IWD and the true hack'n'slash games like Dungeon Siege or Diablo? I'd pick IWD any day. Though someone here should really play Torment and tell me what you think. And if you want a real challenge in BG II, find the gold skeleton and put it together so you can fight the Demi-lich Kangaxx. That guy was so annoying.

I watched the first series of Deadwood for the first time this week (it shows only on one cable channel in Australia), I have to say I'm pretty impressed. I really like these more graphic and violent tv series that are being released now, like Sopranos and Over There. The only problem with Deadwood is they take the swearing a little too far; though at times it can be hilarious. Each episode is about an hour long too, which is a bonus.