I'm a sucker for sci-fi neuromancer/blade runner settings.  I wish they didn't tease the game 2 years out from the release though.

I am honestly surprised at the level of "stuff" the previous owner's get when it goes F2P.  It seems like most games strip everything out but there doesn't seem to be any real downside to playing if you're a founder.

Same with what they offer for free.

Make the players want to subscribe to get bonuses, not force them to do so because you restrict every little thing that they can do beyond a paywall. *coughSWTORcough* Limited UI buttons, seriously?!

I'm right there with you.  It's why I won't play swtor (even though I'd like to finish at least 1 storyline).  Their ftp model is too obnoxious.  I'd rather reward other mmos that have better models with my instore purchases.   

It's good for us as consumers that companies outside of MS, Sony and Nintendo are willing to jump into the upcoming next gen race.  Hopefully companies like Valve and Nvidia will be smart about their risk, and take the fail fast and move on approach, rather than riding a dud into the ground.  Now would have been the perfect opportunity for Sega to get back into the hardware space and put some pressure on the big 3.  I know I'm being nostalgic, but it would have been cool to see a next gen Sega come out of nowhere and blow away the competition.     

One word of advice, wherever you get it from, get a SSD, single biggest performance boost I've ever seen as an upgrade. Actually just put one in a pc my son uses that was build back in 2006 that has a AMD opteron 185 with only 2gb of ram and its made a huge performance difference.

If you do go with a SSD, I'd suggest spending a little more to get one of the larger sizes available within your price range.  They fill up fast, even if you're just using it as the main OS and boot drive.

Don't screw with Relic!  Many of my favorite pc games are from Relic.  Same goes for Volition too.  I'd like to see a Saints Row 4.

My one experience with iBuypower wasn't that good.  The price was fantastic, but I had some issues.  I placed the order on 7/29 and it shipped on 8/17.  I had to pay extra for additional foam shipping protection, and even with that, there was damage to the case and the SSD drive slot.  At some point the case had warped during shipping, which caused the SSD to fall, breaking the connector.  So it was KIA upon arrival.

They say they QA and test before shipping, but I'm not sure about that.  After repairing the SSD and getting things started, I noticed immediately that one of the fans was poorly installed and ratteling.  It was also blowing air in the wrong direction.  During the first game I tested the CPU red temp light popped on.  I checked the temp and it was really hot.  The fan cooling was bare bones, and the liquid cooler for the CPU wasn't working.  They did send a replacement part, but they charged my credit card first as hostage.  It took over a month for them to credit back that charge.  When I was removing the old one, I noticed that they didn't seal it over the CPU correctly the first time.  Not good.  Sloppy work.  

Since then I've installed new fans, turned around the fans they had installed the wrong way, and the CPU temp has been good.  Still, for all of the work I've done already, I could have just built a gaming pc.

I think that Cyberpower and iBuypower are related by common ownership, but they seem a little shady about acknowledging that.  I don't think I would do it again.  Maybe my experience was a rare exception.        

I played a lot of Saints Row: The Third.  That game is insane.  Everything is so good.  Fighting, shoot outs, flying cool hoverbikes, driving, the missions.  I can tell a lot of love when into making it.  Lots of little, very funny details.  It's too bad it didn't sell as well as they were hoping.     

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE NOEMS

 

Oh man, major flashback to 1993-1994 trying to get X-Wing and then Tie Fighter to run on my crappy laptop.  I loved flying for the Empire and earning my super secret wrist tattoos.  Prior to messing with dos memory in the early '90s, this is the command line from my youth that still has special place in my heart: LOAD "*",8,1 

You've clearly not met Origin's mentally disabled cousin, uPlay. 

uPlay makes Origins look good.

You're set for the year Teggy. 

My steam holiday sale pickups were:
Sleeping Dogs
Dead Island GOTY Edition
Sacred 2 Gold
GTA IV Complete
Empire Total War Complete
Medieval 2 Total War Complete (so I can play the LOTR 3rd Age Mod)
Legend of Grimrock

I also picked up Civ 5 Gods & Kings from GOG.

Sleeping Dogs was the only game I purchased above $10.


 

There are aspects of PC gaming, like the example you mentioned, that can be incredibly frustrating.  The upside to PC gaming is pretty good right now though.  Cheaper games through proven digital distribution channels means I never have to step foot in another Gamestop, or worry about managing a library of game discs.  Seasonal sales for digital pc games can't be beat.

I've never enjoyed having to spend a lot of time tweaking and troubleshooting video settings, and thankfully most newer games are good about defaulting to specs that work for my PC.  Older games can pose a problem though.  I had to do a weird executable line edit to the GTAIV launcher to get the game to start (just purchased during the steam holiday sale).  Most of my PC issues are because I'm trying to run older games.  Sacred 2 Gold is another recent example.  I had to do the same thing...add something to the .exe line after doing a bit of research.

I've had good luck with pc games that have been released in the last few years though.  There's a lot of pc gaming goodness out there right now.         

   

I was wondering how long it would take Activision to make a tweet or announcement that the clip was not official.  It didn't take long.

Besides, everyone knows that stabbing a snap on lego hairdo with a knife is stupid.  You might as well be stabbing a helmet.  You have to melt them.  Legos melt real well.   

The games you picked up from GOG are good.  The Witcher 1 may not be the best game to jump back into PC gaming with after being away for 5 years though.  It has some pacing issues during the first half of the game, and then gets really good later.  The Witcher 2 is excellent.  

I agree wholeheartedly with the recommendations for Torchlight 2 (mouse click action rpg), XCOM: Enemy Unknown (great strategy game), Skyrim, and Borderlands 2 (action rpg fps).  I'd avoid Diablo 3 since you have to always be connected to battle net, which you said you didn't like that kind of DRM.  If you like the Total War formula of strategic and real time strategy, Total War Shogun 2 is very good.  

I'm not sure if Torchlight 2 has a retail version, but the rest of the games mentioned do.      

Myself, I've just stopped playing them. If you'd told me a few years ago that LOTRO, AoC, Champions, STO and SWTOR would all be F2P, and yet, I just wouldn't care or that when I tried to get back into those games they just don't hook me anymore, I would've laughed. At least for me, the sad thing is, by the time each of those games went F2P, I and most of the pals I had enjoyed playing those MMOs with simply didn't care anymore.

Most mmos aren't a lot of fun if you strip them down to the core gameplay features and mechanics, especially when compared to fully featured single and multiplayer games that aren't built around the traditional mmorpg ruleset of tank-healer-dps aggro management.  The better mmos I've played mask the mmorpg grind and ruleset with good evironments and storytelling, but it's still under the hood making it all go.  GW2 and The Secret World are recent examples of mmorpgs that are trying to break away to some extent from the traditional mmo combat system, but there still seem to be a lot of people that want to tank-heal-dps grind their way through content. 

When I subscribe to a game, I feel compelled to play in order to justify the money spent.  With the buy-the-box play-for-free model I'm seeing that with the financial pressure off to play, I start judging the game as I would any of my other backlog SP/MP games.  If it's good, I'll play it (GW2).       

The Elder Scrolls Online has awesome writing already

The population of the proud feline Khajiit has dwindled in recent years following a devastating outbreak of Knahaten Flu.

sigh...

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/game-guide/alliances/aldmeri-dominion

Not the Knahaten Flu dammit.  Is that pronounced "Na-haten" or "Ka-haten" or "K-na-haten"?

I'm not afraid of lego hair zombies.   

GMG has a great deal on Civ V's Gods & Kings expansion for $4.49 today.  They also have a 30% discount voucher.  With or without the voucher it's a few dollars cheaper than the Steam flash deal today.

The GTAIV deals are really good right now.  75% off = $7.49 for GTAIV + Episodes from Liberty City.  Or $12.49 for all of the GTA pc ports.

I'm LTTP, but am really enjoying this game after about 10 missions. My sniper has received several promotions, but still keeps missing more often than the hit% would suggest. Can I specifically recruit a certain class?  I think I want more assault troopers and snipers and fewer supports and heavies in my roster.

Snipers will become your top killers once they've reached their full potential.  It takes some patience developing them though.  Towards the latter half of the game my team tactics were based on having 2 snipers in the field at all times.  My other squad members would move through the maps revealing bad guys, while my snipers would kill them.  There were only a few circumstances where close ranged combat negated the huge upside of having snipers in the squad.  Regarding recruits, the game decides what you get.

[after]

Wow...they listed the game on Steam after they were told they were violating trademark laws with their name.

Sleeping Dogs is mine (plus all DLC).  I was waiting for that one to hit as a flash sale.  I also picked up Legend of Grimrock for $3 something. 

On the day when memorials and moments of silence were being held across the nation, the ringing of the bells for the children and teachers, the NRA chose to break their silence with an insane press conference.  Their message was so f'ng crazy, I think it actually may have helped the efforts for more responsible gun laws.  I just can't believe that someone ok'd that speech.  It makes the NRA leadership seem like they are fringe nutjobs.

I served in the military and have owned guns for all of my adult life, but even I know that something needs to change.

I played a ton of Sacred 2 on the 360.  $9 is a pretty good deal for the game plus the expansion.

The first time I tried the McRib in its original incarnation in the 80s, I bit into a processed bone fragment that completely grossed me out.  Even though the taste was ok, the reality that I was eating processed meat and bones ruined the freakish sandwich for me for all time.  Today the concept of processed meat (with whatever else is processed with it) shaped to look like ribs makes me quesy.   

I don't get it either.  Season 3 has been really good.  I think it's the most watched cable show right now.  Why mess with a good thing? 

Hopefully there will be games that aren't on anyone's 2013 release radar that will be great, like Dragon's Dogma this year.  Every year there seem to be at least 3 or 4 games that come out of nowhere for me, and end up being as good as or better than the heavily marketed titles.  That's when I know we're having a good year for new games when there are a good amount of surprise hits. 

That does make more sense.  I thought he was pissed because he was having to talk to a smarmy robot.  Die synthetic!  And you...and you...and you...and you too! 

[Spoiler]

I just watched it on bluray this week.  It started good.  A team headed out on a space exploration journey, cool tech, the possibility to meet a creator species.  Unfortunately, just when the drama was starting to pick up, it seemed to go sideways and crash.  I was yanked out of the story every time something stupid happened.  I'm not talking about a little annoyance or unexplainable event, I'm talking about something so stupid that I can't believe a character in a movie would do it.  For example:

Spoiler for Hiden:

- Magic mapball guy and biologist deciding to head back from an expedition by themselves...and everyone being ok with that
- Same duo getting lost in a fully mapped environment
- Nobody freaking the f**k out when a life form was detected inside the structure that wasn't from their group (it's just a blip)
- Master Sergeant from Halo deciding it's time to get laid even though he has 2 bodies lost and stranded inside an alien structure with an unknown life form
- The expedition leader having sex with Master Sergeant to prove she's not an android
- Biologist losing his mind and trying to wubby dubby with the freaking scary looking trash compactor monster.  That scene...I mean wtf?  Who would do that?!  Least of all a trained biologist.
- And who in their right mind would setup a safe spot in the room with the freaky canisters, black goo, and ceiling murals that are changing?
- I know this has been said over and over again, but why in the hell did she run along the falling trajectory of the ship, and not perpendicular to it?

 

Even with all of that, I still was hoping the movie would pull out a strong ending.  It could've been so much better.  It's still an interesting story.  In the hands of a good writer, I would like to see where the storyline goes.   
     

The campaign has been good, both Allies and Axis.  Axis seems a little harder, but I'm still learning the naunces of the game.  It has just enough depth to be challenging, but not overwhelming like some wargames.  So far so good.  It makes me want to go back and watch the Battle of the Bulge episodes from Band of Brothers. 

What a blatant profit attempt on the success of the DayZ mod.  I hope everyone who bought the game requests a refund.  The quoted comments from Titov are crazy.  The customers misread the features that were clearly listed on the Steam page, imaging features that weren't there?  That's some slimy sh*t.  Please send this developer back under the rock they came from when there are so many other talented developers and studios trying to get their gems listed on Steam. 

I hope somebody good gets the warhammer 40k license!

I would think that would be a license to print money for a talented company/studio with good business sense.  With how good the DoW games were, and the quality of Company of Heroes, I never thought I'd see THQ filing for bankruptcy.

I went into the movie having read the book for the first time earlier this year.  It was good to be back in Middle Earth...Jackson does a great job creating that world for his audience.  Even with the ramped up drama with the introduction of the pale orc pursuing their company, the movie actually seemed to drag at times.  I'm not sure how I feel about the more serious tone of the movie compared to the whimsical tone of the book.  The book does become gradually more serious as they venture further East, which made sense given their plight. 

Some of the added scenes were well done, like the council at Rivendell, but some they could have left out (the entire section with Radagast and his sleigh bunnies).  Overall I liked it.  I hope PJ can get some help with the pacing and tone in the next movie.

If you appreciate a good turn based wargame loaded with polish and crafted with a love for board gaming and wargames, this is a great buy for $9.99.  It's the best strategy game I've seen on the iPad...by a mile.  It's better than most pc wargames.

I'll write more thoughts once I've experienced more of the campaign.  There are so many iOS titles released every week that it's easy to miss the gems.     

http://www.shenandoah-studio.com/products/botb/

This breaks my heart.  I just can't believe it.  Some of the details that are starting to come out are just horrible.  Those kids suffered.  I wanted to throw up when I read that he may have killed them execution style.   

I know it's irrational, but I wish that mf'er was still alive.     

 

Corporate spin is hilarious.  It's like creative writing.

I think Rift is a good fantasy mmo, but the days of the pay to play, $15 a month model are gone for most companies.  Maybe Blizzard can do it with their next mmo.  Most companies can only dream of a large customer base all willing and eager to pay $15 a month to play their mmo...for years at a time. 

My suggestion for anyone considering developing a new mmo not named Blizzard is to design it without a monthly fee and build in a good store model.  Also, see SWTOR for how not to do it.  Hopefully Bethesda is watching the MMO market closely and adjusting their plans for the Elder Scrolls online.     

I'm playing a half-elf bard too (blade kit).  I like the later edition rules that allow bards to fight and cast spells while they have their song going better than the BG 2nd edition.  While it's probably more realistic, it's pretty dull to just stand around doing nothing while bard song is active.  Still, Bards in BG are pretty cool, and the kits help too.  Being able to level up fast and get early access to some of the good damage spells is a nice perk.  I had started a half-orc barbarian with 19 strength (+7 to hit +7 damage!), but it felt like I was cheating blowing up everything in 1 hit. 

I've always wanted to play a high charisma character, so I will be continuing the career of my (at the moment weak) bard.  I think right now he would die if someone farted in his direction.

Sweet!  And their buy to play model is not obnoxious like swtor: http://thesecretworld.com/news/subscription_no_longer_required

I think it's absolutely worth $29.99, but I bet you'll see it in one of the holiday sales in the next couple of weeks.  It has more content than most single player rpgs, with the mmo aspect there if you want it.  If you're into modern day, sci-fi/supernatural settings with a good atmoshpere, and you like a more active combat system with lots of options, TSW is worth a look...especially with out a monthly fee. 

   

Congrats Kato!  Thank you for all of the sacrifices, seperation, and hard times you endured during your career.  I know it will be tough to say goodbye to active duty, but man, you've earned it, and then some.

The 2 jobs I've had since I left the Corps were both because of veteran Marines that hired me.  We look out for each other, regardless of industry or walk of life.  

Spent a couple hours with this last night, and think I'm starting to get the hang of the touch controls.  Odd that things in the tutorial feel so much more difficult than they do in-game.

Still really struggling with the rulesets though.  Going to have to do some serious research to recall those.

This site was really helpful for me.  Lots of good info, and even some thoughts and opinions about the classes and kits.  Don't be afraid of the url address, it's a real site.

http://www.playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur%27s_Gate

I contributed to that weekend result.  Really enjoyed it.  Daniel Craig is a great JB.  I know it comes down to preference, but I'd much rather see the bad ass version of Bond (Connery and Craig) over the snooty playboy version (Moore and Brosnan).  I had a hard time imaging Moore and Brosnan as former Royal Marine, SBS type veterans.