Sony spending $50 million on Vita marketing campaign
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Nintendo acquires Mobiclip
Steam knocked offline on Sunday by power failure
'No plans at all' for Twisted Metal's future
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New video game releases of 2/13-2/19
Indie Jeff's Weekly Pick: Gunpoint
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Blizzard files opposition to Valve's Dota trademark
Evening Reading: Barsgiving
by Garnett Lee, Nov 25, 2009 5:45pm PSTStudies show what people already knew for a long while: the night before Thanksgiving is the biggest bar night of the year in America. Everyone comes up with explanations for this. Some suggest that it comes from college students back home for the first time since going away and getting their drink on back in the old stomping grounds. It becomes a homecoming of sorts. Everyone also knows family time kicks into full gear the next day so it's a perfect time to blow off some steam in preparation. Many employers let people take off early as well offering the perfect setup for a night out. Whatever the reason, if you're out tonight be safe and drink lots of water to stave off having a hangover to go with Macy's parade in the morning.
Or stay home instead, smash some zombies in the face or search for feathers in Venice, and between time check out the best stories from today:
- NCSoft dropped a new Aion trailer that teases a major graphics upgrade in a coming update
- PC System Requirements and DRM for Mass Effect 2 Revealed
- Square gives Japanese gamers one more extended look at FFXIII with a final trailer
- Uncharted 2 getting multiplayer update and free DLC this week
- Get creative and your graffiti could be in Crackdown 2
A bizarre story is playing out in Boston where an inmate wants the state to pay for their electrolysis
After that I needed a puppy story and this one about a blinded sled dog fit the bill perfectly.
Hope everyone enjoys a great Thanksgiving here in the States and a fantastic day around the rest of the world. Friday will be a light day but do check back. We'll each have three gift suggestions going up to help spark your shopping lists and both Chris and Alice have some more stuff cooked up.
One thing that pissed off a lot of people who played City of Heroes was that they used vague descriptions for powers, and often times you would end up picking a piece of crap power that was described as being robust, or you might skip over something very useful and powerful that had a weak vague description.
I don't like that DAO followed this model one bit. I'd be of the argument that you can hide that information with a toggle very easily and provide that information to people who care.
Moreover though, the system I felt was really water down from where D+D stands currently. When I picked new talents for my fighters, they never felt stronger. As I added gear, they didn't really get a lot more survivable. Nothing really changed much. The exceptions being mages and Shale. The biggest changes I would say other than that were if you went rogue/assassin and picked things that helped with your backstabbing damage, you could really generate a lot of DPS like that.
So in the end, I just find myself kind of feeling wistful that this seems to imply the end of D+D based games coming out through Bioware. On a lot of levels... storywise and acting, DAO was really great.
But dropping so many of the classes, losing the depth that D+D rules bring, for me this is a bummer. Makes me miss BG and NWN. I thought about the joy of building a dual wield barbarian in NWN2 and building out my dudes in DAO just didn't compare. In the end when I leveled the warriors it was just ok, grab the next power in the tree and not really see any changes in how that affected the game at all. So that means that there's really not much point to leveling those guys.
One thing that I think I did like better with the magic system was that status effects all lasted a reasonable amount of time. Not the kind of 30 round fuck-you that a wizard can slap on your ass in D+D which makes things retarded, and stops them from being gods. Putting status resists into the warrior trees was also a good idea. If they could maybe build out the skillsets from here it could be possibly as interesting.
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Whose fucking idea was it to put FUCKING CUNTING jumping puzzles that last for FUCKING AGES and where you can fall down RIGHT AT THE FUCKING END OF IT and then have to start over? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST UBI
CUNTS
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Here's some game diaries and such that might clear things up for other people:
http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/11/solium_infernum_a_couple_thing.php
http://fidgit.com/archives/game-diaries/
Solium Infernum is a boardgame-like game of ruling hell.
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Anyone else out running a race today?
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Servo, Tom
http://thenamelessmod.com/downloads/
So this looks pretty cool. I'm down for a Deus Ex TC. Interesting, no?
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http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html
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http://www.shackpics.com/files/shackads_mf81v85sj9twk0zxnq9q.png
This kind of crap is what drives people to install ad-blocking tools.
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180 just walked out of my bank account for a power supply and 4 gigs of 1600 ram.
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This year I am thankful for my many great friends. As some of you may know, the last year has been a difficult time in my life and I honestly could not have done it without the support of my friends. This includes all of you, even if you don't realize it or have no idea what I'm talking about. Directly or indirectly, you all have been a huge part of my support system these last 15 months - everything from PMs and emails to playing video games and funny posts here have been helpful in ways I can't even describe. There's really no community like the Shack and I'm thankful for each and every one of you. Hope everyone has a great day today, and whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or no, tell your friends and family how much they mean to you.
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http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php
Nice to know some of the best ones are completely free.
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2 guys with 4 bars....3 with 3 bars....the rest were 1 bar. GG. What a shitty matchmaking system.
(To be honest, its typically not this bad...I'm usually never host and get only decent lag with 3 bars tops)
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http://www.geardiary.com/2009/11/25/this-mystery-app-will-transform-the-way-you-use-your-iphone-and-we-have-a-sneak-peak/
If you don't feel like clicking, it's Dragon Naturally Speaking for the iPhone. There's a video on that page that demos it and I have to say it's pretty amazing. Seems fast and very accurate.
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http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/11/25/the-pc-beta-sky-is-falling-not.aspx
Not really that much of a delay from "sometime in December", but I was looking forward to blowing some mother f-words up then being oscar mike sooner rather than later.
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http://www.salon.com/books/creationism/index.html?story=/books/feature/2009/11/23/origin_into_schools
Of course, they had to make up the rules they supposedly bypass by this scheme, but still!
They also fail to realise that Origin of the Species is not actually a holy text - people don't use it to prove evolution is true, that would be as silly as using a book over a thousand years old as a blueprint for modern society! We've moved on.
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Dubai World, which has total debts of $59bn (£35bn), is asking creditors if it can postpone its forthcoming payments until May next year. Dubai World has also appointed global accountancy group Deloitte to help with its financial restructuring.
Heh, first the stories of Dubai residents driving to the airport, abandoning their car there, and fleeing possible jail time, and now Dubai is really close to defaulting on their debts.
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Holy shit, it's past 5am, been playing all night. This game never gets old. So addicting.
o.O
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It sucks because we're actually hosting Thanksgiving. :(
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It's not the original but UFO: Aftermath ($5.99) and UFO: Aftershock ($9.99) are available on gog.com now:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/ufo_aftermath
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/ufo_aftershock
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http://www.hafro.is/hvalamerki/60012.html
It's actually a humpback whale marked with a satellite beacon and you can track it's progress through the ocean. I think it's preparing for a coastal attack.
So what's the new hotness in WoW? I don't want to play my Druid anymore. I've already beat the game with Druid, so I think I might try something different. Mage, perhaps, or Warlock. Something on the other end of the spectrum. I haven't played since right around the launch of WotLK. Any significant changes?
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i was attending a dinner party at a pretty well-off family's home. the man of the house was showing me his media room. 100" screen; HD projector; Mac mini hooked up to it. It was in screensaver mode and a picture of him, his wife, and their 10 month old baby popped up.
I said, "Oh, that's a nice picture of you guys. Who did it?"
He says, "Oh, man, we were supposed to have a professional do it, but he canceled, and at the last second I found some guy off of Craigslist. Yeah, we met him at the lake and he took these shots."
I looked at the photo for a second and went, "Well, at least you guys didn't get murdered..."
Silence.
"You know, on account of Craigslist. Sketchy...people. On there?"
He looks at me real seriously for a second, and then starts laughing his ass off.
"Yeah, shit, haha, at least at our funeral they'd have said the pictures looked awesome...haha...he was a Pakistani guy too so who knows!!!"
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It didn't even do anything all that innovative. It was just pure, balls-out unadulterated fun. You got to jump high, punch hard, and blow shit up. It was like Grand Theft Auto with superpowers.
Oh and the Agency sports car turned into the fucking Batmobile if you had a high enough driving skill.
If any of you jokers haven't played it yet, you can pick it up super-cheap new and even cheaper used.
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http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,700050/Dirt-2-benchmarks-DX-9-vs-DX-11/Practice/
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,699998/Dirt-2-DirectX-9-vs-DirectX-11-graphics-compared/Practice/
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,700136/Stalker-Call-of-Pripyat-Benchmarks-from-DirectX-9-to-DirectX-11/Practice/
Uh there doesn't appear to be much visual difference at least in the dirt 2 case.
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I kill all the people there, then I kill the second wave mostly, but the third and fourth or however the hell many waves there are totally wipe me out every time. I end up with no health or lyrium potions left, no bombs to throw, no nothing :(
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