That's about the only thing I agree with but I could also claim that PCs are teh suxor at driving games and fighting games because of the mouse and keyboard.

They are, arguably. But you can buy and use a joystick, gamepad and a wheel, or even attach most console controllers via an adaptor.

Merely by adding components typically worth a couple of times more than a current console I can stay up to date with my PC games?

Bah humbug. Unless you stay cutting edge, PC hardware doesn't cost all that much. You can get a decent graphics card for <100 Euros, it will still be faster than the current consoles. And you don't have to upgrade everything all the time, just single components. In fact, you don't have to upgrade anything at all, since PC games are usually designed to scale down to positively ancient hardware, like my current setup. Adding a new AGP graphics card would add at least another year, and maybe two to its viable lifetime.

I'm going to start filing away at that PCI-E card to make it fit in my AGP slot?

Yeah, I imagine you would. For the other people, there are plenty of good cards still available for AGP.

So do consoles. They're called televisions. Apologies to those in America who suffer from NTSC.

What are you talking about? HDTV? They are expensive. Standard definition TVs aren't anything like high resolution.

Yes, that's clearly the first thing that comes to mind when considering the possibilities of earth-like planets. Oh and of course that would totally screw with that planet's eco-system, but screw them.

The demo didn't do anything for me. But yeah lots of people rave about it.

WTF. The game has a call-home activation scheme. And not only that, but it's bound to the hardware, ie. if you upgrade you need to re-license. And only the first two times are guaranteed to be free, after that it's 10 bucks or hoping for flexibility on dsmart's part. According to him, all of this is industry standard... I don't know which industry, though, I have never ever seen a game that ties itself to the hardware configuration. What a strange community.

(and by the way, that average score on Game Ranking is largely because Eurogamer's review dragged it down.)

No. There's also the 1up review at 5/10, and three reviews at 3.5/5. The median score would be 70%, lower than the average. Not that I think gamerankings is a the definite tool to measure a game's worth.

Get something with a better battery life.

Sure thing. Only, when I bought my 2nd gen iPod mini, there was no such thing. The 2nd mini exceeded the battery life of all the competitors, and by a fair margin. For instance at that time the Creative Zen Micro sported about 8-10 hours, while the mini had 14+.

It doesn't use regular batteries, that's true, and that's a problem when you need to replace the battery because it's too old... but I guess at that point I'd be buying a new player in any event. Using it a few hours every day, a replacement after two years doesn't seem unreasonable.

I don't get why it's suddenly en vogue to slam the iPods. Although it's probably just a Newtonian reaction to all the hype. ("For every force (or action) between two bodies there is always an equal but oppositely directed force (or reaction.")

I was hoping for realtime MOO, but this aint it.

The Eurogamer reviewer writes one whole paragraph to justify the "high" score in spite of the games flaws. And of course, the Eurogamer guys have stated more than once that they'd wish nothing more than to get rid of scores entirely. (Though admittedly the guy who said that isn't part of the site anymore.)

Yeah, I don't get it either. Is it supposed to be irony? Or is fun not hardcore enough? Strange.

Heh. You've got to be kidding me. People in here tore Dungeon Siege 2 apart because of its low-poly graphics, and these screenshots are supposed to be great? They're terrible! It looks pretty much like Darkstone, which was released in 1999 - the models are a tad better, but the lighting isn't and the textures are worse. Mind you, maybe the game is still great - Darkstone was fun.

Now I can experience much more of the game using the single Bladed skill rather than needing to replay the game six times to try each weapon. I really don't know why people are complaining about that.

Well then why have skills at all, or different weapon skills anyway. This still forces you to replay the game when you want to switch to staff weapons or whatever. Just get rid of all the weapon skills. Since you probably don't want that, you're really in the same camp as we are, you just draw the line at a different point.

You might be right about Morrowind trying to use the pen and paper system where it doesn't make sense; which just brings me back to the fact that I prefer isometric games where pen and paper rules are somewhat more applicable! Doesn't make it a good idea to try and force rules that work for isometric games on first person games, though.

I also prefer seperated skills for different weapons. It just results in a certain feel of accomplishment, training your longsword skill to an "elite" level, beyond your other weapon skills. It's yet another way of customising your character - which, along with exploration, is the main thing about CRPGs for me - and knowing that it's reflected in the stats is always way more gratifying than "pretending".
I agree that skills should be linked, ideally, there'd be a hierarchy of skills: Fighting - Slashing Weapons - Swords - Longsword. Some games have implemented similar systems, I think they make a lot of sense both in terms or game-internal realism and gameplay. Personally, I'd even go as far as accruing experience with one particular item, although it's probably a bad idea because it makes switching to a new found item so much harder.

Anyway, I agree with Creston in that I'll take a simplified CRPG over no CRPG any time. And actually I think that's true for most RPG fans. I will still bitch about it, though. And lockpicking minigames don't count as innovation for me, if anything they are a step in the wrong direction. My thief has a high lockpicking skill, I don't, so why make me jump through hoops.

Reading that paragraph on action-RPG versus "pure" CRPG, I realized that really, TES is many things that I don't want in an RPG: First (or third?) person view instead of an overhead isometric view. Single-character versus the IMO far more entertaining party-based gameplay, which is more in line with the fantasy fiction and encourages specialised characters. Direct control of the action instead of (turn-based) indirect commands. I still think it's awesome, though - why? I think mostly because of the beautiful, gargantuan world; exploring is just half of the fun I get out of RPGs, it's always been that way.

Sorry for the rant.

DON'T JINX IT!

Remove some/most/all of the plugins from your Acrobat Reader install and it will be much more responsive, and generally a nicer program to use. I do not have a very fast system, but the most recent version of Acrobat is up and displaying the document within 2 seconds.

Too bad this isn't 2D overhead, like Escape Velocity, I'd be all over it. I still might try it out.

No more turns! No more turns!

The population display in the AoE3 demo is only visible if you enable it in the advanced or GUI options. It's under a somewhat non-intuitive heading, I think about resource gathering being displayed or something. But yeah, it's in the game.

Yup, it does come with Starforce.

Yes, lootwise the game isn't so great. Too random. And I don't much like this Diablo-esque way of setting up magic items, X Axe of Y. The Infinity engine games had the best loot ever - good normal magic items, very cool uniques, and typically with a nice description or item story.