Yep - Civ 5 Gods and Kings for UK£2.99 from GMG can't be bad! It should have been £2.10 with the voucher but their payment page went wrong on me (said my payment had been refused before I'd even entered any payment details then emptied my basket) and then I missed the voucher deadline! I think I'll survive, it was dead cheap anyway. I tried G&K before and it is a big improvement, it makes Civ 5 a lot more bearable after the disappointment of some of the changes they made over 4.

I can't see how this would work while PCs have socketed components. We have a rating system now, the Windows Experience Index (I hate Microsoft terms!) which attempts to set a standard performance figure for the relevant parts of a system. Unfortunately no vendors of hardware are interested in a standard, honest rating system since profit can be derived from understanding the value of a product more than the consumer.

Do you guys think a non-socketed PC product with integrated CPU/MB/RAM/GPU will ever come about? Generally speaking I buy all those in sync with each other, I don't think I would feel I was giving up anything if I bought a single hardware piece to do all that if the rest of my PC was like it is now. Then you might have a chance of standardising the measurement of PC performance. Maybe after a few years of acquisitions a company will be in a position to give it a crack!

Blue wrote on Dec 15, 2012, 13:14:
Console not appealing enough to steal.

That reminds me of my old Computer Science mate getting burgled at university in the 90s. They went from room to room in the house robbing everyone's electronics and he found that they had opened his PC, removed his RAM - and after examining the spec they just left it on the table! I also had the same feeling when my car was robbed in London, they went through the glove compartment and took a CD walkman then went through the boot and sifted through a bunch of my clothes and CDs, and rejected the lot! It's quite an insult when all your stuff it too shit for the kind of scumbag that steals from your car...

It sounds like a way to make couch gaming-compatible PC games available to the non enthusiast market. If a game can be played fully with controllers and has text size and gameplay that works from across a room then you can install it preconfigured and ready to play as all the target hardware is known.

Valve can presumably offer current and future games from their catalogue this way and target all the people who might play PC games but who don't want the hassle of maintaining a gaming PC. They are just opening up a new market, some games like MMOs, competitive FPSs, RTS and so on will still be only playable on a regular PC and the demand for them isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Can't really comment on the quality of Guild Wars 2 since I am not really an MMO player. It's Torchlight 2 for me by quite a long way. It exceeded my expectations by a long way, they really nailed the action and made the grinding, builds, loot grabbing all fantastic fun to do. They were also really sensible with their design decisions, adding flexibility and convenience without fucking up the overall experience. It was exactly what I wanted, the Diablo 2 feel with updated aesthetics and modernised design without any "twists" to screw it up.

XCom is on my list to pick up but I haven't yet so I can't comment there. Terror from the Deep was the one I played the most in the past and that was great so I might end up loving it. The streamlining of equipment is offputting but there's no denying that the YouTube videos of missions and multiplayer make the combat look like a whole load of fun.

Of all the things that detract from gaming, like on disk DLC, consolitis, pay to win, deceitful marketing etc. - I would say that "lack of social equality in those who get to name objects in a kickstarted game" ranks pretty low down the list.

The funding upfront / honour system of kickstarters is unique but putting that aside, people are free to offer and price whatever products they desire, and consumers are free to part with their money or reject them. I'm frequently amazed that people pay up for some of the most expensive kickstarter products around, but there's nothing coercive about it at all.

If Cliffski's concerned with equality, shouldn't he be delighted that the barrier to entry to make money from the industry has been lowered? A couple of years ago it was just about essential to be part of a major studio or indie studio to make money as a computer game programmer. Now you can be a student coder in his bedroom, an ageing 80's game developer, or anything in between and you have a shot at landing profitable work if you have enough of a good product to show. A game studio might not touch you if you are of working class background but you could show off a prototype and get funded if it's good enough. Cliffski should be celebrating!

Yeah I enjoyed it too. Good action and comedic moments and they really nailed the style. The opening credits and song were a perfect fit and the jokes were traditional while avoiding the worst of the cheese you sometimes get! Perhaps the action at Skyfall itself was too generic and blockbustery, but I loved the claustrophobic chase in London, it had a bit of a Bourne-style tension to it.

For what it's worth I have a Razer Blackwidow Ultimate keyboard and love it. The Razer Deathadder mouse is good enough without being spectacular. I don't do any serious, high speed mouse gaming - I just want an accurate, reliable mouse and it fits that function happily.

Needless to say, any kind of behaviour tracking or network requirements on future peripherals would be completely unacceptable and would rule out such products from being bought.

I've only played it very briefly, and haven't played AoW at all, but watching a video of AoW just now, it's definitely more like that than Civ games. The strategic map is more intimate and hints at a smaller area and passing of time. The detail put into abilities, inventory and combat mechanics make it far more fantasy 4X than world simulator as well.

I tried it for a couple of hours and thought it had potential, the skill system and inventories of heroes is quite satisfying and the ability to design troops with equipment, magic items and traits from your production ability and tech tree is very nice. If you had a metal shortage you might need to design monk types with light armour and weapons and based around their Dodge stat, that sort of thing. Could be great if you get into it. The 3D unit graphics reflect the items being worn but are pretty crude.

On the forums people were clamouring for more updates to add features and fix bugs. Some people loved the game and rated it 9/10, several people said it deserved a 6 or 7 in its current form. This patch seems pretty comprehensive in both fixes and balance, no idea how that changes things.

There's no denying that sounds amazing performed by the London Philharmonic. Far Horizons is probably the most iconic piece (leaving aside the title track) and probably the best suited to an orchestral performance. From the OST though, probably my favourite song is Ancient Stones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjrmRW3VXf8 - there's something quite haunting about (what I just learned was ) the hammered dulcimer and that crescendo near the beginning really has Soule's Elder Scrolls signature all over it! It reminds me of old memories of Morrowind: turning a corner in the wilderness - a vista opens up, the music surges and you just stop to take it in for a while!

I haven't played all the games that Soule has produced a soundtrack to but there have been many that I have loved. I didn't rave about Oblivion's soundtrack quite so much but with Skyrim I think he really helped the game achieve a setting and aesthetic that stood on its own merits in the Elder Scrolls series, where I was worried it would no longer be possible. How he can repeatedly do things like that to order is just amazing.

I'll take a look at Skyrim Perk Enhancements, I hadn't seen that and it looks well developed from the nexus page. Wasn't using Dance of Death either.

Using ACE at the moment for one of my characters, she is stealth + archery + alchemy, about level 15 currently. Archery with her's been fun because she's reliant on stealth attack bonuses, critical hits and poisons to survive fights. If you get the jump on the prey by spotting and stalking it then you can one shot or incapacitate most things, but when a few boars or a big cat leap out at you and you are fucked unless you leg it successfully. After being munched a few times you get used to using cover and scanning your surroundings and it has had a good hunt feeling to it so far.

I rebuilt with mods recently, here are my recommendations for mods:

Character Creation Overhaul - makes the character creation a bit more traditional Elder Scrolls. Pick major and minor skills like previously and get starting values to skills in the same way. You'll be 20 or 30 skill in major skills where they complement your class upon creation, and anything down to 5 in non-picked skills. Major skills level faster than minor skills which level faster than non picks. No more jack of all trades!

Harder Lockpicking - no new mechanics, just balanced so that people with no skill can't just pick the locks anyway. Seems to do that from what I've seen so far.

Bards sing on request only - if you've played for any length of time you'll know why!

Lively Inns and Taverns - spawns a shit ton of patrons at the appropriate times of night, so the taverns don't always feel quiet like a reception. Patron noise is good and drowns out the precanned conversations. Also makes all inn rooms available and you get randomly allocated each time you rent! Surprisingly good, this one.

ACE - Skill and perk overhaul. I like this one particularly for the combat, where the game constantly gives you passives depending on what weapons you have weilded, whether you are running etc. Balances out casting and sneaking in armour types and gives chances of extra damage, critical hits etc depending on hitting people in the back when they're busy, tripping them if they're running and so on. Well thought out under the bonnet but you don't need to stress about the details, you just play and the effects just happen as you fight like common sense. This mod is one of my favourites, it makes heavy fighters / light fighters / spellswords etc feel different from each other.

ASIS - another clever one, this is a patcher utility which can be set to make the mod perks and spells available to the player available to NPCs too. If you have a spell mod installed then with this the NPCs can use them too. If an NPC has the "50% cheaper Apprentice Destruction Spells" perk for example, the patcher will give them apprentice destruction spells from any and all mods you have installed. Very inventive modding! Also the perks can be set to work the same way which means that all the NPCs use the ACE perks above to experience the same fighting effects.

Those are the newest mods I added to my install, they are great. There's a theme of making characters different from one another as you can see, so you can play seperate areas of Skyrim with each character rather than just one superhero who does everything...

I would probably argue that some of those garbage releases were introducing something new that didn't become good until it matured into a later release. 95 introduced the desktop we use now but it was unreliable, it had to mature into 98 before it reached its peak. 2000 and XP were good but Vista was notorious. Besides all the media centre crap that got bundled with it, the new driver architecture was barely supported by anyone at first. Windows 7 used the same system but everyone had adopted it by then so it seemed a lot smoother. Windows 7 did also have a fair bit of unnecessary shit stripped out which sealed the deal in my opinion.

I was quite aware in that article that there was no exploration at all of the concerns that people have (to the point where many have decided to already avoid adopting it). The BBC has got worse recently for features that are pretty much just press releases. The second half of the 10 o'clock news is always a feature - sometimes it's genuine: Afghanistan, Libya, CERN etc, but just as often the new feature is more or less an advert such as "Hollywood has a new film out and it's going to be great!"

Windows Sesame Street, I love it!

My dad gets angry to this day when he can't find the button he wants in Office due to the ribbon overhaul. I don't know what he would ever do if his entire desktop was replaced by selection of colour panels...

Wow, that square in Cologne that the Star Wars flash mob hit has acoustics that uncannily resemble a concert hall!

Certainly looks like a bigger update than the usual:

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:

This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Driver

Resolves performance issues (where GPU activity runs at lower values than expected) seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870
AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro™ Technology supported platforms has been substantially improved for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications. An updated driver for 7970M users featuring AMD Enduro™ Technology with additional DirectX 9 performance improvements will be released soon.
3DMark Vantage – Up to 15%
3DMark 11 – Up to 12%
AvP – Up to 11%
Battlefield 3 – Up to 25%
Crysis 2: Up to 45%
DiRT Showdown – Up to 62%
ETQW – Up to 8%
Hard Reset – Up to 8%
Just Cause 2 – Up to 90%
The Chronicles of Riddick – Up to 4%
Shogun 2 – Up to 56%
Sniper Elite V2 – Up to 60%
Tom Clancy’s HAWX – Up to 56%
Unigine Heaven – Up to 33%
Wolfenstein – Up to 9%

I have to say that for Skyrim I find the workshop a lot less useful than just browsing + Nexus Mod Manager. I did briefly have a couple of Workshop mods while I was trying it out but I get everything from Nexus now.

Having said that, Elder Scrolls is a special case since it has a fast moving mod scene with many mods to manage and things like load order are important. In general I'm very much up for a standard approach to getting user content into games.

The game needs polishing up before DLC comes out, especially so soon and containing things like weapons that should have been in by default. At least the game was pretty cheap.

The game still has optimisation/port issues (some types of scrolling like mouse scrolling are at 60FPS, others like push scrolling are much worse with no good reason. Worm animations are at 30FPS with no interpolation or adjustment for the PC. I still have glitchy water that leaves artefacts all over the screen! Some of the new features definitely have potential for new depth but the biggest issues at the moment are animation issues making the action feel quite spongy (unlike all the other 2D games which have sharp feel) and also there seems to be quite a control delay.

So after a couple weeks of honeymoon period, what's the assessment of XCOM single player?

I would love for this to reach a great conclusion but I'll wait and see the result before throwing my cash in. The staff, funding and development conditions may all be close to ideal but it's not automatic to reach a successful end product when the undertaking's this complex and far reaching. I hope they can pull it off!