MasterDex

I don't think morality is there for the sole purpose of human survival or that no morality is more right or wrong than another. I believe that human morality is something that's just part of being alive and intelligent due to our interconnectedness. Let's take the unfortunate cow. Even the biggest beef eater in the world might consider that going into a field where a cow that would soon be slaughtered grazed and being cruel to it is morally apprehensive because as an intelligent being, they can appreciate the lowly bovine's situation. Who's to say that morality is even a unique feature of being a human. If I pretend to cry like a dog, my dog will come to comfort me, perhaps recognising in herself that this thing that feeds her and walks her is feeling sad or hurt for some reason and through her own will decides that she wants me to feel better, because I'm nice to her and I make her feel better if she's feeling a bit down. In other words, perhaps it's just a consequence of intelligence, the consequence of being able to process empathy. Duuuuuude! Far out! Seriously though, I get where you're coming from Fuchikoma. I've often asked myself similar questions and while I have my own uneducated guesses, I've also got different leanings towards multiple ideas. For instance, on a recent Through the Wormhole, Morgan Freeman asked the question "Is the Universe alive?" and it got me thinking about how for all we know, the universe could all be part of some greater being on an entirely different scale, the planets, like atoms, just part of a greater whole. I'm not saying that's the case - it would certainly open up a hell of a lot more questions than it would answer! - but I think it highlights the issue we face now between science and religion. We seem to have more answers for everything and then more questions.Like P4 talked about the domino's falling, I think there's a certain beautiful perfection to the universe around us, how the dominos all started toppling to create a fantastic chain of events that we can't even begin to comprehend. Some believe it's a sign of a greater creator or Gods, but I think that the concept of God, as we grow both scientifically and religiously as humans, will become much broader and harder to define to the point that our image of what a God is will change from being an omniscient, omnipotent, sentient being to something more vague and conceptual. I'd also like to add that I really enjoyed reading both of your posts. I feel like I know you both a little bit better now.

It's still the best gun in the game. None of the new weapons are as OP as m16(although I don't use automatic weapons much). Some people use *ONLY* this gun and have 30-50 stars on it. Basically, every second assault I see uses it. I prefer shotguns, explosives and knife, so when I pick up m16 from a body I feel like some kind of laser-shooting robot. It's accurate, it has high RoF, and it's everything one can ask from a gun, it's too easy to use and fits almost every situation. I still think that DICE failed at balancing the game, it's just too damn hard when you have so many weapons. Also, flares break laser designated rockets. FAIL. I don't think you can really call the M16 the best gun in the game. It can be outclassed at just about every range but it performs well at all ranges. It's designed as the assault's all-rounder, which is also why it makes a good starting weapon for new players and old alike. As an assault, you have to be able to deal with targets at multiple ranges effectively and while the M16 does so to a degree, it doesn't excel at any range. It works better on some maps than others too. On Caspian Border for instance, it's useful, there's wide expanses and tight corridors so it fits right in. On other maps, weapons like the M416, the AEK, or AS Val are more useful. It's just the all-rounder. It's no different to the likes of the Scar 11 and FA-37 of 2142. I've used it a lot myself but honestly, I have more fun and often do better with the likes of an M39 with holo sights and a suppressor, or the Scar and an RPG and I've been having fun with the M27 IAR today. I just don't think the M16 is all it's made out to be.

In A New PC Gamer, I see Company of Heroes mentioned a few times, that's a great multiplayer RTS and it supports up to 8 players. I'd definitely be up for some of that. I'm also playing Battlefield just about every evening on PC, usually with a good few other lads (2-3 squads) but I'd be up for getting together for a game with any of ye and since we no longer have a BF3 server to call home, you're welcome to join in on our pub stomping. We know a few good servers with some decent competition.

Yeah, as I said, I haven't used them so I can't deny that my experience with them is one sided but with the way cashflow is right now, I won't be getting premium for some time so the only chance I'll have to use them is if I happen to pick up someone's kit and they have them equipped. I don't know if I'd consider them overpowered in the traditional sense but they do seem like a step above their contemporaries, even if it's only in certain aspects. The point I was getting at is that if they are truly a step above the rest - which I can't say for certain since I haven't used them personally yet - it does set a precedent that allows Dice to push the pay2win concept that bit further, even if it isn't until BF4 that we see the true ramifications of such a strategy.

As a preface, I should say that I haven't had a chance to pick up the new weapons and use them myself so my experience of them is one-sided but the time-to-kill certainly seems out of whack with the other guns. I noticed this particularly yesterday, as people were able to kill me with those weapons in less than a second, even after I shot the shit out of them. It was like "Dzzt" and then I was dead. Perhaps there were network factors in play but it seemed to be only these two weapons that were in a class of their own. Looking at the weapon stats, I see that the Aug fires 700rpm, meaning it sits mid-way in the assault class for firing speed but then you look at the muzzle velocity and it's 670m/s, making it the gun with the fastest bullets in the game, while also having the longest range for the assault rifles (1005m). That seems unbalanced to me. I've seen plenty of people complaining about premium over on the Battlelog forums, but I haven't seen many people question the new weapons. Maybe I just missed those threads. At the rate new threads are started on Battlelog, it's hard to catch everything. The M16A3 was never overpowered. Most other guns outclass it at their respective ranges so while it is well-rounded (something I think the assault class requires for good class balance), it doesn't excel at anything, except perhaps the recoil, but the M16 is characteristically steady for an assault rifle in real life anyway so increasing the recoil in an attempt to balance the weapon might not be the best option. I think the best thing they could do with the M16 to better accentuate its jack-of-all, master-of-none characteristics is to bring the minimum damage falloff back to 40-45m, rather than the 50m it's currently at. That said, with these new weapons, the M16 probably doesn't need to be nerfed at all. The thing with well-rounded guns is that they're popular choices, simply for being well-rounded and that can lead to a false impression that they're overpowered.

Added in my info. I also have a PS3 but I don't spend much time playing it. That said, if there is a multiplayer session of a game that I own, I'd definitely be up for joining in.

I've been saying that for years! It's why I often create female characters if a game has character creation aspects! As for Move, I haven't got much use out of it at all. The only full game I own for it is Tiger Woods 2012, which I really like. Perhaps it's because I'm usually playing solo at home, unless I'm online but I've yet to see a Move game that makes me think "I've got to have it!".

You have to give them credit though, EA have been trying to integrate pay2win without getting the backlash they've often received at the mere suggestion for years now. That they've managed to do so without causing a stir is a miracle. I wonder if Activision would have had the same success.

The hud reminds me very much of Dissidia - which was a rhythm game in its own right. Is it weird for me to be annoyed that they made the characters look all cutesy? I know it's a Nintendo game but c'mon! they look like they've dropped far too many tabs.

One of the SFIV ones? I got an Akuma one, didn't like it one bit. It's gathering dust in a drawer now. I never had the pleasure of owning a Saturn myself. Had a loan of one for a week once with Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter and Nights but that's about as far as my Saturn gaming goes. They were just so expensive for the time compared to everything else.

What are your specs? The beauty of PC gaming is that you can tweak the settings to fit your needs. Even if it's at a low resolution with settings at low, if you can get around 40fps average, you'll be able to compete fine - since a lot of people think their rigs are better than they are and run beyond their means. I haven't seen it mentioned over on the battlelog forums - surprisingly - but I'm beginning to think that the new weapons, rather than being properly balanced with the existing weapons, are pay2win weapons. Both the Mtar and AUG seem to have an insane time-to-kill, yet people are still more concerned with bitching about the M16.

Most definitely. Karkand and Sharqi were kings of the infantry only servers back in the day and Seine is a fantastic infantry map as well. I haven't played any of the CQ maps yet but from the getgo, I had little interest in them. Don't get me wrong, I still regard CoD4 as one of the best, most perfect FPS games to ever see the light of day and I like that type of playstyle but as far as Battlefield goes, I'd rather just play Battlefield, not Battlefield wearing a Call of Duty mask. I'm looking forward to Armoured Warfare, I hope they do the game some real justice. It's sad that Caspian Border is the only stock map that even comes close to the old large maps. I don't know if it's EA or DICE themselves but somewhere along the line, they lost touch with what made Battlefield so great. Now they pander to the masses and placate the whiners when they could be listening to the true BF fans and recapturing the magic that made the series.

It could also be to avoid problems with disk writing. Some games aren't affected at all but some games will suffer from stuttering if there's a lot of data being written to the same drive, even more so if it's writing in the same sector or cluster.

I thought I commented on this already. Oh well, I'll do so now. It's nice to see some footage but it's certainly not what I was expecting, not that I really know what I was expecting anyway. It looks like it's going to be a bitch to balance all the different cards properly. Actually, come to think of it, it reminds me quite a bit of a TCG I came up with some time back. It's different, it's digital for one thing, but the idea of attacking a vanguard defence before being able to attack the player directly (I take it that that's what attacking those obelisks is essentially) is pretty much in line. My idea was better though.

I like boardgames but looking at your collection, Johnny, I feel like I missed out on some great nerdy ones. Being the only nerd in my family meant boardgames were of the trivial pursuit, monopoly and scrabble variety. That being said, I bought Risk when I was around 10 but never got to have a full game of it because my siblings and parents weren't into it. I have played many a tabletop game however - love them - but sadly, far too little. Being an Irish nerd is fucking hard!

So many new (and familiar) faces! Someone link me to whatever ye read that brought you all here, I feel like being inspired to want to leave Kotaku all over again!

They are indeed. They're as old as the hills, just about. Taoiseach (Tea-Shock) literally means chieften or leader and Tánaiste (Tawn-Ish-Te) comes from the tanistry system of government, essentially just heir apparent/second-in-command.

Sinn Féin has certainly increased in popularity over the last couple of years. Now that Fianna Fail, the party that got us into the mess we're in, lost public favour, it shifted temporarily to Fine Gael and Labour - and their bullshit manifestos - who won the general election and came into power. Since then, they've dropped in popularity as our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) showed himself for the yes man that he is and our Tánaiste (deputy PM) showed the popular Labour manifesto as nothing more than political pandering to get into office. So now Sinn Féin are on the rise. I highly doubt their day will come any time soon however as a lot of Irish are still firmly against them ever getting into power because of the trouble "they" caused in Northern Ireland. Honestly though, I'll probably vote for them in the next election because Gerry Adams seems to be the only party leader with the balls to stand up for Ireland, while the rest throw away the sovereignty our forebearers fought so hard for away. Can he unify Ireland? I don't think so, but he's probably got the best chance of achieving it.

The Christian populace must be very proud to have you as their spokesperson.

Its hard for me to disagree with you, Strangelove. Maybe it's because I'm almost completely focused on PC gaming these days, compared to when I was younger, but I just don't have that many recent Japanese titles in my library. I think their success in the 90's led them to stagnate. Like we're beginning to see over here, Japanese developers all jumped on the bandwagons of their successful games and now, nearly twenty years later, most everyone is tired of the lack of originality exuding from the Japanese games industry. As I said though, we're beginning to see something similar crop up here in the west. Most 3rd person shooters these days all follow a similar formula, almost becoming identical in all but visuals and plot. The FPS market is flooded with generic shooters, even if they're not MMS's and strategy games haven't really moved on since the early 2000's apart from a few outlier examples. The only real innovation seems to be happening in the indie sector but that's always been the case. Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't start the death knells just yet. For all we know, 10 years down the line, western developers will be saying the same things as Mikami and Kojima and Japanese nerds will be lamenting the end of the western games industry.

We should make a fuss if they settle on Roundtable. Just because.

It's so nice hearing an American say that. I'm going to come across as arrogant here but fuck it, it's not often I go full-on. The party system, never mind a bipartisan system, is the most idiotic practice in democracy and the people that stick to a single party are idiotic as well. A well-run democratic government should not give parties power. Political parties, by their nature, create bias that has no place in a democratic government. A true democratic government would elect individuals to fulfil each important role, with lesser roles opened to the public so the best people for the job get it. In terms of Ireland, this would mean each minister is appointed by the people, not the party that won the vote. As far as Obamacare goes, I'm not sure what I think of it now. Back when it was first introduced, it sounded alright but the ensuing party politics seemed to mess things up. At that point, I just tuned it out so I have no idea how it looks now.

Ha! Brilliant! As an atheist, I'd love to be proven wrong and see Jesus resurrected, if even just to hear the "Oh shit!" that echoes across the world as different Christian faiths realise they weren't very Christian at all.

Welcome newcomers! Don't be intimidated by our resident grumps - you know who you are! - they're really cuddly once you get to know them.

For sure. Since the topic was brought up, I will say that I'd support a peaceful reunification of Ireland, I just don't know if any Irish government could a) achieve such a feat or b) make something of it.