TheMightyEthan

Haha, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah, on the rare occasion that I need to use one of those I have to go to the character map (or often when I want to use it someone else has just used it so I can just copy and paste).

Ah yeah, we've got that option. It's always defaulted to US though so I've never looked at what the other options were.

So if the software affects that, what would happen if I were to say bring a US keyboard to the UK with me and hook it up to one of your machines? Would it work the same as in the US or would the keys be all rearranged? *Edit* - I mean I know obviously the keys wouldn't physically move (I'm not that retarded). But like would shift+2 make a @ or a " ?

Sadly, yes.

Oh and we still put the stress on the first syllable, not the second, so it's more like nokey-uh rather than no-kia. And I just looked up the Finnish pronunciation and to me it sounds somewhere between "noke" and "knock" so I'm gonna chalk this one up to trying to approximate the pronunciation of a word that's not even English.

I think it's a bit odd how British people pronounce every word that ends in an a like it ends in an r.

Apparently the head of whatever committee SOPA's in right now killed the DNS blocking provision, so that's good.

It's not saying that American English sounds like gibberish, It's gibberish that sounds like American English to someone who does speak English. Like how vaguely racist people will speak in fake Chinese or Spanish.

I'd say Arrival is worth $2 but maybe not $5. It's not especially interesting, though it does set up the start of ME3. Shadow Broker is definitely must-have though.

Extremely minor difference, but another common US variant is this:

But remember that ME2 is still on Steam and its DLC is not. That's actually the thing that's kept me from buying ME1 & 2 when they've been $5 on the Steam sale. I'd like to have them on PC but I don't want to have to buy the DLC again. *Edit* - I just realized I haven't played a game on console since Skyward Sword and I probably won't until ME3.

But that's ME2, ME3 might use Origin rather than Bioware's system.

DLC.

I'm 58% done, but I also played another 4 hours after beating it.

Arkham City. Great game, built well on the first one.

For my second Nazi picture of the week: (In tags not because of anything spoilerific but because I know some European countries are not too fond of Nazi symbology, and they're wearing SS uniforms)

Yeah, I think it would have been better to have the character creation before the intro, so it doesn't interrupt the pacing. Either that or after the whole dragon attack scene, when there's already a lull.

And today on GMG it's Deus Ex: Human Revolution for 75% off ($14.98)

I don't think the complaint was that there was no backstory, because I agree you should make your own and it makes for a much more interesting (to you) character. The complaint was more that the intro didn't do much to draw the player in until 20 minutes into the game, which is too long. I think EC would have been happy if instead of riding through a confined forest with nothing to look at you'd come out onto a cliffside path that let you look out over the vast, glorious world, maybe with a foreigner in the cart with you to express amazement at what they're seeing. They just wanted the game to show off it's central draw: that there's a huge world to explore. @Atom: it didn't strike me as spoilery when I read it either, but I figure if somebody wants it in tags there's really no harm. I mean, I can kinda see the point, it does give away a surprise event in a quest.

That's because it looks weird if you draw their feet pointing straight ahead.

I think high schools need to get back into having more vocational type classes. I don't know how it is other places, but around here high school is almost entirely focused on college prep, and there's very little there for people who aren't going to go to college, which I think contributes to our high drop-out rates (from the time we were freshmen to the time we graduated about 1/3 of our class dropped out). They need more classes that teach real world skills for people who aren't going to college.

Well like I said, I thought Skyrim's intro was effective. But here's their point, distilled: The intro to your game should put the most interesting aspect of your game front-and-center right away. They decided Skyrim's most interesting aspect, the thing that draws people to it, is exploring its world, and said that the intro doesn't do a good job of that. In Skyrim's intro you're riding in a cart through a closed-in forest, with people talking about stuff that doesn't have any context for a new player. That doesn't do a good job of showing off their game's biggest draw. They weren't saying that the intro needs to be all actiony like CoD4's is, they were just saying it needed to do more to highlight that you're entering this giant world to explore. Again, the intro certainly made me intrigued and want to learn more about the world, so it worked on me, but I do think they have an interesting point. The only thing I really agree with though is that the placement of the character creation really killed the pacing. I don't know about you, but it usually takes me a good 10-15 minutes to create a character in a game like that.

Hell, if a small country in Africa violates it's people's rights no one comes to save them (unless it threatens our supply of oil), or at most a half-hearted effort is made.