Twilight Dirac

Distinguishing between fantasy and sci-fiction starts to get really tricky once people start breaking conventions. I usually view science fiction as something that is a reasonable extrapolation from a our real modern setting to a somewhat grounded in science (hence the science in science fiction) futuristic or alternate history setting while fantasy is where you just go ahead a make up whatever you want with no grounding in reality and only a few in universe rules thrown in to keep things consistent; so wizards, magic, dragons, orcs, unicorns or whatever. There is a sort of intersection between true "hard" science fiction where you got people traveling the stars in hydrogen ramjet fusion driven ships while in cyrosleep and straight balls to the wall fantasy were it becomes somewhat of a judgement call as to what is what. The question I usually ask is if this is something at least close to what could be plausibly achieved in the future (Star Trek, Babylon V, Firefly, etc.) or does the setting just pull whatever out of its rear end? In the case of Star Wars, going by the movies as I claim no special knowledge of the Expanded Universe outside a couple of video games and the X-Wing tabletop game, Star Wars clearly falls into fantasy. There is virtually no justification for anything in the movie in terms of science or reality, virtually everything is just a cool historical scenario ported straight into space with no bearing on whether it would realistically work. Starfighters and fighter combat are just WW2 warplanes in space, the starships are either WW2 battleships or 17th century ships of the line in space depending on the battle. Jedi are just medieval knights in space and the have access to The Force, which is flat out magic in the original films and given a horrible and grossly inadequate science fiction element of midi-clorians in the prequels (an explanation which is almost universally hated by fans). Even the settings line up with fantasy RPG settings most of the time. In your typical fantasy CRPG, there will be a forest level, a desert level, an ice level, a volcano level, etc. And guess what, in Star Wars there is a forest planet (well technically moon), a desert planet, an ice planet, and a volcano planet. Coruscant and Bespin (Sky Temple equivalent maybe?) are obvious exceptions unique to the setting that make it cooler, but you can still spot the general pattern here. The huge sweeping vistas of these environments are also reminiscent of those seen in the Lord of the Rings movies both in terms of beautiful natural settings and the impossibly massive architecture found in both movies. Add in bottomless pits, long catwalks with no handrails over bottomless bits (very similar to the Mines of Moria in LotR), pointless forcefields and various no OHSA complaince impressive scenery that serves no practical purpose and compare that to the much more practical layout of say the U.S.S. Enterprise and you get a clear idea that everything in Star Wars is going for a high fantasy vibe even if it is set in space. I was honestly never sure how this series earned its reputation. I guess its a sort of sandbox that you can endlessly screw around in, but its got a really weak structure in terms of pursuing the actual plot, a rather poor level progression system and really mediocre combat. There really are better games out there. Actually Planescape Torment. That is a fantasy game you need to try, completely off the walls setting.

Nintendo seems to endlessly experiment with hardware and don't seem to be particularly good at it. While I have lost interest in Nintendo's games for some time, when people praise Nintendo or want to purchase the next Nintendo system, it always seems to be for the Nintendo exclusive games. I don't think I have ever encountered someone who absolutely positively wanted or needed to use a wii-mote or that new touchscreen controller thing; if they were excited about getting a new wii-u it was because it let them play Super Smash Brothers X or the new Mario Party or whatever. I almost feel that players would be better off if Nintendo simply made their games for the X-box, Playstation and PC so players could just play those games along with the rest of the games on the market rather than being forced to subsidize Nintendo's latest hardware experiments just so they could play the games they want to play.

Star Wars is by all rights a work of fantasy more than it is of science fiction, almost like a Tolkien novel set in the future. Just because its not set in the Middle Ages does not mean its not fantasy. Or maybe its because Skyrim just isn't a very good game, and I say that as someone who loves fantasy RPGs. I have never been impressed by the Elder Scrolls series of RPGs for numerous reasons. Try Baldur's Gate 2, Ultima 4-7 or Final Fantasy 6 and 7 (those last to are rather big breaks from traditional fantasy settings).

There was a Guild Wars 2 thread here a few weeks back but it got very little activity. So there is at least one other person out on these forums trying to get a Guild Wars 2 game going. This game can be quite fun multiplayer. Do you own any of the expansions or just the core game?

There is an Enhanced Version on steam now we can try, I would be happy to organize a Baldur's Gate 2 game. And if you did enjoy BG2, I strongly suggest you look into Divinity Original Sin. Think BG2 using a Fallout 1 & 2 combat engine (still high fantasy setting though).

Yea that is pretty much how almost any MMORPG works. There pretty much all inferior to a well designed single player RPG, so you really do need to play with friends. That being said, there are a small number of CO-OP single player focused RPGs that are a lot of fun to play multiplayer. Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale 2 and most recently Divinity Original Sin. If we could find a small group of 4 to 6 players playing one of these games would be a lot of fun. I particularly want to try Divinity Original Sin CO-OP, a lot of thought actually went in to making this game work well both single and multiplayer and its combat system is far better than anything you will ever find in an MMORPG. It almost feels like playing a pen and paper RPG. Haven't had any success in finding other players yet though. Probably because that is where most of the worlds internet connected population is located. Sounds good, maybe we can get a Brony LoL group going, I think I already have somebody else from these forums as a friend on a NA server.

The Matrix Reloaded: The plot is stupid and it takes itself way to seriously, but the action sequences are still a lot of fun to watch. The Star Wars Prequels: The prequels themselves suck, but there is hours and hours of entertainment to be had in tearing them apart. Entertainment based upon criticizing the prequels such as Plinkett Reviews and Darths and Droids provide hours of entertainment, and I think it has gotten to the point that there are more hours of entertainment to be had exploiting the Prequels' failure than the Prequels would have provided if they were actually good. Of course you need to watch the Prequels at least once to properly benefit from all this other material out there.

I also have WoW, but my subscription is currently inactive.

I am on the North America server.

Great idea for a topic. I have loads of multiplayer games I would love to find some players to join me in. My favorites at the moment are: Divinity Original Sin (there is a four player mod I would love to try) Civilization V (with both expansions) Magicka Planetside 2 However, I also have Borderlands 1 & 2 Dawn of War 1 & 2 Company of Heroes Castle Crashers E.Y.E. TF2 Beyond Earth Warmachine Tactics X-Com Energy Unknown/Within System Shock 2 Also I have some non-steam games that run multiplayer League of Legends Guild Wars 2 Diablo 3 Starcraft 1 & 2 Hearthstone Space Empires 5 Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 Icewind Dale 1 & 2

The dangers associated with nuclear energy have been exaggerated, and outside of the industrial accidents themselves it is a clean form of energy (solar becomes dirty if you include the industrial accidents associated with it, burning lithium is not good for the environment).

Two words: Nuclear Energy. Its doesn't just match fossil fuels, it exceeds fossil fuels by a factor of 10^8!

I got one of them. It really needs a proper practice mode, and always starts you out in a mirror match when you play the CPU so I always loose track of my character and loose to the computer.

The wide spread use and utter stupidity of zero tolerance policies continue to amaze me. Nothing quite combines cruelty and stupidity the way zero tolerance policies do. Not only are kids constantly bullied by other kids with no protection from their teachers, but now kids are bullied by teachers and administrators in the name of zero tolerance. And this particular kid has been suspended three times. If I were this kids parents I would put my kid in a private school while I dragged the public school into court for the next decade. And the sad thing is, this just isn't limited to Texas. This zero tolerance bullshit is everywhere. I grew up in the Florida schools and its there to. There needs to be a way to put an end to this nonsense.

Oddly enough, I have never been banned from the forums. The only time I was ever banned from anything was when a college club kicked me out after I wrote to them a letter of complaint because I felt one of their officers was excluding me from a particular club activity. They came up with some trumped up charges to have me banned from the club within a space of a week after writing them that letter.

I have often been told that I would make a good lawyer, but I went into physics and engineering instead. And that seems about as far as you are going to get on this forum. It seems most members are the artistic type, with a few math and science nerds thrown in for good measure. Can't say I have seen anybody expressing interest in law.

What about an analog computer? It in theory could operate using a mathematically dense set of numbers.

This really sucks. I absolutely loved these series. It seems like Netflix's lineup keeps on shrinking. I may end up cancelling my subscription and just purchasing episodes outright from Amazon Direct.

This was an excellent sci-fi series. Unfortunately, it was on the sci-fi channel, and like all things actually sci-fi on the sci-fi channel it got the ax in favor of crap like Sharknado.

Possibly, but more likely than not you are simply being outmatched by your opponents. Oddly enough I find that Planetside 2 tends to play pretty well to all skill levels, but I found Battlefield to be merciless. I spent far too much time in respawning screens or traveling only to die nearly instantly as soon as actual combat broke out. The term "hurry up and wait" almost comes to mind, although I suppose in this context its actually "wait then die". And don't even get me started on aircraft. Ultimately I spent way to much time staring at respawn screens and decided the Battefield series was a complete waste of my time. Switched to Planetside 2, never looked back.

All of them. There is just something that about them that rubs me the wrong way. They always come of as spouting generic lines of meaningless bullshit that have no bearing on any particular situation or circumstance.

We can always form Brony based gaming groups. I have a rather large library of mutliplayer games and it would be great to find players to play games like C&C Generals, Civilization V, Magicka and the like with.

That is frustrating. Radioshack has been going downhill for a while, but they still sold plenty of useful things, like obscure battery sizes. Your telling me in an age where electronics are everywhere they can't stay in business.

I would love to see a proper remake of Master of Magic and Ultima 5. Those games really deserve it and are old enough to warrant it.

Its a shame mythical creatures rarely make and appearance anymore. I like the plots where the ponies have to face perilous unexplored terrain filled with dangerous mythological creatures. This aspect of the setting gets largely ignored.