Twilight Dirac

Yea, never get a Mac for PC gaming. Heck, never get a Mac period, unless you like paying a premium to not run the majority of the software out on the market. A modern Windows system will run everything out there, be it old DOS games or current generation games, provided you know how to get everything to work.

Back in the SNES and Genesis era, each console and the PC had their own library that was separate and exclusive from the other systems. At this time, whatever system that had the biggest library would necessarily have the most exclusives. However, as time has progressed all the video game platforms have become increasingly homogenized. Most major Xbox and Playstation titles are now shared across the Xbox, Playstation and the PC. The outlier here is Nintendo, whose library still remains largely exclusive, but the tradeoff is that Nintendo consoles cannot be used to play anything but their own exclusives, even the major releases that appear on every other system are absent on Nintendo consoles. There are still Xbox and Playstation exclusives, but they are mostly a token presence, while the PC still retains a vast library that cannot be played on any of the console systems. Further adding to the PC library is backwards compatibility. In order to play your old Playstation, Xbox or Nintendo games you must hang onto all your old systems, while a modern PC can still run video games released in the 1980s. Further compounding this advantage is the use of emulators, which gives the PC access to game libraries that used to be exclusive, including the aforementioned SNES and Genesis. So yes, the PC does now have the largest number of games available for it. Whether its the games you actually want is still a matter of taste, but its definitely giving you access to the largest range of them.

An odd response seeing how I wasn't even giving an opinion, unless you count the post before that mentioning the likes of Master of Magic. But really, the breakdown is actually pretty straightforward: First you have your Nintendo games. You buy Nintendo consoles to play these games and for no other reason. They are pretty much an isolated segment of the market. Then you have your big budgets AAA games. These are your Grand Theft Autos and Assassin Creeds. These are released for every platform except Nintendo consoles, so it doesn't even matter which one you have. If its not Nintendo, its going to run these games. Third you have your console exclusives. Well your non-Nintendo exclusives anyhow, as Nintendo is nothing but a pile of exclusives. These are your Uncharteds and your Crackdowns. They tend to be pretty generic run of the mill games that non the less command strong brand loyalty. They basically exist to convince you to pick an Xbox over a Playstation and vice versa. You can probably do without them and not really miss much in the way of gaming experience and they tend to be pretty generic and safe in their design, though I suppose that is just an opinion. Finally there is everything else. The indie games, grand strategy games, mobas, or whatever else that doesn't make it to console for any number of reasons. This is a market of staggering size, and I can assure you that it is just as much about quality as it is quantity. Some of the best games every made are found here, long time classics that you simply cannot obtain on the consoles. Games that would surprise you if you ever gave them a chance. And they are all available to PC gamers in addition to the AAA titles. They are easily worth sacrificing the likes of Uncharted for. Granted, there are both financial and technical barriers to PC gaming that are not present when using an Xbox or Playstation, but if you have the cash and the technical knowledge you basically pick of the vast majority of what both systems have to offer plus an additional market of games filled with treasures that easily matches or exceeds the AAA market in size. It also tends to encompass and lot more risk taking, which means you can find truly unique games that tend not to make it on the other systems.

A PC will run most titles on either of the other two systems, save a few games held hostage as exclusives for marketing reasons. But the PC library of games that don't show up on consoles for either technical reasons, or because the are independently developed, or for backwards compatibility reasons absolutely dwarfs those few titles held exclusive to either the Xbox or Playstation. Generally speaking, a PC plus the Nintendo consoles are going to give you access to the vast majority of the market, and there will only be a handful of games you cannot access.

The PC tends to offer rich, unique games that often never make it to consoles or if they do, they are often either long delayed, butchered, or both. RTS, MMORPGs, and MOBAs are the games usually cited for being absent from consoles, but I find most grand strategy games never make it to console, as well as a great many turn based strategy games, a good number of RPGs and a great many odd games that would defy classification such as Kerbal Space Program. Console games often just feel too generic, and Nintendo, which probably makes some of the more unique games, seems to despise 3rd party developers to the point that Nintendo consoles do only one thing; play Nintendo games. There are just too many gems out there you give up by sticking with console: Civilization V, Master of Magic, Kerbal Space Program, Divinity: Original Sin, Heroes of the Storm, Master of Orion 2, Ultima 4-7, Baldur's Gate 2, etc. You simply can't get the same experience on console. Console is usually best when friends are over. There good for gathering everyone around to tv and playing a quick fun game. Nintendo usually knows how to do this best. But if friends are online or you are only, then PC is the way to go.

I have been using eBay for well over a decade. One thing I can tell you for certain is that the feedback system is an absolute joke. Sellers with 100% positive feedback can and will ship slowly, pull bait and switch techniques, list items that they don't have, never ship, or ship fraudulent, pirated and counterfeit items. Feedback manipulation is just that easy, and the eBay community as a whole has almost come to expect positive feedback as a right because of gross feedback score inflation. It can make shopping on eBay really frustrating. If it wasn't really easy and cheap to get all manner of exotic items on eBay, I would have long stopped dealing with them because of the rampant fraud that permeates the whole site. As is, any purchase you make is a calculated risk because eBay is so saturated with scam artist. If first prints were promised but not delivered this is a bait a switch scam, and at the very least the seller deserves negative feedback. Now if you can live with the fact that you didn't get first prints, leave it at that. However, if having the first prints was the main reason for making this purchase, you should dispute the purchase and demand a refund through Paypal (the Paypal refund is really the only form of purchase protection you have on eBay as feedback ratings are worthless). However, make sure you collect evidence of your claims before disputing the purchase. Save a copy of the auction page and those photos you mention in your edit to your hard drive. Also take pictures of the prints you were mailed so you can provide eBay dispute resolution with side by side comparison. Get anything and everything you can to prove your case before making your dispute. But do act quickly, you only have a limited time, I think 60 days from the time of purchase, to file a dispute before you are no longer eligible for a Paypal refund. This is one of the reasons I think many fraudulent sellers drag their feet when shipping the item. Good luck.

Towards the end of last year I purchased an RPG on Steam called Divinity: Original Sin. This is a top down RPG featuring turn based tactical combat similar to Fallout 1 & 2 or X-Com, but in your traditional high-fantasy setting. It probably has the best combat system of any RPG I have ever played, mixing turn based tactical combat with large range of rider buff and debuff conditions and a complex elemental magic system that effects not only the PCs and enemies but the terrain itself. A complex character creation system meshes perfectly with the combat system. The rest of the game is less remarkable, but I do like the way it handles traps and other obstacles. Anybody who is a fan of either RPGs or turn-based tactical combat really ought check it out, there simply isn't anything else like it on the market. The best part is, this is an internet co-op RPG, so you can play it with a bunch of friends. It only supports two players by default, but there is a mod available that allows you to play with three other friends. I haven't tried co-op myself because the game is so obscure that none of my other friends have it, but I think co-op play would be a blast. Its probably the closest you can get to pen and paper D&D without actually playing pen and paper D&D.

I really wouldn't worry about the California drought, it is not a precursor to some kind of global drought, but rather another indication that California is run by a bunch of imbeciles. Remember the California energy crisis under governor Davis a decade ago, which was supposed to be a precursor to a global energy crisis but was in fact simply the consequence of California not bothering to build powerplants? Well this is just that problem again, but now with water. Just like when they refused to raise electricity prices in the midst of the previous crisis, California won't hike water prices now so its politically connected agricultural industry is more than happy to squander massive quantities of water while its citizens are ordered to ration their water usage. Then there is the whole Oakdale Irrigation District scandal where they were going to lower water levels in the New Melones Reservoir to assist steelhead trout migration in the middle of the drought, demonstrating a complete lack of priorities. I hate to sound cruel, but I have long run out of sympathy for California and its management of just about everything. Problems in California are nothing more then an indication that the Californian government is incompetent, something I have known for a long, long time. Just don't elect any California's politicians to Federal environmental management posts and the rest of us can steer clear of these kinds of problems. Your science teacher told you that? Doesn't he realize that was the salt just removed from the sea water to begin with, so that the net salt intake would be zero. Actual ocean water salt comes from the erosion of soil in riverbeds as water makes it way from inland back out to sea after being deposited by rain, which has accumulated over the course of hundreds of millions of years. There is no risk of desalination plants raising the salt levels of the ocean to that of the dead sea. This isn't doing much for my confidence in the public education system.

I have actually run multiplayer games of Civilization V over the internet with a few friends to completion, so it is playable multiplayer poor optimization or not. It's a lot of fun to play multiplayer while running voice chat.

So if I were to organize a multiplayer game of Civ V, would you all want to join in?

I would recommend RMXP if you were interesting in making 2D RPGs because I have used in personally and it is an amazing program that can be obtained through steam. However, it seems more like you want to make an action side scroller, and I am not certain what would be ideal for that.

I absolutely love Civ V but people rarely express an interest in playing it multiplayer. I would be up for joining everybody in a multiplayer game of it.

I suppose you could have some fun with Rise of The Silver Surfer, but its really hard to extract any fun out of the 2005 movie when they spend so much dog gone time sulking over the plight of The Thing.

Do not write polite letters expressing a grievance or complaint unless you are prepared for a rather nasty fight. I wrote a letter of complaint to a college club complaining about the conduct of one of their officers after a club project he and I was involved with met with disaster. They informed me that they regretted my bad experience and that they would investigate, and I should leave everything to them. I did, and the next time they contacted me was to inform me that I was to have my membership revoked and I was to be barred from all future club events and activities for my acts of "disrespect" towards their officer, with no prior warning that they had any problems with my conduct and no second chances. Circumstances prevented me from effectively fighting this nonsense, but in the future I will be prepared for the worst should I have the desire to commit the crime of speaking my mind again.

The Adam Sandler movie is where comedy goes to die. His financial success is a mystery that defies explanation. Seeing how they already managed this feat twice before, they were already experts at this point.

But nothing actually happens in that movie. The Thing wallows in his own self pity, the Humans Torch acts like an a**hole, and Dr. Doom doesn't seem to have a clear reason to attack the Fantastic Four other than the movie badly needed another action scene. And from what I can remember there are zero heroics, both the rescue at the bridge and the fight with Doom are just the Fantastic Four cleaning up their own mess. I kind of prefer my superhero movies to have actually heroes in them.

Or any of the Fantastic Four movies for that matter. They all suck.

- Firefly - Star Trek - South Park up to about 5 years ago - Avatar The Last Airbender - Legend of Korra

I actually enjoyed this movie better than Goldfinger. Yes, it is absolutely absurd (but really no more so than Die Another Day) but over the top absurd is still better than grounded and dull in my opinion. I am going to have to repeat what everyone else here has already said a vote for Last Airbender. Shyamalan absolutely butchers what is perhaps the single greatest work of animation ever made. How can you take something so vibrant and energetic and make it so dull and depressing? Why would you ever do this? Then there is this movie called Nightfall. It is "based" on the Isaac Asimov short story of the same name. In the book, an astrophysicist, journalist and psychologist team up to try to the end of civilization, caused oddly enough by a short night on a planet that rarely sees night. The movie is just a bunch of caveman moping around for 2 hours. Asimov fans should avoid it like the plague. Honorable mention goes to Dumb and Dumber. Its not the worst movie out there, but its still pretty made and I had to sit through it every bloody summer when I was in Boy Scouts. I despise this movie with a passion.

All of Seth's works became stale quite some time ago. Family Guy was a lot of fun when it first came out but now he is just going through the motions. That reminds me of another show that has just gone on to long. As much as a loved the series, South Park has just plain run out of ideas. It used to be clever satire mixed with vulgarity and gross-out humor. Now it is just vulgarity and gross-out humor, with nothing deeper to hold the series up.

Is the Simpsons still on the air, because if it is, it needs to be canceled.

I really like this particular MOBA. It is much faster paced than League of Legends and you tend to have fewer bad games. There are also some very interesting characters such as Abathar and the Lost Vikings. I wonder if we have enough people here to form a 5 person team. What about Brightwing with her constant teleporting and obvious magical abilities?

I just perfected my first spaceplane It works amazingly well The payload made it to Minmus and back It does wonders for saving money in career mode, as its cheap and fully recoverable.

I have also been playing Kerbal space program. I have been sinking far too much time into that game.

Really? One now removed grammar mistake over the course of many paragraphs and you are going to go all grammar Nazi on me? Simple, 3.5e is more complicated than 5e which is more complicated (yet far easier to actually play) than 2e. Choose the level of complexity as you see fit. This is quite understandable, it can be quite expensive to switch to a newer edition. I lost all my 2nd edition books thanks to moral panic over Columbine and had just entered college when 3e came it, so it was an equal investment for me regardless of which edition I choose, so there was nothing holding me back from picking up 3rd edition. However, if you are interested in Pathfinder, all the rules are available free over the internet through the Pathfinder OGC, so you can pick up the system without paying a dime. To be fair, it appears the TSR was doomed anyway for reasons of their own making. WOTC has done an excellent job with the dnd IP they have picked up, putting time and effort into it to ensure its long term success. Considering the way many companies out there, such as EA, flip IP, what happened with dnd was really better than anything that could have been expected. Agreed. I could never get into the whole vampire thing.