Speaking as a fellow Utahn, I'd say the two things that attract Utahns to him are the fact that he did a good job with the Olympics and the fact that he's mormon.

I like what he did with the Olympics, and don't care whether he's mormon or not (as far as I can tell, the fact that Kennedy was catholic didn't impact the job he did as president)... but I generally lean Democrat, so he wouldn't get my vote anyway.

Of course, when you live in Utah, it doesn't matter.  Whether you vote for the Republican, the Democrat, or not at all, the Republican candidate will win.  That's why they don't bother coming here to campaign.

I love the Burnout series.  I wasn't thrilled by the fact that EA bought them, but aside from the music (I totally agree, Blood), they haven't done too bad with it.

I also really liked KOTOR - 1 was better than 2, but they were both good.  Jade Empire had some elements in common (like the way dialogue worked and the whole two paths thing), but battling was pretty different.  It wasn't turn-based, for example.

I'm hoping they won't ruin Bioware's stuff, but it's definitely a good business move for EA, so I can see why they bought them.

I keep coming back to this thread and wanting to post, but I don't want to put in a stupid short thing and I keep not having time for a decent post... so here goes with short anyway.


I have to ditto Dincrest (as I have several times now) on Tetris-like games.  Puzzle games are meant to be played starting at Easy and working your way up.

On other games, I usually go with Normal.  Games take too long for me to be able to play on Hard the first time around, since that entails more of a time commitment, replaying missions I lost or doing extra level grinding.

If I'm playing a game where I am really just interested in the story or just having some mindless fun, I'll go with Easy, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  Actually, I played through the Matrix: Path of Neo game on Normal or Hard the first time around, and then got to a boss about 85% of the way through who I just couldn't beat.  I played every weekend for at least a month, and finally gave up on her.  I wanted to get to the end, though, so I came back later and played on Easy.

On music games, I usually go with Hard, since I'm pretty good at them, and on one or two of the karaoke games, I've actually started out at Expert right away.  That's probably the only kind of game I do that with, though.

I guess it comes down to the fact that I feel like I don't have anyone to brag to, so I don't have that incentive to play on modes harder than normal.  I don't have a ton of time for gaming, so that takes away another incentive...  I'm just not left with many reasons to play on Hard.  It's usually Normal all the way for me, baby!

Don't worry - you're not alone.  I was playing Devil's Advocate in this case because I feel the same way you do.  If she was trying to be greedy, she'd ask for a lot more money than that.  If she asked for less money, they'd say that it was too trivial and she shouldn't have wasted the court's time.  She may be a jerk for other reasons (like if that whole Charles Dickens thing), but I can't really fault her on this one except to say that it would have been nice if she had done something earlier.  Of course, since she probably doesn't live in India, she probably didn't find out about it until now.

Gotta throw in the Devil's Advocate role here - I can't speak for there, but in the USA, if you have a copyright on something (as I assume she does on Hogwarts), you are legally obligated to protect it, or you lose it.  It can make you seem like a jerk, but you don't really have much choice.

Well, OK.  With more explanation of what you mean by symbolism and irrelevant, I'll let it slide. ;)  I'm not really into the Moby Dick level of symbolism either.

The correlation between fantasy, sci-fi and role-playing games felt pretty clear to me, though - have you ever played an RPG that wasn't fantasy or sci/fi?


Adding in non-fiction, you reminded me of two other books: Guns, Germs, and Steel, and 1001 Pitfalls in Spanish.

Dude - you're on a forum for people who like role-playing games and you're going to make a blanket statement like that?  Whether you think that's a good thing or not, I'd guess that most folks here would disagree with you.  

Ever watch The Twilight Zone (since you say you don't know much about sci-fi/fantasy books)?  I know it's a little bit of a stretch, but I think it still falls into one or both of the genres.  The whole POINT of that series was that Rod Serling was able to make social commentary in in the guise of a sci-fi "what if" show that he couldn't make in a show based in normal life.  The same holds true for Star Trek.

I know those are old examples, but I chose them because those series are familiar to a lot of people.

Nah - it was the Virgin Megastore on Times Square.  I always figure the people working there are clueless.

Doesn't look like you did to me.  Not being hugely into Star Wars, though (I'm more of a casual fan), I may have had to read it more carefully than a fan would have.  Or maybe someone's reading comprehension scores are low. ;-)

I think your explanation of the whole Sifo Dyas/Tyranus/Jango/clones thing makes sense, and Emperor Sidious being Luke's grandpa works for me, too.


On a side note, I was at Disneyland last weekend, and watched a cheesy show they do there where they pull a bunch of kids out of the audience and teach them a simple routine with a plastic lightsaber, and then the kids get to "fight" Darth Vader or Darth Maul.  The Jedi instructor said after telling them to duck "Jango Fett should have paid more attention to this part" (or something along those lines).  I'd be willing to bet that at least 3/4 of the audience didn't get that joke, but it was cool for those of us who did  :D

While I'm threadjacking (but hey, at least it's still Star Wars), I have to mention that I have a "Yoda clinging to your back" backpack, and have had at least three or four people stop me to ask about it because when they initially saw it, they thought it was a very sick baby...  (My wife has a Chewbacca backpack, but all he's been mistaken for is a backpack shaped like a dog.)

I went to the store to buy it today... and it wasn't there.  Not even an empty space on the shelf where it was supposed to be.  :(  Maybe I'll have to go back tomorrow.

Cool - a few of my favorites have already been mentioned (Eyes of the Dragon, the Dark Tower series, And Then There Were None).  

In SK's library, I also love The Stand, although I have mixed feelings about the content he added back into the extended version.

Other favorites include Ender's Game and the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card.  The rest of the Ender series is good, but only Speaker for the Dead approaches the original for me.

As I'm sure all of you do, I have tons of other books I love, but don't quite reach "favorite" status.  The Lord of the Rings books (including The Hobbit), Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (as well as his Black Widowers' Club books), David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series... the list could go on for a LONG time.

My wife and I love music games - karaoke, DDR, guitar, drum, maracas (a thousand points to anyone who knows what I'm talking about and a million if you've actually played it)...  we'll probably get GH3 first, and Rock Band later.

As you may or many not have noticed from the articles, I'm working on an NIS game right now for the site - the Disgaea remake for PSP.  Don't want to spoil the review, but I will say that it's keeping me busy enough I'm ignoring all other games for now.

Hah - I definitely took advantage of that ability.  Saving mid-battle is a similar feature - some people like it, others think it makes games too easy.  I saw many threads online where people said that they just used 3 or 4 people in their party to make the game have a decent difficulty level.

Since the game requires you to have 6 people in the fight to start, they'd start 6, then just leave 2 or 3 on the starting pads and never take their turn.

I was a massive Diablo 2 fan, so I've been watching this anxiously even though my laptop probably can't handle it.  You know - hope springs eternal and all that.  I seem to remember them saying a while back that they were trying to keep the system requirements down, but who knows what exactly that means.  Hopefully they'll put out a demo I can download to test my system.

I saw this today and thought it was pretty funny - check out the second "exclusive pet:"
http://www.hellgatelondon.com/underground/love-your-pets