While I agree with the sentiment, 'I know i wouldn't buy an ISP for internet without youtube' is not a valid sentence. Try 'I know I wouldn't pay for an internet connection from an ISP that didn't give me access to youtube.' - You don't own the internet, the ISP or youtube, you use them.
What happened when a drawing is being called child porn? Did any child get hurt? No. It may not be to my personal taste, but if noone is getting hurt, then why the hell is it being intefered with?
How do people like it? All of the new episodes (never watched the old, so can't comment) just, to me at least, seem like dull, predictable, poorly-written, poorly-acted and overall not very good TV. I just don't get why people like it. I have caught an episode every now and then and it just seems so... poor.
Because if your internet connection is unstable (like so many people's are), or you want to play without one, you literally cannot play the game, so why would you buy it.
I'm not talking moral issues here, I am talking about the fact the game becomes literally unplayable because of the DRM, even for legitimate customers.
And they'll loose as many customers as they gain, as the game is so unplayable due to the DRM (which will be cracked eventually) that people are avoiding it.
Right. Find me a group of programmers that can write an entire web browser without any flaws or exploits, while having all the features everyone wants.
Yeah.
What if the 'next idiot' is someone wearing an Islamic religious robe? Why is any religion more valid than this one? They have been around longer? They have more believers? Please. No religion should get any preferential treatment. You either give it to them all or none. All is a stupid idea, but that is what the law says at the moment.
That said, if Europe ever started a more strict enforcement of European law in memeber countries, expect to see countries backing out of the EU.
It sounds like an exaggeration, but I wouldn't be surprised, despite England being known for not having very much 'patriotism', it does seem the average person on the street absolutely hates the idea of being 'controlled' by Europe. Most EU legislation gets really bad press here, no matter what it is about. If they started really pushing it, I'd imagine you'd see fringe parties like UKIP getting major votes - and then the major parties will change policies in order to keep in the running.
As to England signing up to ACTA, unfortunately, it's probably true, as much as it disgusts me. Unfortunately the current English government seem to get away with passing laws and taking actions that no one actually wants. It's mind-boggling, and if it continues like this, we'll see a police state soon enough.
Ubuntu is the newbie distro. It has a huge community, lots of support, packages for virtually everything, and most tutorials written with it in mind.
It is definitely the most user friendly for people who don't want to deal with stuff.
I'm in the UK, and here you can buy pretty much any phone you want either unlocked at full price, or subsidised with a contract. Sometimes you pay less on a subsidised contract than you would just for the phone, if you understand the fact you are buying in for a time, why shouldn't you have the option of doing it that way? Sometimes it's a better deal for the customer.
I agree that people should always have the unlocked option, but people should be allowed to do it other ways if they want.
How else do you expect it to work?
If you want subsidised phones, early termination fees are a necessary evil. If you could just cancel your contract one month in with no penalty, then everyone would just sign up, get the phone, and cancel.
Yup, chuck these guys in prison for a year, then when they come out, hire them at $xyz000 a year, and get them to be that inventive with stopping others.
Yeah, you are right about the way ammo is handled, apart from the power cell box - they do your heavy weapon's ammo.
Hey, the dumbing down could be worse - look at the RTS games on the market. The last good one was Empire Earth 2.
Well, I presume the idea is the weapons are all x times more powerful (just so happens everyone's armour is/shields are too) and so output so much heat it can't be handled by non-ejectable heatsinks. It's a little weak, but at least they tried to explain it.
(Just quickly, no major spoilers here. And no minor ones, hopefully.)
Mass Effect 2.
I'm going to answer the main question simply. Yes, You should buy it. It's an excellent game and you will get more hours of quality enjoyment out of it than most.
This review tends to focus on the negatives. Don't be fooled, it's a great game that will provide more enjoyment than most, and for a lot longer. I got 23 hours out of my first playthrough, and have already started on another. The replayability here is massive, and I'd expect most people would be able to put 100 hours into this game easily without loosing enjoyment. If I havn't pointed it out here specifically, you can presume it's excellent, otherwise I'd mention it. That's what I'm saying.
To put it into perspective, this is from one 23 hour run through of the game, as a soldier and going for the paragon (good) side. I've started another (around 2 hours in) as a renegade vanguard, and the experience is very different, and I'm still finding new stuff and hearing new, interesting dialogue.
Is it better than the original? Probably not, but it's not worse either. I'd say they kept it on the same level somehow, which isn't a bad thing - Mass Effect ranks up there as one of my favourite games of all time.
I'm going to go for the storyline first. You are playing as Sheperd again, this time fighting for Cerberus, a pro-human group, instead of the alliance.
It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing. That said, what is there is fun.
The team over at BioWare seem to have taken the issues people had with the original and focussed on them: the inventory, the mako, the way people tended to play with the same companions and weapons all the time. Unfortunately, they seem to have overcompensated.
The inventory system in the original was a little overcomplicated, and did have it's problems - especially the 150 item limit that forced you to turn items to omni-gel one at a time if you went over it. I would have settled for a little bit of simplification and a 'turn all to omni-gel' button. Instead they have pulled the entire system and give you a choice of weapons each time you leave the ship or come across a weapons locker. Nice idea, but the problem is that the choice of weapons is abysmal. You get around 2 of each type of weapon, and around 5 heavy weapons. It's also not a case of buying weapons much, but rather finding them as you progress through the game.
The mako in the original was a little annoying. The tasks often seemed dull and without much reward. The driving segments were not the best ever, but they were not horrible. Again, I think a little change, offering mako upgrades, reducing the amount you had to use it, etc... would have been fine. Instead they have completely removed the mako from the game. Replacing the mineral analysing bit with a boring planet scanning/probe dropping minigame, which really isn't an improvement. If anything, it's worse as the mako at least had good moments. The scanner is just dull.
The way people tended to keep the same weapons in use has been taken on with the ammo system. They have replaced the overheating mechanism (which I liked) from the original with a system of 'heat clips' (clips of heatsinks that take the heat from the weapon). At least it's well explained. Most people would say this was to try and create a more standard shooter experience (like the move to a crosshair over a reticule). This is probably true, but I'd say it's more to try and get people to vary which weapon they use more. Ammo (which is standard accross all weapons) is always in short supply, mainly due to the fact you can only carry very limited ammunition, with all of the armour upgrades that allow increased ammo capacity, it amounted to around 12 rounds for the sniper rifle, 30 for the shotgun
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree with the sentiment, 'I know i wouldn't buy an ISP for internet without youtube' is not a valid sentence. Try 'I know I wouldn't pay for an internet connection from an ISP that didn't give me access to youtube.' - You don't own the internet, the ISP or youtube, you use them.
What happened when a drawing is being called child porn? Did any child get hurt? No. It may not be to my personal taste, but if noone is getting hurt, then why the hell is it being intefered with?
How do people like it? All of the new episodes (never watched the old, so can't comment) just, to me at least, seem like dull, predictable, poorly-written, poorly-acted and overall not very good TV. I just don't get why people like it. I have caught an episode every now and then and it just seems so... poor.
Anyone else look at this and think there was some kind of e-girl for their android phone?
Well, 1 should be self-explanetory, 3 has been done before, 5 doesn't go into a nice layout, neither does 7, and 9 is a lot of monitors.
Because if your internet connection is unstable (like so many people's are), or you want to play without one, you literally cannot play the game, so why would you buy it. I'm not talking moral issues here, I am talking about the fact the game becomes literally unplayable because of the DRM, even for legitimate customers.
And they'll loose as many customers as they gain, as the game is so unplayable due to the DRM (which will be cracked eventually) that people are avoiding it.
Right. Find me a group of programmers that can write an entire web browser without any flaws or exploits, while having all the features everyone wants. Yeah.
In which case, I entirely agree.
What if the 'next idiot' is someone wearing an Islamic religious robe? Why is any religion more valid than this one? They have been around longer? They have more believers? Please. No religion should get any preferential treatment. You either give it to them all or none. All is a stupid idea, but that is what the law says at the moment.
That said, if Europe ever started a more strict enforcement of European law in memeber countries, expect to see countries backing out of the EU.
It sounds like an exaggeration, but I wouldn't be surprised, despite England being known for not having very much 'patriotism', it does seem the average person on the street absolutely hates the idea of being 'controlled' by Europe. Most EU legislation gets really bad press here, no matter what it is about. If they started really pushing it, I'd imagine you'd see fringe parties like UKIP getting major votes - and then the major parties will change policies in order to keep in the running.
As to England signing up to ACTA, unfortunately, it's probably true, as much as it disgusts me. Unfortunately the current English government seem to get away with passing laws and taking actions that no one actually wants. It's mind-boggling, and if it continues like this, we'll see a police state soon enough.
Ubuntu is the newbie distro. It has a huge community, lots of support, packages for virtually everything, and most tutorials written with it in mind. It is definitely the most user friendly for people who don't want to deal with stuff.
It wasn't intended as a completely serious comment. I understand that some irradiated cows is better than X dead and Y damage caused.
So when Russia starts firing nukes at the US, we get nukes being destroyed. Directly over us. Brilliant.
I'm sure I saw this in an episode of Scrubs or something.
I'm in the UK, and here you can buy pretty much any phone you want either unlocked at full price, or subsidised with a contract. Sometimes you pay less on a subsidised contract than you would just for the phone, if you understand the fact you are buying in for a time, why shouldn't you have the option of doing it that way? Sometimes it's a better deal for the customer.
I agree that people should always have the unlocked option, but people should be allowed to do it other ways if they want.
How else do you expect it to work? If you want subsidised phones, early termination fees are a necessary evil. If you could just cancel your contract one month in with no penalty, then everyone would just sign up, get the phone, and cancel.
Yup, chuck these guys in prison for a year, then when they come out, hire them at $xyz000 a year, and get them to be that inventive with stopping others.
Indeed, I didn't want to explain too much as I felt if you havn't played the game, it's better to hear the conversation for yourself.
Indeed. His comments and actions are hilarious.
Yeah, you are right about the way ammo is handled, apart from the power cell box - they do your heavy weapon's ammo. Hey, the dumbing down could be worse - look at the RTS games on the market. The last good one was Empire Earth 2.
Depsite my warnings, you took my message wrong. It's not bad gameplay, it's just not perfect gameplay. It's still excellent fun to play.
Well, I presume the idea is the weapons are all x times more powerful (just so happens everyone's armour is/shields are too) and so output so much heat it can't be handled by non-ejectable heatsinks. It's a little weak, but at least they tried to explain it.
(Just quickly, no major spoilers here. And no minor ones, hopefully.)
Mass Effect 2.
I'm going to answer the main question simply. Yes, You should buy it. It's an excellent game and you will get more hours of quality enjoyment out of it than most.
This review tends to focus on the negatives. Don't be fooled, it's a great game that will provide more enjoyment than most, and for a lot longer. I got 23 hours out of my first playthrough, and have already started on another. The replayability here is massive, and I'd expect most people would be able to put 100 hours into this game easily without loosing enjoyment. If I havn't pointed it out here specifically, you can presume it's excellent, otherwise I'd mention it. That's what I'm saying.
To put it into perspective, this is from one 23 hour run through of the game, as a soldier and going for the paragon (good) side. I've started another (around 2 hours in) as a renegade vanguard, and the experience is very different, and I'm still finding new stuff and hearing new, interesting dialogue.
Is it better than the original? Probably not, but it's not worse either. I'd say they kept it on the same level somehow, which isn't a bad thing - Mass Effect ranks up there as one of my favourite games of all time.
I'm going to go for the storyline first. You are playing as Sheperd again, this time fighting for Cerberus, a pro-human group, instead of the alliance.
It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing. That said, what is there is fun.
The team over at BioWare seem to have taken the issues people had with the original and focussed on them: the inventory, the mako, the way people tended to play with the same companions and weapons all the time. Unfortunately, they seem to have overcompensated.
The inventory system in the original was a little overcomplicated, and did have it's problems - especially the 150 item limit that forced you to turn items to omni-gel one at a time if you went over it. I would have settled for a little bit of simplification and a 'turn all to omni-gel' button. Instead they have pulled the entire system and give you a choice of weapons each time you leave the ship or come across a weapons locker. Nice idea, but the problem is that the choice of weapons is abysmal. You get around 2 of each type of weapon, and around 5 heavy weapons. It's also not a case of buying weapons much, but rather finding them as you progress through the game.
The mako in the original was a little annoying. The tasks often seemed dull and without much reward. The driving segments were not the best ever, but they were not horrible. Again, I think a little change, offering mako upgrades, reducing the amount you had to use it, etc... would have been fine. Instead they have completely removed the mako from the game. Replacing the mineral analysing bit with a boring planet scanning/probe dropping minigame, which really isn't an improvement. If anything, it's worse as the mako at least had good moments. The scanner is just dull.
The way people tended to keep the same weapons in use has been taken on with the ammo system. They have replaced the overheating mechanism (which I liked) from the original with a system of 'heat clips' (clips of heatsinks that take the heat from the weapon). At least it's well explained. Most people would say this was to try and create a more standard shooter experience (like the move to a crosshair over a reticule). This is probably true, but I'd say it's more to try and get people to vary which weapon they use more. Ammo (which is standard accross all weapons) is always in short supply, mainly due to the fact you can only carry very limited ammunition, with all of the armour upgrades that allow increased ammo capacity, it amounted to around 12 rounds for the sniper rifle, 30 for the shotgun
I fucking hate our government. Seriously. They just all appear compeltely incompetent.