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What adventure games disapppointed you most? I must say, having just finished it, Syberia is awful. OK, the graphics are great and the story is interesting, as far as it goes, but:

Gameplay is terrible: why are there so many useless hotspots (esp. in Valadiene?)

Dialog system is not great: the relationship between the topic and what is said is often tenuous.

Too much walking through empty screens

Has the feeling that they meant for there to be more to it, but ran out of money or time

Cryptic cursors... O-, 3O, O WTF?

No look-at options for hotspots

Glad you find it useful, guys!

Just remember to nominate me for every category in the next AGS Awards  

I had this same problem on my Windows 2000 laptop after installing Windows Service Pack 2... my graphics drivers had been nuked somehow and after reinstalling the latest drivers from the Toshiba website, it all works hunky-droy again.

Same with games.  I never would've purchased Worms 2, Worms Armageddon or Worm World Party with warez.

But most games these days have demos that you can legally download and try out.

[murder]

The commandment in the Bible is not to murder, not do not kill.

Actually, it's "Thou shalt not kill". For reassurance, check out http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm , for example.

Actually, no, by your own site:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9874.htm

Karl Schindler

Wasn't it Oscar, nor Karl?

Does it have to be guitar heroes and not general musical influence? I wouldn't say I admire these folks, which is why they're not in my top 10, but they make some darn fine music:

Billy Joel
The Beautiful South
Beethoven
Tchaikovsky
Mozart
Queen
Boublil & Schonberg
Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Diane Warren

Ludwig van Beethoven: To me, the most mind-blowingly amazing artist of any kind who ever lived.  He wrote his seminal groundbreaking masterpiece the 9th Symphony while he was fucking deaf.

Didn't the deaf mind?

Stephen Hawking: This guy had to go through so much shit and still manages to be the preeminent astrophysicist around, AND his writing is accessible to mere enthusiasts like me.

And he dumped his wife who cared for him through all his illness as soon as he became rich and famous. What a man! Still, everyone has their flaws, so why not choose him!


Not sure of my list, I'll come back and edit later, but in no particular order:

Vera Brittain: Peace campaigner during WWII, author.

Kurt Vonnegut: author: Slaughterhouse 5 makes you really realise that the Germans had no monopoly on being evil in WWII

Adrian Plass: Christian author and satirist

Bill Gates: I hate him too, but this is a guy who wrote a BASIC interpreter and went on to become the richest guy in the world: wouldn't you like to do that?

Jesus Christ: cheesy to list, maybe, but I think he was right in all that he said

Bill Watterson: creator of Calvin and Hobbes, I admire his stopping, but I wish he'd start up again  

Aneurin Bevan: for creating the National Health Service

Victor Hugo: for writing Les Miserables and inspiring the excellent musical

Baz Luhrrman: for reviving the movie musical, providing excellent entertainment in his highly original films.

Maria de Los Angeles Beatriz Montequin de la Vega de MacCormack: for coping with me every day

EDIT: Added AB and VH and updated SH comment
EDIT: Added BL and MdlABMdlVdM

[murder]

Interestingly, I saw "Chocolate" on sale in a Catholic bookshop in Zaragoza recently, next to various portrayals of the life of Christ! Choclate didn't attack the religion, rather the "religous" (people). Kevin Smith and Mel Gibson are both practicing Catholics, I believe.

Here's some points on things various people have said:

1. The commandment in the Bible is not to murder, not do not kill. There are of course various legal reasons to kill: self defence being the most generally accepted, death penalty being less accepted and abortion also is contraversial. Personally, I only accept self-defence as legitimate.

2. Harvester, you are now deciding who is a "True Christian (tm)"? I think that its arrogant for any of us to think we have it all 100%. I know what you mean, however.

3. Although there are plenty of bad people who have used Christianity as an exucse for their actions, there are also plenty of people throughout history who have sincerely believed that they were doing God's work by killing the pariah of the day: Witches, Homosexuals, whatever... I am sorry for these things, but my faith is not one that believes in killing people like that, or even attacking them in other ways, as still goes on today.

4. As a Christian, I recognise that I am a long way from perfect and would probably break all my own principles if, say, someone killed my wife or daughter. On the other hand, I believe that I can be forgiven anything if I repent of it and turn to Christ: and so will go to heaven (without any wait in purgatory).

5. If you want to mock Christianity, it is much easier to mock Catholicism with all its weird and wonderful rituals and traditions or alternatrively to mock the happy-clappy "charismatic" protestants.  However, there are plenty of Christian authors who gently mock Christians themselves (e.g. Adrian Plass) becuase we do all do some pretty silly things.

6. Crime rates are higher where capital punishment exists. Fact. It costs more to have someone on death row than to have them in prison for life. Fact. These two facts mean that the death penalty is utterly impractical, never mind the moral issues.

7. Yes, there are some apparent contradictions in the bible. Google will give you a whole pile of web sites about them. It will also throw up rebuttals and rebuttals of rebuttals, etc. It's all been done before, so don't lets waste time repeating it here.

EDIT: fixed some grammar, etc.

Well, you could use the first option as humour...

Shaggy caveman says: "Oona, my dear, would you be so good as to pass me the earl grey, old fruit? Jolly good!"

I recommend that you go the the library or Amazon and read the Earth's CHildren series by Jean Auel...

Hell exists on earth in the form of air transport. Only the devil could invent such a way for the fastest form of transport available to the public to be made that you have to check in 2 hours in advance of the flight and then the flight is delayed two hours and the airport is two hours from home so your 2 hour flight takes 8 hours...

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH....

I thionk this whole thread is like the Emperor's new clothes or AutoStereograms... you all pretend that you can see something but actually, no-one knows what grey slab is supposed to be talked about. There's just a box under the table.

*sulk*

I propose teh genticular equivalent to smilies: maybe called wilies?

:-   (Trapezoid before)
:----- (Trapezoid after)
:^v^v^ (Trapezoid after it got caught in the zip)

I'll leave the female ones up to someone else...

For those of you on a UNIX system, try the following jokes:

First of all make sure that you're running csh, then enter the following lines for computer wisdom:

Women: are they worth it?

Cigarette?

A lorry full of hair restorer overturned on the motorway. Police are combing the area.

A number of vehicles have disappeared into a hole that appeared in the middle of London. Police are looking in to it.

Reading Dean Koontz's One door away from Heaven... good so far but not yet finished! Was reading Stephen Baxter's Evolution but it was too slow so gave up. I liked his Mammoth books, though.

Edit: oops, forgot that I read an excellent Ian Rankin short story collection in-between.

Here's my totally original logo ideas:

A coffee ring! Not already used by Lucent and 10001 other companies...

A swoosh or some other arc of an ellipse or circle: not already used by Nike and 10001 other companies

How about a shotgun opened to be reloaded... snap shot... geddit?

OK, I'll get my coat...

Fry and Lawrie are a great combination. They haven't been too hot in films (becuase they didn't write the material), but Stephen Fry did a great joke at the BAFTAs this year:

"I see that Micheal Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones are here. They're a lovely, friendly couple and they're happy for you to come up to them and take a photograph or just say Hello!"

Their TV series was great and had a surreal humour that combined Oscar Wilde with Monty Python with a little bit of Mark Thomas thrown in.

How about "Sillhouettes of the Past" or something like that?

When I was young, with all our family in our little hovel in the Highlands, we used to huddle around a candle in winter to keep warm.

When it got REALLY cold, we would light the candle.