If you purchase a game which has DRM you have no right to use it outside the stated use agreed upon between you and the developer. Just buying a thing does not give you unlimited use of a thing.
Don't buy games with DRM and don't say DRM somehow limits your rights when any honest person knows what they paid for.
Yeah I know because we all know you can't balance game play/story with graphics...Oh wait thats right they did just fine in DA:1. Graphics DO matter AND I want a good story. Stop being such an elitist. The graphics look nice and will definitely complement the story I have heard so many good things about. I would like to see some game play though to see if they improved or streamlined the interface.
I run it (during single player campaign) on all Ultra with resolution at 1900x1600 and with the following setup: Windows 7-64 all bells and whistles settings. Amd 2 core 2.6ghz 64-bit 4gig of ddr ram Nvidia gtx 260 w/996mb of ram (not OCd or anything) 1.5tb SATA seagate (7200) When I am in Multiplayer I usually drop most settings to "high" just to be safe.
I have windows 7 and I work on Linux and macs at work. ALL crap compared to this...If you dont have windows 7 you SHOULD want it. I am now Microsoft's Girlfriend again!
If anyone else can remember XP also had tons of issues at its release. It wasn't until about 1-1 1/2 years later that people actually started going away from ME/98/2000. They always have issues to start but fix it up a year after. It sucks that we have to be the beta but I cant imagine its easy to make a perfect operating system every single release. Go install Linux....oh wait you cant play 1/10 the games and you will need to install them at a command prompt while editing text files. Go install Mac OS....oh wait games come out 1 year later and the computer you bought through the mac store cost 8,000.00$ where the equivalent PC would have cost 800-1,200.00$, but hey at least Itunes works. Microsoft Rules. And no one likes a winner.
Nickfury: LOL, actually yes a chair sent to a gallery with a sign that says "chair" would be art. Chairs as art: http://www.gallery202online.com/linkpages/chairisartb.html What you would be doing is basically creating a dichotomy. Or maybe you were trying to make the point that the chair IS NOT art, which incidently makes it art because of the statement implied in your actions. Also, even if you were there screaming at every single person saying "This is NOT art you are all morons." Your display would probably just become art to someone there, it would definitely be art to me. Also please tell me the "reason" "intent or "statement" is in this 140,000,000.00 (adjusted for inflation) painting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._5,_1948 Furthermore, how can you know what the artists intent was? Doesn't just the fact that a game has drawings displayed millions of times per a second, or that it was originally conceived by an artist define it as art? Aren't the musical scores for these games art, crappy or not. Or what about many of the unique stories? Books and movies are art but a video game isn't because theres some profit incentive? Isn't that exactly why we have a movie industry and a music industry, because of profit? Shouldn't they also not be considered art then by this standard? Lastly, getting back to intention, id have to argue that its pretty hard to do ANYTHING without intention. And Id also argue that trying to do something WITHOUT intention defeats the purpose, regardless whether you want to or not, and by the way, what intentions decide what is art? If a guy drawing concept art for "Big rigs over the road trucking" is doing it because he gets paid and for no other reason then does that eliminate his results as art? What about the fact that he INTENTIONALLY drew it? Intention is a weird thing isn't it? It doesn't become art because you necessarily intended it to, that just normally helps a lot.
First of all and not to get off topic, but it must be addressed, money is not the root of all evil, it stands for mutual non-coerced trade and all that is good. Would you rather that we all just barter(whats the difference besides ? Or maybe we could beat the hell out of each other until we get what we want? What is so bad about exchange? If you think money is evil than you should reexamine your principles, the root of all evil is uninitiated force. Back to art, just because it is sold or watered down by someone else's ideas doesn't change the fact that something is art, is the Mona Lisa less of a piece of art because it has been assessed at 100,000,000.00$?If I painted a mustache on it would it not be art any longer since, obviously, the original intention has been covered partly? Is the artist who charges people thousands upon thousands of dollars to make a painting/sculpture any less talented than the guy who does it for free because thats how he wants to do it? Nickfury, you state that "Video games have the responsibly to ultimately appeal to the mass consumer market it is targeting thus destroying the artists intent". How can appealing to a greater audience delete a message or remove intent? Was that guy that stood in front of the tank in china (witch cameras rolling for the world) lesser of a Was COD4's stunning visuals not art because a guy that doesn't draw in it wanted its story to be linear and the art to be particular to specific areas and therefore more easily followed and less distracting for the mainstream gamer, yet you miss the fact that a very engaging, imaginative, morally challenging story is still there even when the game sells for 60.00 new as opposed to a painter drawing me how I TELL HIM TO DO IT for the same price. There is NO difference. You are attempting to understand a video game as if it were a still picture frozen in the moment. Video games are first a visual medium, but can include audio and literary experiences(each of which is an art in itself), and whether or not the person drawing it KNOWS they are making a point/statement or have an inetntion is irrelevant(please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._5,_1948 as an example). If the end product contains 1 to infinity pictures than -it is art-, if it contains a song -it is art- if it happens to have a story - it is art- just because it doesn't resonate with you (much like the Mona Lisa doesn't with me) does not exclude it from the realm of art. Just because all of the guys at Bungie are paid 50,000.00 a year and are told what to draw and given predefined intentions that need to be included in their drawings does not remove the artistic results of Halo. Is Lord of the Rings not a work of art any longer because they put it in film/mmorg form and didn't include MANY of JRTs themes, ideas and intentions is the game less of a work of art because it wasn't put out in total devotion to JRTs world and requires a monthly subscription?! Is Schindler's list a lesser experiences/story because they didn't keep the name from the book it was based on ("shindlers ark") and some of the experiences were exaggerated? A thing doesn't need to have intention to be considered as art, and neither does giving it a cash value change the fact that it is art, it just means that people WANT IT and that in itself is enough of an answer for me. The crappiest game you can think of, so long as it has pictures, and someone drew it with or without intent is art whether you want it to be or not. In fact http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/index.html is art. REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY crappy art.
Klugenbeel, your over simplistic judgment is what makes intelligent gamers like me look bad and gives other jerk offs like yourself, Hillary Clinton & Joey Lieberman justification to make pretend laws to "protect" children (and adults) from art. I have a question, is a person that studies math typically a person that cannot do art? You and people like you are pathetic, why even read the article?Please don't weigh in on issues like this instead just stay in Hello Kitty Island Adventure and don't speak, we adults will make the big decisions. Can anyone actually argue that games as beautifully drawn and created as WoW, COD:4, Crysis, Assassins creed, GTA, half life, bioshock (and on and on and on) could not be considered "ART" just based on their visual value alone? All of that was not just generated by a computer but people with definite talent, and much of it also has values underlying it's stories! Bioshock for example is LOOSELY (although incorrectly interpreted) based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand and objectivism one of the most influential philosophers of the last century ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand ). many of the modern wargames highlight the atrocity of wars and fighting(ya ya its fun to play but try to consider how often you get a stay bullet, who wants to go out and do that IRL?) I think id prefer free trade over getting shot in the face by an Arctic Warfare Magnum because I put tarrifs on soybeans. GTA is often decried as an overly violent video game that glorifies criminals and allows you to run over anyone you want, well couldn't you just ignore the storyline and the instead follow all traffic laws and just go on dates all day like we often do in real life? No because the game is ABOUT criminals and how pathetic they are, they are only "glorified" if your pathetic enough to think what your doing is proper. Doesn't it also make a damn good point of showing how pathetic the average criminal is capable of being or under what circumstances has allowed them to come to that point (obviously exaggerated), while also creating often wonderful political satire on fake radio stations. Look, I personally realize that games are just GAMES. But they have come a long way from MUDs and Pong to actually surpassing the movie industry in sales (and I think sooner or later, influence), and it is now become common to make political and social points in games that have surpassed both visual art, books and the movie industry in engaging its users. Instead of just watching someone make a point they often allow for you to make a choice and see some hypothetical consequences. A picture of some child torn up by a land mine may be visually moving but actually being there and seeing it happen, then given the choice to prevent or not interfere with whether it happens again (and making you actually consider the consequences of your actions) is a huge step forward from movies and pictures. If you have played any modern video games i'm sure you have seen small pieces of what i'm talking about.
So i have a geforce 8800gt and 4g of ran with a AMD dual core 3.2ghz...And i notice you only tested Intel's, why? Amd is as good if not better than INTEL imo, or at least comparable, I'm assuming that Intel bought your review? Could you at least disclose that ahead of time so I can not waste my time reading all the way to the end of your biased review to see the difference between 7 intel chips. BTW, it runs great at medium to high settings on my system for any AMD users. Forget the expensive CPU and put your money in your video card. I'm waiting for the 200 series nvidias to come down to about 149.00 to upgrade for now.
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