Frenetic Pony

For those wondering, early next year will be the time to buy a new PC with a new graphics card. The current gen of cards isn't being updated this year at all, and the only thing these consoles have is 8 gigs of ram with direct access to the video card. Something even mid tier cards should match next year. Other than that, mid tier cards already match up to the GPUs in these things, and the "8 core" CPU is a highly mobile oriented AMD CPU, a modernish Core i5 should easily outclass it. So... yeah. Even with the advantage of devs being able to build specifically to a console's hardware and optimize the hell out of it, anyone that picks up a GTX 780 and a core i5 Haswell at the end of this year should be fine for, pretty much the next 6+ years in all likelihood .

That's pretty much what I got "Hey look it's a box that runs Windows 8 sort of!" Yeaaaah. On that note I've got Linux Mint installed on my laptop now. Is should be trying it out.

Thoughts: The box looks ugly as sin, I miss Allard being in charge of design shit for Xbox. That controller looks less comfortable. I'm glad that the Xbox One does so much shit other than actually playing games, and that yearly releases will be released!

I'm playing Forza 4 every day, and enjoying every day, and am probably going to keep playing it for another good 30-40 hours before I'm done with it. It's quite similar to 3, which I did the same thing with, and doesn't even have Porsches, which are some of my favorite cars. And I've got Dark Souls on the PC, which I enjoyed when I had it on consoles for all of 2 days, and Metro Last Light to play through, but I just know I'm not going to play either until I burn out on Forza yet again. I'm not a HUGE fan of cars, I don't even enjoy racing games 98% of the time, heck I bought Forza Horizon when it came out and was rather disappointed in it. But that 2% of the time I can just sit down every day and pretty much play only a racing game and enjoy the hell out of it for like a week or two; and Forza (the main proper series) continues to be the best at what it does, Grand Turismo really has been replaced as the best hardcore racing series around so far as I'm concerned. So despite not even feeling that different from 3. Oh, and they've got the Top Gear test track in this one. And the Cee'd or "C apostrophe D". And the first time I was on the track I squealed like a 12 year old girl, and then again when I took the Kia out. And then a third time when I completed my first lap with it and a little achievement popped up that said "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car". It was the first achievement I've ever enjoyed getting, and probably the last, but it was great!

Oh sexism in representation. You have a "side" and people of your gender are probably on your "side" and those who are on the other "side" of yours are the sexist ones. Also porn isn't sexist to anyone (unless you're an extremist) and yet not porn is what's sexist, because it's less extreme than porn and thus isn't acceptable. Does that about cover it for all of humanity, can arguments be moved on now too other things that actually have a chance of being "resolved"?

I wanted to enjoy that movie, but I noticed that every shot was filmed at right angled to everything, and about 5 minutes in I got fantastically OCD about it until it was ruining the entire movie for me and I had to stop watching. Which is weird, because I've never been bothered by anything like that before.

What, you were expecting different? Awkward fake families on stage playing Kinect for 3 straight hours is DA BOMB YO

Hipsters, vegans, and rain.

Definitely sad to see all that cool design go to waste, the aliens were way cooler in the original concept than the generic gray things they've carried over from Enemy Unknown. Heck I'd say the game even looked better in 2010 in some ways, now it looks instagramed to hell and back. I'm actually not interested in it now. If I wanted a tactical Xcom game, I uhhh, I've GOT enemy Unknown on my PC, thanks. I don't want "Enemy Unknown but more actiony!"

Gah! That was another thing I noted, a lot of people at Deviantart (yay deviantart!) are fans of the show. The first season was, hey look Rainbow Dash is rather tomboyish, and she's "best friends" with Fluttershy, and people loved making the most of that! It didn't even have to be officially "supported" at all, I mean people being free to use their imaginations to extend things in their head is what builds those rabid fans to begin with. But nooo, can't even let that happen in people's imaginations, have to explicitly stop that implication as the show goes on. Can't let that adorable story where a little (girl? boy? can't remember) is playing with Rainbow Dash and Applejack dolls, and he announces that they're getting married, and his (maybe a boy?) old aunt disapproves. "They're girls, they can't get married!" "Why not?" "Jesus says they can't." "Well then I'm worshiping Satan!" (apparently a true story). Can't let that happen, so let's get rid of that. It reminds me of what happened to Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. The first two Star Wars came from the same original story, Lucas had written this huge thing out to hours and hours. His producer recognized it couldn't be done in one movie, edited the first two thirds or so out to a single movie, and was also responsible for scouting locations, casting, and etc. When working on Return of the Jedi he and Lucas clashed over any number of things, including the damned Ewoks, which Lucas wanted in for the sole purpose of having as toys, while his producer (Gary Kurtz) wanted them out, and a much darker tone. Together they sort of balanced each other out, lighhearted and serious, Lucas with the crazy ideas and Kurtz the more serious producer type. But Lucas won out in the end, with Kurtz leaving production and Return ended up as the weakest of the first three because of it.

It honestly doesn't look THAT amateurish, almost real actually. If there were A BUNCH of games shown, flicking off stuff from Watchdogs, AC4, Drive Club, etc. Then I'd probably have bought it as real. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3trQXK8oBS4 The whole "playstation symbol reflected in the eye" thing is actually quite clever. People not only tend to be drawn towards looking others in the eye, but really tend to remember anything with a human face. It's a solid idea, just not the execution I would expect from whatever several hundred million dollar ad campaign Sony will come up with. I mean, lest we forget this was their PS3 campaign: All in all, amateurish or not the PS4 thing is still and improvement over that.

Yep, definitely gone downhill in some ways. I watched the first season, the one I enjoy the most episodes from, because ahhhh... that's the show I wanted to watch. There's less episodes that I enjoyed from 2, and only handful from 3, and... well whatever. Most shows go downhill over time anyway, the creators run out of ideas, that characters run out of situations to be in, it happens. I mean, that last episode of Season 3 almost felt a bit, desperate? "Well we need to do this, so lets just go with some yada yada yada and get done with it." There wasn't even a plot beyond getting Twilight to be a princess. It's a bit sad really. I think the whole "guy like this show that's target towards little girls!" was the most attention grabbing thing, but that doesn't mean it should have been what the show was about. My brothers ex girlfriend enjoyed the show, cosplayed as Rainbow Dash and she was 17 at the time; there were plenty of older female fans. I remember sitting in a coffee shop, and hearing two little girls and a boy discussing the show and which characters they wanted to be. It was something everyone could enjoy, the sort of thing Pixar was good at in it's first decade of operation, a thing that could appeal across age groups and "demographics" regardless. But, all good things must come to an end. Really it's amazing Futurama and The Simpsons were as great as they for that long. But then I guess not every show can be run by Matt Groening.

If you liked Adventure Time, then the guys other cartoon, Bravest Warriors, is free on youtube: There's also Regular Show, which is ok sometimes, other seem to like it more. My personal favorite is My Little Pony, because how is this not simultaneously awesome and adorable? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssl1RxwMWNA And while Futurama WAS incredible for a while, the last season really let it down, and I don't mind it being cancelled, it was time. The characters were explored, there were some episodes there (of a TV show! Which isn't my thing 99.9% of the time) that were as memorable as a great movie. If you've not watched it much of it is already up on Netflix. As is Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is basically the only good anime-ish show the west has ever put out. Though some of it was quite disappointing Unfortunately as far as I'm concerned you can skip the followup The Legend of Korra altogether.

I found Canybox boring as fuck, because I immediately recognized nothing was really there except to be there on its lonesome. On a completely different topic, assuming your avatar is a picture of you, are you JJ Abrams brother, or cousin or something? Because if you aren't you could totally pass off as it and should sneak onto the set of Episove VII when they're filming by claiming you are so.

Xbox Infinity, soon to feature Halo Infinity, "Xbox Live Gold: Subscription for Infinity", and more Halo Infinity. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/report-microsofts-next-console-will-be-called-xbox-infinity/ Of course, since it's not registered I doubt that's the name. Maybe they don't even have one yet. If not I suggest "XYZbox, Feel the Power of Xboasaurus Rex."

Steam says June, as does another thing I saw incidentally. But yeah, I just looked it up, and June it is apparently. I can't help but feel that it's going to be fairly short with the development time it's had. But hell, the walkthrough video looked good, so whatever, I'll get my $20 worth or whatever it was.

I think the whole "Huge discovery" thing, where you don't know what to expect from a game and yet it keeps showing you new stuff, is what keeps Bethesda's games selling so well. To me, that's what Morrowind did, this amazing journey of "wow, you can do this and that and there's this crazy thing!" And ever since then just about every Bethesda game has been a disappointment relative to that first experience. I've been wondering if it's that first experience of ever playing their style of game that really sells them, versus how good each of their games are individually. Trying to play Skyrim again, heavily modded, has been a bit interesting, but going back to look at the progress on OpenMw (an open source Morrowind engine replacement) and just the things I can see, and remember. I'm not sure how much "better" each game is versus the other, but if you want that experience of discovering things for the first time, Skyrim has nothing on Morrowind. Just looking at the enchantment screen in Morrowind where you can enchant stuff, you can do ANYTHING. Literally any spell, any effect, whatever you want. Want your damned shoes to explode in a fireball? YOU CAN DO THAT. I still remember playing Morrowind for the first time, and outside the first town, the FIRST THING you encounter is a wizard falling out of the fucking sky and dying. And you search his corpse and find this scroll, and you go "oh, scroll of, jumping a lot, what does this do?" You try it, and the next time you jump you FLY ACROSS THE ENTIRE FUCKING MAP in a single leap, probably landing in the water and surviving and just going "Holy Fuck!" I miss Bethesda being able to do that kind of thing.

Oh the boss battles are plenty difficult, and I can see that this is where the strategy comes in. Problem is, this is the ONLY area where the strategy comes in. I don't really want to run through an entire game, repeating the same random battles again and again to get enough items and money and exp and completed quests just so I can get to the occasional good part. Doesn't really seem worth it, I've got Shadow Run Returns coming out next month (I'm already a backer so it's paid for) and I'll probably just tool around with Kerbal or something until then. Something that's more immediately rewarding than promising some sort of reward if only I can get through all the "work" to get too it.

I haven't completed it, I'm not sure I'm ever will, but I've been playing Final Fantasy 13-2. The game feels huge, absolutely massive, almost overwhelmingly so. Each "level" is quite large in and of itself, you run around them gathering quests, finding items, battling random enemies. And there's this time travel mechanic, by which I can see that there's going to be plenty of levels, and know that you can come back to certain levels several times with new things to do thanks to the games whole "Time Travel" conceit. The visuals are solid, though western games have definitely surpassed the once legendary production values of Final Fantasy games on basically all levels. I kind of like the story as well, as anime-ish as it is, there's still enough time travel fuckery going on that it at least feels rather fun. And there's just a fuckton of stuff going on with the systems in this game. You've your assortment of items, and then this Pokemon like capture system where the third member of your party is some sort of monster you've tamed. And then there's this complicated level up system I haven't even gotten too, a bunch of fuckery concerning how you go about switching levels and thus "times" and the items you need to do so, and basically there's a lot of stuff going on. And it's all severely, drably, hampered, suffocated by a battle system that is an entirely uncomfortable halfway throwback to the old FF menu battle system and some sort of not concession to the fact that everyone else has figured out how to do realtime battles and that they're pretty damned cool. You're attention is split between a ton of menu options, you need to switch between "Paradigms" which determine which moves you have available, how your AI partner behaves (you can switch which character you're controlling) and what your third monster party member even is. But it's all "in real time" which comes into play when you're best off to switch your Paradigms on the fly. Sometimes this is ok, some "Paradigms" get you to concentrate on one enemy at a time, which is fine if there's a group of enemies but one big one you'd rather take down first, before switching to one better at dealing with groups. It gets a bit complicated when you're asked to take down an enemy(ies) with a ton of health. Which is when you need to combo them until a meter fills up and they're vulnerable enough to actually do some real damage to, but comboing and actually dealing damage take two different kinds of attacks. But it's really annoying when you're asked to also watch what the enemy is doing, such as with bosses who tend to have a huge attack that you need to switch to a defensive paradigm for, but only when their big attack is about to hit, otherwise to beat them you should be in damage dealing mode. Oh, and you actually have to be queing up your own attacks, even if by "auto battle" all this tome as well. And it's hard to keep flitting between menus and submenus and keep track of your health and what the enemy animation is doing all at once. Not to mention your monster ally's special attack for which you have to activate and do a stupid QTE for every time. Did I mention you're graded on how you do each battle, with the items you receive dependent on your grade? It really just feels uncomfortable, and often kind of boring. Most common enemies can be defeated using the exact same strategy every time. You'll encounter group of enemies type X, employ Paradigm type Y and then just auto attack until they're dead with the exact same results every time. Battle thus becomes a chore "Oh, these guys" and then you just repeat the exact same button presses pretty much to a T. There's a lot of stuff, but it doesn't add up to much depth. It's like Square Enix had ambitions to move beyond its menu and turn based battles, but didn't actually want to go all the way towards a proper no menu, free movement, real environment "3d" type system of fighting either. Frankly I still like Pokemon battles, so I'd have vastly preferred one or the other instead of this shallow and uncomfortable middle ground.

Yessss! I want to go back and play this with all the new patches and mods, and the first person driving was one of the best parts of this game. I remember driving off a cliff, into a tree, the windshield cracking as I was stuck and thinking "OMG I'M IN JURASSIC PARK!" it was AWESOME! Speaking of which, where's my Jurassic Park game using all this stuff?

That's just small scale here we have WAVES:

Largest contiguous section of city for LA is over a hundred and forty miles long end to end. I've measured every single major candidate (I was bored) LA wins hands down. But yeah I thought Vice City was better than San Andreas, lots of empty space. But then, Red Dead Redemption was huge and I enjoyed most of that (parts of Mexico aside) and I even enjoyed how big it was, I think that created part of the appeal. Not that I can vouch for GTA V, but hopefully they've done a better job than SA.

Nope, it's just Los Santos this time, not even other cities. But it's huge, like approaching proper LA metaphor huge. Which is fine, because depending on what you count as a contiguous "city" LA is the largest city on earth several times over in terms of square area. I also assume that since there's a country redneck type area, with country redneck type characters, and a country redneck type song playing over the trailer, there will indeed be a radio station as such.

Yes! Worry about eating too much rather than what you eat, it's an amazing thing to watch people eat a ton of food and then claim it's "healthy" because they skipped dessert. The food pyramid, the traditional view of what you "should" be eating, doesn't actually have a lot bearing. As long you get your protien, vitamins, etc. and from food, not pills (all that stuff ends up being soluable in fat and etc. and thus more likely to be absorbed with food than pissed out in concentrated form) then it doesn't matter as much what you eat beyond that as long as its not too much. Too many calories from a handful of nuts or even a salad is just as bad, and just as likely to make you fat and give you diabetes, as too many calories from a pepsi. Brush your teeth, watch how much you eat in total, get what you need, and eating a bunch of cookies is going to end up the same as eating a plate of pasta in health terms. Even though you've been told by Sesame Street that cookies are a "sometimes food" since you were a kid, if you look at the constituents of what you're actually getting (calories, fat, vitamins, etc.) an omelette is not actually any better for you than a piece of cake, its societies perceptions towards the two that have skewed most people's views.

They're good at what they do, it honestly doesn't look that remarkable, a lot of it is good art direction and talented artists. If you're forgetting, this: Is what a "next gen" game looks like, and a first up next gen game at that, not even a proper built out engine and layout for next gen hardware (Thief is just using a modified UE3). Regardless, rating of characters as they interest you? For me it's Trevor > Michael > Franklin. Crazy hillbilly hobo power that looks like he's addicted to meth? THAT sounds like the way I play GTA games to begin with. Franklin on the other feels like a generic "hood trying to work his way up" character with no particular originality.