Zeusthecat

That's weird. Because I had a dream last night where I had become a zombie-like creature and saw my younger brother trying to run away with some girl. I really wanted to meet her so I chased after them to try to catch up. I finally caught up and started to introduce myself (I was a nice zombie) when my younger brother attacked me and then blew a hole in my leg with a shotgun. Then he dragged me into a forest to leave me to die and I woke up. I also have no brothers. But seriously dude, cool dream. I am envious of people that have crazy dreams and remember them the next morning. I rarely dream and when I do I rarely remember anything about it.

It felt weird playing my Xbox 360 last night. As I turned it on I realized we were nearing the end of our relationship. It has been a fun 6 years but sometimes when you love something you have to let it go. Plus I met a new console named PS4 last night. We stayed up talking for hours and it made some pretty lofty promises but we agreed to wait to take our budding relationship to the next level until this December when we will both be ready to commit to each other. There was this other console named WiiU that was kind of cute and asked me out but we agreed to just be friends for now. Plus, I think WiiU was kind of drunk.

Bravo Sony, bravo. No online requirements, no used game restrictions, $399, and a shitload of cool games. If this all stands as stated then this is the console for me.

Derp. You're right, I was getting a little ahead of myself and thought elmuerte was answering my first question about cloud computing. So, yay cloud computing!

Is that still the case if games are being installed to and read from the hard drive? In other words, is the seek time for a magnetic hard drive faster or slower than the seek time for a Blu-Ray disc and is it still so slow that you would see a tangible benefit from storing content multiple times to reduce this time? At either rate, I am starting to wonder if Microsoft was planning to have cloud computing integrated into all or most of their games from the start and then fabricated the whole once per 24 hour check-in thing once they saw the negative reaction to 'always on' as a way to not appear that it requires a constant connection. If this is the case then that whole check-in thing could just be smoke and mirrors because you would literally have to have a constant connection to play any game that is designed to take advantage of cloud computing. Edit: I just looked it up and seek times are much faster for hard drives as I would have expected but the question still stands regarding whether or not storing content multiple times on a hard drive produces a tangible benefit. My guess is that it does.

I guess we're soon going to find out just how much our internet infrastructure can handle.

What benefit does cloud computing provide when it comes to playing games? Does it just allow for games to be smaller (i.e. not take up as much hard drive space) or give them the ability to squeeze more out of the hardware by offloading certain intensive CPU operations to another server? Aside from DRM reasons I am legitimately curious about what benefits/drawbacks come with cloud computing. A big concern for me would definitely be the 500GB hard drive (in addition to all the other shit already talked about here). If a dual layer Blu-Ray can hold around 60GB and full game installs are mandatory then that hard drive sounds tiny. Even if games only used up half of that it wouldn't take long to fill up a hard drive of that size.

There's games! I'm glad to see they are taking big risks with new IPs like Halo, Battlefield 4, Minecraft, The Witcher 3, Forza 5, Killer Instinct, and Dead Rising 3. But in all seriousness I'm glad to finally see some games. Some of the actual new IPs look like they could be cool and while there was some mention of Kinect I didn't get the sense that they are going to be forcing it down everyone's throats in every game. $500 though? I thought they might go a little cheaper than that. I guess it's not that bad but it's quite a bit more than what the 360 launched for. Edit: And I forgot Metal Gear Solid 5. That sounds like another sweet new IP!

I don't have Gears 3 but I do also have Halo 3 and 4 and I suppose I'd be up to play them if there was some interest over the other games I mentioned. I really enjoyed Halo 4 and wouldn't mind doing some more Spartan Ops or just regular multiplayer (and I'm intrigued about this balance update you mention) but I think I've done everything I wanted to with the campaign on 3 and 4. I'm on from around 9:30 PM to 12:00 AM Sunday through Thursday and from around 9:30 PM to 2:00 AM Friday and Saturday along with some sporadic times throughout the day on the weekend (yes I know my life is very scheduled). Feel free to add me and I'd be happy to play any of those games any time I'm on. Also, as soon as my friend and I finish our Borderlands 2 playthrough that game will be on the table too. For anyone else who is interested, I'm still holding off for a few more days before I start RE5 so let me know if you want to get in on a playthrough, this will be my first time through that game. I'm still trying to finish Monkey Island 2 (stuck in this game at the moment) and Borderlands 2 so I might just hold off until those are done. My gamertag is xXZeusthecatXx and the time of this post for me is 8:50 AM (so you don't have to look up timezones).

Exactly.

Wow. Thank you for enlightening us on the universal rules of economics. You must be a prodigy if you have all the answers and haven't even graduated yet. That level of confidence (arrogance) could only be possessed by someone who truly has the foresight and wisdom to distill everything that may or may not be wrong with a country's economic situation into something so simple. I always thought economic policies were at least in part developed by people that also had a good understanding of how economics works but now I know I was wrong. I vote for you to be president of the world so you can use your ultimate wisdom to get the world economy back on track. Thank you for opening my eyes.

I thoroughly enjoyed that.

Just a step above unplayable.

At this point I think Microsoft's statements and clarifications have pretty much guaranteed that I will be spending my money elsewhere. With confirmation that you lose the ability to play games if you don't check in every 24 hours, mandatory Kinect (although they claim you can turn it off in some fashion), severe limitations on borrowing a game from a friend, and the additional headache and cost that will be associated with selling games or buying a used game (I agree with Thrik's statement, especially considering there is almost a 40 year precedent of being able to sell back games and buy used) I don't see any reason why I should give them my money. As I've stated before, none of this would actually have any impact on me. I have great internet, never buy used, and rarely borrow games. But when I see a company impose all of these restrictions without providing any additional benefit to the consumer it kind of feels like a giant middle finger. I cringe every time I hear them justify it by saying something like "We are doing this to ensure that people will always have the latest updates and have the best possible gaming experience". It just feels dishonest. I also find it kind of weird that their target demographic has started to shift away from people who play video games considering those people are primarily the ones that were responsible for the success of their previous two systems and are still likely the majority of people who will buy Xbone. I am very interested to see what Sony's plans are for the PS4. I'm sure there will be some similar measures but if they have at least one less restriction than Xbone (it sounds like they won't have the mandatory internet connection at least) then that is where my dollars will go. I am a lifelong gamer and a sucker for new consoles with cutting edge technology so I will purchase one and will just have to accept some of this shit if I want to continue to play console games. I might also get a WiiU at some point when they have a good library of games but it isn't as interesting to me because of the outdated tech. But I applaud Nintendo for not giving me a big middle finger.

Whenever I'm in a car I do this weird thing where I press my toes down against the bottom of my shoe as things pass by the side of the car. I will often do it with curbs along the side of the road where I try to time the pressing down of my toes to the instant the start of the curb would pass my foot and then I lift my toes the instant the end of the curb passes my foot. I've done this since I was a little kid and I have no idea why.

Having just finished Call of Duty World at War on veteran difficulty, I can say that having the ability to crouch and go prone was absolutely necessary for survival. With varying types of cover I found myself either standing and peering around the side of cover or crouching behind cover and popping up to take a few shots. So in that case I thought the ability to crouch was meaningful in the context of the game and made it a little more realistic. That being said, fuck that game. It was infuriating. Also, I haven't read the latest cast yet so I'm just commenting based on what I've seen here.

Patrick, this may be horrible advice but if it was me I would purposefully spend as much time thinking about it as I could. I have found that if I confront these types of things head on and run them through my head over and over my brain eventually sorts it out and becomes okay with it. It is a very painful thing to do and can cause a lot of grief in the short term but in the long run I feel like I am better because of it. It becomes something that I can look back on and reflect on every aspect instead of something to avoid entirely. Some therapists actually encourage this method of coming to terms with things when dealing with people who suffer from PTSD. But again, this could be absolutely horrible advice that only works for some people.

And one more thing. Rodi is a really great person. His message to me was very respectful and intelligent. Nice one Ucantalas. There is a surprising number of children's poop books. Our daughter loves that one.

You guys are the greatest. I'm sorry if I went a little overboard with my emotionally charged posts. I didn't mean to go into attack mode and I just got super overly sensitive. Full disclosure, I have a really hard time coping with the thought of people not liking me. I know it shouldn't bother me but I really do care what other people think, to a degree that probably isn't healthy. But at the same time I am the type of person that has a hard time holding back when I feel the urge to say something. Only on this forum can things be resolved in such a mature way. A poop comment turning into an intelligent discussion is something I never thought I'd see.

I wish I could pretend it doesn't bother me but that is something I have a really hard time doing. I don't put on any kind of fake persona here. The way I talk and the way I am here is exactly how I am in real life and it is so difficult in this internet format. In real life I can take visual cues and tone my shit down based on how the other person is reacting to what I am saying which is impossible here until someone directly calls you out. I guess these forums mean a lot more to me than I realized because I feel fucking terrible right now. At least I can go home and play some video games after work.

I'm sorry Patrick, you're right. You were not attacking me and I did overreact. I guess after seeing that first post I'm a little sensitive and self conscious right now. It fucking sucks to feel like I've become 'that guy' that people see a post from and just roll their eyes in disgust (not sure if that's the case but it sure feels that way right now). I have a weird sense of humor that is perfectly normal and welcome in the group of people I socialize with in the real world and I forget sometimes that that just doesn't translate to the majority of people outside of that circle. I also see your point about the podcast. They joke about it in a certain way and I come in here like a fucking lunatic and bring it to an uncomfortably personal level. For that I am sorry. Have you ever felt like you maybe found a group of people that might accept you and where you feel like you belong and then find out that those people are seriously irritated by you? That's how I feel right now and it fucking sucks.

Look, I get it. I've rubbed people the wrong way and I'm fucking sorry. I'm done with it. But seriously, I have literally just re-listened to episodes 1-65 in the last few weeks. Don't you recall strategy chocolates, Chris' story about making poop patterns all over the town in Diablo 2, Jake's endless references to cocks and donkey cocks, and countless references to things coming out of their asses? It is much more prominent than Chris just making a farting noise. If you don't believe me go back and re-listen. Man, everyone is so fucking serious. What the fuck?

Yes, I've been re-listening and there's a fucking lot of them. They even commented regularly on how much they talk about poop and penises. Don't worry, after my public shaming I will discontinue my immature shit.

Call of Duty World at War I managed to beat this game on Veteran. Fuck this game. I also learned that World War 2 was much different than what I had learned in history books. Apparently the entire war was fought with grenades, the Japanese preferred to charge people with bayonets from over 20 feet away instead of shoot at them, and every single member of the German and Japanese military apparently only went after one guy (me). Did I say fuck this game?

Okay okay. I'll try to find a more mature way to express myself I guess. I'm a little confused though considering pretty much over half of the Idle Thumbs episodes are a deluge of poop and penis jokes. I really don't get how someone can like the podcast and be put off by that kind of stuff. I don't understand how it can piss you off so much.