Jake

IGN: This one goes to eleven.™

I don't think this is true. I think the reason people read scores is simply because they're there to be read. If you took them away, I'm sure more people would read the review and make their own assessment. People wouldn't stop reading game reviews. What that means for the Thumb, to me, is that if by some weird miracle we do end up with a larger readership, people would expect the reviews on this site to be unscored, and would read them as articles/stories/writeups/etc - AKA what they're actually meant to be - instead of just dressing on a numerical score. That doesn't entirely make sense I guess, but I think it's true. I don't think people in "the mainstream" are averse to reading reviews (they seem to read the hell out of previews, etc, for instance), but they're just not going to complain if you give them a 2 digit number instead, making the review itself optional in their eyes.

There's a bit more to it than the QOTM. When you register as media/press for E3 you get added to a massive E3 press release emailing list. The thing is, you can't see it. Everyone is supposed to BCC the people on the list when they send out press releases to E3 attendees... except one idiot messed up, and made all the contacts visible. We decided to take advantage of this and hijack the list of names to send out a press release announcing the existence of Thumb. While in the media room, Evan of Adventure Gamers overheard some guys talking shit about a mysterious site. "Gourmet cooking recipes? Who the fuck do these guys think they are" or whatever. Recognizing the "gourmet cooking" bit he listened in further and discovered that they were from WarCry, that they'd just received our press release on the press list, and that they thought it was shit. Fortunately, randomly, that night, in the elevator at our hotel, a guy asked me if I was staff on WarCry. Why the hell did he want to know that? Because they were staying on this floor apparently. He then told me which room number they were staying in. I politely thanked him, and returned to the Thumb room and told people what was up. We collectively decided that the only thing to do would be to stuff a good 20 copies of the Thumb press release under their door, along with a business card with our room number. Once we came up with the plan, everyone was too wussie to actually do it except Chris, who did it. After ten minutes of giddily sitting in our room, a note came sliding under our door. It was our own press release, poorly and rudely edited in red pen by the WarCry guys. Please. If I'm not mistaken we bitched at their editing calls and sent it back, along with an invitation to come over for some pizza. They showed up along with a guy from Gamers Hell, who we all liked more than the WarCry bastards Eventually they left and we went back to playing adventure games on the TV and pretending to write articles. The end. There are photos of all the events above somewhere, but I don't know where.

True on all counts, I guess. Maybe if they'd stuck entirely to their guns re: early 90s "fresh prince opening titles" style of cool and played that up, instead of trying to hide it a bit, I would have liked it more. That crap is apparently in now anyway right? ¬ ¬ okay or maybe not quite the same. And you're right about the gameplay too... Erm right. I think we're saying the same thing, at least in regards to it not being as good a game as it should have been

Did The Tale of Warcry and the Thumbs press releases ever actually get put up on the site, or did we burn out on E3 content before that happened?

Okay so I just got an rtf file from someone at work and tried to make a change when Word produced the following error: Contemplate the meaning of that, and explain it to me. Has anyone else got mysterious and/or hilarious errors laying around?

I disagree, I thought it was crap. The music wasn't as catchy despite being higher quality audio, the art wasn't as stylish despite being more detailed... It had the new unappealing female character, etc. It just didn't really feel inspired, or as if it was made with any love at all, while the first TJ&E just sort of seemed like people cared. Oh well. Fortunately the first game plus a used Genesis/MegaDrive costs less than buying a copy of TJ&E 3... Well maybe not anymore

TJ&E 1 was a great game if you played it co-op with someone else, otherwise it was a little drab. Most all my memories of that game are from playing it with a second person.... I never played the second game but it looked like, as more of a platformer, it could be more fun than the first to get through on your own?

From this Halo 2 story, etc etc yadda yadda. Games are way too expensive. I dislike that MS is gloating it up as a side effect of that fact. And yes, Halo 2 will probably be awesome etc etc, but jeez.

Would Sony approve a GTA game that didn't work on all PS2's? Does this question even need to be asked? (I'll prepare a just in case here, but the notion of GTA:SA not working on all able-bodied PS2's seems a little far fetched)

I hate you and I'm tired of reading your posts.

People don't consider $20 cheap, though, in general. If I see a game for $10 or $15, unless it's a marked down former best seller or other sort of high profile game (eg grim fandango jewel case edition, or dvd case version of giants citizen kabuto), i generally avoid that, but things priced around $20 in standard packaging with attractive box art, on the main "new games" shelf in retail stores at least get looked at and considered by me.

Lots of places sell land on the moon, it is all extremely shady to me.

Ah, the Thumb Way.

See, its like WarioWare for the Cube, but instead of messages asking you to stand on one foot or whatever, it requests - nay, demands - that you knife player two in the side.

Manhunt 2: Return of the Man! :pan: :pan:

Sorry for the extended delay (see note on front page). The article is destroying me, and my evening went longer than I thought.

Rodi

Sorry, I'm in California and its only 2pm here It'll be up late tonight, which is super early Thursday for most people I guess.

Hi Chris my point wasn't that MS was trying to show that games were too expensive, I was just pointing out that Halo 2's preorders = "most money made ever" is kind of extreme. Probably not But fortunately publishers seem to want to compensate for this by raising the price to $60, which will surely increase the size of the udience. Woooo(t).

that computer was 5 years old. and the HDs and power supply still work ¬ ¬ ... quiet.

Oh Hominid, how you excite me.

November 16th

The thing is, from what people are saying here (I haven't dl'd the demo yet), this isn't an issue of "more combat," but instead "all combat," which is hugely different from SoT, which was 50/50 or even 60/40 balanced puzzling to fighting. I know the developers have talked about the puzzling bits in interviews, and we saw some jumping around demoed at E3, so it's still there for sure - but from the demo it seems they've thrown the balance WAY out of whack from what I liked the first time. The thing is, for most people I know (including myself) their favorite part of PoP:SoT was figuring out the puzzles, and how well the nice organic feeling controls worked for solving said puzzles, and while I welcome the combat beeing beefed up (it was definitely weak in SoT), the last thing I want to hear is that it was beefed up at the expense of my favorite part of one of my favorite recent games.