Marek

Ugh... so... tacky. Can't... look... directly at it. But I control those feelings, focus them, concentrate, and... release! And the world is a better place.

Articles are for babies.

Someone make a game about him. Tallest Man + dolphin sidekick.

Sup bitches?? Old school adama reporting for duty

Whoa, Kasavin left GameSpot? That's a huge loss for that site. To be honest I think Kasavin writes some of the most boring and by-the-numbers copy out there, but he did seem to bring a lot of editorial consistency to the site. It's hard to imagine GameSpot with a guy like Gerstmann as EIC (who's replacing Kasavin anyway?).

That's a nice writeup. Now someone invent a paper magazine that supports animated GIF...

Spaff found this. Charles Cecil says things... then some possibly made-up statistics from a Frenchman are mentioned, culminating in an exchange of contact details. "I have his card somewhere, and I can give it to you." Riveting! My index finger and head appear briefly towards the end.

Wow THAT SHIRT has long been thrown away.

Did everyone get my Manny Calavera, btw?

AND ME! ME ME ME!

Last time I was in an electronics store, when I asked how much inch a TV screen was the clerk looked confused, then got out a yardstick and tried measuring the screen (which he did nondiagonally and without substracting the edge around it). He probably would have been better off looking it up in their computer system, if he even knew how to use it. Before that a sales clerk tried to sell me a $1000 BluRay drive (to go with a 32" 720p TV). I began argueing with him just for shits and giggles. He'd never heard of HD-DVD and was unaware that a $500/600 PS3 includes a BluRay drive. I visited 4 stores trying to research a purchase the old school way and it was giant waste of time. Using the internet I could have learned ten times more in that same amount of time. You'd think with internet shops and all, real stores would want to compete on consumer service, but in fact they are hoping enough people will stay uninformed enough to continue using them.

Quality or decline thereof* isn't usually reflected in ratings that quickly is it? More likely the drop has to do with BSG no longer being paired up with two new Stargate episodes on Fridays. * Disclaimer: I think the quality is overall as good as it was in season 2 (and I consider the first 5 episodes of season 3 to be the best the series has produced so far).

I should mention that for the past two years I haven't had a TV connection so that may color my judgment, as I can pretty much just cherry pick whatever I like from downloads or DVDs.... (I totally recommend doing this, by the way). So I'm only looking at the best, not the worst, nor the ratio between good and bad.

I just watched the pilot of My Name Is Earl because I recognized the dude from the avatar and I'm pretty sure this is a series I'm going to continue watching. People often complain about nothing good being on TV but it feels like in recent years that's changed. Maybe it's because downloads and DVD sets have made it possible for TV writers to demand more attention from the audience, I don't know, but there's a ton of good shit out there. Even sitcoms or fluffy shows have some meat to them. I mean, I was surprised to find out that The Office (US) is not only watchable, it's also kind of sort of a bit good. It's a shame something genius like Arrested Development gets cancelled but then again it lasted three whole seasons on a network that hates quality.

I have been saying positive things about XBLA for a long time. It's a great system, but I'm beginning to wonder why, after one year, it's still got so much tumbleweed blowing through it. MS promised 50+ games by the end of 2006, and there's about 30 now. Not that quantity is a good measure, but apparently MS fell short of its own target. MS started XBLA Wednesday, admittedly only committing for the summer, but also suggesting it would continue indefinitely if they could, which didn't happen. The current must-haves in the catalog are probably Geometry Wars and Assault Heroes, and maybe Lumines Live! if you haven't yet played another version of that game. There's a few other cool distractions, but the rest is retro shovelware. Peter Moore: "We think of Xbox Live Arcade as a new platform for independent developers -- it's the Sundance of the game world." Greg Canessa (XBLA): "We have over 80 titles that are currently in development and have been cueing up releases in secret." (July 2006) Where are they? Don't say Castle Crashers because that's just one game, and that alone isn't the elaborate festival of fantastic indie delights that Peter Moore wants XBLA to be. I know a couple of people who are working on XBLA games and apparently there's at least a few logistical and approval/QA issues at Microsoft. They probably didn't expect the platform to get as much interest as it did and now their pipelines and/or tubes are jammed/clogged. The Virtual Console section in the Wii store, while obviously not offering any new titles, has a retro offering superior to XBLA, but the system is terribly half-assed. I hadn't even checked out the store until Jake told me how shit the UI was, and it turned out he was right. It seems like they just lazily slapped some buttons onto the screen. It's also super slow, as if you're browsing a website on a 56k modem. Also each VC game you buy has its own channel. WTF? Why isn't there a VC channel with all your games, browsable/sortable using a tailor made Wii interface similar to the Mii channel? Digital distribution on consoles: :tup: Current implementation: Here's hoping PS3's e-Distribution, with games like Fl0w and Calling All Cars, will cause Microsoft and Nintendo to add more thought and more resources to their digital distribution efforts.

YOU... you are using Stan exactly the way I envisioned!!!!!

Why are humans encouraging this? Next thing we know parrots are living in houses and stealing our jobs and more importantly stealing our women. Knowledge is power.

Yep. But they only become enabled in the Mii channel when both parties have added each other. There's not enough character spaces for your nickname. BUT it didn't stop me from adding you!!

It's hard to believe those were actually the worst games of the year...

Is anyone playing Viva Pinata? I've played it for about 4 or 5 hours now and I'm enjoying it a lot. In the beginning the game just keeps throwing new shit at you, and new animals keep appearing all the time, and animals turn into residents, and it's all super exciting. But right now I'm wondering what's next. I'm not really sure what to do. I have one villager left to unlock, and that's the only thing I can tell that I have to achieve. Other than that I don't really see any obvious goals and I can't think of any to set for myself either. Good game though. I've hardly touched Gears because of it.

fildesy999: welcome! We usually don't get that many new members here, so when lots of people from outside the community suddenly show up to trade Wii numbers it's a bit weird. But please come in, take off your shoes, etc. As a general note to everyone who's new here, a great way to blend in is to make sure your posts have good punctuation (periods and capital letters, at least most of the time). Writing that makes me feel like a bit of a dick, even though I don't mean it in a dickish way. It's just that it makes posts a lot easier to read. Also instead of writing LOL we usually pretend to be grumpy/jaded/shifty/confused: :shifty: even though secretly we may indeed be laughing out loud. That is all from the unofficial Thumb immigration desk...

Cannibalism and jovial incestuous sex with insane moves and positions. It's worth at least a try (by which I mean the game ). I didn't think I'd enjoy the game but I blasted through the first three hours. But if you don't like it after that initial period, that's pretty understandable.

That makes sense. Welcome!

I am not posting this from my Wii because whenever I try to access the Wii Shop now it just stays on the loading screen forever. I managed to get to the actual download page for the browser once, and it started downloading, but it gave an error after a minute. Reggie will pay for this.

Oh wow please send me Phoenix Wright! (I'll add you today.)