Marek

Hurray!

Pie is back.

Yes I have, and yes you can, on Saturday, before a certain party that I assume you're also going to.

Yeah. With "new Farah" I meant "the female character meant to replace Farah".

I thought the voice of Bastila was super annoying, but all the other characters were voiced really well. Did anyone else catch the small role of Ethan Phillips? He plays a character on Manaan.

Yeah your spray is cool. Psychonauts etc. Well done Try saving your spray as a tga, as it doesn't support jpeg. If you want transparency, create an alpha channel for it in Photoshop and save it as a 32 bit tga.

I once had an error that just said: An error has occured. With a single button, which said "OK".

What did you do, exactly? Just press F5 in the game and look in the /cstrike/screenshots folder, and you'll find a jpeg...

Which is understandable. When I first saw the game I thought it was crap too Anyway, I hate these costumes. The intention is obviously to add sex appeal but instead it just ends up looking ridiculous. Any developers looking to sex appeal to their characters should probably take a cue from Broken Sword 3's Nico Collard. Farah is a well designed character too, with some really nice clothes. This new goth crap on the other hand is terrible.

Jade Empire blew me away at E3. Now that I've finally played KOTOR, I'm even more excited. Jade Empire is being written by the same... err, writers, so that's good.

Hahaha, that's utterly brilliant.

You're probably thinking of Salammbo (a game that actually wasn't so bad according to those who played it).

Well, Bush already seemed to have a minor obsession with Poland, so who knows. I'm kind of on edge that something really big will happen, like some kind of giant rabbit (or rat) getting pulled out of a magical hat, that will suddenly turn the tables completely. Like Bin Laden already sitting somewhere inside a cage at some super secret location, ready to be put on display.

Behold: The new hi-res graffiti has led to some amusing ideas. One CT was praypainting an image of a terrorist pointing a gun at you, effectively using the graffiti as a decoy.

"Beroepsorganisatie Nederlandse Ontwerpers"

Or maybe "because they have to" (by Vivendi)?

The way I see it you get 13 games for that money. (I don't own the original HL and its expansions.) Best deal ever.

The Urbz: Sims In the City is perhaps a bit of a misunderstood title. I have to admit that the first press release, issued earlier this year, really turned me off. Fortunately, the producer of the game clarified a couple of important issues during a demo we were given of the game by EA. He emphasised that The Urbz is not to be taken as The Sims: Street. It's a social satire – a parody of moving into the city. Indeed, after playing it for a while, it became clear to me that The Urbz isn't trying to be blatantly “cool”, but that it's trying to make fun of trying to be cool. It's a subtle difference, but it's easy to mistake the game for something that takes itself serious based on some the assets that have come out. I was told that while The Sims is a parody of consumerism, The Urbz is a parody of conformism. The goal of the game is to roam various districts and perform various actions that increase your fame and social standing. Most of the game's options are based on social interactions. You can approach any non-player character and perform various greetings or rituals. Another way to increase your street reputation is to get a job (which usually involves some type of mini-game), which earns you money that can be spent on changing clothes, hairstyle, piercings or tattoos. With twelve different places on the body for piercings and tattoos respectively, it's possible to create a pretty freaky appearance for your character. There are a number of districts in the game, such as a sort of industrial Goth-style train station and a Tokyo-inspired raver/fruity/neon world. Each district has a list of quests and sidequests that can be completed. Later in the game, when you've become more succesful, your image will appear on posters throughout the city as the result of sponsorship deals. Eventually, the behavior of other Urbz will start to change, as they'll think you're really cool and will want to conform to you. You'll have a chance to establish new fashion trends and get your own group of adaptors. The Urbz turned out to be more appealing than I expected, mostly thanks to its humerous bits. For example, there's all sorts of wacky objects that you can buy in stores. In the Tokyo-style district, there were things like bonsai trees, fishtanks and the Schnizzelator, a weird sort of robotic karaoke rapper. Objects can be placed and used anywhere in the game world, so you can trash a place completely or put a Schnizellator in the middle of a street. There's quite a lot of these fun options sprinkled throughout the game. As you may already know, the Black Eyed Peas have provided Sim-ified versions of their music as well as appear as interactable characters. Should you really hate the Black Eyed Peas, it's indeed possible to kill them all. There's also some crazy ways for your own character to die, such as a murderous monkey that you'll meet somewhere down the line. (Don't be alarmed though: when you die, your life is immediately restored.) There's also still the basic chores of The Sims. These repetitive roleplaying elements are obviously not for everyone. A major difference with The Sims is that The Urbz isn't exclusively based on open-ended gameplay. There's also a linear storyline involving three villians (read: Urbz much cooler than you) who need to be eliminated through social humiliation, which culminates in a dramatic conclusion at the end. The game's roots in the basic concept of The Sims would appear to make it a guaranteed success, though EA will have to work hard on convincing gamers first that The Urbz is different enough to warrant purchasing alongside The Sims. EA will also have to more clearly communicate how The Urbz is not a cheesy 'gansta' version of The Sims, but rather a more humerous, imaginative and mission-based take on The Sims formula. Based on what I saw, there isn't a big easily-definable draw to the game, but its appeal lies in a broad range of options and minigames. It's really easy to get into and perfect for the casual gamer, though I'm inconclusive on how much appeal it will have to the hardcore gamer (it really could go either way). Air guitaring is one of the many ways to interact with other characters. In the background you see three images on the wall. That could be you when you get famous. You can keep customizing your character throughout the game. The bartender job involves a rhythm-based mini game. If you screw up, customers complain. Fortunately if you suck at the mini game you can still complete the job, but it will take much longer.

Yes. Well, you have an appartement, but it's fairly bare bones. They want you to explore the city instead of hanging out in the appartement, and frankly there's not much to do apart from taking a shower, or a shit. You don't have to, but you can redecorate any room in the game including but not limited to your own appartement. However, the focus is a lot more on customizing the looks of your character. There's 5 of the original 7 (I think?) maintenance bars. They took some out that didn't fit The Urbz. I think they took out the social interaction bar as that's pretty much all you'll do in the game anyway. You do have to sleep and stuff. If you sleep on the pavement you get fined by the cops. You can sleep on a bench in the train station, but that's bad too. Basically you're exploring nine districts (read: levels) 95% of the time and not spending any significant amount of time in your house, as all the quests and fun things are in the city. The house is more like a house in an RPG... just a home base where you can regenerate and leave some of your stuff.

ARGHHHH no they've ruined it. They should have recaptured the spirit of the original. They should have stayed true to the elements we've come to love. They should not have done anything substancially different. They should have listened to the fans! The chickens would have been such a great showcase for the new facial animation system.

Woohoo! Another thread courtesy of a recent EA press event. This game I didn't get to play myself, but I got a demo of it by one of the producers, and witnessed a multiplayer match between two people. The basic concept of GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is that for the first time in a James Bond game you're not playing James Bond. You're another member of MI6 who's been thrown out for rockless brutality. At the beginning of the game you even get to kill James Bond, except you don't actually kill him. It turns out it was just a sequence from a "simulator", which is a bit of a trite plot device. Anyway, the developers seem pretty excited about allowing players to do in the game what James Bond would or could not do. You run around shooting bad guys often wielding two weapons at the same time. This is kindaneat, as you can mix-n-match various weapons. Depending on what you have in your right and left hand, the strategy changes a bit. Also, if you reload the left and right weapons at exactly the right times, you can in fact create a continuous flow of bullets. The reloading animations are cool, and when you switch weapons the main character juggles them in the air a bit. There's also a couple of special moves, such as grabbing an enemy, turning him around and using him as a human shield, and eye enhancements such as being able to look through objects. The 8 player multiplayer mode seems good, and will probably be a large part of the game's appeal. The levels are tight, and have various death traps that can be operated. Despite these somewhat interesting features, the game didn't leave too much of an impression on me in terms of atmosphere. EA keeps saying how this James Bond set design guy was brought in, as well as a costume designer from The Matrix films, and some guy who worked on the Final Fantasy movie. This would lead you to expect a certain degree of style, but the levels I saw didn't show this. The level architecture in the game seems strongly based on the same stuff we've seen forever. Think rooms with grey concrete walls and crates, wooden pallets and/or containers thrown about, with the occasional tripod lights to spice things up. Of course this all happens at the 10th floor of a large building, with a luscious view of a city skyline whereever there's a window. Did I say luscious? It's just a grainy background photo. Okay, now I'm getting grumpy and maybe letting my personal taste get in the way. To be fair, I've seen screenshots of more interesting areas that weren't shown to me, including some well-known locations from the movies (e.g. Moonraker), but they still all have this bare-bones arcade shooter plainness. I've not seen much of the James Bond elements, or any of the cutscenes, or any of the main characters. Maybe that stuff will be really good, and maybe this game will in fact be interesting. However, my impressions so far are pretty lukewarm. I was, in fact, more excited by The Urbz than by Rogue Agent. (Note: I've not played the much-lauded N64 GoldenEye, so I guess you'll have to compare them yourself. )

Man, I really want to trash up the little market stall in the new cs_italy. I also want to see the physics on those chickens.

It might also be there to establish the shittyness of The Winchester. Liz keeps alluding to that all the time however it seems like a fun place in the opening scene. In this later scene you see all these characters who are made out to be really colorful by Ed but are in fact really sad and boring, which is representative of the pub itself. There, it has a function now.

Wouldn't that involve freezing your piss? Quite a lengthy process.

I think I'm done writing, Toblix