Chris

Um, hooray for, uh, Idle Thumbs...

Oh man, I hope so.

But you love it.

Oh man, Space Hulk. That was actually a pretty good game.

I have no comments regarding any of that stuff (because I don't really care) except for the part about games in a series possibly being able to share data. That pretty much rules. Then games like KOTOR 2 could just take the ending from KOTOR without having to ask the player how everything turned out.

I don't know, it seems just as bad to say "dialogue trees, as seen in Schafer's other work". Just as KOTOR didn't invent them, neither did he.

Man, so true. It's horrible to drive after playing any GTA game for an extended period. Practically any of my friends can attest to this. And I've definitely experienced the Katamari Effect when riding shotgun. I've never reached for a steering wheel, but I find myself constantly thinking "Man, when I roll up those telephone poles it's going to get really bumpy". That's to say nothing of my high school days when I played so much Tetris on my calculator in math class that I'd see falling blocks in my head while walking around.

The lack of a screen sort of defeats what is appealing to me about iPods. If they ever release one with a screen at a price that doesn't require me to not use that money to purchase 10 more CDs, I'll consider it. But that little Mac is awesome. I kind of want one.

Man, getting a sound card was an amazing friggin experience. The first time I had one was in our 486, and I almost couldn't believe it. Holy crap.

You get presents by rolling up the box they're in, so you have to be of sufficient size. They're always really small, though, so it's no big deal.

You sly bastard...

Yeah, I admit the Night Elf's animation was slightly suspicious. I couldn't bring myself to hold it against them, though; everything else was so perfect...

Who's Jax?

Well, like you say, clearly "your book" wasn't the one they were using, then, because many of the winners had nothing to do with narrative. I think there comes a certain point when just denouncing visuals as "superficial" gets kind of silly. That's a bit unfair to, for example, painters, isn't it? A painting can infer a story (as do the small scenes in the WoW intro) but it need not be narrative. Same with a CG piece, even one that accompanies a game. I mean, just because something is a moving picture doesn't mean it needs to be a movie. The Blizzard cinematics team is made up of a bunch of clearly staggeringly talented visual artists, and in the WoW intro they produced one of the most gorgeous and nuanced pieces of CG I've ever seen. It practically looks like hand-painted art, but animated. World of Warcraft's narrative is different for every race that plays the game. They laid out what you need to know in the opening narration: it's been four years since the events of Warcraft 3, and not surprisingly there was no lasting peace. The races are in conflict again. What do you expect? They intro showcases some of the races and locations that populate the world. In that respect it's even successful as something of a storytelling because of how well it illustrates the vast difference between the different factions, the different lands, and so forth; when you see each of the scenes you easily consider possibly backstory, quite easily in fact because of how much life has been breathed into the characters. If you take the intro at face value and don't try to ascribe unfair extraneous criteria to it, it's an absolutely beautiful piece.

I was going to say the same ¬

...and I can't speak with anyone, so you lot are my only form of communication. It's kind of weird that I'm not hindered from doing so. Apparently three previous surgeries (unrelated and rather more involved than this one) have given me some sort of tolerance or quick recovery from general anesthesia. Plus, I don't look like a chipmunk like everyone said I would. I guess that's a plus. But man, my face is friggin numb.

Right, so they need to arrange the backround such that the text can be placed lower.

Fable was a really good game. Just because it didn't do all the things that had ever been projected it would doesn't mean it wasn't satisfying and enjoyable in its own right.

That's what they told me two years ago, those bastards.

Still the champ!

Hmm, weird that they don't mention Xbox... That's the system on which they demonstrated the game for us.

Who's Edd?

It's coming out for Xbox. I don't think it's coming out for any other consoles, but now your hesitation is making me unsure as well. Maybe PS2? Doesn't seem right.

It's a very robust fart.

Everyone told me I would due to swelling.