Chris

Well, Clinton had his share of suspicious foreign activity as well...

Fuck everyone, I fucking hate everyone in the world.

Well, also our media unfortunately doesn't depict him 24/7 as a completely idiotic turd. Even more unfortunately, I suspect that soon they will continue to depict him 24/7 as The President.

Well, at least we can agree on The Royal Tenenbaums (and the election).

How so?

I agree with Kingz about the orange glow. It adds a lot of atmosphere. I don't really agree with Erwin about it becoming a simulation. I simply stopped eating completely after playing the game for a whille, and nothing bad has happened so far. Eating seems more a convenient way to regain health than anything else. If I've just survived a gang war and I'm almost dead, I'll go to a Cluckin' Bell and get a salad meal, and it saves a trip home to refill health there. The elements are there if you want them, but by no means an integral part of the game. I also agree with what I think Ginger was saying in that I am concerned about the image this game is projecting as the mass appeal video game. It really is a lot more extreme than the previous games in terms of brutality and overall tone. There's a mission requiring you to sneak into a house and stealthily slit the necks of a bunch of people, just to steal a book of rhymes for a crappy rapper who can't rhyme himself. That's a mission that honestly just doesn't seem to have any purpose to it, and doesn't leave much room for any "well, this is what you have to do to get ahead" explanations, because it seems utterly gratuitous. I would have told the guy that if he can't rhyme, he can fuck off and do his fucked up killings himself. The game does have a lot of anti-drug overtones (not counting stuff like pot which obviously isn't a hard drug), and honestly I do think it was good of Rockstar to not have your character just eventually become a crack dealer or something, but it did come off as slightly odd to me that such messages are juxtaposed with almost disturbingly and brutally violent missions.

The guy gets a few points for being named McKool, but loses about a trillion and a half for being retarded.

I think if you enjoyed the previous two games, you'll enjoy this one. My signature is slightly misleading; I'm actually having a lot of fun with it. One thing about the game, though, is that it seems to me at least to be more difficult than the GTA3 and Vice City. This struck me as a bit of an odd move considering Rockstar's potential audience includes so many casual gamers. A few missions in particular are devious. That said, the game is ENORMOUS. I kid you not when I say that it still blows my mind that you can get on the freeway and take a particular exit. That sounds stupid, but when you're navigating a friend and you tell him to get off the freeway on the third exit down, it sounds absurd that you're talking about a video game. The three cities are large, as you'd expect, but there's a sprawling mass of countryside and roads and mountains in between them that really adds a huge amount of realism to the game. We all know about this from the previews but that addition is even better than I thought it would be. Just driving around between cities is a pleasure, and I haven't even reached Las Venturas yet. More specific bad points include getting over the game's learning curve. It doesn't really take long, but the controls feel sort of awkward at first, and I've been with the series since the first one (and when I say the "first one" I don't mean GTA3). This is mainly due to things like not being able to run and auto-target an enemy at the same time until you build up your shooting skill a bit, and not being able to run very long until you build up your stamina. Fortunately, these stats are VERY easy to build to a sufficient level without much effort. Plus, if you're the type of guy who likes to max out all his points, you'll have that extra edge if you're willing to put in a bit of time. All in all the light RPG elements are a success after the initial hump. Basically the game is getting a lot better for me as it's going on. I started out sort of dubious, thinking the game was just another GTA3/VC. It sort of is, really, but there are enough additions, not least of which is simply the scale, that make it worth picking up if GTA is your thing. It sure won't convert any nonbelievers though. Also, if anyone has any tips regarding how to beat Zero's fucking Supply Lines mission, let me know. I think it's optional but I pretty much have a grudge at this point. It's the one with the fucking toy plane. EDIT: It slightly bothers me that the Penny Arcade strip uses the "heezy" language, since the game actually takes place in the early 90s, but meh.

I don't have anything very intelligent to say about Japanese stereotypes in Lost in Translation, but I will say that a good friend of mine who is Japanese loved the movie and considered it among one of his favorites of last year. As far as being in another country is concerned in general, I'll say that when I spent time in Italy, while I enjoyed it a lot I definitely felt very out of place (I'm Italian in case that matters). Being outside of your comfortable environment for an extended time especially when you already have something missing in your life can be very disorienting and alienating, believe me. I'm sure this affects some people more than others, though, and I'm definitely one of those people. Also, I'll agree with whoever said that the film didn't really come off as particularly art-housy. It was very relaxed, not intense or obtuse at all. I don't understand why it not "going anywhere" was much of a problem. Considering a movie "boring" is hardly much of a worthy criticism, because that's among the most subjective of subjective judgments. Some of the greatest works of all time in any medium are described as "boring" daily. If nothing else, Lost in Translation was something of a change of pace, especially in the midst of the other big films at the time such as Return of the King. When I walked out of ROTK my head was about ready to explode, but when I walked out of LOT I felt pretty much pleased with the last couple hours I'd experienced. That is of course is completely personal as well but since most people here seem to universally agree that the acting and direction and photography were pretty solid, it shouldn't be a stretch to see why so many people enjoyed the film. Anyone is free not to, but to say something like "I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE ENJOYED THIS CAUSE ITS SHIT" is ridiculous.

So you admit it was skillfully made but it's full of shit because you found it boring? I think most people who saw it (myself included) found it definitely un-boring. In fact, I'd say it was probably the most purely enjoyable movie experience I'd had in a long time, and I didn't have another one comparable until Shaun of the Dead. Even if for some reason I was of the opinion that the movie was poorly written or acted or directed (which isn't the case), it still would have been almost ludicrously pleasing for me to watch (which was the case).

Ok fine, so feel free to lose respect for him for that reason if you feel so inclined. I'm merely defending him in regards to the League movie.

That's stupid, don't lose respect for him. He's a huge fan of Alan Moore's comics, and rightfully so. He really pushed that movie to be made, but then when he realized it was going to suck he got in huge arguments with the director. He had to finish the movie, obviously, but he wasn't happy about it. In fact, there were several interviews in which he denounced the movie and recommended people to read the comics instead.

This weekend my stupid computer overheated or got a power surge or shorted itself out or otherwise did something retarded and now the damn thing won't power on at all. Has anyone else with a laptop experienced something similar? I honestly think it overheated in some way since when it shut down for its final time it was pretty damn hot.

I've played all the Tony Hawk games extensively except for THUG2, and I can honestly say they're all great games. I would agree though that 2 is better than 3; it was definitely way more of a step forward for the series. Unfortunately THUG was pretty much just the same as 4 (still a very good game) from a gameplay point of view and didn't really deliver on its ill-conceived storytelling features, while making the game a lot easier and inflating points to almost ridiculous levels. THUG2 seems to be diverging from the series completely and in a very odd way...

I know from memory that GameSpot also gave a 10.0 to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and Chrono Cross. Tony has to be one of the best-rated series ever on GameSpot, and deservedly so I'd say. I have to say I've been really disappointed in Tony Hawk's Underground and its sequel though.

Did he have some reason for specifically thinking that Oddworld wouldn't work, or does he just think PS1 games won't work in general? I've never heard of a PS1 game not being PS2 compatible.

The cheapest one, a "High Performance - Serial ATA - 80GB Seagate® Barracuda 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache". I can't imagine I'll need much more space than that, since my previous PC had 40GB and that was enough with my 40GB additional external drive. I don't pirate music or anything so hard drive space has never been much of an issue for me.

Yeah, I skimped on the RAM because I was pretty much hitting my upper spending limit and I figured it would be the easiest thing to upgrade later, certainly easier than the processor or the video card. Anyway, I'm sure this thing can handle Half-Life 2, and after the amount of money I just spent, that's the only game I'll be able to afford for a while...

Update: I have just fulfilled an unfulfillable dream of mine circa 1996, and have placed an order for an Alienware desktop system. Oh man, just typing it makes me giddy. I don't even know if it's a great machine or merely a sufficient machine, since I haven't kept up with that crap for years, but at least I know that Half-Life 2 has moved from being a heartbreaker to a GPA-wrecker. AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 512MB DDR RAM ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128MB (ie, 8 times the amount of video ram in my now-defunct PC) Oh man oh man I'm excited. I (hope I) will finally be able to play new PC games for the first time since about 1994.

Out of curiosity though, what would you mean outside of cutscenes? I notice "cinematic" is a word that's tossed around a lot as a positive trait for games, and while sometimes it can be, I think it's often overused.

Let's all give a round of applause to Deadworm, our resident photo thread bastard.

What's that have to do with it? You were still there for the Warcry crap. Also, that Neil Young reference at the end of the press release finally makes sense now that I Kill You is written.

It'll be a wonderful fucking day when people get over the word "phallic".

Ah, good times. (Hint: we do not actually hate the Warcry people)