Erkki

I'm not so sure on that. I can't bother to check though. Anyway, you are allowed to make one backup copy of any software, music album or whatever, regardless what the EULA says. And I can't see something that enables you ta actually use that backup copy as being illegal.

That is just wrong. Well of course, the no-cd crack is usually included with the pirated ISOs, so if you want to use no-cd on a legal version you have to find it separately. But if you need to install patches with an illegal version, you have to wait for the patched .exe to be cracked as well.

I liked the videos too, but won't play it any time soon unless I suddenly become rich.

I sometimes go two weeks without shaving, out of laziness. But then the beard starts to bother me. And I bet Ben uses Shick Extreme 3.

Yes, I often buy games I've already downloaded and played.

The annual price (30$) isn't way too much, but... Practically the only thing I would really want it for woudl be the Ice skin. I can't stand black or dark backgrounds in websites. That's why I seldom actually read through their reviews or articles. And it's completely offpissing how they advertise the skin. "A sight for sore eyes, (but fuck your eyes if you don't cough up the dough)" So is anyone here a subscriber? How is it? I'm thinking of trying it out for a month.

1. Thief: Deadly Shadows 2. Gish 3. GTA Vice City when I feel the need to rape hookers and cut their heads off (in no particular order).

I just watched the video review of Chronicles of Riddick that is only for subscribers. It's an Xbox game and they gave it a very high score (9.3 and Editor's Choice award, and the reviewer said it's one of the best games currently available on any platform). Obviously the score made me interested, but I probably wouldn't have bothered to read the text review as I don't have an Xbox and won't plan to buy one. The video reviews also shows gameplay while the reviewer talks, it's really great and kind of saves me time or allows me to spend time where I normally wouldn't -- I won't have to watch a separate trailer and I think it would have taken me longer or about the same time to read the text review.

I have used it, but at the moment don't have it installed. They have some deal with Siemens I think that enables using it with regular (Siemens) phones.

Not just. For the skin, for no ads, for the videos and FTP access. But the skin is a big part for me, as I said before I just hate to read text from dark background, and feel physical pain and suffering from it. But why pay for a skin if you can get all of it free elsewhere? I'm not hard-core enough to know every website and visit it every now and then. Still, I'd like to know what's going on and to have all the stuff I want from such websites as painless and as few clicks away as possible. And in that regard I've liked GameSpot for a long time, but I really hate their default colors. I'm trying it out for a month, and if I'm satisfied, I'll subscribe for a full year.

Thief 3 is definitely better than Invisible War, maybe even 'amazing'.

There seems to be a high-res E3 trailer there (maybe high-res only for subscribers?): http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/metalgearsolid3/media.html E3 2004 Trailer Check out the full length Metal Gear Solid 3 trailer from the E3 2004 show floor. POSTED: 05/13/04 | Approx: 15m 15s | High Res - 392.3 MB - Low Res 178.4 MB Actually, there seems to be a lot of high-res versions of all kinds of videos (that even look good in full-screen), maybe those are only on the FTP, though, which is for subscribers.

BEWARE! If you scroll this thread up & down fast, you can see the clever subliminal messages inserted by Marek. The picture is actually a halo around that pale guys head.

Yeah, that's it.

I've been watching a lot of videos on gamespot today and they actually do have some problems. But not as a rule. One just won't play at the moment, and sometimes if I try to seek (fast forward) I get a long delay (over a minute even). And during the delay, any other movies won't play either, they'll just be "connecting to source ...".

Hmm... for some reason I've always though Penny Arcade was affiliated with Gamespy.

I agree with that. But I still like the skin Now I don't feel physical pain every time I visit the site. I don't like Gamespy or IGN much though, they seem uncomfortable to use compared to Gamespot.

I kind of like the videos. I prefer that to reading text at least, because I don't really like reading from a screen, I try to avoid that as much as possible. And the streaming is pretty good. No wait time, I can start watching immediately and the quality is not bad. I didn't pay much attention to how much of these videos were available without Complete though. Hehe... I just watched a Peter Molyneux presentation and he said "we have a big outsourcing resource in places like Estonia". I hadn't even heard of that.

Well, I caved in and payed the montly fee, which is not that much (about 6 hours worth of playing pool , which I don't do very often at the moment) The wonders of the digital age are quite amazing sometimes. I don't have a credit card, but my bank has a nice feature -- a virtual temporary debit card, which works like a VISA credit card for online payment. It works immediately as I order it from the internet bank, costs less than 1$, and when I payed for gamespot complete, the sum was almost immediately debited from my account.

I've heard about there being lots of GTA clones at E3... did any of them seem any good? What about the existing ones? I don't know how much they can be considered good, but I hear The Getaway, True Crime are similar. I've played Mafia and loved it. I wouldn't consider it a GTA clone, though -- it's quite different (though I actually wish it WAS more like GTA in some respect).

Probably should have done that. Too late now

You know what's funny? I just happened to see a thread on gtaforums.com discussing what the fans would like to see in a next GTA (it was started a long long time before anything was known about San Andreas) and to my surprise, I found most of the features that have been reported as present in San Andreas mentioned there. Including bikes, more gang-based, control your own gang, more interiors, including robbing peoples houses, take place in LA, San Fran, Vegas, have a countriside, have a mountain range, have a casino where you can gamble away your money, eat fast food. etc. etc. etc. http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=94324 Either a freak coincidence, or Rockstar has really paid attention to what the fans want. Almost makes me think that article in the magazine scan was fake.

I think that's a pretty narrow-minded thing to say. Derivative? Of what? It's a sequel, so it is obviously derivative of the previous games. The graphics are not the best out there, but I'm actually glad not all companies are chasing new records in number of polygons and fancy effects used in graphics. As I see it, the whole GTA series, especially GTA3 and Vice City are some of the most important games in gaming's recent history (the past 10 years or so). The series is innovative, and each title mixes new things into the amalgamation. Vice City hinted at strategy elements, which are going to be developed a lot further in San Andreas it seems. It's social critique and awareness is not matched by any other game that I know. It's main appeal though is that it's incredibly fun. That can be matter of taste of course; I could say I don't like The Sims, but I won't deny that it's a great game. To me it's just so fun travelling around in a living city, doing whatever I want (as much as the game lets me). And there are a lot of fun things to do. Yesterday I just discovered a new thing in GTA3 that I had completely ignored before: you can drive a car down to the metro station and on the rails, and drive on the train tracks, competing with the subway train. There was nothing intresting down there, but it was still fun. In Vice City I found I could jump out from a flying helicopter, land in a sailing boat and commandeer it. What other games let you do these kind of things? And the latter two games are not that much about violence and causing total mayhem any more. The only thing they reward you with for that is your criminal rating (which I personally never even looked at, practically). Appendix. after playing both VC and GTA3 recently, I was actually making a comparision of what VC added compared to GTA3: - motorcycles and helicopters (both really fun imho) - pizza delivery (one more minigame, not much but still fun) - ability to change your clothing, more clothes become available throughout the game. This was really good, kind of letting you personalize your character. - properties you can buy (some are just save spots, but some generate money if you complete the missions of that place). This was also quite fun. And it was cool taking a helicopter and flying through all my businesses, collecting the money. - more boats, boat races (just a small addition, not much) - more street races - bodyguards you can hire after finishing the game (or was it after collecting the 100 hidden packages). This is not much really as the AI isn't great. - remote-control helicopters and planes. (just a couple of fun races) - more story, story better connected with gameplay - buildings you can enter, including stores you can rob (simplistic, not that fun or useful though) - a firing range where you can practice your aim or try to get a high score - keepy uppy beach ball (really hard and a really minor thing) - roofs -- with the addition of helicopters and crazy jumps on bikes, the higher levels of the game world also got more developed, and became even more 3-dimensional. Depending on how you look at it, there are quite a lot of improvements actually. nothing really innovative, but I think San Andreas will have so much more than this little list that it will be almost revolutionary. At least the previews gave me a really positive feeling about it. I certainly wasn't expecting that much.

I don't mean that you'd have to control all the 11 guys all the time. There'd still be AI of course, but you'd have more strategic tactical control and if you wanted, you could override the AI with your own commands. So many times playing FIFA I've been frustrated that there's no way to get the ball where I want to in certain situations or I can't get the player's to the positions I want them to be at etc.