vimes

I can clearly see it : Infinity Ward - I'd guess one of the top 5 profitable studios under the Activition umbrella - being wedgi-ed into dropping dedicated servers. Come on, if this issue was going against their philosophy and was crucial to them, IW had the leverage to make Activision rethink their decision. How many billions have they been making since CoD1 ? Any guess should dwarf the cost of the 2 months of dev they were allegedly refused .

That happened to me once,

Juts completed a 6 (or 7 or 8? Can't remember) hour long session going from Chapter 2 to Chapter 25. Awesome game, a bit less well balanced than the first one : goes a bit more into Tomb "pushing blocks" Raider territory, features a tad too many cutscenes which are too close one from the next, there's a weird (or way too lenient ?) waypoint system that teleports where you haven't been yet . The rest is awesome : they managed to improve the control schemes for grenades, the graphics are amazing. Should rename it "Uncharted 2 : Shit breaks" for all the rotten things Drake keeps on using and that keeps on breaking under his weight. Anyway, I gave up after 8 hours because Elena's AI insists that she be in plain sight during the river infiltration sequence. And also, a minor character is named Shäfer. you now from Brütal Legend ?

I like it a lot, and then I hate it. Right now, I'm frustrated : I've spent the last 2 hours trying to , and the game never gives me a hint of why I'm losing. Plus, the shortcoming of the game are really showing : how come I don't know how long the debuff are lasting or when a spell is going to be available again ? How come even though I threw a Rock Block at the beginning of the game, the opponent still manages to throws bunch of troops at me in the first 30 seconds? How come the Merchbooths from the opponent takes age to crumble down (even in DoubleTeam) but mines falls like match buildings? How come it took me fuckin' ages to notice I could defend the stage by myself, and why isn't it bloody efficient ? If there are reasons - and I guess for 75% of these, there are - then the game fails to convey those. Writing a letter with advices day 1 after launch is cute , but it means something is wrong in terms of game design. Aren't there betas and test to notice that it's a big mess and then fix it?

Ooooo, I just discovered you could mount most of the wild beasts. Riding a laser panther and a thunderhorse? Fuckin' done! Apart from that, I've had my ass handed over several times by , so I'm currently spending some time roaming the land to find new spells (found 4 new ones, I'm still missing one) and get some fire points.

Wait for a few weeks then, it's not as if the game will become suddenly crap because Rocktober is over.

Played a few more hours; the RTS part looks more like DotA to me, but where DotA didn't ask you to direct the critters, Brutal Legend does and it makes playing tedious and difficult. I really get a kick out of this phases when I manage to get the proper flow between doing recon in the air, sending your troops at different positions and doing the dirty job yourself - when it pull that off, the feeling is quite unique and awesome; but that usually happens only once I've already gained - by chance or not really knowing why, the upper hand in the battle. Before that, pff ...the troop management is chore (I tend to forget I need to replenish my troops), and I wish the flag thing was automatic (i.e. new units are either sent to you or the 'hottest' position) or that the 'heavenly light would only stick to towers, fan geyser and gates. In fact, it would be awesome if you could choose to delegate most of this stuff to Mangus, since he's already warning me of incoming troops, tower attack, etc .... that wouldn't change the gameplay fundamentally - Riggs would still be a general and would still get to brawl - but it would make those parts really memorable and less frustrating.

Goddamit, I just rage quitted the game after having reset the first battle mission 3 times in a row because I got "out of the battling area". If you're going it put a warning message, display it so that I can actually prevent myself from doing so, even when I'm in the Killmaster bike.. There's a lot of things to say about what's wrong (stuttering framerate for instance) or not perfect (yet another game who goes from corridor to full open world too hastly; I wish I could deactivate all the gamey screen (achievements, win/loose, help)), but it does have the best atmosphere and the best feeling of authorship and personality I've had in a game in a looooooooonnng while. Kudos to the environment artists, the scripters and the music director for making the world so amazing to roam through. And so far, the changes in gameplay are akin to what Schafer's offered in adventure game : same basic mechanism but completely unique interactions; I know it's not going to last, but so far that's one of the highlight of the experience.

This is strangely catchy and hypnotizing; this might even become one of my guilty musical pleasures, in the same way the Soupe au Choux remix was for a few weeks: hXz7o62T73c

I'm not really a connoiseur of game related litterature, but Hit Self Destruct was the best thing that I was ever given to read on the interweb : it had great content, a personal yet refined angle, a semi self conscious style and managed to covered a whole bunch of genre without getting lost in its aesthetic. It featured rants, analysis, fictions, allegories and, except for ealier articles and exceptions here and there; everything's awesome and worth reading.

I always thought the director of animation on Roger Rabbit was Ward Kimball, but for the life of me, I can't find a source...

Done and all I can articulate is a lengthy sigh of content, the kind that follows a very awesome meal featuring the perfect successions of courses, all of them made with the proper ingredients, cooked the way they are meant to be, in quantities just right and condiment-ed the way I like it. 'Aaaaaaahhhhhhh...'

Roger Rabbit is an awesome movie, don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Well, why, of course Alice!

So, Friday is the definite meet day? Ossk and nowak when are you leaving ? I'm planning to take the Friday off and get a train around 9AM.

But then, that means that, for you, watching a movie is damn close to experiencing reality. So, in a sense we're catching on to you, rather than leaving you behind.

Thanks! I'm bookmarking this, and I'm taking my diva-esque indignation off. As a side note, I've just stopped playing the game because I'm sweaty and shaky from being sent down the dark corridors of an ancient nazi sanatorium where - would you know it ? - terrible monsters dwell. Monsters that can kill you with one clench paw. I hate scary things, I don't like them in real life and I don't like them in my games; that's even more true when the game is a shooter and my uncontrolled trembling makes my aim even more shitty that it usually is. And I loath games that are in no way scary until the game designer suddenly chuckles and plays the horror card out of the blue. I think I'll ask a friend to go through this level for me. I know : I'm a baby.

Jesus Christ, I'm playing this game right now and I find it completely awesome - actually, it's the first console shooter whose control I find comfortable and fitting ... and I've come to this thread to see my enthusiasm being pumped up tenfold by what I remember to be a very good piece by Alex. And then , it had vanished; vanished in such a dire way that even the Wayback Machine can't seem to be able to bring it back. So, What's up with all the written stuff having vanished, not only from the main page, but from the public server? Are you guys playing "Let's see how long we can pretend there was nothing before the podcasts and the Idle Memes era" ?

I completely remember this one, and the peculiar circumstances in which I bought it : I was on a trip with my parents in Venice and bought it from a small press kiosk in the city's web of intricate streets. Every night for the rest of the trip, I would fetch the box from our luggage, stare at the disks (two of them were black, one was blue, that was a first as a gamer) and read the italian manual illuminated with wonderful black and white pictures of the game. I must have been 9 or 10 at the time, and when I finally got to play the game, I got raped thoroughly and could never get passed the second level. Man, what a difficult game. Anyway, back to Lucidity : the aesthetic is charming but the gameplay (think Sleepwalker minus the platforming component) turned out to be very poor and so I couldn't bring myself to finish the demo. I like the effort though, since it shows LucasArts is ready to venture in new genres, new style and original universe.

Streets of Fury By: Cyrille Lagarigue & Jordi Asensio Available: Demo is free, full game is 240 MsPoints Synopsis: A Fatal Fury burrito with Guardian Heroes meat drenched in a Street of Rage dressing; the whole thing being wrapped in a deep fried corny scenario in which the uprising of french suburban gangs forces the president to call the best LA gangs members to the rescue. It's a ton of fun in coop (4 player in local) and pretty awesome too in single. Plus FMV sprites FTW! Gets bonus points for being developed by a coworker and friend. More: Marketplace link Official Website

That's one of the bit I don't quite get : if he loves the Disney aesthetic and universe so much, why would he change nearly all of it? "I love Disney, so I've made a game about its universe crumbling down and rotting with corruption" ?

Here's something I've always wondered about comics : what's up with the weird use of bold words. From time to time, they do make sense in terms of speech emphasis, but most of the time they don't make any sense. What kind of rambling lunatic speaks like this. "You will live long enough to rue this day-- to taste the vengeance of the Silver Surfer!"

This project is intriguing. In a way, it feels a bit like Ripper or Dante Inferno, since Junction studio took a iconic property yet brought it miles away from its original tone ... thus could have used an original IP. To draw a parallel, Toostruck created a cartoon universe from scratch but referencing heavily Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, the Merry Melodies and Sunday Morning cartoons in general. Because the game distanced itself from lost of well known material, the spoof and criticisms it drew were pretty efficient, smart and even dared to go into 'kinky' territories. If someone made a total skinning for Toonstruck with well known characters and kept all the rest, I don't think any of it would work. So, I remain sceptical, somewhat convinced that tying the game to such a tightly controlled universe as Disney's might dumb down what Spector and his team could say and do within final game. But Spector is behind it, so my double guessing might be wrong .. and if someone manages to find the right angle on such extreme approach and make a good game out of it, it might be the best surprising thing ever.

I love the sound of rad and I definitely picked it up from the podcast, so you all three are responsible for my social downfall.

I corrected it to 'Hamburglar' after searching on wikipedia, but the translation and alliteration seemed to fit . Frankly, I'm not sure what's his name in French... Also, an Irish coworker couldn't stop laughing for 20 minutes when I said his prototype was 'rad' because, apparently, he felt this word belonged to the 60's ... and learning it was apparently a shortcut from 'radical' made it sound even more cheesy;(