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Mmm, I just noticed I cut but forgot to paste a paragraph in my previous post : As for the , I was delighted to see that the graphics got better (subtle DOF effect, some kind of baked ambient occlusion, better textures) and that they nailed the look of Guybrush, Elaine and 95% of the environment (not so convinced about the jungle). Also, I loved the very first plot twist and the cliffhanger.

I mostly agree with what Rodi said : good but not stellar. Because of the crafty hands at TT games, it was enjoyable but I was surprised to see how formulaic everything seemed : the writing was good but lacked character (secondary cast could be put in S&M and no one would notice), the musics were good but unimaginative (except for the piece inside LeSinge's laboratory), the puzzles lacked the inventiveness of Chariots of the Dog or The Great Cow Race, the art design was good but lacked the particular edge of the concept arts ... In the end, I had an OK time but feel disappointed to not be surprised at all by where Telltale decided to take me with the MI universe - at least so far. Maybe that's what happen when you bring veterans of a mythic series to a new installment, but I was expecting more bravado on the gameplay front at least.

"I'm not really allowed to join that conversation... * sight* " It still fills me with wonder when game like CIV - which I expect to be a very hardcore math simulations - happen to create believable and striking story arcs. What saddens me is that when I tried to play Civ3, the event Nick described seemed very unlikely. But maybe it was already happening and yet, because I hadn't the keys to analyze it, I simply couldn't notice it. Maybe only an experimented user, who can see the Matrix because he actually gained big insight on the simulation through hours of gameplay, can decipher what's happening and construct a narrative out of it.

Well, I think the character of Bayonetta is the 'logic' evolution of God' Hand villains. Yeah, you're right, I listened to what you said again in the podcast and I did misunderstood your point. Sorry :/

Eheh, ThunderPeel 'Where's my Monkey Island?!!!!' EuAVgWJ28Hw

Chris, I don't really get why you hate Bayonetta's chara design so much since you said you loved God Hand and it had a very similar over the top, non sensical approach. Anyway, I too found the discussion about RPGs and adventure game very interesting and it'd be awesome if you could find a good excuse to seg to that in a future podcast. On a related note, isn't it pathetic and lame to give thanks to the adventure game genre for the fact that Gears of War provides a linear and meticulously pace experience ? First, it is lame because GoW story is lame, second, it is pathetic because to me, the way Uncharted, GoW or HL² tackle linear storytelling is closer to the Hollywood blockbuster paradigm than it is to any other. Good or bad, they did that on their own, I don't think adventure games had anything to do with it. What the traditional adventure game recipe offered as unique ingredients was a gameplay that required no split-second reflexes and a story that perpetually waited for the player to do something to move forward ... and I don't think the aforementioned titles tried to emulate that; and for good reasons.

Nonetheless, the fact that there is no texture and that the elevation is procedurally generated is very impressive.

"Up" is very strange movie. It feels like they pasted a 80 minutes entertainment movie at the back of the best piece of work that went out of Pixar's gates. Those 80 minutes are ok - sometimes hilarious - but it feels so different - what with the dog's joke and the weird bird - that every time the plot gets center stage, it just feels wrong.

I'd like to see Ron Gilbert's version of MI3, if it exists, just for the sake of it. In fact, since MI consistency has never been a huge concern for the guys who participated in each games, I would like Telltale to start the equivalent of Marvel's What if ? series. My opinion is that, since anyone within the adventure game community can play Six Degree of Telltale successfully, they could set up a series in the MI universe in which each episode featured a guest (game designer, writer or art director) providing a personal view on MI yet in a limited canvas. They could even give a little bit of continuity by making it an exquisite corpse game series. I can see the human resource and content management issues this would raise, but seeing how stimulating the mentioned series was and how the form of omnibus anime (which use a similar idea) isrevered, I think it would definitely be wort the hassle. Mind you, they could also do that with a brand new universe or Sam & Max and I'd be happy too.

Thanks! First weird thing, the support line number xbox.com provides for cell phone is being refused by my provider. Second one, when I use the 'normal one', from getting the line to the main menu, I have to go through 2 minutes of messages by several women displaying the thickest and most diverse north african and arabic accents, I've been given to hear. When I finally get to the menu none of the options fits the fact that I need to confirm my address, and there's no 'other' option. Well, I'll try this on monday at work.

I joined the club of the non-fixable RRoD an hour ago, with the slight difference that, having bought my 360 in the US and having it died in France, I expect the repair process to be a bitch. In fact, it already began : I registered my console on xbox.com and the site wants me to phone the support line since it can't confirm the physical address I gave is real.

Well, if he had, then he'd have Andie McDowell as a wife!

Ohooo, I see you're playing the '1 father and two twin sisters' card, heh ? It feels like cheating, if you ask me, but two can certainly play this game; how 'bout "You ain't got no Geneviève Brunet & Odile Mallte and Dominique Pinon^5 multiplied by André Dussolier on the same feakin' screen", mmm? NB: you're lucky, it's my time to commute.

Yeah, but even then, they didn't have Roland Giraud,Michel Boujenah & André Dussollier. Oh yeah, this cultural showdown is ON!

That's what the writers from Two and a Half Men said ....

I heard the story that Caro was just fed up of having to go through production - phase he wasn't really interested in since working with actors wasn't what he looked forward to - so they parted ways not because they disagreed, but because Jeunet wanted to keep on making movies while Caro wished to scale back his involvement. Don't know if it's true though.

So, I've given the game another short go, like for 8 hours during the week end ... which in turn, means that I've obviously enjoyed the game far more during these hours than I did in the first two. Weird how after Oblivion and STALKER, here's another open world game which doesn't seem to know how to properly introduce the player to its universe and gameplay mechanisms. Anyway, I've enjoyed Prototype for good reasons since, like someone said, Radical has a gift for portraying chaos in a fun and understandable way; which gives Prototype several awesome and truly epic moments. In fact, this is the first game I think I can call Epic. Epic, there. Like a boss fight that seems to be lasting for an hour and a half, and still remains tensed and challenging. Or a high speed foot chase in a city in which infected and non infected get engaged by tanks while you're consuming people on the go. Really impressive. The thing is that Prototype never manages to raise above this moment to moment awesomeness, which is a shame, considering how stellar a pair of these are ... too bad the game doesn't feel like a sandbox/open world game, more like a linear game set in a huge level. There isn't a lot of room to experiment the craziest moves, since I expect everybody will rely on a handful of moves, despite the fact they might be 30 of them. Now, I'm not done with the game yet, but for the first time a sequence seems to difficult for me, the one in which and I don't know if there's much I can take for this game; so I might just give up. Felt good to be wrong though!

"This is the game Terry Gilliam would have made if he had the visual flair of Michael Bay." -Ign.com "This is like Black & White 2 meets Dig Dug" -Ign.com

Face Controllers! R7lcJWL8mhE VtRVvBSbonk

Is that the Derek Williams from Free Market Economy ?

I just played a little less than one hour of Prototype On my 360 and I found myself surprised that I'm completely underwhelmed. The mains problem isn' t the aesthetic(big failure in terms of technical feature and art design) or the dull story, it's that the gameplay fail to offer me any kind of interesting situations or challenges. The Radical team decided to make the controls incredibly accessible - and that's fine by me - but where Spiderman added another layer of challenge by having an environment that stressed the limitation of Spidey, Prototype offers nothing. The consequence is that I'm running full speed on glass buildings but it doesn't come close to play as awesome as the in-game video looked. Plus, everything feels gamey and artificial - the blue columns for objectives , the ridiculous disguise gameplay, the crowds reaction, the insane number of cabs.. I've got a little more time this week-end, so I'll give it a go once more, but my hopes are pretty much shattered at the end of this first station.

I definitely know this one, it was in a book with several other 'terror' stories, one involving a haunted bus stop, another about a mother constantly tricking Death when it came to fetch her baby and the one I remember most vividly, the stories of a boy found a recursive book : the boy was in a old house and in this old house there was a corridor, at the end of this corridor was a cellar and in this cellar there was a chest and inside this chest there was a book, and the book told the story of a boy who was in a old house, and in this old house there was a corridor, at the end of this corridor was a cellar and in this cellar there was a chest and inside this chest there was a book.... etc. Can't remember the ending, but it still gives me goosebump. I've tried to find it online, but couldn't.

Life is treating pretty me well currently : I just spent 4 very relaxing days in Prague, on a sort of whim (read: I set that up 2 weeks ago). Chose my time pretty well without realizing it, what with all the United Islands Festival (think J-Pop festival and substitute J-Pop Bands with drunken Czech rocker/ska-er with interludes by Belgium Jazz) and the Night of the Museums going on during the same week end. Went to a Berstein/Jewish composers' mysic in a Kitsh Synagogue. Began wisthling 'Summetime' in a Art Nouveau Café at the very same second a very charmante german girl also did. Talk with a guy who went from the south-east of Italy to Lisbon with a bike he bought in Turky. Plus Mucha, Mucha, MUCHAAAAAAAAAAAA. And the Petrin Hill..

I would have loved to have Nemo in Slumberland and a Norman Rockwell illustration book when I was 10 or so! I still, I had The Cité Obscures (best BD ever) and Mafalda which were awesome in their own way. Going through the Comics/Bande dessinées stuff, I really liked Théodore Poussin which took place in sort of romanticized version of the colonialist era; a sort of Corto Maltese-light.