vimes

We need another one.... come on.

It'd be nice if we could actually take control of the avatar and just run around the dashboard... an create a sort of personal room, ala Psychonauts/LBP. That'd be unuseful but awesome.

Damn, I missed this opening music.

Wasn't Hitler's other testicle supposed to be in the Albert Hall ?

I really like the new interface and new look , but NXE keeps on making my console freeze when I go to my friend's list. The avatar creation is indeed very nice and it would be awesome if you could actually use it with something as lobotomy42 said.

Too bad, you're not English, this would have been pretty appropriate. At least the first 30 seconds.

The scenes are composed of several planes of 2D art : 1 for the foreground object, 1 for the location where Mona moves and 1 for the background. They tried to give a better impression of depth by having these plans move when the character does (ala [jump to 4.30 to get a proper explanation and 6.38 for the bambi openig using this]) ... but the relative movements seems just plainly wrong to me.

I've played it for 5 minutes, long enough to have an opinion about the cosmetics unfortunately, not enough to judge the gameplay .. So, unsurprisingly, the background art is very impressive but the 3D art is a bit disappointing so far : the models are good, but their animations are a bit stiff and their integration in the background could be far better - ah, also, the parallax scrolling is just completely fucked. In terms of audio, the music are awesome and Frodrick's and the bad guy's voices are quite alright. Mona's voice on the other hand ... is very, very irritating. I just noticed that this demo is the first time we hear her voice and given her look I was expecting something more sensual an mature... maybe it fits her character, but that undermines some of the magnetism given by her stature, gaze and way of moving around.

Finally! I've got scientific ground for my phobia of one-testicle-ed people.

I'm in.

OK, I have to admit my comment was pretty heartless but I'd still stick to it since I still think this story gets even more surreal as it develops* ... but since my comment brings nothing to the table, there was no reason for me to post it in the first place and I shouldn't have. for me. Anyway, to clarify my feelings : it simply feels outlandish to me that, upon finding their son's corpse and even before his funeral, a couple would think of starting a charity and evoke such strange reason for it. I'd think that, seeing the condition of the death, this would be a time of self-introspection. *so much, in fact, that I can't make any emotional connection with the parents. My fault, I guess.

Wait, what ? Can anybody explain the parent's train of thought ?

Errr, good episode, but since the first podcast, I've been wondering : is it only me or does the reader's letters section tends to slip toward easy bashing rather than constructive stuff ?

How do the ones among you who played Far Cry 2 feel about Redding's interview and Clint Hocking's keynotes/conference now that the game is out, and that it's definitely not the semi-autonomous character driven juggernaut they promised it would be ?

I only managed to play a few hours since getting my PC copy last week, but so far, even though there are a few great ideas, it seems mediocre on too many level for me to gather the courage to finish it GRAPHICS I'm not a big fan of the artistic direction, particularly the character design : that might be because I'm on "average" settings, but most of the character look like they are made of wax. Lots of unreadable space : not enough landmarks in the wild (jungle and desert) makes traveling around boring and can't trigger my thirst of exploration. In the urban areas, there's a lot of confusion : I find it hard to distinguish between the characters and the background. Atmospheric ... but only at dusk or dawn : 80% of the time, the lighting is a bit crude to my taste (had to put a lot more contrast and lower the lightness), and there's a horrendous bloom effect on every other object, including dead meat ... and overall, the textures are pretty flat (most seen in the desert). But yeah, at dusk and dawn, it looks pretty awesome, and the environment suddenly grows character. [*]GAMEPLAY A horrible AI : in Legend, the opponents can't notice you when you're in their freakin' face and they're impervious to bullet. They decide to drive to you, when you're two meters away and most of them don't have any initiative. ... but an enjoyable talking component : it's pretty good, and always hilarious, mostly when they keep on talking and talking like they are in a café or something Bad exploration game design : walking or driving around is uninteresting, the diamonds are scattered artificially (in freakin' suitcase and in 'random' location) and gathering them feels like grinding; it's a shame since the GPS/map/highlighted road sign system is a complete success. Poor FPS design : the AI is bad and the weapons are too weak to make up for it : the firing feeling is non-existent, and if the jam and explosion event are awesome ideas in themselves, they're being triggered too randomly to have a real dramatic effect. So, it's very close from being good, but it's not. Awesome buddy system : finally an awesome alternative to quickload. It's good, really good. [*]STORY, CHARACTERS & UNIVERSE : for now, I can't really give any opinion : the first encounter with the nemesis is pretty laughable (arm dealer AND English major?) and seeing the AFL give you money before you do anything is weird , but the rest seems to give a good depiction of the dynamics of the African conflicts. I can see how it could turn out to be really good, but there's also a lot of hints that it won't matter which 'side' you choose. It's like in Deus Ex 2 : they get pissed for 2 seconds, then give you money for another mission. Also, I'd be curious to see what is the impact of the character the player choose before beginning the story. My current feeling is that for all the things it tries to do and to be, FC2 lacks a unique direction that would unify all of these into a coherent whole; worse even, I feel that the designers underestimated the importance of getting the fundamentals of FPS and exploration gameplay right before attempting anything risky in terms of narration and experience. Thus, it can be pretty ugly, mostly in combat. But that being said, I'm only a few hours in, and I can still conceive how this game can become awesome; but I'm planning to give up if nothing noteworthy appear in my next three game sessions. Edit : , the ends of several sentences were missing, I must have been tired.

The slow motion makes it look like you're digging a hole, in a fashion to happy for it not to be kinda disturbing : are you digging a grave? who are you gonna put in ? mmm ? Mmmm ?!

I'm playing it right now and, hurray, the french version runs perfectly on my US Xbox. I'll tell you what I think later on, but the most striking and surprising thing for me right now are the urban environments : they. are. just. perfect. No kidding.

Maybe there's a remote chance that the Dream Team Operation from Ubisoft Canada could help you ? Plus, since he's back on earth, couldn't you guys ask money from albion-born multimillionaire* Richard Garriot? * it's how he's referred to in the french daily news

Heh, as said in the intro, it's not a story of a single person :

Played it for 5 minutes and so far, it's awesome : I love the fact that you use information from previous stories to create new ones. I wonder if you can get pass the first action ...

I always wondered : can you register an IP like you'd do for a patent or something?

Err, what's the best way to buy a US game to ship to Europe (I've got a US 360 and I fear it's not going to be compatible) ?