Thrik

Sadly, it's true. And haha, yes. The first thing I thought when I saw it in its flat position was "priner". :~

That "The Room" really was incredible. I mean, God damn. Obviously it's no good as a game in itself (except for some messing around), but if they can work that into a working game concept then it'd be brilliant. Black and White 2 looked great from what I saw, and I don't really think it looked chaotic at all. Everything seemed very logical and simple to use. The battle bit was pretty intense, but it has to be remembered that that is not the kind of battle you'll be thrown into as a beginner. I mean, any RTS game is going to look confusing as hell if you start watching somebody else playing it who's fairly experienced. I look forward to The Movies too. I've not been following it too closely, but what I saw there looked ace. The whole menu system was very cool. I knew that they were stripping the interface down to a bare minimum, and keeping it mainly 3D, but I had no idea how they were actually goint to be doing it.

Oh, we can.

Heh. It's still playable, so I'm just gritting my teeth through the cutscene stutters, and a bout of driver experiementation has helped the 3D problems to an extent. I still blue screen or freeze every 20 minutes or so, but you know, it's better than nothing. The game runs great apart from that. Although bgbennyboy has just given me a pointer that may or may not fix the Bink problem. We'll see.

I guess they just wanted to ensure that everyone can actually play it by not providing the game via a format they can't use (although obviously the point was defeated with GameStop's supplies seemingly being a bit borked). I mean with more high profile games they can afford to exclude some people, but Psychonauts obviously has to be treated with a little more care.

Haha. They just shipped mine with all 5 disks, thank God. Really, if they hadn't I would have had it returned and jumped onto the return flight armed with a scythe.

Is there anyone who's received the game with missing CDs who didn't order it from GameStop?

If you're in the UK, there could be delays on our end. It's bank holiday Monday, and I'm not sure if postal services continue to operate on public holidays like that.

It's still showing as unshipped in the tracker for me on GameStop. Oh, how I laugh.

Pro tip: Record the aforementioned program to access the bonus level.

If there were a GameStop here I would do just that. ;

Man, yes. I've emailed GameStop again (after they promised me it should be shipped on the 27th) all ">:". Hopefully I'll get more than a generic response.

Those crazy Lionhead types have released a short compilation of footage from their current pre-alpha build, available from GameSpot here. You'll need a basic account before the link will allow you to download. It looks pretty cool. Unlike a lot of people, possibly because I totally ignored the hype, I really enjoyed the first one. It was the best game ever, until they took my creature away on like the third level. Then I got upset. I can see why the intense micromanagement and such would have annoyed a lot of people though, since it did get a bit excessive at times. From what I've read though, they've learnt from their mistakes and the actual play of B&W2 is far different from the original, since the people have "evolved" into a later stage of history, and as such can take care of all the micromanagement from the first themselves, and let the player concentrate on doing divine things instead. It's all about war too. There's clearly room for polish after watching the trailer though, which I hope they manage to iron out by the time it eventually comes out. Some of the animations seem a bit linear, and the fps ducks at times, hinting at a lot of optimization ahead. I do have hope for the game though, and since it's not even in alpha yet there's plenty of oppertunity for cleaning stuff up.

a) What's with the two recent BGAE threads? The sequel?

Yeah. I'm not sure if the (short) footage actually shows anything from the "Lost Coast" extra level thing which is supposed to be the primary showcase for this new HDR lighting which is being put into Source, but it shows HDR lighting in Source. http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/halflife2/Missions/hdr_lostcoast_q01.zip.html It's pretty cool, and the potential for this is quite extensive with future mods. If you're unsure what HDR actually is, you might want to download this, which is a small tech demo that basically shows off HDR in its fullest. In other news, I like the music that plays during the church footage (also seen on G4 in the past if I recall) of the video. I hope we hear more melodical stuff like that in either the mission pack or expansion, instead of more of the heavy electronica stuff.

Probably. This is Valve, remember?

Man, this is why scores should just be banished. Make people exercise that reading ability of theirs and get the facts rather than just score-skimming.

GameSpy @ 4.5/5 stars.

Hahaha.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/607/607025p1.html?fromint=1

It uses wireless controllers I think.

Did you then proceed to tell him to go eat his dick?

Man, I feel your pain. I'm sat here like a dolt waiting for GameStop to even begin shipping PC Psychonauts! This is outrageous.

It's not hugely complicated, although the FX one is a bit of a confuser at first. The FX series is essentially just the 5th series, then you've got the TI series being the 4th series, the rest are just named by number. Certain cards in each series fall well above or below cards in higher/lower serieses though, so have a good look into a card before buying it. The MX that I mentioned earlier is one example. As a small piece of advice though, I'd try to avoid the FX series if you can, and just go straight to the AGP 6th series. The cards are far more powerful, and are worth the extra cash. The 6600gt is a fairly good card which is powerful yet affordable, although it has problems with VIA and SiS mainboards, so avoid it should you have either of those. ATI don't really have a comparable card to the 6600gt afaik. The 2nd/3rd/4th Geforce series cards should just be outright avoided. Most of them are 100% obsolete and no longer supported, and newer drivers pretty much ignore their existence (you get far better performance with two year old drivers when using a GF4 than you do with the recent ones). They're cheap, sure, but they'll struggle. They'll struggle a lot.