Thrik

Hah, my poor keyboard has been shoved into numerous spots before I finally shoved my shelves along a bit to make room for where it is in the first photo. One of these days I'll sort out the big box o' crap that contains numerous books, films, games, etc. Anyone else have tasks that should be done right after moving that just linger for... years?

Oh, just realised this thread is for gaming areas too. Haven't got a fresh shot so this one from Christmas will have to do (both taken from roughly the same spot coincidentally):

Haha, yes it seems that my OCD doesn't extend into my virtual world for some reason.

I've never really liked having two monitors, the divide bothers me. I much prefer to have a larger monitor (24 inches or above) and I kind of just throw my windows all over the place, never maximising anything. Suits my chaotic working style, anyway.

Funnily enough I reported this as a bug to IP.Board a few days ago. In the meantime it can probably be fixed if the embed code is adjusted to use a wmode of 'opaque'.

The square avatar thing is actually a side-effect of importing all the data over from vBulletin. The new forum will generate nice square thumbnails when you add a new avatar, and you can even determine which part it uses — but ones carried over from before have no such thumbnail so the regular version is simply stretched into place. I doubt there's a trivial way around this so if it bothers you just re-upload your avatar.

I'm pretty much delighted to see IP.Board in use now, being in the process of switching my own forum over to it (phpBB ¬¬). I've thought it to be ahead of vBulletin for a long time and am amazed more large forums haven't made the jump. Regardless of what quirks arise, this is a splendid move!

Max has been portrayed by a different actor in all three games. Check him out in Max Payne 2: The same voice actor has performed for all three games though, and in the third he's done his mo-cap too. His MP3 rendition is quite visibly based on the MP2 actor: As opposed to the MP1 guy:

Not going to be able to afford it for a while, but this makes me want it: WIzyXYmxbH4 I'm liking the concept of getting to see Max Payne go even further down the rabbit hole of despair (Is that even possible?!) and ending up as the slaphead wreck the original announcements unveiled. I originally thought the game would just take place in Brazil from the outset and have little in common with the past Payne aesthetically or otherwise but that seems to not be the case. Also, hearing that theme gets me nostalgic as fuck.

I don't have any worries at all about Double Fine being capable of distinguishing which feedback is worth incorporating. I've hung around no end of official game communities over the years and the amount of insane opinions you see is hilarious, but the developers have always been pretty good at figuring out which issues are genuinely in need of looking at — it very rarely comes down to the 'who shouts loudest' approach we (probably somewhat insultingly) assume developers will use.

Assassin's Creed 3: Bear Eater

I really like that art style, reminds me a bit of the LucasArts fan art Jayel (He is Dan Lee, right?) used to put together. Not sure what exactly I'm meant to be looking at, though — is that a pirate, a scientist, and a knight? With the concept also featuring things like gangsters I'm thinking this might be a 'choose your class' type game, which is a feature often found in genres I'm not particularly keen on. But we'll see!

Haha, no I agree it is a very overused effect — I guess it's become the new HDR. It's more the footage in general I like though, it captures the essence and scope of Tribes really nicely. He should have just released it without the effect.

I like this. u4YyBypBSGw

Oh, does it? Well I'll give it a while and if a new release doesn't seem to be on the horizon I will most likely break down and play it via the Wii.

Well yeah, that's what I mean. Those things were a bit out of character for Snake — although it is understandable Kojima might want to emphasise the fact that there's a reason Snake was so legendary in his youth — but there wasn't really anything beyond that which was silly. Out of hours of cutscenes that's not too bad, and well worth it for the improved cinematography just about everywhere else. And most admirably of all, the dialogue remained pretty much identical throughout. But yes, I think we're in agreement. Both versions are splendid and the only thing remaining is for one of them to be overhauled into looking good in HD. I just don't feel right starting my HD MGS adventure with MGS2!

I'd recommend Twin Snakes every time. While I'm typically forgiving when it comes to graphics, MGS1 sits on the wrong side of the 'when 3D games started to look timeless' line for me. Even though I thought it looked spectacular at the time and my original love for the whole series came from that game, I just can't get into how it looks now — and if I can't, someone new to the series is going to seriously struggle. Also the gameplay does feel a bit too stiff and fragile in comparison, even if Twin Snakes makes things easier (although I've played it on Extreme and 'easy' is not a word I'd use to describe it). Overall I don't think anyone is losing anything by experiencing Twin Snakes instead of MGS1, although it is a shame we can't just take them back in time to when MGS1 blew everyone away. I agree that some of the cutscenes were made a bit OTT, although it's easy to exaggerate the issue. In reality less than a handful of shots were taken to the extreme, and even those weren't really any worse than what we've seen in all three subsequent MGS games. Other than that, I think Twin Snakes' cutscenes were largely done much better than MGS1's and most of the iconic moments were treated with a lot of respect. I reckon if Kojima could edit out those few crazy-ass bits he would, so maybe we'll see a third remake or adjusted version of Twin Snakes that takes the best bits of both. Something that'd slipped my mind until I saw the video above is how good the cutscene music is in Twin Snakes. Seems it's actually specifically done by the same guy who did much of the music in MGS2–4, whereas the in-game stuff is done by relative nobodies. Real shame none of it is available for separate listening.

Yeah, the original MGS is well beyond a bit of touching up. I guess completely remaking it would be pretty hot, although I think the result wouldn't actually be that far off Twin Snakes with snazzier graphics. It was actually Kojima himself who wanted the cutscenes making more dramatic in Twin Snakes, allegedly turning down a version with the cutscenes recreated down to every last camera angle. I think most people do actually like Twin Snakes, though. There's a vocal minority displeased with the fact some things were messed around with, but then these are the same kind of people who go mental about in MGS4. And considering that MGS4 treats things introduced in Twin Snakes as canon, I consider it the definitive version of MGS1 and would be more than happy with a re-release a la the HD PS3 set to be in my collection forever. And yes, the Twin Snakes Ninja depiction is gloriously mental.

Also, I am massively looking forward to playing the HD re-release of this. However I'm hanging on and hoping to God there's a HD re-release of on the Wii-U first. :tup::tup:

Yeah I agree that it's well worth switching between the two modes. For outdoor areas it's definitely preferable to have the free-roaming camera, but indoor sections tend to look and play better with the traditional camera — which is appropriate as these sections are themselves reminiscent of past MGS games. I highly recommend playing through MGS3 and MG4 on 'Extreme' at some point. It really turns up the necessity to be stealthy, and gives the enemies far superior vision and hearing. The amount of tension I experienced sometimes was enough to give me a heart attack and I had to spend ages planning out how to approach each area.

Bloody 10/10 on Eurogamer? It's great but I wouldn't say perfect. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-16-tribes-ascend-review Getting good reviews across the board, though. Apparently player figures are exceeding T1 and T2 too. Good, hopefully that'll mean more big maps.

So, it's out! It's really not very different from the beta, although the new map Raindance is excellent — totally feels like a classic Tribes map, which I believe it in fact is although I never played Tribes 1. But it feels like a lot of my favourite T2 maps like Sanctuary so I'm happy. Also, if you're quick you can get a free spinfusor for the Soldier here: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/04/12/celebrate-the-launch-of-tribes-ascend-with-a-new-weapon-on-us/

Yeah, he really is all about giving people a new experience — and that's a wonderful thing. Black & White was a brilliant game in my opinion, a crazy fusion of various things I've always enjoyed (simulation, puzzles, Tamagotchi). It saddens me that kind of game will probably never happen again, especially when taunted by things like From Dust.

I've always been fond of Molyneux. He's a little like a child in that he gushes on about his ideas and gets really over-excited, but it's all very innocent and is simply a true creative who loves his job. I can see why those who hang onto every word he says and expect his games to be the second coming of Christ might be disappointed upon actually playing them, but I've been very careful to avoid listening to him talking about his upcoming games and as a result I absolutely loved the Black & White and Fable games — I had no expectations, and really enjoyed them for what they were. Plus let's not forget that this is the man behind Theme Park, one of my absolute childhood favourites.