lobotomy42

This, by the way, is an awesome beginning of a sentence.

Hmm...this game seems to be getting an awful lot of good press, but I still don't want it. Am I crazy? Am I missing something? It looks like Deus Ex underwater? I mean, I love the art style and the story and stuff, but as mentioned above, every preview just talks about "all the different ways to kill stuff" which, as far as I can tell, is the same bunch of ways you've always been able to kill stuff in an RPG/Shooter hybrid - stealth, guns, or magics. This doesn't seem that new? Or new at all? Can someone on the Thumbs staff write a scathing review of it once its out to justify my completely arbitrary prejudices?

I'm in the beginning/middle of Okami now. Going has been slow, as work is busy and much of my time goes into Planescape: Torment these days (now that my computer works again again again). It's a neat little game. I'm not completely blown away by it, but perhaps I built it up too much in my head. Still, it's a nice alternative to Zelda, and better in a lot of ways. I really like it, but I still feel slightly disappointed because I expected it to be this *brilliant* masterpiece based on all the awards it's been winning. (Also, comparing anything to Planescape Torment makes the anything pale in comparison.)

Kotaku Yuck. I love Chibi Robo, but this is a bad, bad sign, since "retailer-exclusive" usually means "terrible." I was so looking forward to this game, but I guess now I'll wait for reviews before deciding not to buy it.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/a-fightin.-hand/dr-who-video-game-for-christmas-284277.php YES!

Except, I don't think it is attitudes like that which make cheap franchising easy. Sure, I suppose it helps with the odd cult franchise that actually has devout fanboys, but most franchising is for mainstream films and television shows. The games are bought by the mainstream because they probably don't own many games, and hey, the kids will play it. From the people I know who buy franchised games, there reasons are usually more along the lines of "Well, I don't care about games very much, and this is fine" than it is "SQUEEEE! Garfield the game of the movie of the comic!!! I must have this!"

You guys can trash-talk it all you want, but I'm still excited. It can't be more of a waste of money than all the Who novels, cds, comics and "Official Magazine" back-issues I have sitting around. It's just one of those things I'm obligated to buy.

So, I was all excited that I can finally afford to go out and buy an Xbox 360... Only to realize that I don't actually know what games, if any, I want. What games are the best on this system? I'm all stoked for the games *about* to come out for it, like BioShock, Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon and Mass Effect...but they're *about* to come out. Should I just wait until then? I'm perusing the list of already-released games, and the ones that stand out to me the most are: Kameo: Elements of Power Dead Rising Lost Planet Gears of War ? (maybe) Is this it? Because if so, I may just wait and go buy some DS games instead.

Seriously, why not? Everyone seems to hate these stupid lists...so let's see if ours comes out any different. Just type in your favorite game and we'll tally them up as we go... I vote for Grim Fandango. Go!

You think it's bad seeing it? You think it's bad in the country where it's happening? Try living in Washington, D.C. where I do, and you still can't actually vote for anything meaningful. We have one fucking "honorary" representative, and one electoral college vote. ONE. That will make a difference in NO ELECTION EVER. So, you get to watch it happen all around you (in buildings a stone's throw away), you get to constantly be forced to the side of the road as Bush and his ginormous helicopters/motorcade/hoverboard take up the entire street, and you get the sweet satisfaction of knowing that any drunken anti-evolutionary Kansas school board member has about 200x more input in the government's direction than you. UGGGGGGGGG What genius thought of that? "Hey, let's have a democracy, where everyone can vote. Except people that live in the capital of the country, that would be stupid." Seriously, imagine if Londoners couldn't elect MPs or Parisians couldn't elect deputies and vote for President? Would that not sound a bit, well, ridiculous?

My wishlist is basically that, plus Mass Effect, Blue Dragon (maybe) and of course, Eternal Sonata EDIT: Oh, goodness, and Fallout 3! How could I forget that!

Well, you beat me to it. Since I *also* just got an Xbox 360, I'll post my initial thoughts here as well. FYI, I got the Core model, and the smallest memory card possible, because I'm cheap. And I don't feel like paying money for online service, so I'm not really worried about missing out on XBLA or anything like that. I'll deal. Also, I already had the component video cable.) The Dashboard, or whatever it's called, is ridiculous. It's like every bad stereotype of Microsoft UI's. I can honestly not tell what it supposed to be on each tab, nor why some information appears to be duplicated. And when my screen is in widescreen mode, it refuses to even take up the entire space, so it's also wasting real estate. I thought the Wii's internal UI was overly complicated, but this blows the Wii out of the water, and not in a good way. The controller is decent, though not as magnificent as I'd been led to believe. (IGN called this "the best traditional controller ever" or something.) I like how they differentiated the two sets of L/R buttons, and the joysticks really snap to the center. I do wish that, since they went with "XYAB" for the lettering, that they'd keep them in the same position as the SNES controller they stole them from, but that's a small issue since they're color-coded. I think I still prefer my GameCube controller, but this is nice. The console itself isn't too much bigger than the PS2. This is nice, since I was led to believe it was monstrously huge. What's up with that weird plug? It couldn't read my Kameo disc at first. Not a good sign. Graphics: Hard to tell, since I only have a few games. (Viva Pinata, Kameo, Eternal Sonata demo) But, all three are really pretty - the hi-res textures really make a difference. And they do look quite nice in 720p. (Kameo's wings are my favorite bit.) What's up with the framerates, though? They seem sort of...not so steady. (This could be the games) And the loading times! Yikes! (Again, the games maybe?) *sigh* I miss last-gen. It's a tad noisy. In general, my feeling on the Xbox 360 is...I like the Wii a lot. Seriously, I was a bit underwhelmed by the Wii when I got it, but it compares pretty damn favorably to the Xbox 360. I wasn't totally convinced Nintendo was right when they said "Oh, graphics aren't so important anymore. Let's focus more on controls and the user experience." I mean, I was excited, but I secretly wished the Wii would have awesome next-gen visuals. But, seriously, I'm starting to think they were right. Also, some specific thoughts on the games: - Why do I suck at Kameo so much? I keep dying, no matter how hard I try to beat up these ogre guys. Maybe I should stop skipping the tutorials like a 6-year-old. - Why do I suck at Viva Pinata so much? My whirlms keep getting attacked, and no one will mate except them. Maybe I should stop skipping the tutorials like a 6-year-old. - Eternal Sonata is going to kick all kinds of ass.

Man, and I thought the GCN controls were pretty much perfect. I may have to get this, if it's as improved as everyone says...

Alright! I'm back, with an Xbox 360 Core (already have component cables for it, and I doubt I'll use the hard drive or online service). I bought Viva Pinata ($30), Kameo Elements of Power ($20) and the Eternal Sonata Demo (aka Xbox Magazine) ($10) So far Viva Pinata is cute, though my fear is perhaps being made manifest - I've reached this point where I'm like "Ok, now what am I supposed to do?" and just sort of keeping building fences for no reason. And they've just revealed to me that my animals will *eat and kill each other* which is totally not very cute or very friendly! They let me name my little worms, become attached to them, watch them mate, only to have them blow up in my face because of the stupid snakes? Grrrrrr...That's it, I'm just fencing in the worms forever so no one can hurt them. Kameo looked...er...interesting. I was thinking it would be Zelda-ish but it seemed more...I don't really know what. Whatever, I'm sure it's fine. Really, the whole point of this little exercise is to be ready when Eternal Sonata comes out. I played the demo and it was FREAKING GORGEOUS. I *love* the Tales of series, and although this game isn't in it...it pretty much could be. The battle system isn't technically real-time, but it's still nifty. So stoked!

I'll have to take a look at this Crackdown business. I just plain haven't heard of it. I guess I'll go read some reviews, but if y'all recommend it, I'll assume it's good stuff? As for Kameo - I actually prefer pastels to brown, so no problem there. And I'm iffy on Gears because of the ridiculous machismo pouring out of it, but I might suck it up and get it anyway. I do like 3rd person shooters - or at least I loved Resident Evil 4. I was thinking Viva Pinata, but I worry I might not enjoy it. I soured on The Sims and Animal Crossing because I quickly realized that there was no "end-game," and so the various tasks I was doing seemed more like endless chores than progress towards any sort of goal. Does that make sense? I do like Pinata's art style, though, so maybe I'll try it anyway. Is there more to do than just errands and garden maintenance?

Bah. Linux rules. GUIs drool. Except for games. I need me my graphics in games...

What? What?!? The timer is what makes this game work! If there wasn't a timer, you'd just stock up on Pikmin for a few days before you ever go out, and then tear through the enemies. Then stock up, and repeat. It would be stupid! They took the timer out of the second game, and replaced it with dungeon-crawls. The whole game became killing other creatures. No puzzle solving, no exploration - because all that stuff becomes easy if you aren't racing against the clock. Just lots and lots of enemies to fight, and it was totally boring. (Although the item gallery was pretty neat.) The first Pikmin was SO GOOD. Everyone hated the timer, it seems, except poor old me...

Grim Fandango had great controls. Seriously, I loved them, and I wasn't even a Resident Evil nut at the time. They weren't in the way, they were simple, and best of all, they didn't detract from the cinematic experience. Someone could just sit down and *watch*. You could hold down the "up" arrow and watch Manny run in a continuous straight line for multiple screens, even as the camera angles changed. Seriously, if GF had a stupid Monkey Island-esque mouse pointer waving around all the time, I'd hate it. The controls were fine. The gameplay was great, combining objects or no. The story was fantastic. Look, it was just perfect, and clearly the best game ever, and if you can't accept that than I'm afraid you're going to have to live with being dead wrong for the rest of your life, and possibly I'll take you off my MySpace page or something. That's what you get! GRIM FANDANGO WINS AGAIN

Let it be known that, before this thread matured/degenerated into people talking about how stupid this thread is, that.... GRIM FANDANGO WAS WINNING! Therefore, Grim Fandango is truly the best game ever and I win! Yes!

I'm a sci-fi whore: Metroid Prime 3 Mass Effect (and I don't even have an Xbox 360!) Too Human Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations No More Heroes To a lesser extent: Dewy's Adventure Zak & Wiki Bioshock And, my biggest hype, for things way way down the line: KotOR 3 (if it is ever announced, and I hope it will be) Fallout 3 Mind you, I can't actually afford to buy any of these. And I certainly haven't the time to play them. Nonetheless, there they are.

My PC is finally working again, and newegg *finally* sent me a replacement for my previous broken graphics card and... W00t! Things look good again! Wow, the Prey Demo is really fun! And, hey, the Doom 3 Engine actually looks really really good when it's not running at 5 fps. Wowsers!

The graphics card is AGP, that's all I can use in this motherboard. And a new motherboard means a new processor, and probably new RAM, and heck, my CD/DVD drive is pretty close to busted, so I might as well get a serial ATA one, and both hard drives are full, so I should get a bigger one, and I just know this power supply isn't going to last much longer, so that should be replaced and this case is freaking FUGLY, and what's even left? Oh yeah, the monitor and speakers. Well, my speakers are fine. The monitor is fine, except it's a CRT. But ideally, I'd like to just get an HDTV and hook my PC into that, since I only use it for games. And my keyboard is have broken. So, far, in my new computer, I could keep: - Speakers - Mouse - Wireless card Yeah, once we get to the point where the motherboard goes, the whole thing goes. So I'll just wait. Moral of the story: Hardware is an inelegancy. Software is where it is AT.

Any NES game?

Well, replacing the processor means basically a new computer, so, um, no. Maybe in 2-3 more years.

Well, I have an Athlon XP 2400+ (as high as my poor old motherboard can go), 1.5 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 7600 GS. Am I game or no?