DanJW

It probably feels like... being GOD!

The missing employees are a bit of a mystery. The possibilities are: GLaDOS killed them all. They fled the Combine attack They are in storage like you were at the start. They are going through the tests at the same time as you (remember the graffitti?), but GlaDOS keeps all subjects away from each other. Also I disagree with you being an android. Supposedly her name is Chell Johnson, and if you've been through www.aperturescience.com then you'll know that the founder was Cave Johnson, and that GLaDOS was first fully switched on during the first annual "bring you daughter to work day". I'm sure you can see the inference here. Also that bit at the end

I think the length should definately be noted for the benefit of the reader, but it should not normally affect a game's score.

Yeah, the foghorn leghorn text was the only thing that made me laugh out loud. I liked his email tagline as well; "please shut up about flak towers". Oh, and also the allusion to Okami at the end.

Oh I agree. Heavy-medic teams especially think they are almost invincible, so it is always fun to vapourise the heavy right under the medic's nose. And as demoman I can lock-down whole sections of the map all by myself, and sentry turrets hold zero terror for me.

Yeah, uber pyro is "where it's at" as they say. And the fact that pyros are favoured targets can work in their favour as 'weapons of terror'. Often I will go kamikazi when I see an enemy offensive brewing. Running into a whole knot of opponents and setting them all on fire will only net you a couple of frags and get you killed pretty quickly, but will cause general chaos and force them to stop and put the flames out long enough for your team to get their defense together.

I suck at spy lately. It's probably the only class left that I have yet figure out a reliable style of play with (besides the sniper, which I don't think I'll ever be good with). I was good at spy early in the game's release, when most spies just backstabbed but I focussed on sapping and racked up many points that way. Nowdays most engineers are good at breaking sappers though so it's a lot harder. Occasionally I manage the old "sap and stab em before they can fix it" (especially fun after decloaking behind the an engy in the int room), but it's tough if they have friends around. I think the scout has a lot of potential for mastership, if you can learn to think fast enough. One of the best moments I've had was when I used a scout to keep a team of four soldiers in complete dissaray all by myself. I'm looking forward to learning some more tricks with him. Oh, and beating a heavy to death with a baseball bat is also utterly brilliant.

System Shock 2?

They even made the original voice of Optimus Prime go through auditions I thought the movie was OK, but I wouldn't get it on DVD.

Nothing very official happend. About 5 or 6 of us joined the sevrer but were kind of lost in the crowd. We need a server to ourselves and enough people to fill it. AS an aside on TF2, and this is nothing to do with thumbs players, but I'm getting frustrated with TF2 lately. I still really enjoy it, but find myself getting immensley irritated when I find myself on a weak team. As I was saying to Nachimir earlier, I've never felt that way in Counterstrike. In CSS I can have loads of fun while getting trounced. In TF2 though, if your team flakes then you are left feeling completely helpless, as teamwork is so integral that even a great player will get wiped when facing a more cohesive opposing side. The game is at that stage where there is a vast difference in players that have a grasp on the tactics and other players who, for instance, choose to fill half of an attacking team with engineers, or build a sentry next to the spawn room where it does fuck-all until the very end and then not much, or defend a capture point by standing next to it just outside the outline and firing a pistol randomly, or repeatedly run their scout past the same bank of sentries without considering whether a demoman would fair better. Phew, that feels better. Been wanting to get that off my chest. Seriously, I'm looking forward to playing with a bunch of Thumbers where I can relax and not really care how the game goes, because it's all friendly. Yeah yeah I know, I need to chill

On the other hand, arcade games are seeing something of a rennaissance on Live Arcade, are they not? And yeah, Portal felt like the right length for me too. It would have probably felt stretched if it was any longer. Plus I still haven't finished all the challenges.

Yeah, seems like a really dumb decision to me too. Damian Schubert has posted his thoughts on it as well, as he talked about the folley of "gamifying" it some time ago. Maybe they'll release those songs as DLC?

I believe there are other stats showing the same thing. I will have a hunt for them later.

Hey, coincidance! A Japanese photographer who uses tilt shift came up in my art class on Tuesday. He uses depth of field to make real world scenes look like toys. And yeah, I love to see good depth of field in games too.

Don't forget the statistics that show that a large number of players, if not the majority, actually complete very few games. This means a huge number of game copies are never played to their end, which argues in favour of shorter games - if for no other reason than the wasted devlopment time. It is only the gaming press and the vocal minority of 'harcore' gamers that view 100 hours as some kind of desireable benchmark.

Hahah that was a good one. The expected Republican rants have errupted in the comments thread though

Yeah, I liked Stardust. It's a bit twee, but it has such charm that I really didn't mind. Like the reviews say, it's great for a date movie. Also Claire Danes

Talking of adblock, does anyone know how to block flash ads? I never want to hear that mosquito again!

Yeah I agree. Whereas Myspace is basically a "make your own homepage" deal, in the tradition of the awful days of geocities and so on, Facebook is actually an effective social network.

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAH! Amazing how, when computers are involved, all standard police work becomes utterly ineffectual.

3rd Person Action Adventure Heavy Metal Fantasy Rockfest Satire. It's a standard genre, I don't see the problem.

I like my previous description, of "the most extreme mock-fantasy heavy-metal album covers, brought to life".

I've heard that the second series is better, but I'm not terribly motivated to find out for myself. I'm having too much of a good time catching up on Scrubs.

Doh, yes I do mean World War Z. Z-Day is what they called it in Shaun of the Dead maybe.