DanJW

Great sequels make it a good time to be a gamer, but perhaps not a good time to become a gamer. Where would you start?

That's an interesting point of view, and one which I can respect. No wait... Screw you!

Not sure if you're being ironic but... go easy. 'Gerbil has been here some time and like a lot of pre-podcast forum members he doesn't feel bad about giving occasional critical feedback to Chris and the gang. This is a good thing I think. He has already qualified his statements, the cast responded, all is good. Although to be honest, a lot of us are lay critics here. We'll critique anything, from movies to music to ad campaigns and we have fun doing it. Oh, and video games. It's almost the raison d'etre of the forum. Welcome!

I thought it was a pretty good return to form. After the fantastic feature length opener things went back to formula a little bit (still doing the 'inspiration from something someone said about something else' schtick), although the spotlight episodes for other characters were very nice. I especially liked the psycho episode. That woman was chilling.

100 pages!

EA Presents: Car Men

EA Presents: Camper in the Rye (bindun?) How about some opera and ballet? EA Presents: S.W.A.T. Lake EA Presents: The Magic Brute EA Presents: The Nutcracker: Sweet! I... I really want to play that game now.

SO she self-classifies as not liking science fiction, while actually liking good science fiction? Fair enough, that goes for 90% of the world.

Bicurious?

Shhhhh! You'll scare them away. They're like, uh, badgers, or something. Very flighty.

Oh wow. I don't think I ever played Tiberian Sun, but C&C (retroactively Tiberian Dawn) and Red Alert are seriously seminal games and they still play great. The last year or two has been amazing for that SVGA era of retro - it seems like all the best stuff from my own personal Golden Age of PC gaming has been re-released either for free or for a pittance. So good.

I for one welcome our new Ad-hoc-cast masters. Plenty to interest me and make me laugh. The appearance of the in-jokes during the readermail felt more like a sending off for them than anything else. Good show.

Sweet! Although I was hoping you would number them with roman numerals this time round.

Yeah I went for the gold edition of Rome too. Such a good game (and expansion) for under £2 is just... well I couldn't pass it up.

Happy belated birthdays to all who wish them!

No, they're not. Part of it is the barbie-doll effect, whereby a small-scale model makes some features look smaller than they should be, despite being in perfect proportion. Thus they tend to get exagerrated. Scaled up to life-size, Barbie would be something like 38-18-34, with a double-D cup (and would quickly develop crippling back problems). The other factor is habituation. It's Blizzard's own fault, in that they have over the years shown their players constant images of barbie-proportioned women wearing chainmail bikinis... and now the younger fans that have grown up with that imagery think it is normal! This makes it difficult to do anything else. The same goes for much of game industry of course... and Western society come to that. I don't have any problem with conventionally pretty women (the older I get, the more often I seem to fall for blondes - weird) but as for fictional heroines the ones that really do it for me are the more down-to-earth hint-of-tomboy types. They just seem much more capable and believable and interesting because of that.

Slightly related, I just saw the UK TV spot for the game. Jesus christ that voiceover is bad. Sounds like Julie From Shipping was roped into doing it at the last moment.

Le Sigh. Blizzard's fan community really are a bunch of retards. That character is possibly the most attractive and best proportioned female they have designed to date. If someone in our group beats me to the wizard (Wizzaaaaaaaarrd) then I may well play the monk instead. The old guy version is cool too (although I wish his beard was grey).

Signed I also mentioned the muteness in the comment field.

It's a good start. If they just ape the old games this time around, then they can start building on that with the one after. It really does feel like they need to learn the basics for themselves all over again. I see what gerbil means with the character art and animation. It doesn't feel quite right. He has too many spikes! And is still too tall. Sonic himself needs to be a few things: 1. cute 2. mute 3. fast 4. blue (mostly) Very little else. Keep him chibi. Still I approve of this move and am more hopeful for Sonic than I have been in ages. Also is this the Project Needlerat game that everyone thought was going to be a Sonic 1-2-3 remake?

Because the business analysts at the publishers are from the same college classes as the investment bankers who brought us so much joy these last couple of years.

Happy Birthday Wrestle! I hope all the Vanias has a lovely lunch.

Sadly, not the first or last one. A resurfacing ex did pretty much the same thing to me a few weeks later. Yeah, an ex and some female friends have said something in the same vein: that all girls like being asked out. If nothing else it is a compliment in itself. Hmm, well my state of mind is in a bit of a downswing this last week, so conjuring positive thoughts is a bit difficult. Thinking back though, I did pretty well last year, asking out more girls than probably the rest of my life put together. This lead to, variously, being given fake numbers, girls not answering my calls, being asked to contact them via facebook and being ignored there instead and so forth. On the other hand not once did I get a straight "no thanks" or blunt rejection, so take from that what you will. I read most of Neil Strauss' The Game early last year and spoke to a guy who turned out to be a semi-pro pick-up artist in a club. Equal parts insightful and depressing, I still hate that men like that exist, let alone how readily women fall for their system. But even rejecting the lifestyle, there is some very valuable advice for any man in there, if you strain the obnoxious shit out. One thing is to grab your first opportunity. Waiting for the 'right moment' will only make things more difficult. If the girl is a random stranger in a bar for instance, the recommendation is within 10 seconds of making significant eye-contact. Just walk over and do it, otherwise you probably never will. Sometimes this means doing something incredibly hard me - asking a girl for her number within ear-shot of other people. Just get it over with - in fact she is less likely to say no because she doesn't want to seem cold in front of her friends. Another thing I've been trying to do - possibly less successfully - is approach girls who I only like a little bit rather than a whole lot. I must have a female brain or something, because no matter how pretty a girl is I don't feel any real attraction until after I get to know them (like Patters, the personality cliché). This can make motivation difficult when attempting the first advice above. But that's how meetings start and not every girl you take out has to be as special as the last (most of the population seem to go out with people who they don't even like). This did however lead to me being on the other side of the fence for the first time in my life. After spending the night with someone, I had to let her down when she wanted to take it further and I realised I just wasn't as into her as she seemed to be into me. That was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do (and hurting someone may be one of my biggest fears). From experience it still wasn't as painful as being on the receiving end. Still, she took it pretty well, we are still friends and I have only received one single batch of angry drunken text messages from her since then SO yeah... I think I'm getting there slowly. Though I reckon I'm going to take a break from the stress of courtship for a bit now. Concentrate on getting a new job. A sad fact, but in the same way that most men are shallow about looks, so most women seem to be shallow about money and success. And even if that's not the case, I would still like a little bit of money to spend on or with someone I like. Gosh that was quite a lot. Hope it helps someone. Chin up, what.

All sounds very familiar to me too. I've reached a point now where I am doing enough activities where I meet lots of people... but yeah they often end up being acquaintances. On the other hand I have a massive circle of acquaintances now, sometimes seems like I know half the city, which can be cool (although it may be one reason why I have itchy feet to move somewhere new). Another problem I have is that despite meeting lots of women, I have some kind of mental block between chatting and being friendly and actually making any kind of romantic advance. I can treat an attractive girl as a coworker or equivalent but not as an object of desire - precisely the opposite of the stereotypical male problem. Flirting or telling a girl I like her feels like an admission of guilt*. I blame being brought up with strong feminist values - I'm as ill-equipped to deal with post-feminism as traditional men were with plain feminism. But that's me. Keep up the effort, I'm sure it will pay off eventually! *I did actually finally ask a girl our a couple of months ago though - she was so special that I knew I would hate myself if I didn't. She said yes! We had a date planned! Then she met someone else...

Saw Sherlock Holmes. Found it enjoyable action movie stuff. Downey Junior just keeps getting more and more watchable. Jude Law on the other hand was so flat as to be almost non-existent. No wonder they needed Rachel McAdams there in order get some actual chemistry between some characters. The film as a whole reminded my a great deal of the Young Sherlock Holmes movie. Which says a lot. Also they carried on the great screen tradition of Holmes' deductive reasoning actually being inductive reasoning. Made me giggle every time.