n0wak

"childsexfacial" isn't as comical

Half of his drive since, I assume, he has loads of stuff on there already.

What reading comments arguing in favour of Vista over XP make me feel like: http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/boone.html I'm looking forward to checking out the update when I get home. Cautiously. My XBox died shortly after the Spring Update

What you describe is exactly why Activision is now the second largest third party publisher in the world behind EA The point of this merger is to make a move for them to be the biggest.

I just scored my 100th star! I'm basically done with all (about two left) of the regular/hidden stars for all galaxies, including the trial galaxies which means that all I have left are stupid comet stars. Stupid stupid comet stars. My god. Some of these are incredibly annoying hard. Especially the purple coin ones. I got my first GAME OVER -- in a game that gives away 1ups like they're nothing -- trying to get the purple coins in the toy galaxy. Holy fricken hell. :frusty: But it hasn't put me off of the game yet. I'm close to getting all the stars and am using that momentum to get me through the last bit. BTW, anyone beat the game? The ending is... odd. PS. Yufster, don't read the above post .

What would I pick? The PS3 because I have the other two. What should you pick? Well, it depends which games you like? If you're looking for mostly casual stuff, a nostalgic fix on Virutal Console or established Nintendo franchises (cause that's all it has going now): Wii. If not, then PS3.

Oops. Totally missed that second link Official site though!

And if you're confused by the reference in the credits See:

The fact that you used the words "cute girl" argues otherwise. It comes across as a little dismissive. I mean, this is an industry filled with socially awkward nerds. MOST producers, male or female, -- save for a few outspoken exceptions -- come across like that. They're focusing on the superficial because, well, most games are superficial. How else would they have presented it? God forbid the producer of the game can't talk about it because she's not an awkward looking nerd (and is, instead, an awkward good looking nerd).

I'm mostly interested in the impressions of Link's Crossbow Training. It seemed like a throw-away game (like Wii Play) but some early reviewers liked it well enough on its own. Ghost Squad never sounded good though. They should release Virtua Cop on Virtual Console (VC on VC!) and find a way to get it to work with the Wii-mote, but it sounds like it'd be too much effort for them...

DEU SEX 3 teaser trailer I tried to play Deus Ex a few months back for the first time and I just couldn't get into it. I'm sure things get better later on but it just felt dated. And I don't mean the graphics, I can live with that. It's the interface that I couldn't stand. It's amazing how much we've progressed on interface/UI design in games in just the last ten years.

Unfortunately the reason publishers all release their games in this time period is because it still IS like that and that is when they are more profitable. I don't have a citation for this (can't remember where I read it), but I do believe some smaller publisher has said that even with the glut of titles, the volume of sales is so high in this period that they are likely to sell more copies with all the competition than they would in, say, April. With all the clueless grandmothers and uncles and OLD PEOPLE buying games, it's not surprising.

As much as I hate to say it, for this kind of stuff the best place might be NeoGAF You'd probably have to dig deep for it though. There's also http://www.vgchartz.com/ but their numbers/methods are suspect so take all the numbers with a grain of salt

Here's a review of Rock Band that compares it to Guitar Hero on the gender front http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/11/21/6348/ totally agree with it.

Or completely loathe him?

Someone is also making a CLONE of the game for iPhone

Speaking of game OSTs, I just acquired the Mass Effect soundtrack and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. (Could do without that credits song, though)

Finished the game over the weekend at 60 stars. I could have done without all the annoying "story" parts: they detract from the flow of the game. Still, that final level was quite the enjoyable GAUNTLET of pain. It was like they took elements from a number of various galaxies and cranked them up to ten. I think the stages that use a one time gimmicks are my favourites. They don't overstay their welcome but leave you wanting more. Rolling Greens was awesome. That "Matter" galaxy was awesome. The 2.5D stages that mess with gravity are awesome. The only thing I wish there was less of are the swimming levels. Still, I finished the game and then went back into it to get some more stars and I realized that after spending all this time to beat it, I still had only HALF of all the bloody stars. This'll take a while.

I've been meaning to get back into Metroid Prime 3. I was starting to enjoy it once I arrived on some new worlds. The early "Space Marine" parts were annoying as hell. But the game got lost somewhere in that perfect storm of games that started to hit in September. I should get back to it after I'm done with Super Mario Galaxy.

Mass Effect is an interesting example. How long it takes is totally dependent on how you play/approach it. If you just rush through the thing ignoring the side-quests and all the other stuff in the universe then, yes, it's a relatively brief game (by RPG standards). If not then it takes a lot more time.

Typically, I've found that if they have a name they do have a quest related to them. You just might not have encountered it yet. There was this one guy that was all "Bugger off" to me but then I was delivering an item for him and, all of a sudden, he's kinda chummy and we get into a dialog tree.

Yeah. There's a lot of that in the story but it's still interesting enough, with all the dialogue options, to keep me going. I give them credit for fleshing out such a large universe though. It's a good game and a decent space opera, but it has a lot of problems to keep it from being great. I'll still play through it a second time.

OK. After a bit more back and forth in the Citadel and a lot of talking -- go to this person, they have a problem with that person, go to that person, try to persuade them, go back, etc.. -- I finally got back on my ship and the galaxy was open to me. There were two obvious missions available and a third little quest to, I think, get another character... but you can essentially go anywhere in the galaxy at this point. I went to the big, shady corporate planet. And there it was... more talking. And negotiating. A small battle or two... then more talking. I managed to get to the outside, vehicle parts (the vehicle parts in Mass Effect feel VERY awkward) but by that point I was already tired of that world so I flew off and went to some uncharted planet for a little surveying. After that I went to Ferros, one of the places reporting a geth attack. Almost instantly I was in battle. Then more battle. Then I ran into a geth Destroyer. I guess I should be careful what I wish for cause after wishing for fights I finally get one that kicks my ass. I tried again and again and failed both times. I was starting to think that maybe I was doing something wrong -- was my level too low? Was my gear too crappy? Should I have gone somewhere else instead? But I realized that my problem was in my tactics. I was playing the battle too much like it was Gears of War, relying on the shooting rather than playing it as a tactical RPG. After some careful planning and use of talents the battle was a piece of cake. I'm almost done all the planet's missions -- the final encounter is kicking my ass though since I'm low on supplies -- and, apart from the vehicle controls and some annoyances (CURSE YOU UNSKIPPABLE CUT SCENES :frusty: ) I'm enjoying myself a lot. With all the battles on this planet I've managed to level up quite a bit and get some useful abilities/gear. The dialogue. Well, a lot of it is the typical dialog tree. "Tell me about this thing", "tell me about that", "tell me about you". To be expected, as there is a lot of exposition in the universe, but often times you can choose your reactions to the characters and this affects how they perceive you and how they deal with you. At one point a woman approached me and asked me if I can use my authority to spy on this other guy and get her the information. I kindly said "It's my duty to uphold the law, not to break it" (or something similar) and... she went away. I got my "Paragon" points (I'm trying to play through as a good guy) and never touched that quest. There are enough choices to make me want to replay the game as a "Renegade" (bad guy) just to see how differently things pan out. Oh, and depending on your skills sometimes you have extra "charm" and "intimidate" options in addition to the regular answers. There was a situation that was quickly spiraling out of control that made me wish that I had upgraded my charm talents some more. Could have avoided shooting the guy in the face

Just make sure you get the right one. The one with backwards compatibility, cause they're totally taking a U-turn from what they preached and removing it from all systems in every region.

I will get a Playstation 3 eventually (honestly, the game I'm most interested is Little Big Planet and maybe the new* WipeOut) but right now the 360 is by far the better bet. Yeah, you have to pay extra for Live and, yes, a strictly peer-to-peer service has its problems (lack of dedicated servers, possible latency issues) but it is a far more mature and established service than PSN. While everyone was playing CoD4 online on the 360, the PS3 version was having troubles because their servers weren't expecting the load and choked. Besides, a good developer can leverage the system to do a lot of amazing things like with Halo 3. Say what you want about the gameplay, but the matchmaking and stat tracking in that is better than anything else on a console ever. By far. Better than most PC games. And the problem with betting on the Playstation's "potential" is that it's not a guarantee like it was last generation. Not with the way the console marketshare wars are going.