Roderick

Its wasteful and illogical, but it did give all the paper a really distinctive look. It of course bites with the 'this is not some Star Trek bullshit!' attitude that the series creator's were going for, but whatever.

I'm still bummed about the slowness of the menus, but I've been trying out all the streetpass and Mii exchange features and that is amazing. The 3DS holds out pretty well if you put it in sleep mode by closing the machine, so you can easily walk around with the thing exchanging Miis all ady without worrying about battery life. I finally got my first game on the system, Samurai Warriors: Chronicles, and I haven't been bothered by the battery life at all. It doesn't feel like I can only play for a couple of hours. It's fairly easy to just hook the machine up to a socket every evening. I'll be very happy with the inevitable Lite version in a few years with longer battery life, but this is acceptable. By the way, Samurai Warriors is bloody good. OK, it's just the same thing the series has always been doing, but it plays very well on the 3DS, the 3D is excellent (I was so skeptical about the 3D, but now I am delighted with it, and it doesn't strain my eyes at all). I also love the little vignettes with all the feudal warlords that are littered all over the game. It is, in my opinion, the best thing out on the 3DS now if you're not a fighting game fan (which I am not) and therefor aren't interested in Streetfighter. It's not a perfect game and it decidedly benefits from the meagre launch line up, but I'm enjoying myself a lot with it.

You're added, Canuck.

Reviews, meh. I enjoy watching Gametrailers despite their formulaic approach, simply because you get to see lots of footage from the game which makes it at least entertaining. But furthermore, whenever there's a game I know I'll play, I will make an effort to avoid reading anything about it, I'll want to know as little as possible. In that sense, reviews are actively avoided. Idle Thumbs, where have ye gone? I do agree heavily with something they said a few podcasts back, that the podcast format of discussing a game is infinitely more useful, insightful and entertaining than the standard 'graphics, gameplay, bugs, grade' stuff.

The Fantasia rabbit hole goes pretty deep, actually. If you want a fascinating read at how the company treated abstract animator Oskar Fischinger (a refugee from Nazi Germany who was a great influence on the film) read this article: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=2409 Steamboat Willie was a theatrical release, yes, as were a lot of the Silly Symphonies of the time.

The Lincoln Lawyer: Bitching film. It's a relatively unassuming courtroom thriller, but craftily made and a very convincing performance from Matthew McConaughey.

Nice! It's awesome to manually climb huge buildings. I was miffed that there were not flights all the way up the Eiffeltower, only 2/3rds of the way.

There's lots of smoky sax during the softporn scenes that riddle the first half of the movie. But really, it's something to behold. Tommy Wiseau's acting is a thing that never loses its incredible awkwardness.

Well good, since the last time I opened a window facing north I heard minarets chanting islamic prayers. OK, what are the True Fins? It sounds like dolphins but more menacing than dolphins.

You're tearing me apaaaaart, Lisa!

I wish I had been in either the script meetings or the test audience, and then I could've pointed it all out to them and they'd have listened

I think the problem is, the way those screenshots look, that's how I remember Morrowind looking in the first place. Which is obviously balony, but explains why I'm not too impressed It does look nice though!

I call for a director's cut without the ending! And also no shot of the Sydney opera house.

Internet, I am disappointed in you. Why didn't you tell me that Sunshine was so good? Well, okay, I didn't care for the ending at all. But the road towards it was excellent. Sunshine has some truly breathtaking visuals and the first 80% of it was ridiculously good. Shame about the ending (do we really need the 'Enemy' in this movie?), but that's no reason to dismiss what came before it.

Haha, the same thing kind of happened to me when I got a new PC and played Morrowind with a much extended draw distance. The world seemed a lot tinier and less impressive, in some ways! In general though, I hate the way those mods make Morrowind look. Vvardenfell shouldn't have luscious trees 'n foliage 'n shit, it's a place filled with mushrooms and dust storms and weathered husks of bark. It's supposed to be barren and rocky. I don't recognize it as Morrowind at all.

That's the first time I heard that opinion. Usually it's the other way around and BS1 is considered the better game. BS2 came out only a year after the first one to ride the wave. Though that is a very impressive feat in itself for such a polished title (go Revolution!), I felt that it also made the game a little more off-balance (there are areas where there's nothing but conversations for an hour, and the ending was lacking).

I have great memories of Broken Sword 2. It might be the lesser of the two games, but damn if it isn't atmospheric and cool. I might just play the original, who cares about high res graphics?

I think the reasoning is that most Japanese learning on the web takes place on English sources. I think for most of us it's no big problem at all, since English is (at least for me and I assume for most of us) so ingrained in our system that it takes no additional processing power in the language region. There's no 'extra step' there as opposed to a native English speaker. The reverse polish notation thing is interesting. There is definitely something like that going on in Japanese language, though if I understand it correctly (still learning!), it's a little more chaotic than that. As long as the verb comes at the end of a sentence, it doesn't seem to matter what order all the other parts come in. Though, yes, the particles indicate what position the nouns, adjectives and verbs have in a sentence. As long as they're there, one is able to figure out what it all means. I find it extremely compelling, it's like a challenging puzzle. Learning Japanese is way better than sudoku.

That wizard scares me silly, very nice. It's equal parts school project and real video clip. The second minute (first appearance of the wizard) drags on a bit, but as soon as the wizard pops up a second time and starts singing, it's golden all the way through. As can be expected, killer soundtrack. Did you make it yourself?

I still dislike the turn the series took after part 3, which was still charming and 2D. Suddenly it became very serious, 'realistic' and gritty, and that took away any appeal the world had. Also, I'd love it if the main, hardcore Might & Magic RPG line was resurrected. Seems Ubisoft is doing basically everything with the spin-offs, and nothing with the actual RPG from which it sprang.

Dragon's Dogma (there's a desperate title if I ever saw one) looks more parts horrible than awesome. There is slight potential in it being an Elder Scrolls-esque open world RPG, though I expect it to go more towards a Demon's Souls based system, but damn... dragon overkill? Extremely generic-looking main character? Hack 'n slashy bullshit? That guitar riff? It seems repellent.

So, can someone tell me why Bioware's marketing push for Dragon Age has spawned some of the most generic, boring, spectacularly crap trailers ever? 'Cause I am utterly stumped. Compare this to the delightful way in which they're pushing Mass Effect 2, and a picture is painted of a company that knows exactly what it's doing with one game, but hasn't got a clue how to market the other. I mean: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/wynne-trailer-dragon-age/54157. And that's not even the worst one. What's happening here? Am I missing something?

Yesterday I "finished" the game with some friends. I say "finished", because our proposed Magicka evening quickly devolved into my graphics card locking up and watching them finish the game having played only five minutes myself. I am never touching this game again, this fucking buggy game. It reminds me of exactly why console gaming is so popular: it's easy and it works effortlessly. Magicka is a great game, but with shite technical execution.

She is my future liege lady!

Faux French, obviously.