Roderick

Fucking sweet. I suck, but look forward to playing (Right now I'm doing singleplayer on hard mode. Amazing how much fun it still is, the second time around. These levels are among the best I've ever played. That rising lava level? Absolute perfection.)

I'm surprised at the level of childish or plainly silly opinions about Starcraft 2 going around. I've personally heard garbage in the line of Starcraft Isn't A Real Game, but already geared towards the next two instalments: 'Why should we pay full price for Heart of the Swarm when we already have the multiplayer?'. More aggravating is judgement that Starcraft 2 is 'old-fashioned'. The genre has moved from base-building to squad-based gameplay, so for some that's reason enough to dismiss Starcraft 2 as a dinosaur with the immediate implication that therefore it's not that good. It boggles my mind that people don't understand that: 1. Starcraft 2 is a remake of SC1 in gameplay terms. 2. It's not trying to be any other genre than the classical RTS. Even Tycho called Starcraft 2 tentatively 'cowardly' for not innovating as opposed to Warcraft 3. Although his point is defensible, it's one I vehemently disagree with. Cowardly is in the intent: if people are trying to remake or update something as true to the original as possible, and the original was as close to perfection as a genre could get, how is that cowardly? How could they have improved on those goals by adding new things?

Leeuwenhart - 438 - Europe I'm a starting Zerg player with an ailing mid-game

Strangely enough, I found that terribly shocking, even moreso than people buying PS3 and smashing them on the street. This is an actually useful appliance, not a luxury. Wantonly destroying it (though it might already have been broke, who's to know?) is vulgar and decadent.

You may safely buy the game.

Just finished it and thought I'd throw in a bit of fanboy love for this game. I thought the singleplayer campaign was extremely good because gameplaywise they really spiced things up since Frozen Throne (everything's so smooth) and storywise I love how the game feels very 'personal',

As regards the singing Christian dog: I can see his pedophile face underneath the paint, which is terrifying. As regards the Oblivion thing: masterly.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was the worst game I've ever felt compelled to love. Especially the second half was a huge letdown both in tone and gameplay. So I'm really pleased that they're trying again with a sequel. I hope the gameplay'll be far smoother, less annoying, and the focus will be more on cool heisting action and less on... guerrilla warfare crap. But man am I digging the new style they're going for. That filthy, grimy handicam stuff, like the whole thing is filmed by a $50 camcorder handled by a guy who's just running along, or footage from some sleazy news station censoring nudity. Superb. Even the boxart features video artifacts and pixelation. http://www.gametrailers.com/video/welcome-to-kane-lynch/64423

The manual isn't really that special this time, certainly not up to snuff with classics like War2 and Starcraft 1. Blizz manuals have been getting increasingly shabby. War3's was noticably smaller and less cool than the ones before which tended to be A5 instead of A6 size. I love in the first mission of the singelplayer that

Few years back I watched AD/BC about every other day. It's among the best British comedies ever.

Good to hear it! Don't shoot me if it turns out shit though!

GAHHHHH It's just so fucking infuriating that I'm waiting here for fucking trucks to deliver the fucking game to fucking stores whike everyone's already playing! :tdown: [EDIT] Just heard that one stores has them. I'm on my flipping way. [EDIT] OK the install is done. /Gone for the next 5 months.

I'm pissed at Blizzard's inexplicable decision not to send out copies to retailers all over the Netherlands until the actual launch day. I understand that it's annoying when retailers then break launch day by selling it the day before, but with Starcraft 2 that's 100% not a problem because of the online authentication which Blizzard controls completely. Now retailers are pissed, customers are pissed, and I am pissed because I should've been playing Starcraft 2 last night but now I have to wait for random delivery trucks while thousands are already playing. I don't say it very often, or at all, but fuck you, Blizzard.

God, I watched that movie clean, without the snarky extra MST audience. Imagine.

I'm sorry, what's a Goon? All I see before me are mafia cannon fodder.

Tighter means in this case that it actually appears that when you shoot a guy in the face, it hits instead of... randomly not hitting, as would happen in the first game. Cover seems sturdier too. But the demo was so short (and admittedly chaotic too, which was one of its draws) that I don't dare formulate anything on how the gameplay will be.

When I say intellectual in respect to Nolan movies, I don't mean that they're necessarily smart, but that you're constantly being engaged on an intellectual level instead of an emotional one. You're thinking instead of feeling (so to speak; of course there's an enormous emotional charge in these movies).

The New York Times had a fantastic review that I disagree with. They said that Inception lacks heart, basically, because it never really manages to explain emotionally how the characters work because the film (and other Nolan films) tends to be so absorbed in its mechanical plot. I've thought about exactly this a great deal and in my opinion, that's the thing that makes Nolan's films great. They're art films that delight in plot intricacies. They're not trying to be like other films, they're not trying to let people get into a well-established emotional rollercoaster. Their intention is to engage you on an intellectual level with tricks and traps, storywriting flourishes and plot devices. That's their genius. Nolan's films have always cared less about establishing characters in an emotional way. I don't mind at all, you just have to not want these films to be something they're not. They're brilliant at what they do, which is deliver hands down the most interesting ideas and storytelling in film today in a bold, uncompromisingly intellectual way.

I played the K&L2 demo and posted my thoughts here in the rant underneath the comic: http://www.captainaugust.com/them-again

With Incepton, Christopher Nolan needlessly reaffirms his position as the best filmmaker of our time.

I mean, there's no handy system of knowing when that is, apart from stupidly learning the dates by heart.

The ides of <month> scares me, because one time it's the 13th, and then the next it's the 15th, and there's just no system there

Man, Idle Thumbs are just a bunch of wizard-fellaters!

I guess what I'm starting to find a little outdated is the way Rockstar handles quests in the game. You have these amazing cutscenes filled with character and promise, but the world itself is disconnected to that. Whereas in Oblivion (and other games of the sort) there's more the feeling that questgivers are actually in the same world as you're in, not just existing in a cutscene. It took a few minutes to get over the slight disappointment I felt when I discovered Red Dead was going to be a 'GTA-like', where the only real interactivity with NPC's comes through your weaponry. So, yes, dialogue trees. But also, as a world, more diverse things to do. I find it hard to come up with real examples. I should think about it a little more to discover what this is truly about.

I don't know, I'm perhaps done with the old GTA formula. I crave a little bit more specific interactivity with the world, if that makes any sense. Think more 'Oblivion'. So, the more interesting question might be: do we think Rockstar is going to make another game using these same gameplay mechanics or are they going to crack open their game and take the next ambitious step?