Roderick

I downloaded Passage, but it doesn't work properly. Now it seems to have nestled itself in my goddamned computer because I can't move or delete it; it says it's in use by some program -even when I've just booted up. Does anyone know how I can circumvent this? Fucking hell.

The recent batch of episodes I had to catch up with because of my holiday were excellent I especially liked Celebrity (14) because its Lost Odyssey review had basically come to the same conclusions I had in my review for GMR a few weeks ago.

One example of a game doing this is err, I don't know the name, but it's this game set in the second world war in Paris and you're playing some underground whatever. The interesting bit: Nazi occupied areas in the city are greyscale, and when you deal with it the colour returns. It's a little more blunt and in-your-face than what you were proposing, but it's still a good idea. You could have a game about someone who's mind is unravelling, and is this happens textures fall away, bumpmapping vanishes, motion blur and anti-aliasing go, polygon count dwindles... you could really make a nice arty high concept with that. But it's a one-time thing, obviously. It's the surprise that makes it worth it, like the Eternal Darkness insanity effects. It'd get boring if lots of games would do that.

Okay, I was bullshitting a bit there. But my main gripe is still the idea that 90% of everything I see and feel around me is owned by either Viacom or Disney.

I didn't even consider the gaming side here, I just dislike all the mergers and everything becoming owned by a single company. The corporate greed of it, gobbling up competitors. That sort of thing.

On the subject of Dexter, I too finished season 2 a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty well done. On another note, I loved watching Hustle so much this past year, having downloaded the first three seasons, that I'm considering buying them on DVD. It's just such an excellent and fun show. Wouldn't mind owning it. And it's only fair, seeing how it entertained me so perfectly.

No, it's just become mainstream and you know... part of our weekly routine. No need to comment on every single one Though the Drake's Fortune one was very funny!

Hey, that's pretty cool, cause during my holiday I decided to grow my stache/goatee again. I'm 24 and I can't grow a decent beard swim my way out of a barn. It is frustrating to no end (some days), and since in May I'm going to do a Mr. Godot cosplay (!!) I'm gonna start ow to weave me some facial hair. Let's see how far I get this time (last attempt was a year ago). Pictures will follow in the weeks ahead.

Morrowind's introduction rocks monkey socks.

Jesus, fuck off with those mergers already It's super bad for the creative flow and the market if everything springs from one company.

(Hi guys! I'm back from Turkey!) Well, I'd be super-excited with an adventurey remake of some sorts of RE0. The old RE controls are a huge turn-off for me; I just can't get myself to play the REmake because of it. So any novel development would be excellent, but that's apparently not going to happen.

Is there ever not?

If you kill an important plot character, the game continues but informs you with a text message that you've broken the chain of destiny, but that you may 'persist in the doomed world that you have created'. Which is ten kinds of awesome.

Ken Levine basically already confessed that he gravely underestimated the player's desire to follow the emotional and philosophical story (which is weird because the game is otherwise so smart and sophisticated). He recognizes the ending was disappointing. So, I also think it wasn't meant to contribute anything else to the message or theme of the game. And kilometreage is Great.

Oh dear. After reading the reports on Molyneux' GDC conference and actually seeing it myself on Gametrailers... I'm very excited. Which is a very dangerous thing. Because we're dealing with Molyneux. Don't get me wrong, I liked last year's Realistic Dog Following You Around, but what we see now really tickles my fancy. Especially the singleplayer co-op where someone can just jump in and out of the game, on the same console, and earn experience and gold via a centralized online register of all the characters (though my Xbox isn't hooked up to the internet I'm sure I'll be able to play). And for the rest, it's all the familiar Lionhead foibles and fetishes; dynamic game world, You Can Do Fucking Everything, Molyneux having designed his entire house, XBLA games earning Fable gold... And I can't believe it, but I'm believing it again. I can't wait to play Fable 2. The difference is, of course, that I'm laughing all the way to the release date this time, hearing what Peter comes up with next. Even remotely plausible things get this air of being insanely wacky 'Fumpkin' gimmicks. Awesome. Fable 2.

Jesus, what a cutthroat bunch of looters they are! 1000 Pounds in fees?

Yeah, you hear some rotten things about the banking world. Fucking leechers. Myself, I'm with the Postbank (Dutch, obviously). We have a nice agreement; I don't dick around with them, and they leave me alone. Haven't had any problems with them in my entire life. Even when you're in the red, they only charge a very small percentage every quarter or so.

Jesus Christ I'm glad that shit is over. I'm happy for Blu-Ray to have won, but I'd have been perfectly content either way. I'm just glad it's done now and Blu-Ray can take the spotlight and perhaps I'll finally go buy HD movies in three years when they, and their players become ubiquitous and affordable. I might even get a PS3 around that time, if the Xbox hasn't already incorporated the player by then. Isn't Blu-ray the technically superior format? Good to see the best player win, even if it is better by just a small margin.

Back to politics though: I just finally watched Fahrenheit 9/11 and it fired me up against that miserable Bush. Bah humbug. Stupid war in Iraq.

I highly doubt it, considering the two systems (faith vs science) are practically at opposite ends of the scale. In any case, it'll be a hard pill to swallow. I'm not betting on it happening anytime soon.

But that's not what religious people are saying at all. They are in effect saying that this and that happened scientifically. If only they just saw it as an ethical system, then at least there would be consensus that it's just an opinion. But they're making it holy and try to shoehorn it into the development of life, and that's what's causing so much of the problems.

I can't really think of an instance when I was particularly bothered by it. Do you have some specifics of your own?

Oh, we all have our Hooker Sense tingling at the idea of 'believing in science', trust me. That notion you put forth is most likely true. But the concept is fallacious, because in the natural world, 'why' always follows from 'how'. The two are intimately connected. We first observe (how) something (is happening), and then we discover why it's happening. Of course, that only works if you don't assume that there's human thought behind everything, or conscious thought in any case...

Well, that's why I play Morrowind. I can actually read everything there