Roderick

Adventuregamers.com for life, YO! Though I don't really visit those forums anymore... for no apparent reason. Actually, because it became cumbersome to keep them up. Idle Thumbs is much nicer because it's smaller and cosier and I know that if there's a new topic, there's at least a 85% chance it is both relevant and entertaining to me.

Woops. Got him aaaaaall wrong. Awesome, brkl, by the way. Oh and my version of house isn't smiling at all. Ohhhhh no. He's a grumpy ol' doctor, ready to cane-whip you (which is a variant on pistol whipping).

Psyche-Unlocks Europe.

Well, I believe a huge range of Wii heavyv-hitters is coming out in 2007, so I'm all set. You know what's weird? I'm terribly afraid that Bioshock won't manage to interest me for very long. System Shock 2 was really awesome for a few days, and then I lost interest, and seeing as Bioshock is pretty much more of the same... here's hoping that the atmosphere and setting will be all that's needed to see it through to the end.

I don't do it often, but when I do I usually don't make a secret out of it. And in that respect, I just take a holiday on those days, which is to say, I just don't show up. But at the same itme, I'm not pretending to be ill or something

I was sceptical at first, seeing as both Squeenix and Disney are mediamoguls I kind of distrust. But the game has impeccable charm. That's its main attraction: good music, sound models and excellent voice acting. The downsides are horrible, rectangular level design (blocky and boring) and err... well, I haven't really actually played it, I just watched for hours as a roommate played it.

,,I don't have a pain-management problem, I have a pain problem." Dr. House. Festive as always.

That is the power of The Internet.

Whatever it is, I hope this time they make a decent DS game of it. I only played SWL2 on the DS and it sucked enormously. Buggy as feck, audio skipping, characters getting stuck, blinking or disappearing and... yeah, even unplayable.

But I like Emperor Zombie! Hmmm, maybe in a few weeks or so I'll consider something new.

Alright then, I will painstakingly translate it, for your reading pleasure. ----------------- It's taking on mythical proportions: Shigeru Miyamoto's reported habit of 'upending the teatable', which refers to the old manga comic 'Hoshi and the Giants' wherein a strict father occasionally threw over the table. What is meant is that Miyamoto often comes with radical changes in the design at the last moment to perfect the game (consider Metroid Prime: long in ill health until the Japanese master reached for the tabletop and the game became a succes). According to the Twilight Princess team Miyamoto never touched their tea table. Instead, many 'lamentation-mails' came in from a disappointed Shigeru who had been attempting something in the game all night but hadn't gotten any reply from the inhabitants of Hyrule. So the tea table might have remained upright, at least one or two saucers were upended.

Near the end of Justice for All I was for the first time tempted to go to a walkthrough, but I resisted and solved everything on my own, much to my personal satisfaction. Persist, defenders of truth!

Uhm, as far as I could see there was nothing wrong with the fifth case. In fact, it was absolutely bloody brilliant.

TO ME, SASHA NEIN!!

I don't know exactly when it is, but I believe when the series is nearing its end, during season 4, it gets so wonderfully epic. Never a dull moment, with major story arcs thrown at you with reckless abandon; mini-movies all around. Major battles, epic confrontations, good stuff. I'm sort of sad it has ended, but the material that's been made is so good, and all in all we have almost 90 terrific episodes and the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries. More than enough to make a great show.

Taking my time, I finally finished Justice for All just now. Terrific! The last case was quite refreshing in its setup. Ever since the ending of Phoenix Wright I had wondered how they'd equal the sequel's ending without making it totally the same, but they really nailed it. Can't wait for the port of the third title! (Though the new one may be first up)

Marek, TV is still overwhelmingly awful. It's just a few series that have begun to realise shows don't have to be dispensible and can be works of creativity, resulting in a host of quality HBO series, Dreamworks epics and other company flagships. On the other side, you have public television that ocassionally manages to produce good television. In the Netherlands, that's usually the better news/politics shows and cabaret/satire. Also, yesterday I bought the third season of Farscape on DVD in Germany. Those boxes aren't cheap, but at least they exist, as opposed to other countries that don't care about Farscape. SELL SELL SELL THAT QUALITY SCI-FI

SiN; I know the DS version was crap. In fact, I reviewed it for [N]Gamer and crushed it, hopefully sending a signal to the developer or publisher. Heh. HAHAHA

Ohh man, Worms would be so great on it. As soon as I have an Xbox I should get it. After the disappointing Worms DS, I'd like my enthusiasm for the series revitalised.

I played a demo of Exit 2 on my brother's PSP and here's how it went. The first two minutes I was enjoying the art style, the flair and the possibilities a 2D Prince of Persia-esque game like this brought. Then I discovered that the game suffers from terribly old-fashioned design and spent the rest of my playing time getting increasingly frustrated. Moving is incredibly slow and almost cumbersome; even in the first few levels you can only succeed by trial and error as there are dangers the game doesn't inform you of or hint at; but the most annoying is the outdated mapping of the buttons. Instead of having a single action-button that adapts to the situation (with maybe an additional back-up button) Exit has one button for opening doors, one for picking up stuff, one for crouching, one for using items, one for etc, etc. I hate it when designers get sloppy with controls. The premise of the game is really nice, but the execution is (save for the visual style)

I have no idea what those people are looking for over there, but my guess is they're either hurters, or not totally serious. Actually, I've never read the comments because comments are usually either too voluminous to bother with, or -more likely- completely irrelevant and upsetting in their idiocy. As for UK:R itself, they have their moments of humour, but I also think they sometimes delve too much into juvenile porno-comedy. The anti-Sony stance is amusing though. The PS3 Lie Watch is particularly good.

(Following Mareks desire not to pollute the original thread, here a comment) Ben, there was nothing wrong with your analysis of Shadow of the Collossus, so stop excusing yourself for delving into NGJ when writing. Remember, it isn't a taboo -unless you choose it to be. Great addition to the topic, it's nice to hear a personal story about the game.

Fourth'd. Quality thread. Maybe the Thumb can even wring some nice wrap-up article out of it, digesting our picks-of-the-year into actual new content.

On a tangent: it's fun to see that at our artschool too it was a perfectly legitimate excuse not to show up for a morning if you were getting your Wii. Great stuff, the widely acknowledged importance of the new Nintendo console.

Tanu! You've got a Wii! YESSS. I'll add you later today and send you myself and a collection of 20th century dictators. I've already sent them to the people who added me, and I see there's still a lot more whom my Wii does not yet consider my 'friends' Also, when in heck will there be cool multiplayer games on the Wii, and where is that damn Gears of War port?