Roderick

I was wondering about minigames, but couldn't think of any names of websites anymore. Orisinal! Gonna try it out today! Pity Knytt is keyboard controlled.

Oh, didn't you know this was an extremist right-wing neo-nazi jugendfest gaming website?

I'm joining in on the number exchange fun! So far my family's on my Wii and of course Adolf Hitler which turned out pretty nice and evil. 2911 4861 6792 4702 So, apart from lifting over your Mii's... what else is there to do? Aside from the obvious multiplayer once it comes out (where's Gears of War for the Wii?). I'm gonna add most of my friends here of Thumbs.

ZOMG! I'm posting this from my Wii as well! I agree with all the comments so far (no url bar), but it's still cool! Don't think it'll replace my keyboardcontrolled PC though.

Most noteworthy game of the year: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Oh god, if only there were a real life Japanese series of the game, I'd gobble it up!) Phoenix Wright, when it finally came out here in the Netherlands, was left gathering dust on my shelf for a good three months before I finally took it out of its plastic wrapper after acquisition. Not because I didn't know I had a jewel lying there, or wasn't acutely aware that I'd love it the moment I'd play it, but simply because I couldn't find the right moment for it. When I did, obviously I was hooked. Phoenix captured me with its strong characterisation, weird plots, funny dialogues and scarce-but-effective animation. Never mind that it was technically a GBA-game and that the linearity and even somewhat lack of actual game were easily perceived; it was just a damn enjoyable game and one of the biggest surprises of 2006, even if everyone and their grandmother had already extolled it with highest praise. Disappointment of the year: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion After the genius of the supremely lovable and supremely imperfect Morrowind the stakes for the sequel were high and it was disappointing to see such a lacklustre, uneventful game arise in the end. Oblivion is just at no point very interesting. The fighting system has been improved, but seemingly at the cost of everything else. What seems a fluke is actually a flaw running deeply through all parts of the game: every new thing Bethesda added to the game struck another tiny mortal blow to the game. Full voice acting? Sure, but it begot marginalised dialogue and the irritation of only a handful of voices. Instant teleportation throughout the lands? It destroyed the careful increase of difficulty and the sense of exploration that lay at the very heart of the series. More fool-proof and console-centric menu and inventory? Say goodbye to having a clear view on things and the immediacy of drag-and-drop RPG-ing. I could go on and on, but the end-result is a little sentence I've written down before: I played Morrowind for over 150 hours and I still want more. Oblivion should consider itself lucky with 15 hours. Gaming show of the year: VideoGaiden (season 2) Hooray for Scottish gaming TV! And thank you BBC Scotland for taking the bold move of broadcasting something you knew would be obscure, weird and alienating to all but the hardcore. Gaming platform of the year: Nintendo DS I elected this earlier this year as my favourite console ever, and I stick to it. No other platform has given me so much gaming goodness as the DS. And it truly is more than simply a handheld; it is a valid console, a platform to be considered just as valid as its 'big brothers' (which is confirmed in the official sequel to Dragon Quest being released on this system). But forget all the politics: the DS has simply proven itself the most fun this year; with great titles like New Super Mario Bros, Brain Training, Animal Crossing, Phoenix Wright and all the excellent ones from last year, and 2007 will be another fantastic year. All hail the DS! Most anticipated yet-to-be-announced title for 2007: Diablo 3 C'mon Blizzard! Give it to me! Forget all that World of Warcraft business and give us another fantastic, addictive, narrative singleplayer experience!

Holy shit! So it's not just my internet connection! After a few tries I finally managed to download the Wii update I needed, but the shop kept on loading. I thought it was my crappy wireless connectin, but apparently it's nationwide malaise? What a relief! Maybe tomorrow I'll finally be able to send my little Mii into the world!

If you can find it and you're into Japanese RPG's (that are few and far between on the Gamecube), go for Skies of Arcadia Legends, a remake of the Dreacast classic. It's quite good and features pirates and airships. Tickld my fancy more than Tales of Symphonia did (with its horrrrrrrible voice acting and pacing of dialogues).

Oh man, yesterday we got two Xboxes in the house and hooked it all together with two TV's and played Gears of War multiplayer with the four of us. It was so beautiful. Even though I'm far from understanding the strategic possibilities of the maps and gameplay; it's just so wonderfully visceral and exciting to engage the enemy and end the skirmish in a chainsaw decapitation! So nice! I heard stuff about the game being badly balanced, or this-and-that, and it's all just whining. It's exciting, whatever it is.

Nono, I'm pretty much against all unreasonable religious lobbies. Or industrial lobbies for that matter. I'm not against jews themselves, as persons, but against their government and bureaucratic bodies, in much the same way that I have no personal grudge against Americans but can be often heard lamenting their woeful leaders. In the case of the Jews, it's really that they're abusing their position to getting away with stuff. It was totally outrageous in the first place that they were allowed to invade Israel out of some ancient claim to it, mostly because everyone felt (justified) pity for them after the second World War (obviously way more complicated stuff that I don't understand was going on here). As they are today, they (the officials) seem completely two-faced to me: on one side they're still playing the 'everyone-is-against-us-and-we're-so-innocent' card, and at the same time they're still pestering the Palestinian and Libanese people with their unchecked military superiority. As long as they still have hundreds of Palestinian war prisoners in their dungeons, they don't have the right to get all upset whenever a swastika appears somewhere, or use anti-semitism as a rhetorical stranglehold to forcefully silence even the slightest bit of commentary on them. Quit being so sanctimonious and own up to the fact that you've taken on aspects of the ones that once sought to destroy you.

Yes, looking forward to Corruption. I hope it has less of an insane difficulty level with its final boss though, cause that's the only thing that almost mortally wounded the experience of Metroid Prime, tainting an otherwise fearfully atmospheric game with one sloppy game design choice.

We don't have Live, unfortunately, and the xbox isn't mine to begin with. But who knows, perhaps in a year from now I'll get my own

But that's the problem with all prisons; they breed hostility and polarisation. It's basically how Al Qaida was created; one too many torture camp by an Egyptian dictator installed by the American government. You reap what you sow.

It's ridiculous that he was imprisoned for it. I think legal action can be taken up to some point, maybe of a reprimanding, but not an actual punishment. Not unless he was inciting people to become anti-semite terrorists or something, which he clearly wasn't. Typically, the big Jewish lobbies are 'displeased' with his release. Go back to your own little race-bullying in Palestine and quit whining

What I really like is that even though my mom hasn't played the Wii yet, she recognises it as something that's suitable for other people than youngsters, simply because in the commercials people of all ages are playing. That surprised me because it never occurred to me that it would be this simple. I thought it'd be a hard sell to convince our elders that gaming could also be for them, but all it took was a commercial that was aimed at them.

I hate Nintendo for not bringing out the Mega Man anthology in Europe. Damn their eyes!

Is Red Steel THAT bad? I thought people judged it mediocre, at worst, but not 'bad'.

You were expecting something erotic?

Good thing I made it to the top of the all-time profit list before all the others. Must be doing something right. [uPDATE] Wait, no, I've been uncovered. They've taken away the 1.000.000 I so craftfully cheated out of the game. How dare they. That is no way to applaud my skill in pirating. If they're really all about pirating, they'll restore my fortune in honour.

Wow. I am so taking my Wii home for christmas, so that everyone can play.

So far, I think so, though ironically (due to the groundhog day aspect of Zelda) the various parts of the series are so diverse comparisons are somewhat lacking. Majora's Mask was way too difficult in parts to be enjoyed fully. Visually, I preferred Windwaker, though that one had little dungeons and an off pacing. All in all, yes, I think Twilight Princess is one of the best Zelda's so far. The gameplay has been perfected, not only on a 'feeling' level, where everything just feels damn smooth, but also in its pacing. There's a steady rhythm to the game that constantly feeds you new stuff to do even in the cyclical repetitiveness of exploration/twilight/dungeon.

The reason I like House MD is because Dr. House constantly plays on his GBA SP, and even a DS, never mind that the sounds don't correllate with the images. There are other reasons.

Oh, that last episode was excellent! Ben's letter on screen, fantastic. I especially loved how they asked Ian Livingstone about a game on City of Thieves, which is one of the best adventure books out there. I don't necessarily need a game though, only if it were to really capture the eerie style of the book and not be some crappy action-fest. (And the wizard's name is Nicodemus, by the way )

Awesome! Ubi could do this more for a while, they haven't lost any appeal.

Well don't be. At the moment, it amuses me. I just have the feeling I'm missing something right now. To give you a frame of reference; I didn't feel that when playing Knytt, because that felt terrifically comfortable with its simplicity. Skyrates just begs for something more complicated, deep, involved. Also, they really need to make the login-process smoother. Everytime I want to play I need to log in and wait for the world to load. May not seem terribly cumbersome, but if their aim is quick play 'like checking your email', then it needs to be a heckuva lot more streamlined. Store my account in a cookie, or make it a downloadable applet that I can optionally put on my desktop or something.

Question: is there any more to do right now than check which resources are scarce, then fly to another island to sell them for petty change and let the computer do all the fighting because it's damn near impossible to do yourself? At this rate it'll take weeks before I have enough cash to buy another plane. And where does the multiplayer aspect of the game come in? I feel like I'm really missing a bigger metagame or something.