loonyboi

Yeah, I checked, and you're right. You'd have to leave out the audio...that's 58 megs right there. The main exe + main.dat are like 1.25 MB.

It's five shades of kickass. Also you gotta love the fact that it's so small, if you remove the uninstall.exe file it fits on a floppy disc (!).

Bah. I got two wrong, but even those I would have gotten if I wasn't rushing through them. It's too easy.

80? Dude, I hadn't even finished the main quest at 80. I accept that i'm in the minority, but don't claim there's somehow less than 80 hours of gameplay there. I had well over 100 without dipping into replayability (that is, doing the same quests again).

It depends on how evil you get. I have two characters, one I used to do the thieves guild/dark brotherhood, and one I used for everything else. The DB character has a super-high infamous rating. I got about 120 hours out of Oblivion across both characters. I've gotten about three or four times that out of Morrowind. But then that includes both expansion packs and playing it on both PC and Xbox (to completion!). Also Morrowind was a slower game in general. Morrowind is probably my favorite RPG of all-time, so yeah, I don't think Oblivion is as good. But it is awesome. I couldn't have asked for a better next-gen sequel to Morrowind.

Ugh. Let's hope he hasn't. The word does not need a Halo game designed like Indigo Prophecy.

That's exactly what happened, actually. Revenge came out last year and 5 won't be out until next year. Sounds like that's what's happening...from the OPM article:

Congrats! May the universal law of children* not apply in your case! *The universal law of children (as stated, you know...by me) says that children will inevitably dislike anything their parents like, and like the things their parents hate. Therefore my theoretical children will hate comics, movies and games in favor of sports, sitcoms and pop music.

Yeah, I really don't like that idea. I don't want to drive to each mission, I want to just jump right into it! On the other hand, it sounds like the crashes are going to be insane.

I know all about A.H. I pre-ordered Accordion Hero the second they announced it. After great games like Nazgul Thunder and Cthulhu Karts, I'll buy anything Schadenfreude puts out.

My friend, you severely underestimate the power of the Accordion. And who wouldn't want to rock out with Keytar Hero?

RedOctane was bought by Activision, not Acclaim. Acclaim in its current state is just a publisher of MMOs and not in any position to buy anyone. I think what this shows is that Activision paid waaaaay too much for the wrong company. They got the Guitar Hero brand and the patent on the plastic guitar, but they failed to purchase the developers of the game. If MTV/Harmonix wants to go off and make Saxaphone Hero/Accordion Hero/Bass Master, etc. they can do it with any publisher. They're probably tied into a multi-title deal with Activision/Red Octane, but they're still independent. If anything, the MTV deal means Harmonix has better stuff in their future. Before Guitar Hero, they were this small, but pretty cool company making quirky musical games. Now they've got the backing of a major conglomerate, so hopefully we'll see a FreQ style game for handheld systems or something.

They're both awesome. Burnout 3 has a better interface (these things matter to me), and some better tracks. Revenge has some cool additions (crashbreaker road rage == awesome) and some things I'm not so crazy about. For me I prefer Revenge, b/c it's on 360 which means it looks freaking awesome on my HDTV.

It's a nice idea, but the manufacturing costs will likely make it far too expensive to be widely used. The solution lies in developing hybrid players that can play anything put in it, not hybrid discs.

Put Dragon Quest VIII on there for sure. That was excellent (if you like that sort of thing). Also Ratchet & Clank 3.

I've played the original, Super Metroid, Prime and Fusion. Fusion I kinda dug. The others bored me. What's Play?

I'm more human than human. Other things that might piss you off: I don't like Metal Gear Solid, Metroid or WOW. I think Beyond Good & Evil is an average game that was shipped in an unfinished state. I think Psychonauts was an okay game with funny dialogue, but I completely understand why it didn't sell. And so on.

I'm definitely pre-ordering, but I haven't decided on what game(s) to get. I'm considering Zelda, but to date, I have never really liked a Zelda game. Link to the Past bored me, as did Ocarina of Time. I finished Majora's Mask, but only because I really wanted to see how close that meteor could get (it was pretty cool, but the gameplay was dull as dirt). Wind Waker made my eyes bleed. Excitetruck looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know if it'll be fun after 20 minutes of playing. That's the one I'm leaning towards at the moment. Metroid's not a launch title, but even then, I got so bored with Metroid Prime 1 that I'm not sure I'll really be all that interested in it when it does come out. Metroid Prime was a completely lifeless FPS. No character interaction whatsoever, no dialogue, nothing. I need more than that. Mario Galaxy is the game I'm *really* looking forward to, but now that's not a launch title either. Those planning on pre-ordering, what are you getting?

Fallout 1 is genius. Fallout 2...less great. But still awesome. Fallout 2 got sidetracked on a lot of smaller, sillier things, I thought. There was a lot more to do but it felt a lot less focused. Also the pop culture references felt totally out of place.

I disagree. I watched the movie about a year (maybe two) ago, and I think it holds up just fine. Maybe you're just bitter.

In no particular order: 2001 Casablanca Blade Runner Citizen Kane The Godfather The Graduate Manhattan A Clockwork Orange Fantasia Sunset Boulevard Chinatown Apocalypse Now Vertigo City Lights Dr. Strangelove

We have HMVs in the US. I've seen them in NY and San Francisco. I'm pretty sure they sell games there, but I've never bothered to actually go in one.

I love bargain bin hunting. You can find tons of great games for $10 or less. Once I bought Suikoden for $1.99. (This was pre-PS2, even). PC games are the best for bargain bin shopping, since the major chains don't know what to do with excess inventory. And on eBay PC games are never worth anything if they're more than six months old. I picked up The Longest Journey not too long ago at my local gamestop for $4.99.

I don't know if their games (okay, there's only been one) would apply to XBLA. XBLA is not (at least right now) for games of any significant length. It's for games where rules are more important than levels. Psychonauts would be a bad candidate. A side-scrolling version of Psychonauts, minus the cut scenes? Sure. But I don't know if that's something anyone really wants.

At least this isn't a piece about how "girls play games too!" With lots of profiles of girls playing first person shooters. That story got old years ago. Many, many, many years ago I was asked to write a story like that for a major magazine. I declined. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Since then, I've seen that story more times than I'd care to remember, and it's always lame. It's like the obligatory "Bang! Zoom! Sock! Comics are for grownups!" story that hits every couple of years.