Duncan

By the auto-gyro missions, are you talking about the one where you have to find and shoot down Ulysses Boothe? If so, I think I lucked out on that one, because I passed it with not much difficulty after the first couple of tries. I have much more difficulty with stunt flying than I do with combat, it seems. I like that the missions don't get progressively difficult. After that last Hollywood mission, I've pretty much been breezing by since then. I'm at the first Manhattan mission now. This game is a lot of fun.

I haven't watched either network in years, but I basically agree with what Kingz said. Nickelodeon has always seemed frustratingly loud and obnoxious. With Cartoon Network, one of the only minuses I can think of is they tend to censor stuff. I'm pretty sure they censored Futurama every now and then.

...Oh my God, that is too funny. Also weird. You didn't rhyme anything with 'Potter', though. And rhyming 'all' with 'all'? What's up with that?

I didn't intend to sweep in and clarify everything. I was pointing out - and this was something quite obvious - that whatever your argument, you were losing just a little credibility with 'oh yeah and for a cute lil irish girl you sure are trouble...tststs'. That, I think, is being an asshole.

Even though it's clearly not a good idea to step in here, I thought I should just point out that your 'game developers are making games because of pent-up social angst' has lost all credibility by this point. Also, you're being an asshole. EDIT: (Not you, Yufster.)

This is weird. So yesterday I called up this hotel, which shall remain nameless to apply for this job as a generic hotel lackey-type person. So I get through to this woman and I say I'm interested in this job. She asks me why I'm interested and I tell her that I just love crappy jobs and I can't get enough of them, really. She asks, would I like to know more about the job? I think no, I already know everything I need to, but I say yes anyway. She goes on for about two minutes and I remain politely silent. This is going somewhere, I promise. So then she says "Well, to be honest...", and I see where it's going and realise I'm probably not getting this job. I don't. Guess why. It's because - get this - because I'm not female, and therefore don't have a natural attention to detail. I am not making this up, that's what she said. A natural attention to detail. Fucking hell. Yesterday I was enjoying the whole thing because, well, it was funny. Now I'm kinda bitter.

Man, talk about luck. I just got through that last obstacle for the first time ever in the actual mission after about nine thousand failed attempts, then proceeded to win the following two battles without taking any damage at all. My love for this game now continues unhindered.

I'm hardly being told to sit at the back of the bus. It's more a case of one person being weird rather than anything serious or harmful and I don't think it requires vindication or civil disobedience on my part.

It's more of a self-policing country. (I don't actually care that much...)

Practising it in the instant-action map, I've now done that particular stunt twice. Followed both times by my instant death. Still though, progress, progress. Also, I can now recite practically all the dialogue up to that point in this mission. "That doesn't impress me, Zachary. You all know I'm the best pilot - this will prove it once and for all!" "Zachary leads the pack through another obstacle!" ...and so on.

I was just writing this big arguing post, but then I saw what Jake had just written and you pre-emptively shot that down pretty well. I can get behind this a little more, especially since I now have this ridiculous urge to buy it and use it with my PC monitor/keyboard/mouse. Two computers! Wow! Actually, I had no idea there were USB-compliant monitors. Also, the iPod shuffle's low price is neat, but it sucks that there's not that much storage on it.

I would probably call you if it didn't cost ten thousand dollars a minute. Actually it doesn't cost that much, I have since discovered.

That Margaret Power thing is the lamest ghost story ever. "There was this woman Margaret Power who died. Now she's a ghost possibly! Ooh!"

I would recommend pushing up bookcases against windows as soon as possible. And why do you want to go to the swimming pool anyway?

Having a shotgun on public display in a sinister, allegedly haunted hotel is just asking for trouble.

I will take you up on that in order to replace my lame former avatar.

With the two expansion packs, it ought to last you about a million hours, so I imagine you'll have your hands full for a while. I think you'll like it, though. As far as the Xbox version goes, the graphics might not be as clear or precise as the PC version (the PC graphics weren't fantastic, anyway), but as far as I know there aren't any real problems. The only point of interest is in the Xbox version is that you have to play it third person. The characters and character interaction are some of the worst things about the game. No one has any real personality and consequently, I'm not caring about anyone in the game so far. What's also annoying is that when you ask a character a question, you get a paragraph of dull exposition in response. It is good, though. The amount of freedom and number of quests are incredible. Once, after receiving one of the main quests, I ditched it and did other stuff for about fifty in-game days. So it can keep you busy. The downside is that, again, the characters suck, and the guy who gave me the quest didn't care that I hadn't seen him for months. None of the characters do anything, really. They're always in the same place. At four in the morning, they're still standing in the same place. Not sure what that's about. Also, people who have been giving me missions for months still tell me it's a pleasure to meet me. (Thanks for the Oblivion preview link, by the way.)

That's pretty great. Have you played Morrowind, Trep? I'm playing it right now, and it's so great on its own that any significant gameplay improvements should make Oblivion pretty fucking fantastic. If they spent some more time on character interaction, it ought to be amazing. This is basically saying I hope the improvements aren't just graphical. Though that said, it'll never run on my computer anyway.

My middle name is James. I guess that doesn't carry the same connotations of being great at spreadsheets as 'Stats' does.

One of my problems with KOTOR was that while playing light side, you couldn't choose any of the funny answers in conversations. That pissed me off. I think at one point you could say to Jolee "I hate you, old man." But if you're light side, you don't get to say anything funny, you could only echo the Jedi philosophy or whatever. I agree with you about the overuse of amnesiac characters, but what I really hate in RPGs is revealing that the player character is someone of grand importance or The Chosen One or something. I think it's a lot more fun and rewarding to start off as some nobody and build your way up to getting all this respect and recognition from all the other characters, rather than getting this sudden shortcut to fame and success. Oh, here's a question: what is the PC selection like in general? I remember seeing one of the trailers and noticing that some of the PCs in there looked exactly the same as in KOTOR. Are there actually different ones this time around?

Spreadsheets?! I just guessed.

Uh... Mrs. Peacock did it with the lead piping in the library. I'm absolutely certain of it this time!

I forgot about the explosions. Their absence is disappointing.

I agree with you about the text, but apart from that it really is awesome. It's also really great seeing the Double Fine logo down there. Man, I hope this means that Psychonauts is a lot closer to finished than I thought it was.

Okay: Reverend Green Dagger Study