Duncan

If you're in Europe and you're ordering something from the US I don't think you get it on release. You get it a few days after the release date in my experience. They ship it on the release date, although sometimes a day or two earlier actually.

No. Scar is a . Not too surprising considering you are halfway through Battlestar Galactica's phase. When you get to "Downloaded" you will be fine.

Yeah, Steve speculated that it'll be a timed exclusive like GTA used to be, which seems probable. Certainly Ubisoft are being pretty coy about what platforms it'll be on.

I think with the fifth and sixth season, the finales were written so that they could work as the end of the show, and even then they were planning to follow it up with a movie and a spinoff. It's my understanding that everyone involved was under the impression that the eighth season would be the last, and the last run of episodes in the eighth season clearly have a finality to them that the previous three seasons didn't. But they definitely were going back and forth on the final season for a while there, and Richard Dean Anderson's decision that he was leaving the show, for real this time, after the eighth season probably made some people think that ending it that year was a good idea. I don't know why I still watch it either. They seem to think that it can go on indefinitely now since it survived a cast/plot change... (but it really didn't...) I actually don't know much of anything about Bablyon 5, but I'm pretty sure that Straczynski worked out the actor's contracts so that hiring them all back for a sixth season would be way too expensive. If Straczynski got his arc to work, good for him, but it wasn't necessarily the best way to run a show and it certainly couldn't have been easy. Going by what Lawrence and n0wak said, the five-year plan cost the show at times. And if the network cut the episode order for the season in half or even doubled it in the middle of production, as they are wont to do, then what is he going to do? He's kind of fucked. Again, it's cool that he made it work. I just think mapping out a strict über-arc before production isn't the best/only way to make a serialised, continuity-based show work. I would cite Arrested Development, which never had a grand plan (and as a comedy was probably never expected to), but was solid, well-thought-out and continuity-heavy, where things were only ever planned out a couple of episodes before they were revealed.

I have no idea what Ron Moore knows or doesn't know, but he has said that there's no grand plan which maps out the series from start to finish. Which isn't actually a bad thing, 'cause it's counter-productive to think like that when you work in television. The number of seasons it'll do is up to the network, not Moore, and if the network wants five more seasons, then Moore's kind of screwed if he'd planned it out so carefully that it can't go beyond four more seasons. And if he won't do that then the network will get someone else to do it, which, more often than not, is absolutely what you do not want. The Sci-Fi channel airs both BSG and Stargate, and Stargate's 8th season was written, rather conclusively, as the last season because everyone involved believed it was. Except no-one thought that the ratings would go up as much as they did in that season, so even after they'd actually ended the show, Sci-Fi brought it back for a ninth. And now it's pretty clearly running on empty. I think BSG has shown that Moore has a pretty good handle on things and is able to keep the show coherent and structured even if he's making things up as he goes. I don't think the second season is as good as the first in that respect but by all accounts that was a reaction to the longer season, and I have every expectation that the third season will do it better. And unlike shows like Lost or X-Files, BSG is forward-moving; the question is never what does this mean but what will happen next. There's no secrets to reveal and the backstory isn't critical, there's no big secret Moore could mess up the timing on and reveal way too early or never get a chance to at all. The show will probably run for a while, and there's no way to know if it'll stay good or why it'll go downhill or anything like that, but right now there's no reason to suspect that Moore is going to blow it. Not having a grand plan has worked well for the show so far. Anyway. The end of the first season is great, so enjoy that.

I think April not actually being dead is almost as obvious as Westhouse being the one who killed the Dragon. Man, did Kian turned out to be a big load of useless or what? He could only have been in, like, one hour of the game and was so annoying. You knew exactly what his little character arc was going to be before he even showed up, like reading the back of the box you knew what he was going to be. Also I think he's the character the game's lack of facial expressions hurt the most. I am struggling to quantify what Kian's contribution was, both of his big scenes with April were absurd: the impromptu ethical debate in the middle of the street and his monologue before her "death" -- "Yeah, soldiers are coming to kill everyone in your sanctuary here but hold on, I really want to tell you about my character growth which apparently came out of nowhere, it'll just take an hour." I guess it's implied between this game and TLJ that he and April will get married at some point but I really hope that doesn't happen. He's such a ludicrous character. I think I hate him. Just one more character who can mention "faith" about FIFTY TIMES because that was such an under-represented theme in this game. Man alive. "Faith". So blatant with the themes, seriously, you don't have to keep bringing it up all the time! Did faith even matter in the end? Was it relevant at all? It felt a lot like having a "theme" for the sake of having a "theme" rather than actually having anything to say about it. And of course her name turns out to be Faith, like Lord of the Flies didn't need a kid called "Humans Are Inherently Evil". Resolving the plot seems to be the only time the writing isn't incredibly straightforward. Zoe talking almost immediately about how she has no goals and no direction in life, man. Not so subtle with the character development. What game has this dialogue? "You're stuck, Zoe." "Yes, I'm stuck here in Arcadia." "No, stuck in life." THANK YOU. Sometimes I like the ending and sometimes I think it's ridiculous. I think if the last hour were the season finale to a TV show it would rock, but there you know you only have to wait a few months. It's totally set-up for the next game, which I guess is fine, because now I really want to play the next game, but come on, give me a little more than that. The plot was obscure enough and I still don't fully understand it, but the mass cliffhangers... Reza is a Cylon? Where did that come from? You know what, I'm actually fine with the cliffhangers. I just really wish there had been some pay-off in this game, make me feel like I learned something, like I did something. Like, come on, show Westhouse killing the Dragon. We all know it's him. I guess if he's the Prophet you might want to save that reveal but it's pretty clear he's a bad dude. Also I honestly can't remember what the Prophet's deal was at all, or if we even learned that. The thing with Faith and Zoe at the end is the only conclusion there is -- at least I THINK it's a conclusion -- and I still don't know what happened there. It's the most confusing scene in the game! Zoe and Faith are sisters, OKAY, also Helena is their mother, and Faith was visited by "the white lady", which is cocaine, and apparently something bad is happening in Arcadia at the end which is...? And there's not even any payoff to "save April Ryan" which -- that was the whole point! How did I save her exactly? And if that's supposed to relate to her "death", then what did Zoe do to influence that in ANY way? Yeah. There's a difference between teasing the next installment and thoroughly confusing everyone. Tell us something, seriously, other than that Zoe is stuck in life and that the game is about faith. Dreamfall has two positions, "needlessly obvious" and "arbitrarily obscure". I actually really liked seeing Cortez at the end there, and surprised that I recognised him immediately, given that I played TLJ six years ago, forgot entirely about his relationship to Westhouse and thus why he would be around in the thirties, he has a different voice, and they called him "Chavez". Anyway, there's no way April is dead.

He won't be saving the third world with that attitude

I really like this one for some reason. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer just hanging out.

DON'T DO IT

... ...? WHAT Man. Everything I learn about gamelife raises more questions than answers. Also, WHAT?

Wow, that kind of came out of nowhere. Crazy. ...Students of game design are of course familiar with the famous "Audrey transcript"...

It feels like Sony has gotten more shit than they possibly deserve for the controller thing, but it's hilarious that they've compounded that by apparently stealing PR strategy from Microsoft. Like they're kleptomaniacs. It's a compulsion.

Weird

This guy, their Ziff Media handler I guess, may be the creepiest of all. Except for Geoff of course, who will need to register as a sex offender at some point.

There's a Gamasutra article here which thinks Lucasarts might be into a lightsaber game, though on closer inspection the article seems a little too optimistic. I think it's interesting how a prospective Wii lightsaber game is entirely about this simple game mechanic but that's pretty much all the game would have to be for everyone to love it. Everyone's just really excited about the Wii, which is cool.

Horrifying.

Well, you can sell all your hot-ticket items for more money, so there is money to be gained from that. It becomes pretty annoying when you can't sell these awesome things for more than a quarter of what they're worth. I'd agree that it's something of an underdeveloped idea, though.

Yeah, I'll buy these for sure. I don't own any of the movies on any format so I don't feel too jerked around by this news.

Yeah, this is the only reason I'm interested in NWN2. Otherwise

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/5/prweb380201.htm uh huh

I think it's a safe bet that the nudity thing was entirely responsible for the reclassification (the unmoddable 360 version isn't getting re-rated) but to be fair Oblivion is more violent than you might assume. Anything from the Dark Brotherhood questline is pretty grim, like the severed human heads and dead bodies hanging from meathooks.

Lego Star Wars is a great co-op game but it's not story-driven. Still awesome though, so it gets my recommendation. Oh wait, I even reviewed it. Good choice for Xbox, also.

I haven't played Runaway, but I suspect, because I've been told by people I believe, that it isn't very good. In any case there are certainly a ton of better games you could get. I'm not sure if this has suddenly become a "recommend games" thread but Deus Ex is a winner.