miffy495

Just wanted to say: I had to leave a movie theater to regain my composure the other day when, during a screening of Dr. No, James Bond was told "This came for you today sir, in a diplomatic pouch." I completely fucking lost it. Thanks, Idle Thumbs!

Fucking Lucidity. I paid $2.50 for that game and still felt ripped off. That's the only time that's ever happened.

Awesome!

The Metal Gears are indeed great. On PSP, I'd highly recommend the two God of War games, with the latest (Ghost of Sparta) being better than GoW3 in my opinion. Also, I'm really liking Persona 3 Portable right now.

Has anyone actually tried Vietnam yet? I'm really into the idea, but don't know if I'm down to open the wallet yet...

As I mentioned in what Toblix called the "Pokemon podcast" before the last Grand Thumb Auto round, earlier today I spent some time signing up for and registering my games on Club Nintendo. (one of these games was Pokemon Pearl, which got Wrestle and I talking about it. Apparently we sounded podcast-ish) That DS Game and Watch collection that Japan got a long time ago always looked really sweet, and it seems us North Americans can now get it for 800 coins. Coins are, as you may have guessed, the Club Nintendo currency. You get 30 coins for registering a DS game, and 50 for a Wii game. By my math, at new release prices, this translates to roughly 1 coin for each (Canadian) Dollar you spend on Nintendo's first party games. Frighteningly enough, after registering all of the Wii and DS games that I could, I have 780 points. That's $780 over the past several years that I've spent on Nintendo. Yikes. Aside from this shot of perspective, I'm really choked that I'm so close to getting that Game and Watch thing but am still less than a game short of the target. So now I'm taking suggestions. I need one (1) first party Nintendo game for either system to get that Game and Watch thing and if I'm buying a game, I'd like it to be a good one. Otherwise, I'm just spending the cost of whatever this other game would be on the Game and Watch collection. I already have all the Mario games (except Sluggers. Don't like baseball), Metroid, and Zelda. I considered one of the Brain games, but unless someone sways me, the odds that I'd play it for more than a day are not good. As far as I know, there's no Fire Emblem DS. That would be an immediate buy if it existed. I'd be interested in Fire Emblem for the Wii, but can never seem to find it anywhere. Right now, it's looking like my two best candidates are Animal Crossing or Wario Land Shake It, both for the Wii. I was actually really pumped for Wario a while ago, but reactions seemed mixed and I never went for it. Worth getting? Alternatively, anyone have Animal Crossing yet, and if so, is it any good? I put a few months into the DS one before getting bored and quite enjoyed it. Hmmm... a thought occurs. Tetris DS? Tetris is Tetris, and I heard this version is quite good. Probably fairly cheap now as well. Anyway, for a post that essentially says nothing, this has gone on long enough. Point is: Advice-ify me. What's a rad first party game?

As a Canadian, I once wondered why Quebecers were excluded from our contests (yes, even in Canada they can't enter things) and looked it up. To the best of my memory, any kind of contest that has an element of randomness without rewarding any kind of skill is regarded by the Quebec provincial government as "gambling" and is illegal. Some companies try to get around this by having it be random, followed by the winner having to answer a "skill testing question" to receive their prize (usually some arbitrary arithmetic) but unless you're willing to go through with that, no entry for the citizens of Quebec.

It's true, I've been loving my DS constantly for over two years now. This is why I need to upgrade to a 3DS. My DSi just doesn't have the lustre of the early days anymore.

True enough. I haven't bothered to change it since about March '09. Does anyone actually pay attention to those things?

Totally with you. Kids will play with whatever they play with. They're too new to the world to give a shit about gender roles. The rest is just marketing to societal sexist stereotypes. The trouble I have is, when thinking about 10-ish years down the line when I hope to be a father, how to keep my own children from being sucked into that crap. Easy enough at home, but as soon as they have peers it gets weird. It's a huge bummer that that's even an issue, but here we are.

Keeping up with my run of Ubisoft Montreal games, I just finished my third runthrough of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, but this time on PS3. I downloaded the HD remake when it came out and had been excited to try it. I'm kind of torn after finishing it though. On the one hand, it's fucking Sands of Time. After finishing it I just wanted to stand up and start yelling "Fucking video GAMES!" with joy. It's so good, and still is. It shouldn't be too hard to make a case for it as the best overall game of the oughts. On the other hand, the HD remake stuff is pretty fucking lazy. They basically just added some anti-aliasing and fucked up the sound mix. All the models are smoother now, but this really just makes the textures look muddy. Kind of a bummer. The real issue though, is the sound design. For whatever reason, with the volume turned way up and the speech set to way higher than the music or effects, I could still barely hear any of the dialogue between the prince and Farrah. In a story that's so focused on the developing relationship between the two of them, that sucks. Anyone considering playing this, be warned. The game is still one of the best games ever, and no amount of sloppy porting can ruin that, but man do some parts of the port feel absolutely infuriating. Continuing on, I'm also in the middle of playing the Beyond Good and Evil HD remake on 360 (spoiler alert: It's a way, WAY better port), which is also my first time playing the game. It's great, but as I haven't finished it yet, I'll wait until I'm done to talk.

Yo, I finished Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Thoughts in the thread to keep the 'blix happy. We love you 'blix.

Finished. I don't really know what I can say. Running around as Desmond, particularly has me really, REALLY wanting to play Assassin's Creed 3 now, as does the new, even-more-than-AC2, "What the fuck?" ending. That shit was fun as hell. Also, getting Rome to 100% rebuilt was really fun, though I could never tell you why. All in all, I greatly enjoyed the game. Definitely glad that I sunk the 20+ hours into it. It was crazy fun, and continues to make me suspect that when all is said and done, AC will be one of my top candidates for "series of whatever console generation we're in".

Bought the two pack on Steam with a friend earlier this week. Stoked as hell!

You should really play the previous Splinter Cells. The thing about them was that not only could you do that, but you could also do entire levels doing nothing but knocking folks out and going on your way. In Splinter Cell 3 I went through the entire game and didn't kill a single person that the story of the game didn't force me to. It was goddamned glorious. I had so much fun sneaking around people, dropping them silently, and moving on with the knowledge that I didn't end another digital life. I tried playing Conviction that way. It doesn't work at all. That's my main sticking point with the game. It's a fine action game, but it isn't what I want out of Splinter Cell, and it made me really sad that they took it in that direction. At any rate, glad you're enjoying it!

Holy fuck does that game look beautiful. Too bad it's a city builder. No matter how many times I've tried to get into the genre, it just doesn't seem to do anything for me. Still, I'll keep an eye on this, if only for the visual appeal.

Ha! That ad was one of the Golden Lion winners (best ad awards at Cannes) last year. My theater runs a week-long show of the winners each year, so I've seen it quite a few times. It is indeed pretty good. As for Cool Guy, what the fuck why can't I stop laughing? As for "Why are you showing Ads at an art-house theater?": You try getting people to come in in -40 C weather. It's pretty much the only thing that makes any money in January.

I nearly fell out of my chair at the Vladimir Putin photo. Well done indeed.

Automagic. Although you'll need to import your Rock Band 2 songs separately, everything you already imported to RB2 remains good for 3. When I booted up 3 for the first time, all my RB1 songs were there, I just had to go enter the code for 2 and download all that business. EDIT: I can only actually confirm this for RB1 though, as I don't have the others.

I've got a weird trifecta of books sitting next to my bed right now. I just finished the graphic novel Asterios Polyp, which was excellent. Really clever the way they worked stuff together, and the idea of narration by the main character's stillborn twin brother made me really happy for reasons I can't quite qualify. Still, if you're into weird graphic novels and haven't read that one, give it a shot. The second book is Karl Popper's The Logic Of Scientific Discovery, which I'm reading purely for it's entertainment value to me. I'm only about 50 pages in yet, but it's genuinely thrilling to me to be reading a book that so obviously was a huge influence on everything philosophy-of-science that came after. It also makes me really relieved that I'm enrolled in classes again starting in September after taking a year off. When I start reading 500 page logic books for fun, I think I'm ready to head back to class. The third is purely for times when my brain refuses to think. My girlfriend got me hooked on Dragon Ball, so after reading all of the original books, I'm now about halfway through Z. They're stupid, they're childish, but they can be really funny and sweet too. I think the other books I'm reading are enough to make me feel like I can read adult things, and I'm having a bunch of fun with Dragon Ball, so fuck the haters. I'm very amused to look next to my bed and see an artsy graphic novel with a Dragon Ball book and a dense logic text sitting on top of it. Diverse reading, yeah!

That's messed up. I feel terrible for that girl now, and am incredibly impressed with her response to some of that shit that people are saying. "That was the worst thing I've ever heard. I'll never get that girl's voice out of my head." "Well, that's an accomplishment at least." Fuck yeah it is, you tell 'em! Eh, whatever. She's an 8th grade kid. If we're judged by the music we like in Junior High School, I'm pretty sure each one of us would have something horrible that they're ashamed of. Hell, in 8th grade, I owned a Limp Bizkit album. That's pretty fucking low as well.

I did some Japanese courses during my second and third years at Uni (it was that or take intro French, which I had been speaking since I was 7). It was fun, but really hard to do simultaneously with a full course load. I had memorized all the Hiragana and Katakana, as well as about 100 Kanji, and at this point can sort of ask for directions to a bathroom. Of course, letting it atrophy for 2 years probably has something to do with that, so make sure you keep practicing if you're serious about it. Have fun with tricky language stuff!

Tuns out to be a moot point anyway, as I only have one game in my whole fucking library that EB will give me $8 for and I can part with, so nuts to that. At the same time, I'm a huge goddamned Nintendo fanboy and love my Nintendo systems, despite getting them right away and waiting through the early dry periods, so I doubt that will be a problem for me. I've started a "3DS jar" in my kitchen now, bolstered with they $125 I was going to spend on it anyway (out of a tax refund I got this week) and which should be filled gradually over a couple of months. Then, I'm buying the sucker. I know it's silly, but the game I really want to play is Pilotwings.

I played it for a bit at PAX and came away impressed. I may have to check this out.

So is this worth trading in a bunch of things for? I can't afford to buy one straight-up, but gamestop is running a thing where if I trade in 5 games it's $125. I'm pretty tempted to take them up on this, if I can find 5 games I'm ok losing that would be worth more than $8 each in trade value, but I want to hear a bit about what people think of the thing. Worth it, or no?