miffy495

$200 Canadian. I think something like $180 USD, which is about $50 more than a Lite, if I'm not mistaken. My DS is definitely my most played system, so I'm actually getting quite excited to see what they've done with it.

Blue for myself as well. Picked up Chinatown Wars, but am saving it for Sunday to christen the new system with.

7 Central you say? Should be 6 for me, which would work great but I still don't have the game. For Scrobbs/Norfolk, I believe that would be 1 in the morning, which is unfortunate but he could be up late...

I'm also in love with Bit.Trip Beat, and have been since buying it day one. Fantastic game. I sort of wish I could swap out the motion controls for more traditional dpad, but it works well enough so I don't really mind. I was actually considering starting a thread for it when it came out two Mondays ago but it seems as though Wii-centric threads don't really get a lot of love around here, no matter how great the game. Dominant opinion seems to be "Yeah, this'd be great if I hadn't sold my Wii a year/two years ago," which is a pity. Especially since games like this, Madworld, HotD, etc are making the system much more relevant this year than it has been for the last while.

I may actually be able to join in next week. Trying to get my headset mic working has been a bitch lately, but whatever. How many slots have been filled during recent games?

Same here. Since I graduated to Expert drums back in May (ish) of last year, I've found myself unconsciously separating the drum tracks from almost every song I listen to and wondering if I'd be able to play it. I need to upgrade from my Ion kit to a real set one of these days. Played guitar for 7 years before picking up Guitar Hero, and found the original two games to be incredibly fun but didn't really change the way I thought about music. Drumming in Rock Band, however, has flipped some switch in my brain.

Damn, that sounds ideal. I've been interested to try this game out, and since the price drop it's gotten more tempting still. Saturday doesn't really work for me though, at least not for a while. Perhaps after the term ends I'll have a chance to give it a go with you folks.

In this case though, it's not just bad journalism, but a direct quote that makes the situation ridiculous. Admitting that the guy had no idea that he'd raped her and even invited her out after are pretty clear signs that the sex could have easily been stopped. How many people commit assault and follow it up with "so, you wanna head down to the multiplex?" Rape is horrible, but pointing out that this girl is taking the definition way too far is not trivializing it. I see it rather as resisting the trivialization of it. If we allow regretted sex to be classed the same way as rape, the word begins to lose its impact and we will begin to take genuine cases of rape less seriously.

That's fairly close to where I want to start with all of this. Precisely because potential outcomes are weighed in our minds when determining our judgements, punishment does serve a very useful purpose. Of course, this is not quite the same as making it ethical, which is where I hope to go in the end, so it does get substantially more complicated. Even if you're a strict utilitarian, (probably the most likely group to take this as ethical) it may not be justifiable, as there are situations where utility could be negatively effected in this way. Deontology is founded on choice, so it doesn't really work so well either. Ethics is founded in so many cases on free will, so I think that trying to come up with a determinist ethic is a really interesting (and hopefully possible) endeavor.

I've hit my head up against that before too. It's not so much that we're going to criticize it though, more that it should be justified in some way.

I don't know if his work specifically will be published or not, seeing as this guy is going into law school right away rather than continuing with Philosophy. This is what my group is doing in order to get our degrees, so job one is to get it in to our department and be dubbed worthy of the BA-Honours that we're all working for. Some people have gone on to publish their honours thesis after graduating, but it's pretty rare. If you're interested in the subject, I believe his paper largely consisted of a response to this book, which came out while he was in the planning stages and both luckily and unluckily pertained to his area of interest. Luckily because he had some recent work to start from. Unluckily because he was all fired up that this was fairly new ground until that point. Oh well.

Hey, if you're interested I'll keep you updated on what I'm doing. I probably won't get to the serious writing parts until December or so, but if I find particularly interesting readings while doing my research I'll let you know. It's something that's bothered me for a long time (as in, pre-university) so I figured this would be the perfect excuse to put some work into it. I have a friend who's just wrapping up his own thesis right now on how apologies work and I'm finding it's always a rewarding experience to talk to someone who's dedicated that much time to a topic that interests them. Even if you don't care going in, suddenly you get extremely involved. I hope to have a similar effect on people in a year's time, but there's no way to know til we get there, right?

You actually want to know? I warn you, I'm a philosophy major, and as such incredibly pretentious. I'll put it in spoiler tags for those who don't give a shit. So yeah, I get to read tons and tons of books on Ethics and Philosophy of Mind. I wouldn't have chosen the subject if I didn't love both of those things, but damn if it doesn't still seem pretty intimidating at this point.

Damn, sounds like I missed a great one. On the other hand, I now have a good handle on what my next year is going to consist of and feel prepared for it. Either way, I'm definitely in next week.

Good to have your support...?

Unfortunately I have a meeting with a potential thesis advisor for next year during game time this week. Degree takes precedence over GTA, I'm afraid, so I'll be missing my first round in over two months...

Oh my god that is my favorite thing in quite some time. The Pepsi energy field was the best part. And when they traced aesthetics from 3000 BC up to "Pepsi 2009: ?" Amazing find, sir.

Grab House of the Dead and Madworld. That'll change.

Hell, I understand. Priorities and such.

Was just reading 4 Color Rebellion and came across this: Note the quote on the back. We're not the only ones...

I am now halfway through the game, (7 of 13 bosses defeated) and the early impressions have not changed. I've discovered two new things though, both positives. First off, the story is actually sort of interesting. There have now been flashbacks to the incident that set off the games, Jack's motives are slowly being revealed, and a big conspiracy plot worthy of only the cream of B movies is being unfurled. I figured the story would just be something to loosely tie together the gorefest, but it's becoming yet another motivating factor that pulls me back to the game. The second is the pacing. It's very well done. A few of the levels (I'm looking at you, Mad Castle and the first part of Asiantown) are very constrictive. There are only so many environmental hazards around, and you begin to run out of ways to kill guys quite quickly. Just as I start to get bored of killing in the same way though, I seem to unlock some new weapon. I was resistant to these at first, as the chainsaw is just so damned effective, but it's become plain that they're fantastic. The spear from the Lusty Geisha level is my favorite, I think. Impaling three guys on it and hurling them into a rosebush, pit of fire, or whatever is not only worth a ton of points, but also insanely entertaining. It's got a brilliant finisher as well where you launch the guy over your head and spin the spear like a propeller as he falls down into it. And again, these weapons always show up just as I'm getting bored. If it's not a weapon, it's one of those minigames. These are kind of hit and miss. A few are fantastic (the man-golf is a particularly fun riff on something that every damn Wii game seems to do and the fireworks one is great.) but there are a lot that just don't seem worth it. Still, they keep it mixed up and the game never gets boring. Platinumgames obviously spent a good deal of time plotting out their levels, and it shows. The game is becoming more challenging than I would have thought. While you can get through the first few levels button-mashing, recent fights have taught me just how misguided this strategy can be. Dying quickly on first attempts, I'm now getting quite good at dodge maneuvers and triggering those QTEs that otherwise would have resulted in the boss carefully removing my bones. Yokozuna, the sumo wrestler, especially requires careful dodging and striking to fight effectively. This game is becoming easier and easier to recommend. Not only are all the positives from the first impressions true, it's now surprising me with depth of play and story as well. Get the damn game.

Because they were incredibly early attempts? When I was about 4 years old, I had exactly 4 games. Lemmings, and all 3 of the Hugo series. All four of those games still have a very special place in my heart.

Always a nice surprise when 1dg4f joins in. That hatchetjob podcast he hosts has really grown on me, and it's nice to be able to talk with him while exploding some folks. As I believe Wrestle said last time he played, conversation turns really interesting when you have a radio host in the game...

This thread just made me go back and play through the game from start to finish in a sitting. Total time, about 2 hours. This is the time logged by my Steam account. This period included the time I had it paused while I walked my dog. Actual time: closer to an hour and a half. Not a complaint, actually. It was good to sit down and give it another runthrough, and nice that I didn't have to kill a week doing so. First time I've played it since first beating it in 2007. After a year and a half of calming down from the OMGBRILLIANT!!!!11 reaction, I can still say that this is an incredibly charming, fun little game. I need to replay short-burst games like this more often. Maybe another play of Rez is in order next week or so...

I'm still not positive on what this means for me, daylight-savings wise. I think I'm supposed to be on at 3:00 now, rather than 2:00 as I have been since this started. I'll double check that and will be on at the appropriate time. Nothing pulling me away early this week, so I'm in for however long we play. EDIT: yup. 3pm. I'll see you then.