Nachimir

That was my main gripe too, but outside of that it just felt like it was ticking boxes.

Happy Ging-day, Ginger's bum.

Manny was such a prick that I found that particular cutscene with Elizabeta hilarious.

My word. It's more of a Crystal Skullfuck. Lucas and Spielberg have jizzed in my eyes. I could take a lot of the silliness even though it did get distasteful, but inter-dimensional aliens? Fuck off.

YAY

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18761

I couldn't take any more at "Green red yellow blue what will yooou dooo?"

There was a guy in America who got one of those "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON $5,000,000!!!*" letters, took a plane to where the spam mailing company was located in Florida, and of course left disappointed. Several times. Likewise, 419 scammers based in Amsterdam rope enough suckers in that they can get them over there with cash, beat and rob them. http://www.419eater.com/ is good entertainment based on counter-scamming the scammers.

Yeah, coverage of him pops up outside of game politics occasionally, but it reached fever pitch last year and since them many gaming press people seemed to have adopted a "do not feed the troll" stance toward him. Quite right too I think; long before his bar association troubles in particular states, his threats were toothless and his hyperbole became monotonous.

Sucks Toblix :-( I lost a few months of email at the end of 2007 and a gig or two of music last month, but it's been years since I've lost a drive. I'll second this; my job has switched me on to doing nearly everything online now, and looking after data (like POP mail) seems like a massive ball ache in comparison. Given that my personal stuff is on an Ubuntu machine now, I could easily set up some scripts to back everything up, but online is just easier. Reinstalling machines with any OS has become really simple, whereas before it involved quite a few hours with a long list of software to reinstall and data to shuffle around. Wrestle, I noticed you had a gripe or two over del.icio.us on Twitter a while back. Care to explain why you choose ma.gnolia/Foxmarks over it? I'm just curious.

My, what a horsey carcass (scroll down).

Because noone outside of the games industry or anti-games lobby gives a shit about him.

I agree with you about Manny. The Manny and Elizabeta missions were my favorite parts of the game though... Little Jacob is through and through a good guy, everyone seems to like him. Plus, the cut scenes with him and Shadow speaking patois and Niko looking bewildered are hilarious

I think it only allows that if you shoot him in the knee first. I screwed it up once by twitching and hitting him in the body. -- Was it someone here that mentioned the Playboy X penthouse balcony being a good place to go for the six stars achievement? If so, thanks for the tip. Got the achievement tonight with about $65K worth of rockets/launcher for helicopters and a load of machine gun ammo and nades for the cops on the opposite roof. I'm now at the very last mission, and debating whether to go for it, or savour the stunt jumps, pigeons, etc. before using the last mission to get 100%...

Idle Thumbs: Only rapes for justice. I don't have a PSP, but otherwise I would be all over this and sending you my profuse thanks Since this kind of effort and sharing shouldn't just sink like a stone, I wanted to tell you that.

If you're going to be using it by yourself, the AG Neovo F-419 is a good 19" panel for the price, though judging by a quick look many places list it as "special order" and only some keep it in stock. I got a pristine return for £140 a few years ago and it seems they've held their value ever since, with new ones appearing to be around £150 - £160. A friend and I both have one, and though the response time at 15ms is nothing stellar, it's enough to play games with without any ghosting being noticeable unless you're really sensitive to that kind of thing - I've been finding it fine for Team Fortress 2, Stalker, etc. They're also very bright, sometimes it seems too bright when I'm using it at night. I don't think the viewing angle is amazing, but again it's been fine for watching DVDs with someone, too small for a decent sized group of people though.

Maybe it's surfer girl

Good point, I knew San Andreas less than LC or VC. I did have a better grasp of SA than the new LC though (nearly 40 hours spent in GTA IV now); I only played through it once but can still remember a lot of locations and how they relate to each other for some reason (On that note, my boss and I were walking around San Francisco in February, recognising fragments of it from San Fierro ). Perhaps because the three cities in SA are so visually different to each other I found them easier to parse. Maybe because of the lower level of detail. I don't know. In SA I generally always knew roughly where I was and how to get to wherever else, but in GTA IV I can get lost and so often see completely new places. I'm not complaining about it

There are already torrents around of the radio stations, though they're fairly poor quality rips, it seems taken from audio piped out of a running copy. some of the stations have 19 or so tracks, and it seems the game mixes them with slightly random adverts and bits of DJ talk. At the moment, I'm still staggered by by the art direction and visual depth of it, but the missions are feeling really tired. The ones that make me smile, like are essentially repeats of similar missions from earlier GTA games. I'm nearly 40 hours in and can only take it in small doses. Though the Staggered that, with that kind of playtime under my belt, still only have quite an abstract mental map of the city. By this time in GTA 3 I knew that version of Liberty city like the back of my hand.

Maybe you're right, there was that scene where he saw Six as Ellen. Loved the surprise jump order too. I thought this was better than some of the S4 episodes so far. I have a low tolerance for mysticism, and have found Starbuck severely annoying so far this season on account of her becoming such a self-absorbed nutter/victim, but am roped in enough to want to know how this ends.

Then again, a year of pre-production is a long time, and might be a promising sign...

Skinny I heard on surfer girl was that management at quite a few companies were getting agitated about her. I'd really like to see a hit rate for her rumours at some point. I hope this sequel gets made, but I'm not getting too excited about this being in pre-production, as it gives plenty of time for this to get nuked :-(

Every time you take one of them out, their "like" percentage increases, and all of them are shown in your game stats. If you take them to do something they really like, their percentage jumps up quite fast. Every time you snub someone, it goes down, but only by 2 - 3%. I'm most of the way through the game, and only had one dip to around 85 or more from 100. It's not difficult to get them up to the point of giving you favours, but it is a bit tedious and once Niko makes a bunch of friends they do ring the phone to ask you if you fancy doing something. It's kind of annoying, but only in a "having to reject a call every so often" way.

Some of them are really worth it, some aren't unless you're going for 100%. I'd advise keeping Little Jacob on good terms, because: Francis: unless (really BIG spoiler): Though he's never really a friend as such and you don't have to go through tedious friendship missions. Taxis can also take some of the pain out of them since you can pay a little extra to skip the journey (rarely goes above $40 so it's peanuts really) Also, watch it with the rocket launcher. My housemate is struggling for cash near the end of the game, since he's severely dyslexic he tends not to pay attention to certain things and didn't realise the rockets cost $5000 each