Nachimir

fast

Jesus how many sequels has he written? I loved Ender's game, but the (so aptly described by Noyb) christian overtones and magic wish based space travel just annoyed the piss out of me in Speaker and Xenocide. Are the others worth reading, or comparable to those two?

Excellent. Sat: Went to London to meet a friend from the states, got caught right in the middle of a zombie flash mob at the Tate Modern. A very pissed off security guard at the door was saying "You can't come in here, this is a public art gallery!" as about 30 of them shambled past him . There was a guy leaving fake bloody handprints on the cafeteria windows and groaning "MMMUUUFFFIIIIINNSS" at the diners. Sun: A friend came around for some LAN games, but instead of the usual FPS stuff we play, we used an N64 emulator and some pads to play Mario Kart 64 and Micro Machines

Perhaps that's only viable as a short term strategy though? Being crapola hype-machines costs review sites *my* page views.

A guy called Dan Marchant writes some good stuff about the games industry, including this piece on why the rubbishness of a game is not always under the developer's control.

A metafilter user said it best: "WHAT THE GIBBERING MONKEY FUCK WAS THAT?" I googled for references to it being a fake. As far as I can tell, it's genuine

I thought the Meat Circus was ok. It was annoying at the time, sure, but now I look back on it fondly. Likewise finishing the last level of Ouendan has meant it's a more satsfying memory: because the first half hour of attempts ended in seconds each, success results in a greater feeling of mastery.

I agree with you to a certain extent, for instance the Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows was a standout level near the end of an otherwise quite ropey game (and the last level was utter shit). I always get pissed off with games that throw all the cool stuff out at the beginning and are then purely derivative for the other 80%. However, that kind of sequencing is only a part of design: http://lostgarden.com/2006/10/what-are-game-mechanics.html Making sure the last levels are fun wouldn't ensure the earlier parts are any good at all.

This week, Manhunt They're finally offering video embeds too.

I prefer before, but that's probably just because I met someone who looks like that a few weeks ago and he's a very funny man.

I used to work with a manager who shaved all of his hair off below the neck. Not only that, but he seemed to think telling his staff about it was a good idea.

The magnet did seem frustratingly out of reach at the very beginning, but I found enough arrowheads for it while playing through the first missions. I think it was probably about 3 hours of gameplay before I hit the first psi-tank (which really annoyed me without the magnet), but I got loads of arrowheads, psi-cards and treasure hunt items done at the same time. The dowsing rod was the most useful item for the summer camp bits; until I picked that up everything in the shop seemed ridiculously priced.

I'd post this poll here but the sample would be biased and ikkle: Q1: Is the world full of idiots? Q2: Are you an idiot? Saw it posted somewhere with a lot of traffic once. It only showed the second question after the first had been answered. Results: Roughly 80/20 yes/no for Q1, the reverse for Q2

Haha: "I love going on message boards and complaining about games I've never played"

Hmm, the comment threads I want to avoid tend to be on sites I do avoid, like gadget blogs, Joystiq, Kotaku, etc. There's a little known forum called NaliCity: Other Stuff, which used to be quite a good hangout for Unreal mappers. It went from having some incredibly clever people there to, well, youtube commenters talking about how AMERICA WON VIETNAM ASSHOLE SO STFU EURPEON YOU DONT UNDERSTAND NETHING. Also: http://xkcd.com/202/

That is correct. Phone companies be trying to FUD it all up. I'd link the Daily Show segment on comedy central seeing as they issue takedowns for ones on youtube, but their site is a crappy, barely functional mess that forces an advert down your throat then tends to skip the video you want. So here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB2Xnu9xQVU

I'm sure there's a secret "generic games" GDC session where developers gather round a huge pair of tables on the wall with a giant colon in the middle, and roll dice to see what their next project will be called.

Fixed, ta. Some of the comments there are hilarious. People getting WAY too excited, in every possible way, about pictures of a woman wearing knickers and a t-shirt.

Wooo! Yeah! I only got to play Rez briefly at a festival, but I really wanted more. Also, I wonder if there will be a microsoft branded trance vibrator (NSFW I suppose) for this version? I played it, again briefly, at the same festival, and watched a load more people on it. As far as I can tell, it's about having your ass handed to you again, and again, and again...

Yeah, I ended up toting 5 of the more powerful endurance artifacts. At first it was to carry loads of stuff to sell later, but later it was just so I could get to places faster, and also carry a stupid amount of ammo for a vintar rifle (full auto + silencer + scope FTW).

Some of that was total ass and makes me glad I was doing something else while keeping an eye on it. However, the Molyneux bit, the Robert Lefever interview, and the Wii Fit... thing, were great.

It's from "So How's Your Girl?" by the Handsome Boy Modeling School.

Is the pic that avatar comes from by Jim Woodring? Oh, and if we're doing hypno-animals: BAM!

Dan is correct. There was an astroturf campaign by the telcos to present tiered net access as something "on the consumers side" against the "big, evil companies like google and yahoo", blah blah, etc. It slagged off net neutrality as a profiteering lie, etc, but was total bullshit. Unfortunately, lobbyists still seem to be getting U.S. senators to buy into opposition to net neutrality.

I'd say it's worth it. The game is interesting, and the sarcophagus, also the whole last level if you go for the other end, are beautiful. (Edit: It's now down to a tenner including delivery at play.com) @Dan: Yeah, it's weird that Pripyat seems to be the biggest urban part of the game and also the most detailed and complex, yet the amount of mission they have in it is tiny, just pushing you right on through. I would have liked time to poke around it in peace, like at Rostok (West of the Duty camp). Sounds like we played the game in exactly the same way too I ended up getting the rich man ending, then going for the other two, and watched the rest of the sarcophagus endings here (spoilertastic).