eljay

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Posts posted by eljay

  1. Posted · Edited by eljay

    Just because a cause is negative doesn't mean the effect is, I took the Willy Wonka example in the opposite way: After experiencing the example of his father he strove to create the reverse environment and bring wonder to the lives of children instead of fear.

    edit: I should probably point out I didn't much care for seeing a wonka backstory, but didn't see it as a negative slant on eccentricity. Also I did enjoy Christopher Lee saying "Chocolate"

  2. Posted

    All the spam I get seems to be really bizarre random stories with a link in the middle. My favourite one is the following, purely because of the last sentence involving Poirot:

    Jot down the facts. You will sign it, and watson just as badly. And you can't s

    Are You Inadvertently Making One Of These 3 Mistakes Trying To SStart A Woman's Sexual Motor?

    With harriet, just as they left the rest of the of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction of gibraltar, the bashaw of el garb, and the alkaid duke arranges with an accomplice to have him killed. If you are so excessively rational. Try rather cook was extraordinary, but i realized that he that is lucky,' commented the doctor. 'on my soul, to me. Of course i ought to have kept an eye on and came, summer and winter, in sunshine or storm, didn't. Mr. Poirot, you know what men are! They are four ounces of pepper, four ounces of nutmegs,.

  3. Posted

    ...I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed that I got all but two of them right away on my very first try... Such a Nintenwhore. *sigh*

    I got all but two too! Which ones eluded you?

    I failed to identify Mario vs Donkey Kong and New Super Mario Bros

  4. Posted

    I don't know as much about programming but it might be similar there -- I imagine after a while you can self-teach a lot of languages and specific tricks and techniques, but what's much harder to learn on your own are the right general problem-solving skills, the underlying logic of certain approaches, the usefulness of certain standards/best practices etc.

    As a programmer in the industry I can say this is definitely the case. I learned java at Uni and have since taught myself C# followed by C++ (also have had to learn SQL, php and some Python). Understanding how to approach solutions to problems and how to structure a program are very transferable skills.

    Unfortunately, from an industry perspective, what you'd probably want is just more dudes who can model a thing or script a sequence .... You might have a tougher start in the industry than those who were taught a lot more immediate practical skills

    This is less true for a programmer, every studio I've interacted with prefer maths or CS degrees as they'll give you a much broader problem solving base to draw from.

  5. Posted

    I guess maybe it's an issue with my computer (or ears), but I wasn't able to pick up much of the chatter, as so much of it was playing at the same time.

    I haven't played this, but from what I understand that's kind of the point. It's supposed to evoke the hubbub of a crowd rather than weird isolated conversations that most games do in crowd situations.

  6. Posted

    Did anyone else notice a big Battlestar Galactica influence in ME2 that wasn't there in ME1? They use a lot of the same acronyms like CIC, FTL, etc. that weren't in the first game but were used all the time in BSG. Not to mention Tricia Helfer and Michael Hogan. It kind of tainted the Quarian fleet a little by making it seem more derivative than ME1 ever did.

    FTL was used plenty in ME1, it's an extremely common acronym in sci-fi, which is not surprising considering the necessity of faster than light travel in exploring space.

    CIC is a fairly standard military term for a command hub on a large vessel.

  7. Posted

    I found the inventory / item system in the first game to be its biggest flaw by far. You were constantly flooded with items, filling up to capacity after each mission, having to sell the stuff to the normandy quartermaster, and so being flooded with pretty much useless cash.

    Each item had one or two makes that were worthwhile and the rest were garbage. Especially true of the omni-tools and biotic amps, anything but a Savant is utterly worthless.

    The visual layout of the whole thing was also filled with unnecessary stuff like 3D models of the boxes that the equipment comes in (bizarre!). Comparisons were not helpful as you could only compare with the people in your party, even on the Normandy, and it pointlessly showed you comparisons for armour you could never wear (alien armour).

  11. Posted

    I was given the option to do so when I imported my character, I was tempted to change her to an infiltrator as my original (and lost) character was one but I ended up choosing to stay as an engineer.

    EDIT:- Sorry I just realised I misunderstood, you are talking about doing a New Game+ with an existing ME2 character, I thought you were talking about importing an ME1 character ^_^;;

    That's a really odd decision on their part.

  14. Posted

    Just read a comment from the devs saying the third one will be on the 360; I was really hoping for it to be on the 720(whatever) since I'd like to see the mechanics/tech step it up a bit. Also in terms of how long it will take to make the game, it better be at least a couple years away... which will seem odd because that could potentially put it very close to the launch of a new generation of consoles; which makes me wonder why not just go full hog for the new ones.

    If they didn't put it on the 360 then you wouldn't be able to carry over your save from ME2, which for me would suck a lot more than not being as pretty as it could be.

    I've been pleasantly surprised by the wealth of little touches related to my ME1 playthrough, especially things relating to sidequests.

  15. Posted

    Seriously, with so much attention to detail everywhere else, why is it that so many planets in the ME universe just happened to evolve the exact same fauna. I'm thinking here of the Varren, Thresher Maws, and those monkey things I can't remember the name of.

    Batarian's keep Varren as pets and if I recall correctly they tried to damage a lot of other ecosystems by introducing them or something.... it's all in the codex :D

    Not that I'm defending it, but the answer to "why?" is in the game.

  16. Posted

    Enjoyably noirish :)

    A couple of comments :-

    1) The switch from "She" to "You" felt a little odd, it felt like she was telling someone all this, or someone was surmising how she felt and telling her, but it was coming from the perspective of the impersonal narrator.

    2) I think I'd have said "He'd probably have been a goner anyways" suggesting he would soon have become dead rather than seemingly speculating on him already being dead.

  17. Posted

    The only elevator I had an issue with in the first one was the stupid one in the Normandy to get to the lower deck. It travelled 10 feet at most but took an age to do so, it made me wonder what the hell they would do if there was an emergency in engineering.

    I'm enjoying this sequel quite a lot so far, but as everyone has already said it is a very different game. I've basically done everything I can find on Omega so far, and the atmosphere and feeling of that station was great! Felt a lot like Down Below in Babylon 5.

  18. Posted

    The original was around 35-40 hours long for me, but then I did absolutely everything. So maybe factor that into your perception of how long it is? Are the reviews specifying whether that's with or without ancillary content?

  20. Posted

    r the way Assassin's Creed II covered two languages in conversation frustrated me: I usually play games with subtitles on, however whenever a character is speaking then transfers from English to Italian the subtitle would read: [English spoken Part][italian spoken part (translated Italian)] where I would prefer [English spoken part][Translated Italian], where the character you play clearly understands it, so why can I not have this mess on my screen.

    While I agree with you this is mentioned in game as a glitch with the animus, so Desmond doesn't in fact understand the bits that are in Italian.

    It was made all the more weird by me playing the game in Italian as the double subtitling made even less sense!

  21. Posted

    This isn't *that* new - there's a pre-rendered trailer for the original Mass Effect, as well - it plays when you boot up Mass Effect and leave the menu open for a period of time.

    There was definitely a pre-rendered trailer for Jade Empire, as well. Not sure about KotOR but it's not like this is something out of the blue.

    Fair enough, I guess I didn't see the ones for their earlier games and the relatively close release of these three new ones made my brain play tricks on me.

    I still don't like them :shifty:

  22. Posted

    I had exactly the same reaction toblix. Oddly it seems to be a newish thing Bioware are doing, they also did it for the upcoming Old Republic MMO and Dragon Age. In all three cases I failed to see the point of creating them, they dulled my interest in a weird way.

  24. Posted

    The first year in other words? or Year 1?

    As there was no year 0 in the calendar a decade should run from 1 -> 10, the turn of the millenium should have been celebrated on new year's day 2001. However aesthetics tends to win out and all those zeroes make a more appealing milestone