Nappi

What is this crap? A future where everything isn't colorless, cultureless and shit? Looks excellent. If this turns out to be good I may have to build a killer PC to run it along with all the other outstanding high-end PC games I'm missing.

I've heard they've been busy with other stuff.

Be sure to pick the right one since there might be two or more versions of some of them. You will know which one is the right one (hint: he is not a computer or suffering from painful puberty).

This is becoming quite a problem for me. Usually the back cover texts don't give away too much (I generally don't mind first 20 pages or so being spoiled) but as I buy most of the books online I have to find information about the contents from other sources. I'm quite slow reader (one book in a bit less than a month on average) so I feel like I can't afford to just pick a book without knowing anything about its setting or theme – I don't want to spend my month reading about wedding planning or(and) torture. Wikipedia is often quite good at giving only very general information in the first part and having the plot summary in its own section, but that is not always the case. Amazon and other shopping sites, on the other hand, are often very poor ways of discovering new books. Furthermore, my friends have yet to earn my trust when it comes to taste, and I wouldn't snatch a book solely by their recommendation. This reminds me that I forgot to comment on the books everyone should read visualization I posted. This one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/information-beautiful-books-read-100#zoomed-picture I have read 10 of those. Many of the other ones, especially the old classics, I have no intention of reading. That Oliver Twist quote from a couple of pages ago is a good example of what puts me off in many of the older novels. I quit listening to the audiobooks available at Project Gutenberg website after realizing that more often than not, I was just boring myself*. I even left Around the World in 80 Days unfinished with two chapters remaining because I simply didn't give a fuck what happens to the cold, hollow (and strangely, lion-headed) man, Phileas Fogg and his manservant of whose intelligence is conveniently in accord with his lower social class. *Sherlock Holmes audiobooks are excellent, though, and not only because of the excellent narrator whose voice has shaped my image of the Real Sherlock Holmes™ irreversibly.

Can't recommend Inherent Vice enough (although I have no idea if you will like it). Yeah, it's still a good book, maybe just not as good as I expected from all the nice things that have been said about it (by you among others). Landsman was indeed a very interesting crime novel character with his little phobias and deep affection for his sister.* I was actually quite shocked to find the back cover to contain spoilers from the latter half of the book, namely that . Very odd decision. Like I said, I was occasionally quite bored by the long-winded descriptions and the plot that took it very slow for the most parts. A big part of the problem was that I read the book between Neuromancer and Inherent Vice at the time when I needed a quick 20 page fix of interesting things before going to bed after a long day of studies and work (and no play). I had missed the "sholem" thing although I should be familiar with the word. Thanks! I wasn't aware of the Eruv before I read the book. Such a silly and interesting habit. *I actually haven't read enough crime novels to know if he is at all interesting character in that context.

After reading Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, I have read (almost entirely by coincidence) four other very dissimilar books that, in the reviews at least, have still been compared to Chandler's detective stories: William Gibson's Neuromancer, Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and Hakuri Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. Of those, Inherent Vice is by far my favourite. Having read The Crying of Lot 49, I was positively surprised how easy and smooth reading the story of a dope smoking private detective turned out to be – I even laughed out loud. It painted an interesting picture of 60s turning 70s Los Angeles in shadow of the Manson trial. Maybe some day I will have the courage to tackle Gravity's Rainbow which I have long dreamed of reading but whose sheer length and alleged complexity has always warded me off. A Wild Sheep Chase had its moments but it didn't quite do it for me as a whole. It may well be because of the disconnect between me and Japanese culture and tradition: "oh so you have been calm the entire time, then smashed a guitar, and now you are calm again." Neuromancer was as entertaining as everybody has been saying. The setting was intriguing to say the least. I assume it's a safe bet to read the rest of the Sprawl trilogy as well, right? The Yiddish Policemen's Union was somewhat of a disappointment and I often felt bored reading it. Glimpses of Chabon's alleged literary prowess where definitely there though, so I might not give up on him just yet. The insight on Jewish and Yiddish tradition was most interesting thing this novel had to offer. That and this sentence: "There is not a beard to be found on the chins of any of the men in his maternal family, reaching back all the way, no doubt, to the time when Raven created everything (apart from the sun, which he stole)." I take it was Kuhn then whose writing is so dense that our lecturer warned us against trying to read his books?

Watched Tron: Legacy yesterday. The soundtrack was excellent and visuals were great at least on technical level. Otherwise the movie felt like an enormous wasted opportunity and I can't help but feel that it could have used a decent director, or writer or whoever. Oooh.. they are evil alright. Really? You do?The one part Zen-Buddhist, one part God, one part the Dude and one part hollow Kevin Flynn was so poorly written that his every "Man, ..." made me cringe. So yeah, audio-visual treat and nothing else. I'm not sure why I even expected something more.

Then widen your gaze. Went to a Devin Townsend gig a couple of days ago even though I haven't listened to his stuff all that much. Very interesting and very very entertaining.

Hurray for Jake! Now, off to package that Saitek Cyborg mouse! Nah.. that's ok.

So in this case that would amount to taking a lot of shit because you are getting a lot of shit? Most of the 'criticism' towards her isn't actual criticism by any standard.

Yeah, there was even a horrible behind the scenes video about that.

Far more enjoyable than QWOP. This one's missing a story though. 22.9 meters. For additional frustration ctrl and shift don't work on OS X version of Firefox, so that I can only use one hand for the key presses.

I have only played 5 minutes of the third episode so far. Just wanted to say that envy Marty's unending sense of wonder regarding time travel. Everybody else would probably have gotten used to things being different each time you pop back to "your time" by now. At the very least, they wouldn't be saying things like "Your hair is different!" out loud in surprise.

http://www.jinx.com/minecraft/minecraft_three_creeper_moon_tshirt.html?&cid=0&catid=287&cs=2&csd=287&sf=1&fp=1&ps=40

Fucking knew this would happen.

Hmm.. I guess Empire. I played Rome a lot more than I did Empire, but I think I still remember how Empire's campaign map was like.

This is excellent news! Thanks! What are the most radical changes in the world map by the way? I guess diplomacy and agent action have been overhauled somewhat, but apart from that? Does the relatively small size of the map have any effect on things or have the provinces been scaled up to match European countries or US states?

I wasn't saying you had. I was making a point.

Awesome posts Squid Division! Got me excited about the game. Have you tried auto resolving any of the battles, by the way? Are the results more fair than in the previous games? (See my post above.)

The "American games" categorization feels really really artificial to me too, especially when we are talking about how they affect Japanese developers. The fact that people here have difficulties differentiating between US, UK and other European games speaks for that already. Moreover, I don't think US sales charts are topped solely by American games. Japanese developers who target US market are not trying to sell their games to American games or American game developers but to American gamers. If these developers are even remotely smart, which I strongly believe they are, they will be looking at what kind of games, say, American gamers play or, more to the point, want to play, and not what kind of games are developed in that geographical region. Talking about western influence or western audience makes much more sense to me. Of course, there are regional differences, even big differences, but I'd still say that most European games for example are much closer to American games than Japanese ones. This is why inquiring for a Japanese game that has Eastern European influence is somehow besides the point of the whole discussion. I agree with Chris that the criteria you are using to control the discussion seem very artificial as well. Case in point: Both are very cartoony about their "gore" and surely no less happy than, say, Prince of Persia that was mentioned in the UK:Resistance article. And to answer the question you put out in the very first post: Yes, of course you can blame Japanese developers for making "dark n' gritty" games for western audiences even if all the American or western games were so dark that you can't see the picture anymore. They shouldn't be looking at the gamers and not the game developers and find their own place in the market.

This was pretty much my experience with the exiting marriage of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Games for Windows Live. For some reason, the thing just wouldn't log in after registering no matter what I tried. Furthermore, I had to play a portion of the game again because I couldn't use my old save when I was finally able to log in after manually installing a newer version of that piece of shit. So basically, my first two hours with the game saw about 30 minutes of gameplay of which 15 minutes was unique. While I didn't care much for the visuals in the first game, Crysis 2 looks incredibly good. It's probably because this time they have something other to show than leaves. And it has some color too! Unfortunately, it also has space monsters which is a huge turnoff for me. I like to imagine the people around you can hear your suit saying "cloak engaged" if you are close enough to them to begin with.

And Red Dead Redemption is by Rockstar San Diego if that was what you were referring to.

I don't see why Japanese studios should make their games dark and gritty even if every American studio did.