Noyb

Really? You get to see all of the kids in multiple (3-4? Don't remember the exact number.) situations before nightfall. And even in those brief instances, the characters' relations to each other, as well as certain personality aspects (I love the mobster kid) change dramatically. It's like what showed up later in Bioshock: rewarding exploration with backstory and development of some of the minor characters. He's trying to act "mature" based on what he sees in the movies, hence the "My mother lets me see R-Rated movies, so I think I know more about this than you do" quote. Plus, it's just a funny glimpse into the mind of a prepubescent "ladies man." Okay, I love how you can use practically everything you have in the game on the kids to see their reaction. From tickling them with the feather to trying to firestart them to the amazingness of seeing exactly what they think of you with clairvoyance does wonders for fleshing out their characters.

From Penny Arcade: Edit: updated link

Looks like Braid is coming out to Xbox Live Arcade in early 2008. There's a lengthy video (spoils some of the gameplay twists and puzzles) from the Independent Game Summit about the gameplay and the designer's prototyping process.

Gamecube. I fail.

What's funny is that I *just* got Rez and Ikaruga used for their original consoles this summer. Awesome. Get them both. Funny how one is very easy, the other is insanely difficult, yet both are absolutely engrossing in their own ways. Toblix, you've really been giving off a self-hating gamer vibe, moreso than usual. Btw, I just played the first Gobliiins game again since not getting too far when I was a kid. It's really charming, but the gameplay was ridiculously frustrating. Too many times it forced you into situations requiring trial and error, and permanently punishing you for making the wrong guess.

It's not the price. I like the price. It's the feeling like I'm paying for the same thing twice, that the addition of those games would have increased the price of the package, instead of the reality, which is valve actually did put those in for free. I admit it's not that logical, because that means I thought more negatively about the current pricing scheme than if HL2 *wasn't* included. Anyway I bought the package anyway almost immediately after my earlier post, this thread rehyped me so much. Whatever.

What the hell? Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of discounted package for the many, many people who already bought Half-Life 2, and the still significant ones who bought episode one? By Valve's current pricing, it's apparently a $35 savings off buying just the new games individually, but still. Telling me to give HL2 to a friend isn't really a solution (as most of my gamer friends already have HL2) and including it makes me feel like the price would have been cheaper had it not been included.

I had no idea that there was such a heavy story and role-playing element to this game. Wrote it off a while back as a generic post-apocalyptic shooter. I'll have to check it out when the deluge of games and work subsides.

I found Super Paper Mario to be tortuously slow, coming as a fan of the first two and the Mario & Luigi games. Now that the season of insanely numerous anticipated games is upon me, my hype is diminished some. You may have something there with Bioshock being so good, it's hard to believe that every other game will live up to it's hype. Still looking forward to Phoenix Wright, Mario Galaxies, Smash Bros Brawl, Portal, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and the new season of Sam & Max, even when my bank account isn't.

More disturbing than consolevania/videogaiden usually is? Damn, that's saying something. Guess I'll pass for now.

Could have done without the "reward", but at least the self-deprecating dialog was funny.

d'oh.

From a gamefaqs guide: Haven't played the game, but hope this helps.

It happened to me in the demo on a Vista laptop. I fixed it by downloading unofficially updated video card drivers, since the laptop company doesn't bother to update them manually, and the official ones are locked out of laptops. So, updating your drivers should help, if you haven't already.

new video on the console wars: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/1383-Zero-Punctuation-Console-Rundown

Metroid Prime seems to be one of very few first-person games where jumping from platform to platform doesn't feel awkward or dangerous.

I thought that the regular (non-boss) enemies in Metroid Prime 2 had far too many hitpoints to be fun. Not that they were that difficult, just that killing them took far too long and got in the way of the exploration. Didn't like the combat-heavy Hunters on the DS too much, so I'm reasonably wary about the constant reminders of the greater focus on combat in this one.

The big daddies are tough fights at the beginning, but (mild early gameplay spoiler) Plasmids are the active abilities, while tonics are passive abilities in three areas: physical, engineering, and combat. These plasmid and tonics can be swapped out for no charge at gene bank machines scattered through the game, or when you get a new one.

Is there a difference between the English translation on the import version and the English localization on the American/European version?

Looks like 2K rethought their activation policies:

Apparently, with SecuROM you can only activate a CD-key TWICE. Ever.

It was recently released in America. Sooo fun, although the NOA servers don't seem to have any downloadable puzzles yet.

Oh, sweet. The PC demo is out on Fileshack and Steam.

Speaking of Mignola, did The Amazing Screw-on-Head ever get past the online pilot?