Wrestlevania

Simple answer: no. When you destroy a target, it adds a bit of percussion to the music. Hitting stuff in time just gives you musical satisfaction, but has no overall impact on the pacing--except for clearing a section and moving onto the next. Each section of a level progresses the music, and transitions from one section to the next are beat-matched automatically by the game engine. So even if you complete a section mid-beat or 'phrase', the music transitions smoothly.

This is what I imagined when I first heard of Call of Duty: Big Red One:

What's bothering me is the dawning realisation that both titles will easily come in at the 800 point mark each. I've 200 in the bank, left over from when I bought Streets of Rage II and Space Giraffe earlier this month, but I'll still have to buy more than the wallet-friendly 1,000 point chunk I got last time. Fuck. This points thing is properly shit.

...you took the Internet to the bus stop?!

Link's teh busted, dude. Sort it - because that's a hot, hot article.

Agreed - excellent save, Sir! But in all seriousness, Nappi, Rez is unlike anything else I've played. Except maybe Space Giraffe, but it's much more artistic and considered than that (from an audio-visual standpoint). Rez is an absolute pleasure to play. Every. Single. Time. I'm so excited about this and Ikaruga; MS are really pulling out the stops and I like.

It gets better... Original post. ZOMG finally! But no mention of two-player over Live, which is a little disconcerting.

Dungeon Keeper had a linear, narrative-driven path that cast you as an aspiring evil-doer from the start. You had no choice in the matter (other than not buying the game, you goody-two-shoes). So you're right; this is different. But I'd rather we didn't start flinging terms like "intelligent design" around the place with gay abandon--we'll have more Googling nutters in here before you can say "Creationism". On a more serious note, this is game design theory I've been working on for many months now. ThunderPeel2001 and I discussed it briefly before, with regards to Fable, but my expanded theory was world scale. I may finally divulge the details on my blog because of this.

oh...

...what a rubbish name though. It's almost as bad as Rage, or FEAR, or Wet (which happens to be the single most despicable, marketing department-driven computer game I've seen to date).

...eh?!

I'm just inside Fort Frolic right now, though, away from the game, I'm inadvertently tripping over spoilers left, right and center. It's really fucking annoying because I wanted to avoid them as much as possible. I'm almost certain I've worked out several of the "secret" achievements already, and the ending just seems like a trivial formality now--thanks to over-zealous podcasters. Why can't people discuss heavily-narrative-dependent games without making disposable comments like, "oh I was totally expecting the ending, because of the way [plot device] worked." Just shut up! Some of us are working hard to maintain our ignorance and not over-think these things! I've been consoling myself with prolonged high score whoring sessions of Space Giraffe, but maybe I should just knuckle down and complete BioShock and have done with it. Something else is bothering me about BioShock though: the much-lauded replayability, which our (ex-)very own Chris Remo insisted was palpable. I just can't see it myself. Having carefully examined most nooks and crannies in the game so far, my compulsion to retread the whole thing - just to find maybe a dozen small encounters/discoveries I may have missed the first time around - is dwindling fast. I'm thinking I'll get this finished and then trade it for something else in all honesty. I can't see it standing the test of time quite the way System Shock 2 did. It seems too disposable an experience, necessitated by some weak design choices (those respawn tanks for example), presumably catering for the less tolerant(?) console gamer. I'm also finding the combat generally weak at this point, the gun play needlessly imprecise and the plasmids incoherent and awkward to utilise properly. For example:

Robbo, the guy who looks after the Consolevania torrent files, has a direct download of the recalled episode. I was getting a meg a second just now on it (mirroring torrent via our "always on" office network, heh).

Has the Internet been brainwashed?! I downloaded the above torrent and just got 27 minutes of black screen with "25677-3 RECALLED" stamped down the side of it... Edit: Nevermind. I think my video playback software just stuck for some reason.

...or someone could just post the link you're alluding to.

Righto, thanks Dan. Will skim better next time.

Skimming a directly related article in Wikipedia, I think I'm along the right lines. Though I hasten to add this isn't something I've ever looked into in any sort of meaningful depth--just bits and pieces I've crufted from various podcasts which have toyed with it in the past. I suck at politics as my second hobby.

My (vague) understanding was that Net Neutrality had been shot down once it reached congress, and the two-tier approach was its phoenix, so to speak...

You speak like this has already come to pass and is law, Dan. But it's not... is it?! I can't see how this will ever make it through the larger US law system; surely it's in direct conflict with Freedom of Speech? "Yes, you can say what ever you like, but no-one will hear you if you've not paid for them to." This is bogus and will crash+burn very shortly I'm thinking. Net Neutrality as a whole has already had a few gaping holes blasted in it, as soon as the stupid old coots who dreamt it up presented their ideas to the wider political and judicial assemblies. It's currently taking on water and sinking fast - and I'm hoping it transpires that "Two Tier Internet" was being smuggled in its cargo hold, too. Nautical (but nice) metaphors ftw!

When did this patch come down the pipe? To my knowledge, I've only had one update prompt when firing up the game on my console, and that was last Thursday (I think, maybe Wednesday). My game hasn't frozen at all since I got back (and patched). It's still prone to the odd momentary pause when I go to hack something though, but hasn't outright died like it did just before I went on holiday. Haven't played it very intensively either, mind, but things have improved slightly I think. eljay gave me a top tip which might help, however: hold both bumpers when starting the game until the red 2K logo appears on-screen. This resets the texture cache--you may be experiencing "texture thrashing" possibly, where new texture data is simultaneously copied into the cache whilst old data culled from it.

One wonders just how much cash the ISPs are putting into certain politicians' party coffers over this... There's no way anything other than big business is driving this; tiering the Internet in this way strikes me as entirely undemocratic. Why should a politician --or anyone else for that matter--give a shit about this, unless you're an ISP?

Expertly done with no spoilers given away (in my opinion).

I'm afraid you lost me at "tts". (Did you misspell "tits"?) This sounds like a server/software configuration problem, not a programming one as I first thought. Can't help you I'm afraid.

Hmm, you may have a point. It does seem somewhat elusive...