Wrestlevania

Correct - although the person was kind enough to write back and explain so.

Hurrah! Congratulations to David Jones and the Real Time Worlds peeps.

Stalked! Likewise for you, Miff - although I'm not sure if I've messaged the right PW or not...

Ye gads - congrats, n0wac! I'm approaching (or maybe have just broken) the 400 mark on agility orbs, and broke the 150 mark in hidden orbs some while back, but they're already becoming much trickier to locate. I'm generally not worrying about hunting them down explicitly, but keep an eye out for any incidental discoveries during co-op (which only adds to the fun). Has anyone heard details from the sequel yet? I'm already looking forward to it.

Fair enough, but it's such a wildly different mechanic to what id are used to doing that I'll remain sceptical until it's proven me wrong, first-hand. For example: I think it would be fair to say most people won't be expecting the accessible driving model of Forza 2 in Rage, but that's not to say I wouldn't be utterly delighted if was just a good approximation of that.

Excellent, Rodi - best of luck to you and your partners in getting it finished how you wanted it. Very much looking forward to watching the end result (and the unicycle ride).

Bunch o' cunts. Being honest, my immediate reaction to the civilians in the extended Resi 5 trailer was, "fuck... now those poor bastards have to contend with their friends and family turning into flesh-eating lunatics, too." If that's inherently racist, then I'm deeply apologetic for it, but at no time did I think, "look at the crazy niggers!" or similarly despicable crap. It did occur to me that certain shitheads people would see this as political leverage, so I'm not surprised by what's happened as a result--nor the total lack of integrity these same people possess. Their response equates to, "Look over here! Now look over here! Now look over here! Just don't look over there anymore." Transparently amateurish; as is the convenient smokescreen of pulling the tired old argument that "games heighten aggression". Which is utter horseshit to anyone, except the navel-gazing gallery that the author(s) like to hide amongst whenever common sense starts to spill over into these topics. I'll say it again: bunch o' cunts. Also: Resi 5 is going to be fucking brilliant! And I'm glad to see Capcom continuing to explore new environments and locations. I expect the story will pan out to be much more grown-up and reasonable, too. They must have known full well what a stir this might cause, and that people won't stomach shitty generic storytelling in the final game as a result.

That's not what I said at all. What I said was: the game could look significantly better than other browser-based 3D efforts. Not that it would be "Quake 3 in a window".

Call me pessimistic, but that's a very tall order for id Software in my opinion: Innovative software? Without doubt. Innovative gameplay? Good grief, no.

Here, here; he seems to be on a mission to debunk the idea that "lesser" platforms (i.e. mobile, web) mean visually crap games. Doom RPG and Orcs & Elves both look fantastic, all things considered, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's gotten something browser-based singing, too. I reckon it'll be Java-based as well, mind. I doubt he'd bother doing all that research into JME and then ignore Java when it came to doing something online. Java's much more comprehensive in terms of networking (therefore multiplayer) than Shockwave could ever hope to be. Plus Java can utilise the OpenGL libraries, so we should see something quite pretty. I'm excited.

Spoilers, bitch! :( :frusty: :\ :\ :\ :spiraldy: Seriously, please use the spoilers tag in future.

I'd support this notion, too; even if you do die having not saved for a while, the game is very fair in restarting you at the beginning of the current section, not the entire level. There's no way I'd still be playing if the game was more brutal when it came to regressing play. It was one of the many pleasant surprises about the title for me to be honest. You don't even notice the game quietly saving in the background at the start of a section, mid-play--as opposed to when you've gone through a green "area" door.

The mere mention of "Ghibli" instantly has my attention. Will keep an eye out.

There's rumour of a 45nm chip design being taken up at some point in the not-so-distant future. Microsoft may take the opportunity to redesign the console then, perhaps making the unit smaller and (significantly) quieter in the process with any luck.

You have a point; it does strike me as quite a self-indulgent film when I think about it. But it's definitely more about the sensory experience (and disorientation) than any great command of narrative or story-telling. Paprika tickles the synapses and I liked it. Going by your brief description, Paranoia Agent sounds like it's worth tracking down. I'll make a point of doing this.

Yet another 'own goal' for opinionated in a way that is different from me retards.

Oh well. I wasn't sure as I was typing out my post, but neglected to go off and check before hitting the Submit button.

Crackdown would be my immediate suggestion. But one assumes you'll only have access to a single console, so that's out. How about some of the shiny new old stuff off XBLA though? I would imagine Bomberman and Marathon would be pretty compelling stuff, if not all that glitzy. For competitive stuff, Forza's very solid if either of you like racing games. Same for MotoGP, although I've yet to find anyone else that enjoys it. :\ And Fight Night: Round 3 is hilarious if you ask me.

Right, figured I owed it to you lot to 'fess the love I have for Resi 4 now. Played an arse-load of it whilst off ill last week and I'm really enjoying the game now. The new way of handling and upgrading your equipment is actually fun! And I like the guns a lot; being able to pick your armoury and then tailor it to suit is great. I'm currently making my way into the depths of the castle, having just gotten past the prison section and then covered Sophie whilst she raised those bridge sections. This "covering" mechanic was actually more fun (given hindsight) than I first gave it credit for. My initial frustrations with it were because I a) wasn't using a suitably ranged weapon, and actually shot Sophie by mistake - whilst she was being carried off! - on my first two attempts. Precise control seems to be a big factor, more so than any other RE game I've played in the past. Which definitely suits my tastes more. The camera and aiming revisions make a huge difference in how fun this game is to play, compared to my experiences in the earlier games. I'm just envious of anyone playing it on Wii; I can imagine it can only be even better. (The weird motion-sensitive interpretations of the Quick-Time Events don't count in my opinon, as QTEs are lazy and shit anyway.) I'm making a point of trying to play this every night - even just for a little while - at the moment, I'm that enthusiastic about it now. Will share my final thoughts when I've completed it.

Ah, it's nice to see it in the pixels finally—thanks for posting the snap. Looks like it'll be a pretty beasty on the diminutive DS, too. Wonder if they've built a camera dolly, into their development copies of the Xbox 360 version, to help in authoring the isometric textures for the DS game? Interesting… And, um, there's that quaint little franchise from Rockstar too. On the defensive ("fucking WHY?!"), Kojima has been active in trying to quell the MGS4 → Xbox 360 speculation lately. Which is odd, seeing as Kojima Productions were notably vocal about how PS3 wasn't a financially viable platform for mega-budget exclusives not so long ago. I don't think anyone bought Sony's recent, "we don't buy exclusives" horseshit a couple of weeks back, so I wonder if they're firming up Kojima's plans with fat wads of Folding. They certainly had enough to court Rockstar back into exclusivity last week, albeit with an as-yet-unannounced (new?) property.

As much as you deride that hefty Pokéstick, my gnarled claws* weep in pain at the memory of the original DS' stylus. If I'd had something like that when I still had my DS, I think it would've been infinitely more comfortable to play. * My office nickname is 'The Claw' btw - that's how big my hands are (apparently).

Engaging art styles ft-Suspension-of-Disbelief-w!

I watched Paprika whilst laid up in bed with a virus last week. It's superb and some of the best anime I've ever seen - not that I'm any sort of connoisseur of such things nowadays... The soundtrack is also brilliant.

Finally got around to renting The Machinist last week. If you haven't seen it, you should: it's dark, disturbing and brilliantly acted. Really superb film. Next up: Serenity.

Apparently not, which is kind of the point with "region free" - there's never more than one type of disc to validate against. My colleague imported a dirt-cheap copy of Crackdown from Hong Kong and it played fine on his PAL (UK) Xbox 360.