Wrestlevania

No, I think maybe we're all getting somewhere with this. What about peer review upon redemption of an invitation? The editors would obviously pick a bunch of people they like to begin with, and furnish these people with invitations. If you're invited, you must submit a short piece of writing and must have that positively vetted by the majority of existing commenters before being allowed to run amok on ths site proper. Sure, there are possible manpower overheads with the review process. But that's where leveraging the existing community comes in. (I appreciate this would still be open to "in with the in-crowd" abuse if the vetting process were not properly - not to mention maturely - supervised.) Sticking with the community idea--but as an alternative to the above vetting system; if the site had background forums (that didn't interfere with the editorial comments), you could selectively promote members to 'commenter' status, based on what they've submitted in the forums. I think both of those ideas might go some of the distance in eliminating the "less productive" commenters, who're still getting through the rather ambiguous invitations system. Nothing to say privelages couldn't be revoked later on either. Edit: In fact, the whole of the above could be handled via a wiki--including the peer review/voting (and revoking) system.

This is why I shut down my blog a couple of years ago and never restarted it; it's far too easy to be lazy and slide into this way of thinking, and convince yourself your right in doing so, too. So, instead, you now have me clogging up the odd quality forum instead... Now you guys point it out, I think that might be the real rub I have with this invitation-only scheme - the dickheads still appear to be getting in. Isn't the invitations scheme very friend-of-a-friend though, rather than by written recommendation? For example: if I've received an invite and then signed up, I can go ahead and invite e.g. my potty-mouthed, know-nothing 12 year old hick kid brother to comment as well? Hugely flawed if that's the case. So yes, in hindsight; not elitist enough is right.

Spot on mate.

You've not read much Dredd, have you... Anyway, what about body language? I can see where you're coming from, but I still think Master Chief could be made into a convincing movie character.

I enjoy the majority of stuff posted on SlashDot Games, which tends to focus on gaming culture and trends--stuff I find really fascinating. The (games-related) subject matter is also quite diverse, which is an added bonus.

Net snobbery/elitism in a prominent site which should know much better. I discovered this in precisely the same way as you--it pissed me off so I emailed them to ask why they'd done this, and I included a taster about something I know for a fact will be in Sony's HUB service (and it's still unreported at this time) to "sweeten" my enquiry. And... nothing. So I dumped their RSS feed and went elsewhere. To be honest, I was bored rigid with the cross population of the same dozen-or-so stories on Kotaku and similar blogs anyway, so my daily news intake now has a much better "signal to noise" ratio since I cut them out of it. I honestly don't think I miss anything crucial in not subscribing to them anymore either, but YMMV.

...to the benefit of whom, exactly? All the lip-readers in your average cinema-going audience?

Buy yourself a USB 360 pad; it makes up a considerable amount of the distance between using a keyboard and actually playing on a Game Boy.

Damn--I keep forgetting to watch that! Anyone seen Nacho Libre yet? School of Rock surprised me with how consistently funny it was all the way through, so I've reasonably high hopes for Jack Black's latest effort.

Yeah, I can see that being a real head-fucker.

Haven't read any of the books, but personally I find the visual design of the Spartan armour to be distinct and appealing. Couple that with the somewhat endearing introduction of Master Cheif in the original Halo and I think Bungie created a good character with lots of potential. But please, film directorial types, don't mandate the removal of that shiny helmet as instrinsic to the plot. There's simply no need--look how shit Judge Dredd turned out, because of some meddlesome requirement to humanise a brutal and ruthless character, loved by millions for exactly those traits. (I appreciate casting Stallone as the part pretty much doomed it anyway, but the 'humanisation' sank things only further into the poo.)

Sounds like it's got some potential, so I'll try to pick this one up too. Thanks for the review.

I'll have to check, but I think each session is 'from scratch'.

This is my concern with not wanting to download the demo. My laptop's a good 2 years old now, and, whilst it can play Half-Life 2 with a respectable number of bells and whistles enabled, it's not what you'd describe as "super-slick". Certainly not choppy either, but it's about the limits of what my laptop can handle at a respectable framerate (i.e. anywhere between 20-45fps depending on environmental clutter). Comparatively, what order of magnitude would you place this over Half-Life 2 (with HDR Lighting enabled) in terms of a performance hit? Just a rough stab at a number would be appreciated--I find 'on paper' requirements rarely match up with real world hardware performance...

Played a bit more today, experimenting with the whole sandbox idea. I made my way up to the balcony cafeteria, picked up the till (cash register) and then threw it as far as I could out over the mass of zombies below. It took out about 7 or 8 of them when it hit the ground and slid through a group of them. I also had a skate around to see what was about, but the skateboard's quite tricky to control--might need to read more in the book shops and newsagents to build up my skills first. Still, you can bowl zombies over when you hit them whilst riding along, so not all bad. I also managed to kill 4 zombies simply by pummeling them with CDs, which was... "interesting." They're funny when they try to get away, too; seems to really annoy them, and they tripped and fell over each other trying to escape the barrage. All this whilst wearing a pantomime horse's head and a ridiculously small child's t-shirt. Great fun.

Konami showed a convincing work-in-progress version of their forth-coming Castlevania game for Nintendo DS, entitled Portrait of Ruin, at this year's Comic Con in San Diego. Whilst it's evidently still a mid-development build of the game, it looks like not only will we get a convincing 'partner system', Konami have also seen fit to bin that somewhat trashy stylus element from Dawn of Sorrow. GameSpot have a decent enough mini-preview of the demo shown, and highlights include: Cooperative play (including NiWiFi!) Online shop system where players can sell each other equipment Exclusive music by Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog, Shenmue) [OMG shameless girly squeal!!!] Fingers crossed the game will also support Download Play off a single cartridge too, although it might be a bit much to hope for given the complexity of the game's graphics, audio and combat/levelling. Dawn of Sorrow was definitely one of my favourite action-adventure games, so I can't wait to play this!

You're (both) taking me too literally. The reason I quoted that entire paragraph from the article, then cited Farenheit, is because Farenheit deals with all of the themes quoted in a mature and respectable way--and with some level of quantifiable success regarding each, too.

Missed the first one, so I'll definitely check this demo out--thanks for the notice and the summary!

Brilliantly put. I really like the way he highlights cost to the consumer as a barrier to entry for new titles--I think that's going to be critical with the forth-coming consoles. Microsoft have already - very cleverly - smashed this barrier down with Live Marketplace (albeit for the hellishly expensive dev kits and licences). Nintendo are bringing an inexpensive games download service with Wii, too. I want to see what Sony is doing in this regard for PlayStation 3; there's no reason why the strength of that brand should preclude the widest selection of this kind of game for consumers. In fact, I believe Sony must offer the most eclectic and varied choice because they've already captured the attention of so much of the market this generation. Everyone knows the PlayStation brand, even if they're not interested in video games at all, so it'd be nice to see Sony intelligently lever this to bring in new players. They may have already shot themselves in the foot however, with that astronomical PS3 price point.

I think my blood pressure was way too high by the end of page two. Someone staple this chump to a chair and make him play Farenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy), FFS. I also find it aggravatingly ironic that he cites Disney as a credible source for his wundergame's visuals, yet his main message appears to be mature themes. Disney haven't been credible in this regard for decades and decades--long before many of the young people he's aiming this article at would have either been born or old enough to care; it's a completely flawed example! And I agree with Miff; the author's an asshole for wading in on comics like he did. Completely uncalled for, and serves only to highlight that he doesn't have a :cens0r:ing clue what he's on about in this regard. This smacks of sensationalist journalism to me - a rather desperate and somewhat pitiful attempt to bring in a wider audience - and I'm shocked to see it appear on a site like Gamasutra. Ironically enough, I used to consider Gamasutra to be one of the games industry's more high-brow web sites; until I read this article that is. No doubt we'll all be accused of knee-jerk reactionism, but it's still needlessly twisting the knife in more than one back. Fair enough that the author highlights the Whack-a-Mole lawsuit issue, but way to go for repeatedly kicking the industry in the face whilst it's down. This article does not help matters; it conveniently glosses over the myriad quality high-brow titles out there, in order to pander to the very crowd the author would like us to think he's objecting to (i.e. the witch hunters after Rockstar's blood).

Hmph. I just didn't like it as a whole. There were good set pieces throughout admittedly - the "Fire!" scene in the German chateaux for instance, and the tank chase - but I didn't like the way it all hung together; kind of rag-tag in my (humble) opinion. And the ending was cack.

Someone with a particularly nasty STD.

Dead Rising looks and reads as though it'll be fantastic fun to play. I wouldn't worry too much about the story line, as this is definitely Capcom reinventing the arcade game for next-gen. In fact, Dead Rising was to first game to strike me as being truly next-gen when I read about it last year, because of the new gameplay experiences you'll get which are only achievable because of the horsepower of the new consoles. Need to get the demo and see if it's lived up to the massive potential.

Father Ted; Graham Linehan's most revered work--every episode is an absolute scream The Office; the original UK version is modern British comedy at its best Spaced; Simon Peg's most-excellent small screen uber-geek series I would also recommend The League of Gentlemen if it weren't for the fact that the quality of writing dive-bomb's after the first series--directly in proportion to how much the production budget grows. You could always watch the first I suppose, but the temptation to watch the second - and possibly then the third - might ruin your appreciation of some seriously pitch black colloquial English humour. Obviously that's a very small selection, but it's pretty varied regarding themes so you should be able to find something else in there you like too.

This was my perception also. What I meant by 'artificially shortened lifespan' was that people had already written off the machine long before titles like Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7 turned up. Both of these key titles were released late in the GameCube's life, because Nintendo realised by then that they'd failed to capture the mainstream games market (outside of Japan). I appreciate where you're coming from, lobotomy42, with the Metroid Prime instance. I'd argue it wasn't enough of a title to make the mainstream sit up and take notice though, whereas both Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7 on GCN really set the media alight. But too little, too late. Wii will be completely different, and bring Nintendo back to its glory days of the SNES. I've little doubt of this, as do many others.