Wrestlevania

You've been spoilt, I think, with Mr Remo's rather spiffy recording setup. I can't imagine we'll do much - if any - better than the selectbutton forumers, especially as we'll probably do this over something as crude and lossy as Skype. Anyway, I'm definitely up for it.

Just switched it off around the 20 minute mark, when they . Was actually looking forward to The Waters of Mars, but it's clear all the original ideas and decent writing disappeared a long time ago. It's just weakly written, poorly directed, generically/predictably/badly cast filler now. Doubly so, seeing as they managed to drag this one out into two hours. Still think the early "new Who" stuff was good though, especially the Dalek story.

"Hello, and welcome to Married Life..." But pre-emptive congratulations to you both, and best wishes for the day. Just make sure you both don't loose your sense of humour about the in-laws--it makes a huge difference, believe me.

Sorry I bailed on our post-Left 4 Thumbs session last night--that server we landed on was hacked to shit and very stupid to play. Who do morons insist on doing this still?! Glad you're getting the full game though! It's out tomorrow, so I guess you could preload it today..? We'll probably have a big kick-off session tomorrow night I would imagine (assuming I don't get called rood names for binning Grand Thumb Auto again).

Mercifully, yes! Only lost about 20 minutes gameplay as a result, but still went back and redid that mission. That time, I found out just how potent fire is in the game's grasslands--particularly when the wind's gusting quite strongly. Got away with just a mild barbequing this time though, and now I've bought the guns I unlocked and played with those a tiny bit. Need to get back into it though, as it's so much fun just spending time in the game's world doing nothing much at all.

I made a game a couple of weeks ago, but I was busy again this week. Should be playing this Tuesday again though! But back to the topic... I've also got EDF 2017 and find it lots of fun as well, but with one very particular condition on my part: you must play it with a friend in split screen. It's several orders of magnitude more fun played that way in my opinion and an absolute crime that the 360 version has no Xbox LIVE integration whatsoever. And while we're on the subject of good co-op games for Xbox 360, playing through Halo 3 with toblix, miffy495 and n0wak has been incredibly fun on the few occasions we've done it. (Actually I really want to start that again, now I'm back and playing regularly again.) Getting away from shooters, I'll add a further vote for Forza Motorsport 3 and Burnout Paradise - both lots of fun but in completely contrasting ways.

I must be some sort of sick pervert, because I'm finding playing this particular FPS with a controller much more satisfying than I did with a mouse and keyboard. I think there's something about actually pulling the right trigger on a gamepad that just "feels" better to me sometimes--especially when the gunplay's realistically modeled. (I had a similar experience with the original Modern Warfare.)

Ha! Thanks, twmac - she's all better now and feeling great.

Haven't played for a couple of weeks, but wanted to relate quite a funny circumstance that occurred... I was making a run on a weapons convoy and, having successfully bottle-necked the two escort jeeps - by blocking the road with my jeep and then firing a rocket into it as they approached - I just had the truck left to destroy. Unfortunately, the brush fire from my initial ambush destroyed the pristine jeep I was hoping to chase after the truck with (I'd used my last rocket for the booby trap). I noticed the supply trucks operate on a loop, so picked a spot out in the grasslands the truck would pass through and waited. Wanting to get things done quickly, I switched to grenades and, as the truck approached, jumped out into its path and rolled a ********* towards it. Boom! The truck explodes, rocketing up into the air right in front of me--amazing! Then the game immediately pauses - truck in mid-air - because of the mission being completed, so it can auto-save. As it's saving, I realise I've unlocked a couple of really nice guns at last. The auto-save completes and I'm back in the game... just in time for the smoldering hulk of the supply truck to land right on top of me and kill me instantly... and it'd auto-saved me in that circumstance too... Fuck this really fun and satisfying game.

My sentiments exactly.

I've played about 4hrs now and, to be blunt, I'm not enjoying The Ballad of Gay Tony very much at all. The missions often seem very repetitive, making you do exactly the same thing (e.g. fly a helicopter around) immediately after you've just done that in the previous mission a moment ago. And when it's not lazily recycling the same theme or mechanics, it's irritatingly awkward, and has caused me to replay a number of the later missions at least once. The map being littered with uninteresting side-missions/mini games - like sky diving or triathlon events - just adds more noise and obscures the main game. TBoGT's design often seems to deliberately exploit the sluggishness of GTA IV's controls, keeping fast-moving targets at the very edge of the camera's limited movement (during car chases, for example). All this succeeds in doing is proving that GTA IV's vehicles really aren't that good under pressure--particularly the helicopters, which remain unwieldy and maddeningly inaccurate, even given the focus they receive in this episode. The N.O.O.S.E. tank is also pretty dull and seemingly quite fragile in certain situations, contrary to what it's name implies and what other characters would have you believe. I'm also not liking any of the cast much any more; there's no development, they just mostly seem to be either swaggering, smart-mouthed blaggards or extremely douchy jocks. Yusuf provides little comic relief either, having done the same dumb visual gag twice in adjoining missions. In contrast to Jonny Klebitz, I'm finding Luis to be annoying, robotic and having a bland, "gangsta" response to everything any other character says. I've caught myself a number of times hovering over the 'A' button to skip these boring cut scenes, because it's immediately apparent how most of them will progress within moments of seeing the setup. In summary: I'm bored and annoyed and unexpectedly glad this is the end for GTA IV now.

Me again. If you're after something Electronically uplifting/pulse-raising, Thomas Summer is consistently turning out embarassingly good mixes at the moment. I've just finished listening to his 'Day One' set and it's superb--download it and give it a try for a good taster.

Paging through that, I've seen a few of those different series through and really enjoyed them. I also like the look of Eastbound & Down and Wonder Showzen, the latter of which I've seen a few clips of on YouTube and found very funny. Mind you, I think I've missed a series of Dexter and would really like to get into that. Mrs V and I made it about halfway through season 2 of The Sopranos, but it kind of fizzled out for us and we've not picked it up again.

Had this tiny snippet of a very old track nagging at me for days now. But this afternoon, my brain decided to finally put me out of my misery... Big up the Junglist Massive!!! WYSZwwMeKOo

Nifty! I've just blogged about Them Crooked Vultures' releasing their whole album on YouTube as part of my day job.

Whedon's talents don't rely or involve big production though, in my opinion. At his best, Whedon tells intimate, engaging stories about the interplay between a close group of people. If those people are on a spaceship, that's fine. But it's still all about the people, not the spaceship.

I can't remember if I've done anything other than Dead Air on Expert to date. Would be great to get the other 3* as well. *Crash Course is balls and so doesn't count.

When the original series cancellation was announced, it was the final nail in the coffin for Dollhouse. We were most of the way through series one, but just weren't enjoying it much at all. Worse, we were also watching the second series of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at the same time and enjoying that far more. So for TTSCC to then suddenly get canned for Dollhouse to be resurrected was somewhat beguiling. So now Dollhouse has died again, leaving TTSCC in limbo for ever more I would imagine. Makes me angry. And I agree that Whedon should stop wasting his time with a media outlet as fickle and easily swayed as Fox. There are much better routes to your audience now, regardless of the medium or its distribution--though I appreciate he could've been tied up in a prior contractual obligation to create a new series (i.e. Dollhouse) for Fox.

I really like the concept, personally. I've been wondering if something could spin out of Thumbs' members in a similar way, perhaps, to fill the void left by the official podcast drying up..? We have some fantastic discussions on Grand Thumb Auto quite often - in fact, that's one of my favourite things about our regular multiplayer sessions. Hmm...

The forumites over at selectbutton have started an interesting gaming podcast. They're announcing a topic per episode and then self-nominated forum members make up the panel for that particular show. And they're doing that for every show. It's early days at the moment, but they've just done quite an insightful episode about fighting games which I think some others here would also enjoy.

Nathan Fake has just posted a new mix on Pacemaker. I've not heard it yet (it's my planned listening for this morning) but the tracklisting holds promise. And if you like something a little more chunky, Gary Werbisky has put out a new installment of Controlled Confusion which is really good--and also, topically, was (I believe) the opening set for Nathan Fake and James Holden that night. None too shabby! Edit: Listening to the pace and feel of NF's set now, it's just dawned on me that these two sets are probably from the same night - how cool is that?

Holy crud, I completely missed this thread until just now. Many happy returns, Your Spaffness! And belated birthday wishes to other splendiferous Thumbs in a back-dated type manner also.

Yes, good fun. Sorry I had to duck out before the end though.

It does take military training not to shit yourself and spray bullets into the nearest pavement when a crowd of lunatics comes charging at you, though. And just how practical is standing still, trying to bullseye one of [15] sprinting, brain-crazed cannibals? Not very, unless you're up high or have a good stretch of ground between you and them--both circumstances being deliberately infrequent in L4D. L4D isn't meant to be a deep game as far as gunplay's concerned. The depth comes from the tactics and teamwork. Nothing has beaten the gunplay in Modern Warfare for me as yet - the weapons are chunky and really satisfying - but I've found L4D to be consistently more enjoyable as a team-play game. liquid, it would be great to get you involved in one of our L4D2 demo excursions. The Thumbs' L4D crowd are great fun and it might make up for your (understandable) disappointment with the guns.

I had something very similar to that happen in the original game, when you execute that faux-gangsta idiot, Manny, and then cart his dead body off to that black market organ dealer. As the instruction to take him there from another main character ended, the music fading up on the radio was from a particularly disturbing scene from Silence of the Lambs: 22ltlLZkFlE It was really chilling and added a lot more gravitas to what I was doing at that particular moment. Made the hairs on my arms stand up.