Wrestlevania

Yeah, it's stupid. I was looking on eBay UK last night and the Twin Snakes auction nearest to finishing was already on £49--plus a rip-off amount (£12.99?!) for postage on top of that. Computer Exchange have dog-eared copies for £26, but it'd mean a trip to their Birmingham store for me. Which would probably bump the price up to around £50 at least when all said and done. Console makers really need to sort their digital back catalogue services out. It would probably help if they included a caveat with the platform publishing rights, along the lines of mandatory opt-in to their back catalogue program (including profit sharing from such sales in future).

Plus it looks fucking gorgeous and was a super-erotic 3 way creative cluster fuck between Shigsy, Kojima-san and Silicone Knights. :tup: I'm desperate to play this on GameCube, but you can't find a copy of the bastard thing anywhere--it's even more rare than Subsistence. (Besides, I don't think the MGS graphics are that nasty--they're hugely charming in my opinion.)

Ginger is really Fat Rab from Consolevania in disguise, isn't he..? In other news: I may well be visiting your fine city, i.e. London, for a web app development conference on the 15th and 16th of September.

I'm not going to see it tonight, as no-one was interested in trying to book any tickets after the balls up earlier in the week. And my brother's away for the weekend (as is usual nowadays) so I'm thinking of going on my own sometime next week.

Copious lack of any racing game suggestions--which I'm more than guilty of, seeing as I love them. I'd suggest either SEGA Rally (if you prefer 3rd person racers) or the first PSP Ridge Racer (if you prefer 1st person driving). Personally, I loved them both. I've tried WipeOut Pure but it just doesn't seem to click for me as a portable game. I've also given the recent RACE Driver 3 PSP game a try, but that's complete arse and nothing like the console versions; I imagine the design discussion went something like this: "So, how're we going to make the best racing game on PSP?" "Make it as FUCKING ANNOYING and pointlessly test-driven as Gran Tourismo, but with the added benefit of that shitty analogue nub for control!" "Brilliant--start printing money!" Tis balls, I tell thee. And I didn't suggest Echochrome as it really didn't do it for me when I tried it a few weeks ago. (Sorry, Ben.) After 6 months of ownership and all told, I'm not in love with the PSP. It's good, but certainly not essential. I'm giving serious thought to selling mine and getting a DS Lite instead. I miss my DS Phat quite a lot...

Bomberman Land** Cave Story (free but your PSP must be hacked) Everybody's Golf 2* God of War: Chains of Olympus Guilty Gear Judgment* Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (blatant soundtrack bias!) Lumines* Loco Roco Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G* Sid Meier's Pirates! Syphon Filter: Combat Ops*** Tekken: Dark Resurrection* Ultimate Ghosts 'n' Goblins * Also good in multiplayer ** Shit in anything but multiplayer *** Multiplayer only Of all of those, God of War, Loco Roco, Tekken and Ultimate Ghosts 'n' Goblins are the absolute essentials I'd say. Note that you can use the XLink Kai service to play "local only" multiplayer games with distant friends over the Internet. I've not tried this yet, but it's straight forward enough I believe.

elmuerte and me, hanging out and decorating the island. Note the tasteful painting...

See, worth trying wasn't it? I had a very nice exchange of pleasantries with our very own DanJW earlier (but had to go into a meeting quickly after).

Well done, you looked fantastic! Was it an IMAX screening as the article suggests to my non-understanding eyes? If so, how was it? I heard negative things about Batman Begins on IMAX, so I'm very curious to know what you thought of the sequel in Super Humongous -o-Vision.

OK, now I'm positively moist.

That's a fucking good "worst case" suggestion actually...

I didn't realise you could play as a zombie! That's pretty fucking cool actually and immediately changing my perception of L4D possibly being short-lived...

Fantastic work - love the huge gun and that massive pile of bookcases on top of the palm tree. I've been out of the office unexpectedly today - and will be again for most of tomorrow - so apologies if I wasn't there when I said I would be.

Because... Which I think is a perfectly valid and reasonable point. And because people are starting to get FPS fatigue I think, especially on Microsoft's FPS 360.

Nicely put, toblix. Hope you get some satisfaction.

That's the attitude.

I thought the point of L4D was the pacing..? In that it adapts specifically to the circumstance the players find themselves in. For instance, when you start a level/mission the game's AI decides how many zombies to throw at you and then either ramps things up or scales things down depending on factors like how well you're doing overall, how injured you might be, how many zombies you've killed (and what type). The example I read fairly recently was of a group of journalists playing through the same map twice in quick succession. The first time through, things were fairly evenly paced and they didn't do all that well. But they did complete the mission. The second run through, they were a lot more organised and daring, so the game responded by quieting the streets later on and then throwing a huge wave of zombies at them--including a huge boss character to take down. I'm liking the sound of it, but I can see it being a bit of a flash in the pan; it's going to be massive for about 4-6 weeks and then it'll really tail off. Fan-created maps will change this though, but I expect it won't last that long on the consoles. (I was particularly looking forward to the Xbox 360 version running on Live, as it'll never run on my decrepit laptop I expect.)

I've taken the liberty/piss and created a Thumbs room in Google Lively. See you there!

Need to read Watchmen quick-smart, methinks. I only read V for Vendetta for the first time a couple of years ago--and I still haven't seen the film.

Due to a booking cock-up, we have no tickets for Wednesday... :\ Trying to see if we can get in somewhere else this week, but it's not looking good. Gutted.

Mrs V and I just watched Sideways (2006) and it was all I could do not to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for my better half--she was comatose well before the mid point. Thoroughly dull, plodding, predictable piece of navel-gazing. If this is supposed to be a high point in considered, humorous, modern American cinema, you lot are fucked. But it matters not, for I am going to see The Dark Knight this Wednesday eve! At a local early preview no less, with a few friends from work. I don't think I've been this excited about a film since The Phantom Menace, but that turned out to be a suffocatingly huge mountain of infected dead elephant faeces; from what I've heard, Nolan, Bale and Ledger have put together one of the most poignant pieces of popcorn cinema this decade. I'm so excited, I'm nursing a semi just writing about it!

Disturbingly good. Now you just have to talk to everyone you meet like they're a small, stupid child--while licking your lips constantly. I'm off to a local preview with a gross of work colleagues this Wednesday night, but it's an agonising wait.

This makes a fair compromise I think: Going to try Lively now and look at how easy it is to create our own room.

Going through my first foray into programming the Google Maps API, so needed a stress-busting moment or two...