Wrestlevania

What his calls for is some immersion therapy; go and buy one of these cheesecakes and proceed to eat the whole thing as fast as you can. Guaranteed to make you barf like a fountain and never go near the things again. Worked for me with popcorn: 14* spews in 2 hours ensured Mr Butterkist would be shit out of luck ad infinitum as far as this Thumb's concerned. * That's four-fucking-teen, you fat pigs.

It's in every game nowadays if you ask me...

It's certainly quite cookie-cutter usually; that's mostly what we've talked about on here before now. It'd be nice to think he could just keep going and going, but I'm sure his contract with The Escapist will be very reasonable. He probably had fun putting the artwork together for this one at any rate.

This week: Crysis.

I've been on the beta list since the project first broke cover early last year and was hoping to have been invited by now. I've had a very brief email chat with Koster about his ideas and the web, but I'm still not much the wiser as to how Metaplace will actually work. It's going to be in-page embedded app, like Shockwave or something, correct? And you'll be able to make your own 'space' there and then connect to friends' spaces also -- something like Second Life but browser-based. I'm struggling to see how they'll be able to go live with it in April, as it still sounds a long way off from realising its ambitions. Still, he talks a good talk does Raph, so I remain optimistic. It's certainly very interesting in principle and the potential for it is massive.

I believe it was the puff piece used to justify his impending decoration at a Scientology award ceremony. Which is perhaps what that footage of him walking on-stage is right at the end, apparently suffering from a migraine.

If a DS Phat and an original iPod had sex, would Steve Jobs and Satoru Iwata automatically have joint custody of the offspring? Or would they be banished, sent to live in a basement somewhere until we'd forgotten either parent ever existed. Only for them to emerge decades later, having built a massive underground complex and spawned many mutant siblings, hell-bent on reclaiming the Earth... or at least the portable consumer electronics section of your local Dixons.

Mistwalker, developers of forth-coming Xbox 360 RPG Lost Odyssey, have just released a glut of screenshots and artwork showing off numerous character and location designs. Not typically being a fan of JRPGs such as this, I've never the less been tentatively interested in the title. Not being a graphics whore either, I'm not changing my mind about the game based on these alone. But it's certainly got some flair to it, no question. The story is what interests me the most: Nothing particularly out of left field regarding your average JRPG, but it piqued my interest anyway when the game was first announced. Anyone else interested?

You might fair better just skipping all that and reading the Planescape: Torment novel instead. It's basically all the pertinent story-telling text and dialogue ripped straight from the game, with the few gameplay-dependent segways filled in by the guy who pulled it all together. Sounds compelling enough to me, just haven't gotten around to taking it to the local digital printer-bookbinder yet (can't stand screen-reading books).

Right, quick update: Dexter: Ripped through season 1 and both of us are well and truly (meat-) hooked; season 2 already queued up and raring to go! BSG: Season 3 remained completely arse until the couple of court episodes, which are two of the best in BSG's history IMHO; Razor was an interesting if clumsy - and largely irrelevant - diversion. The Wire: Finished season 1 and absolutely loved it; already started on season 2 and was completely engrossed by the end of episode 3.

There's a strong narrative thread about the lead character being cursed(?) to live for 1,000 years, as punishment for something. At the time, he's supposedly at the peak of his life, very much in love and everything's going swimmingly. If I remember correctly, the curse is placed upon him very much with the knowledge of what is to come on the part of the caster(s). This is so that the lead character has to watch everything he has worked for and cares about - including the love of his life - slowly die around him, whilst the society falls from grace into a bitter war lasting many decades. This is primarily why I'm interested in Lost Odyssey. I also like the art direction chosen to complement the story; something about it seems unusually "right" to me.

...how else would you get excited about a game if it wasn't for at least one of those 4 things? the side of the bed you got out of that morning? you received oral sex the night before / whilst reading the preview? you've decided the next game you read about will be the one you obsess over?

Agreed; QotM update please, powers that be. -~-~-~- Update: A colleague finished the game yesterday and has very kindly lent me his copy this morning, insisting I at least give it a try. Hoping to like it, but not expecting the earth to move.

...or the distress call of an alien species.

If, somehow, that photo is a fake, it's a fucking outrageously good one by any standard. Arrest all B3TArds!

Desperate Political Writer: "I have an angle, I have an angle... and it's video games!"

Fucking what?! There's a cock-fest of a trailer available too. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Welcome.

They all are, as far as I can tell. For consistency and integrity...

...maybe.

Yeah, the whole boobies thing is no less stupid: Purile shit. The reason I was upset about Star Wars being dragged into the proceedings was because, up until more recently, the Soul Blade series has been quite romantic in its premise in a way; focussing on pitching traditional and highly respected sword fighting disciplines against each other is a quite spectacular idea if you ask me. I'm saddened to see it ever more diluted.

Agreed. Read the BioShock breakdown earlier in the week and really enjoyed it. Was planning to read 'Dealing with Death' imminently, but blasted work keeps distracting me from doing, you know, The Important Stuff. It's great to see Thumbs bubbling along again. Hope it continues.

Nothing I don't think. I can understand the thinking with regards to SMS being panned because it wasn't traditional and, arguably, relied on a gimmick. But it was a sumptuous and brilliant game to play. It didn't draw me in quite like the others, but it was still a great Mario adventure.

For what little it's worth, eljay was 100% on the money. I'm not the thought police, I'm just incensed by the apparent inflexibility of ThunderPeel's thinking that it might just be possible to take a typically casual source as actually being genuinely credible and insightful for once. Credit where it's due, nothing more. I'm not interested in wasting any more bile or other people's bandwidth* on trying to make my position any clearer. * Magnanimous, aren't I?

I think you need the help, quoting out of context to suit your own needs. Yet again, what you've quoted here had nothing to do with this conversation, yet you've casually altered the meaning to play the "hard done-by" card some more. You simply aren't reading what's written, or you have a serious cognitive-disassociation problem.