Thyroid

Thanks for the responses and the help, everyone. I think I'll hold-out and wait for the price to drop. I haven't played Uncharted 2 yet, but I thought the writing in the original was OK at certain times, needing work at others.

When it's there, good writing adds a lot to a game (see Portal, Schafer, Telltale etc). But I won't kid myself: it's not a requirement. If the writing is bad but the gameplay is fun, I'll either tolerate it or skip it. My question was, basically, whether Dragon Age is fun enough to play for 50 < hours, because what little I've seen of the writing has been bad. (By "writing" I mean characters, dialogue, the story, etc.)

Didn't know that there was a thing such as a "perfect experience". TIRED: Forced motion controls, imperfect single-player experience. Wired's review of Super Mario Bros. Wii.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/36431/EA-falls-out-of-love-with-new-IP

Activision to "monetise" COD online. You get to pay for online features. I love to pay for online features.

Well, it's not like the writing in Uncharted is exactly top class either. I mean, sure, some of it amusing, but I was put-off by the predictable plot, as well as the undeveloped side characters (Elena's handling of a gun, as well as her fighting level and no remorse for blowing a billion people's heads off, being a good example). Good writing is still a rarity, so its absence won't completely water-down the experience if the game is fun...Does that change your answer at all?

So, question for anyone who's played both: should I get this or Uncharted 2? I can only afford two PS3 games from here till Christmas (I'm saving up for Telltale's next), and since I already have Brutal Legend... I don't usually play RPGs, but this one looks OK. I guess the writing will put me off, but if it's fun enough, maybe the 50 hour play time will keep me sustained till my next batch of games? As long as it's fun I'll take it, I suppose. I'll just button through the talkey parts if I can't stand them. So...which one do you guys recommend?

Yep, I guess we do. Well...forgive me for being corny, but what I really do like is anything that's played passionately. Leadbelly, for example. There's some good electronica out there. But, yes, I do think we seem to like a lot of the same bands.

What, do you think, was not handled maturely?

I get the feeling, from Ebert's review, that it's not going to happen. I don't know. I'll tell you when the movie finally arrives at this side of paradise.

Dark is OK, if it has a point. I routinely cite the Vengeance Trilogy as a testament to this. Everything could use a little humor, I think, but dark is OK when handled in a mature and interesting manner.

I really, really want to see the movie Precious. I've known about it for a couple of months, but the more I hear about it, the more interested I get. It's exactly the kind of story I've been thinking about, the kind of story I've been wanting to write. Synopsis (from Ebert's review): Precious has shut down. She avoids looking at people, she hardly ever speaks, she's nearly illiterate. Inside her lives a great hurt, and also her child, conceived in a rape. She is fat. Her clothes are too tight. School is an ordeal of mocking cruelty. Home is worse. Her mother, defeated by life, takes it out on her daughter. After Precious is raped by her father, her mother, is angry not at the man, but at the child for "stealing" him. Holy. I need, need, need to see this movie.

I know it's translated, but the description of the video game sequel to Antichrist is: "It will be a self-therapeutic journey into your own darkest fears, and will break the boundaries of what you can and can't do in video games." Self-therapeutic, eh?

I've been listening to The Vaselines a lot. While everyone in school listened to Hinder, Tiesto, super radio-friendly stuff, I was really into The Raincoats and The Vaselines. (And yes, Nirvana; my favorite band ever.) I had what my then-girlfriend called "celebcrushes," especially on Frances McKee from The Vaselines. I loved them so much I never shared with anybody. I now graciously share with you. I picked their more accessible music. dW3xlzF0cEc QufDdHzWhgw They made a third/fourth masterpiece called Looking In the Shadows later on in their career, as middle-aged women. They were every bit as brilliant as they had always been. Here's a video they did off one of the singles: yqOuNYR-ckE The Vaselines were a different thing. I think they were a couple, and if they were then their music is the exact kind of thing I'd like to share with someone someday. Either way, they were great and they mixed professionalism with naivete. Eugene Kelly later went on to start a band called Eugenius, and later played with loads of bands, including The Pastels and Isobel Campbell, before making a solo album in 2006. Frances McKee (once again, my "celeb crush," alongside the artist Kei Acedera) was in another band called Suckle; she later made this weird, very small album that got a mixed reception, called Sunny Moon. Once again, these are The Vaselines' more accessible songs: B0qIARknhMg aGNHDD1oJS4 You could throw in "Molly's Lips" and "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" too, but I don't want to turn this into a post about songs Nirvana covered. So I'll post my favourite Vaselines song instead: fr5Aw5O2MvQ

Haha. This guy makes Brown look like fucking Thomas Pynchon by comparison. Edit: I just read a bit of Angels and Demons. Brown's terrible, but he doesn't hold a candle to Paolini. This sentence, off of a review from Amazon, should explain it: "P.S. - I haven't seen anyone else comment on this particular name theft, so I thought I'd mention it. You know the Bid'duam? Turn it around and what do you get: Muad'dib. Frank Herbert alone could sue the kid for plaigarism; I'd hate to see what the Tolkien estate would do if they got word."

I want to tell you about this book. I read it a few years ago, thought it was in "so bad it's good" territory, read its sequel and decided to never, ever read a book by that same writer again. I re-read some passages yesterday, and yes: the guy is in a special calibre, one thought to be exclusively inhabited by the IGN writers. Let us see if you can guess what this book is. Don't skip to the end. You'll be surprised. The book opens-up with this beautiful yet ass-kickin' princess carrying something that is very, very valuable to the evil Empire (yep, it's just called "the Empire"). She is attacked by the King's soldiers, led by his right-hand man, but manages to send away this valuable object before she's captured. The story then jumps to introduce a young man, an orphan with a mysterious past, who lives with his aunt and uncle on a farm. He accidentally receives this object, which causes the Empire's soldiers to come to his farm. While he isn't there, they burn the farm down and kill his aunt and uncle. He's saved by the town storyteller, who is actually not some homeless hobo but a wise, old man, and really the last member of a once-great organization that practiced a forgotten but powerful art, with specially selected and trained members. As they travel, the revenge-seeking boy is taught in the arts of these peace-keeping warriors; he is even given his dead father's sword. At night, the boy has visions of this princess trapped in a castle. She weeps a single tear. Along the way, the old man is killed by the King's right hand man, the boy becomes better at the thing he's learning, meets a rebel, enlists the rebel for help to save the princess, has this huge battle where he destroys something valuable to the empire (against all odds!), goes out to meet another master of the art, a retired, disabled dude in a faraway place. Crazy trivia: - Yep. The King and his right-hand man did, in fact, kill all members of the ancient organization. - Yep. The boy and his party do, in fact, join-up with the rebels to take down the empire. And yep, they do have some success in book one; they do lose in book two; and, well, I assume they win in the third book, I really don't care. - Yep. The Empire does have this big, evil guy, although he's killed off in the first book. Only to be replaced in the second. - Yep. "I am your [relative]," says Evil Guy (in book two). - Yep. There's a lot, lot more to it this delightful plagiarism than I care or wsh to remember. A quick scan of some anti-this-book sites reveals as much. And yep, the book is Eragon, by the misunderstood genius that is Christopher Paolini. Now, for some excerpts: The book begins: Woah. You can't top that. That's miles better than Star Wars. This part is during an interrogation. Eragon, in prison, suspects that this Shade (the equivalent of Darth Vader in this story) is drugging his water. He wants to find-out Eragon's "true name," aka the gateway into his soul. Your frothing demand for this book increases. Wait till you read the descriptions of the rocks on the side of the road. Fucking poetry, right there. But, I will refrain. I'll provide a taste of the action instead - a swivel, if you will - a taste I hope your heart can handle, for it is even on the same level of the poetry about the rocks! Steel yourself, before you feast your eyes on... Oh. My. God. Tim Schafer, you suck. My mind is blown, like a fucking egg from the IGN fucking shotgun.

The writing isn't exactly good either. ulbotKa5LnM

I think Hal Barwood's and Noah Falstein's roles were played-up for promotional purposes. No need to slap them with "past masters" just yet.

These comments don't really count, I guess, but IGN's readers make the site look like Old Man Murray by comparison.

That too. For some reason I thought someone had already posted that on the forums, and I decided to just mention the scrapped IP. This makes it oh-so-much-more delicious.

Yeah. I understood what he meant right off the bat, but it was still a funny headline.

Nah, I get it's intentionally like that. I wrote that a little hastily. I meant that it made me laugh in the sense that it parodies the whole "Citizen Kane" thing going on. Although, I did forget to cut-out the "raises the bar on game writing" bit. My original post was a lot more snarkey, but I thought it didn't work, cut it down, and forgot to erase some lines. Basically, I get it.

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the Citizen Kane of repeatedly shooting people in the face." This is the beginning of an article that raises the bar on game writing, and only the third comparison of video games with Citizen Kane I've seen this week. None of them in The Onion.

I'm not one to talk, since I've had my slip-ups. I do, at least, try to improve, and that's to avoid sentences like: "To be certain, this is the ultimate hardcore game." - Gameshark on MGS4. "As is evident from the name, Space Siege will take place in space." - Gamespot. “The Video game industry has literally never had a year like 2007.” Next Gen "The Most Boring Game of the Year: It’s addictive and absorbing - but unless you’re playing it, Demon’s Souls is staggeringly dull, says Chris Dahlen." Also Next Gen. Finally, let us not forget this masterpiece. Am I doing this right? I feel like I should be putting these in the IGN thread.

So am I the only one in this thread boycotting Activision?