Scrobbs

I can understand the completeness mentality totally, being an obsessive dorko myself sometimes (c.f. Volkswagen Golfs I, II, etc. ) I guess it's the current fashion (and has been for a while) to have a cold opening. I've not heard this term before but I'm assuming it's when it jumps straight into the action, followed by credits, then the main event and the credits have been designed precisely for those reasons - pacing/timing/flow and cutting them out would be a curious decision from the producers' view, so is a necessary evil for shows with that structure. Having agreed with you, I do skip them, because they bug me. Does that make me a philistine?

You're dead to me.

Sorry Castorp (and your clumsy sarcasm) but what I meant was that I felt that the more interesting point to take away from the blog post was that DRM actually had no (or very little) effect on the piracy level. Very few devs talk about this. Of course piracy is bad (mmkay), and hurts the small devs - substantially more than the big ones I presume as they can't absorb as much punishment - but the discussion of DRM is woefully poor (beyond the normal line peddled. On that subject, if I may go OT for a little bit longer, CVD software have tried a different tack: It remains to be seen whether this will take off and lead to more 'sales' of course. The cahnces are it will lead to folks just grabbed the cracked .exe from somewhere of course, but at least they're trying.

The original meaning of R&B. Maybe it caught me on a bad evening.

Interesting - when you said inspired choice - am I missing a connection between Baltimore and R&B? Is there another reason it was chosen? I used it in the sense that it just seemed a boring and insipid track. I'm not sure what I would prefer - in fact, I'm pretty sure the producers wouldn't care anyway I think it also links into a more general issue I have with TV series etc. always including the title sequence on the DVD. Keep them in on the first one, sure, but after that, take them out.

Watched the first episode of 'The Wire' last night...and was unable to resist watching the next three. The first one is a bit shaky, but it soon sucks you in! What does need to fuck right off though is the theme music. Really, really uninspiring R&B to the point that it grates on me. Fast forward rules.

That reminds why I stopped playing this game after the first mission - go to the hut where you can sleep, just after meeting the boss guy. Drove over there, liked the map and car etc. There were two guys guarding... I hid behind a burnt car waiting for one sentry to walk past me, with his back to me, the other was behind the house. I hacked the dude from behind with my machete...the other guy shouted and ran round from the back of the house immediately... not impressed.

I drove a friend to Asda today, 'cos he wanted to buy it and was desperate. I watched him play on his 360 (he didn't want to try it on mine 'cos of saves), and was pretty meh. He kept banging on about the amazing graphics...well, I was watching the same screen, and yeh, they were nice. But...meh. I did really enjoy the first game mark you.

Castor, your tone and the tone of the piece from 2D boy are totally different. They are writing it as if it's expected and you're raging against piracy. I don't understand.

We're seeing some subtle things about the AI director, but we aren't sure if it's actually happening or its being percieved as such. For example, if you have one of those moments where everything you aim at and every round you fire is dead on and you are owning the whole show - the infected "appear" to target you out of the group... Another example, on the homebrew extreme setting (i.e. cheating) with infinite ammo/grenades and larger groups of zombies etc., the AI decided to punish us with a smoker + boomer + horde then follow up with a tank + witch + multiple hordes combo. I so hope it's true.

All this talk is certainly upping the anticipation of the series 1 DVD winging it's way here!

Ok, will order the first series and check it out. To be fair I don't think I've found a single person that says it's bobbins, so it must be good!

You're 5 hours behind if you are in New York. That would make it 9.30 here - I might be about - got some friends coming over, see how that pans out. Are you in the Thumbs steam group? Scratch that, yes you are.

Public Demo will be out at 15:00 GMT. They've fixed the demo exploits, so you can no longer play as infected. Have to wait until 18th I guess.

Ok, I've set one of the servers with larger zombie groups, more often, and infinite ammo. You can also play as a zombie. Carnage.

Work out a time you want to play, I will post server and vent details for you to use (which you NEED - it's far far funnier ) and password the server, plus instructions how to connect to game servers using the normal server browser and not the gamelobby system they are so insistent on you using

Its the source engine - although it's not the most beautiful around, it remains one of the most scalable. The demo is out tomoz - you could always give it a go for free!

Right, so I've sorted one demo server out, and the other is up now but needs configuring, so will be available this evening. If there is any interest for a thumb L4D session, shout! The demo will be avail to everyone tomorrow I think, as opposed to pre-orderererererers.

Your government is trying to stop certain people giving birth now aren't they?

Here's a set of frankly brilliant pics http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/the_next_president_of_the_unit.html

Is the Wire the one set in Boston? How many series now? I think I should try and catch up.

Having listened to it, it's not so bad. I can take a little ribbing - and after listening to it, it was stupidly long question. It wasn't really a question was it? It was more of a dump of what was churning around my mind at the time I wrote it. Thanks for giving it a good go though, and I appreciate that (I hope!) you weren't taking aim at me for thinking those things about game-type copying. There was a game that I was thinking of as well, directly to do with the terrorist thing, except the writer had swapped it around, where you played person of middle eastern origin, and all the enemies in the game were US soldiers. That caused a lot of problems.

I wondered whether I'd come in for some flack. I've not listened to it yet though. Will I want to kill myself?

Although this game has been hyped to death over the last year, (and I know of a one or two folk who have gone out and bought a PS3 for this), does everyone think this will stimulate demand in the console for Sony to the levels they're after? Or will it result in a small spike?

How could you have mist it?