James

That guy seemed to be a member of staff. Generally they're less rabid than their fans. Still, yes, it must be conceded that there were some voices of reason, and the voices of unreason were probably in the minority. The majority was pretty much a bunch of people saying "hey, whatever, I'm still going to buy the game". Which, of course, is fine. I am, after all, still going to buy the game.

A birthday!

On the whole, no. It's not that they were evil. Just indicative of some of the more ridiculous aspects of gaming fandom. Shit, there's that word again.

I have a few other videos on my YouTube account, if you're interested (although they've all been posted in this thread at some point, I think).

Shit, I completely forgot about that thing. I'll have to catch up at some point.

So you're giving those guys a 4.3? Apparently it demonstrated the Thumbs' lack of intelligence!

Allow me. I particularly like that neither the writer nor copy editor knew that "use to" is wrong. Or perhaps there wasn't a copy editor.

It's so annoying. I feel like I oughtn't by a drive at these prices, even if money were no object. I don't want to endorse this nonsense.

That's probably what that shifty-eyed face was about. If people are desperately seeking L4D 360 players I could dig my copy out. I prefer the PC version, but both are good. I won't be getting the sequel on 360, though.

Hahaha, that's pretty much exactly it (I wasn't aware of any of them except Dawn, which I saw), except that I'm thinking of it being more of an annual thing with a consistent marketing campaign, just to make it more confusing. But yeah, there's probably loads of it that I just don't know about.

How much of its usefulness is reliant on other people having it? I like messing around with fancy new things, but I wouldn't want to waste an invitation on my uninformed curiosity.

A friend suggested we see Halloween 2, then realized it would be a sequel to the remake and therefore probably rubbish. Another friend asked whether that just made it a remake of the original sequel (borderline oxymoron?), and he explained that it didn't, as the remake deviated a fair amount from the original. I suggested that it would be amusing to do a series of remakes where each film takes a film in the original series as a starting point, and deviates to a similar degree to the first Halloween remake. You'd have a confusing string of unconnected films that each nonetheless seem like they should be in some non-existent sequence. Dumb things amuse me.

Nick. It was funnier the first time, though, when everyone was really tired. Is it a lot louder in person? All I hear is a not-particularly loud sound not entirely unlike a fruit machine spewing coins or something. I guess it's probably different if you're there, but I do like the idea that Nick is constantly incredibly on edge, one unexpected sneeze away from complete emotional and physical meltdown. A bit like Tweek in South Park or something.

The Internet is like that. Jeff Gerstmann got an incredibly hostile reaction from some people for giving Twilight Princess an 8.8. That's a great score! That kind of stuff pretty much puts me off the idea of being a "fan" of something, rather than merely liking it. I like how a lot of the posters are referring to the segment as a review. If that's what they think it is, I don't suppose it's any wonder they were expecting a more thorough and complete analysis. But I don't think any of the games podcasts I listen to do actual game reviews. They're mostly just conversational impressions to accompany a more formal text or video review on the site proper. (Of course, it probably now seems like we're being Idle Thumbs fanboys and are just as reactionary and ridiculous as those guys.)

So, have they shown you how wrong you were, or are they going to have to explain it some more?

Awesome! One of the things TLAD had was an automatic shotgun, which was obscenely over-powered in multiplayer. It was quite ridiculous.

Michael Thomsen is always coming out with ridiculous crap, in my experience. I think I remember him saying that the left-to-right progression in Super Mario was the best ever piece of emotional narrative in a computer game, or something to that effect.

Most of the guys who were playing around the time TLAD came out have it (as in I don't remember anyone being excluded by not having it), and we played it for a couple of weeks, but we came to the conclusion that the original was better. It's annoying that you can't have all the features at once, although that would still exclude people who didn't buy it, so perhaps it doesn't really matter.

I find it amazing how awkward they managed to make the multiplayer interface for GTA IV. It's almost like that's what they were aiming for.

The dumb thing is that I have that album and I totally forgot that song was by him.

Yeah, large vehicles work really well on the bridges and elevated roads. TLAD multiplayer has those massive airport trucks available as a vehicle, which resulted in a ridiculous pile-up when we tried them. It was hilarious, but for some absolutely unfathomable reason TLAD removed GTA races, so there were no weapons. That's utterly perplexing to me. On the plus side, since it was a standard race I think we respawned with our original vehicles. Still, with those sorts of things it's generally best at the beginning when everyone's still in a big group.

I almost forgot to order this. I'm not sure how that happened, because the first game was great.

Oh shit, it's that song that was sampled by that got used in a billion daytime TV shows.I think I prefer this version.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM SUNDAY'S GAME Some moments of glory: iDZhW4Kwwoo VBEPOsQvqT0 Tempered by a moment of extreme shame: 3QMEkoKEPpk A good night all round. I'll pester him about it. On Monday he said he might get it yesterday afternoon, but evidently he didn't. He has enough money, but only just, so when he does buy it it'd be great if repayment could be swift (not that I'd expect anything less).