James

I know, I know! It's pretty much futile for me to care about it, since most of my game-playing happens on PC and PS3, and it seems completely irrelevant when compared with anyone who has significantly more or significantly less, but now that it's so close it suddenly assumes some sort of significance in my mind that has nothing to do with anything real or meaningful or important or good. We should plan out our Achievement-achievement so that we can stick together GAMERSCORE BUDDIES FOR LIFE, YO. Or: not.

I know, I know. I mainly wanted an excuse not to do stop watching the gun-films.

How does it shape up on PC? It seems to me like it'd be more at home on consoles, but I'd be more willing to pay PC prices.

I thought Metropolis was a pretty good anime without too much gratuitous bullshit (although it did have some anime sensibilities I find jarring, particularly in the dialogue). One thing that troubles me about a lot of my limited experience of anime is the undercurrents of, if not sexism, perviness. I know there's a lot of stuff that is explicitly very pervy, but even the stuff that seems to have designs on seriousness and sobriety seems unable to resist having some sort of (often quite uncomfortable) sexual content. I might be willing to accept that as an attempt to maturely tackle genuine and serious issues if it weren't so ubiquitous and didn't always have a slightly compulsive feel to it. I don't know, perhaps I'm projecting some sort of personal neuroses onto neutral content, but it seems as though unless an anime film is specifically aimed at children, it will have something sexual in it that will make me feel uneasy. I guess what's pretty inconsistent is that, when I think about it, almost all the films I see and like and own contain a level of violence above what most of us ever experience, or would want to experience, certainly, and although on an intellectual level I recognize this as possibly problematic and troubling and maybe symptomatic of some sort of Bad Thing, I don't really react much to it on an immediate level, or feel particularly uncomfortable about it. I mean, the amount of films that have guns in them, even if they're not actually about anything involving guns, seems completely out of whack with the lives of anyone I know. Perhaps I should just watch romantic comedies for the rest of my life or something. In conclusion: anime is weird but maybe so is Western cinema perhaps I suppose.

Oh, I get it. It's a subversive work of public art.

A mere five! I've never felt so close to another person. So, you guys are buying avatar stuff? I kind of want the cool stuff, but I also kind of want to hold on to my imaginary cyber-dollars.

Hahahahaha. I think you might be overestimating the amount of analysis that's going on. It's more a matter of playing the game and inevitably noticing some stuff that works and some stuff that doesn't. Yeah, we decided that the truck was probably better against the AI than humans.

Then this place is teeming with women.

I-know-better-because-I'm-from-the-Internet-moment: Why don't they just patch it or something? Also, such intolerance to expansion sounds like a pretty poor design in the first place. DEAR MICROSOFT, I KNOW BETTER BECAUSE I'M FROM THE INTERNET.

While I would agree that you should pick on the weakest targets first, I would not rule so strictly against chasing healthy survivors. It's easy for them to get caught on a piece of geometry or slightly misjudge a corner, particularly if you're running backwards and trying to shoot a tank (which is why that's not always a great idea). I would also caution against switching targets too much. If you can spring a surprise on someone, great, but constantly flitting between one survivor and the next as they each happen to be the closest at a particular moment doesn't give you time to actually trap anyone. As I've stated before, my main piece of advice is to bash people against something solid. If you can get them against a wall, or, even better, a corner, you can keep hitting them until they're incapacitated, which should only take a couple of hits. You should be able to get at least one person down that way before they take you out. If they're out in the open, you could try to disperse everyone. That makes it very hard for you to take them all out personally, but hopefully the other special and common infected should be able to handle them before they can reunite. And, of course, if you're on a roof, knocking them off the edge is ideal. Yeah, there really isn't much point going for someone who's already down. While you're doing it you're a very large sitting duck, whereas if you go for everyone else there's a chance you could incapacitate them all and end the round right there. I'm never sure whether to bother with rocks. They can be pretty devastating if they connect, but it can be hard to avoid accidentally hitting a bit of the level, and to predict people's movements. Corridors can be quite good for them. Object can really turn the tides. They're easy for the survivors to forget about until it's too late, and it will instantly incapacitate them, regardless of starting health, which can be a real disaster for them. If you can take down someone with green health using an object at the beginning of you're run, they've had one of their primary weapons replaced with a very inaccurate pistol. That's a good start. Also, remember that your fellow infected are still in play. If one survivor is running off on his own, let them handle him. The other specials are all heavily susceptible to having another survivor rescue their target (or, in the case of the boomer, fight off the horde). The tank is a lot less vulnerable to this, so is more suited to sticking with the group. Of course, if all your team mates are dead and someone is making a run for it, he's probably making a mad dash for a better score, so you might want to do something about that, depending on how long everyone else has left before spawning. Of course, depending on the situation when you spawn as a tank, all this can go out the window pretty fast.

A friend and I finally finished Herc's Adventures this weekend (it was something we played quite a lot in our youths but only ever got about half-way through). Curious about how it was received at the time, we looked up some reviews. For comparison, I also checked out a review of Disney's Hercules Action Game, which came out at roughly the same time. I found it fairly amusing: "Hercules is a game not to be missed. 7.6/10" - GameSpot.com I like that 7.6 isn't being treated as a bad score, but this might be taking things a little too far. "It's like there's a party in my mouth but I'm not invited" - IGN.com

Yeah, having forgotten about that round, I'd assumed my team had lost. I guess the idea behind the scoring is that non-complete rounds act as a tie-breaker.

You said that you can't add friends using the website. You can use the website to add friends. You can't add friends using the website alone. ARGH WHY AM I BEING DELIBERATELY DIFFICULT?

Well you can, but it looks like Steam has to be installed on the computer. So the website is just a front-end. Which is pretty dumb. I'm sure there's a reason for it, but I'm going to dismiss its validity out of hand.

I played the demo (or was it shareware?) of RotT quite a lot. I had a magazine that had a level editor for it on the cover disc, and I made a bunch of levels that I never got to try. I have no idea whether they would have been any good. Other than that, my prevailing memory is the crazy weapons and the ability to lose more eyes and hands than you actually have in the spinning blade traps, particularly if you had invincibility on. Anyway, I quite like that this mod exists, even if it doesn't seem like the most sensible way of going about things.

Still, it was tense for us as that was pretty much exactly as far as we'd reached. If you had managed to stagger a bit further you would have received more points for the round. Of course, it's round completions that really matter. It does kind of bother me that if you get to the finale on the last chapter but don't survive to be rescued, you get the same number of points regardless of how long you last. Generally getting there isn't such a big deal, and actually getting away in versus is quite rare (in my experience), so it makes the final round kind of academic in most cases. Not that the points really matter – it's good fun and it gives more people an opportunity to be the tank – it just seems like slightly wonky design.

I am completely excited about L4D2. I'm pretty sure non-Thumb Danny Boy will be getting it at launch, too. That's three already. Everyone else pretty much has to join us. Anyway, about that thing Wrestle mentioned: moTNeOAxk50&ap=%2526fmt%3D18 Or, if you prefer an upscaled version with inappropriately sombre music: x_uclf56O0M&ap=%2526fmt%3D22 I would like to draw attention to my pounce at the beginning. I conspicuously fail to repeat the feat several times later in the videos, but I think it was pretty cool the first time around. I would also like to draw attention to how well the other team did, and how delightfully sneaky Toblix was, because I feel like a bit of a dick for going on about myself so much. In fact, when I was watching Toblix live, I was wondering what he was doing back there, and presumed he was trying to stage an ambush behind where they were meant to be heading. In retrospect, it's obvious that he was just waiting for his stomach to recharge, and that he had an excellent angle of approach from behind the TV van. A good thing I didn't reveal my stupid, then, eh? Also note how, near the end, on accidentally pouncing on Wrestlevania instead of Thayer, I'm about to type a message in frustration, only to find that either I've been knocked off or Wrestle has died, and I'm standing around with a chat box open. I frantically hammer the escape key, taking me to the menu. Fortunately Thayer was blinded by spew and surrounded by the undead, so I got away with it. Also also note n0wak's left hand being thrust forwards in a peculiar fashion at the three minute mark.

I agree on both counts. Also, bringing it back to the spoilers thing, I saw The Machinist in the cinema without having a clue what it was. It's probably the most pure introduction I've ever had to a film, and it paid off. The problem is that to repeat that experience I basically need other people to dictate my film-going habits for me.

That's pretty much how I feel. Which doesn't always stop me, but you know.

I'd forgotten about that. I'll see if the video of it was any good. SOME OF US, however, will be in GTA. I'm open to playing more often, although I don't pay especially close attention to Twitter and so on, so I don't always realize people are playing. Oh well. Also, I haven't been at a loss for what to do gaming-wise recently. I keep getting new things without finishing old ones.

Hahahaha. That's OK. Glad you could join us.

Sorry if I was being a bit of a dick tonight, team (of which only Toblix posts here, I think). I was annoyed at my voice chat problems and consequent inability to bark unwise orders at my team mates, who I erroneously suppose to be minions or something. Anyway, it was a good game with some great moments. I don't know if the server had some crazy settings (the messages implied it had bots playing as infected, but I never knowingly saw them), or if we were all just playing better as infected than survivors, but in only one round did anyone reach the saferoom. On a couple of occasions we barely got past the start before being slaughtered.

Last time I went to the zoo my friends and I went around making inappropriate jokes and taking photos of us pointing at and giving thumbs up to the animals, particularly the giraffes. Sadly the gibbons were hiding. Gibbons are my favourite zoo animals. They have ball-and-socket joints in their wrists. True story.

I think you mean video gameindustry.