James

From what I remember people don't wake up any time soon unless they're woken up by a buddy or something. Perhaps something brought him to. Or the scent of the fresh Playboy pages lured him out of his stupor.

Once you've played it a bit, if anything it's actually kind of easy. Then again, I guess it might be a matter of being repetition-tolerant -- I got the medal thingy for beating it on the hardest setting in under a certain amount of time and without being seen or killed or whatever, but I did so through incessant use of saves rather than truly spectacular talent. There are bits that are frustrating, certainly, but I don't think the game as a whole gets particularly punishing. There's something at the end that can be really awful if you're trying to do it without dying, though. Playing it normally, however, should be OK, I think.

Did any of us check Xbox Live's status when we were playing?

Yep, although if you join mid-round I don't think the time registers in your stats or contributes to your achievements or anything. Which is clearly all you play for.

- variety

I guess my pessimism makes me more critical of my own mistakes when playing in each role. Still, the opposition seemed to get further in almost all stages, by quite some margin in a couple of instances (their tank got us all at the beginning of chapter 4, for example). Oh, you didn't make it? I was wondering why the safe room was open. You were all the way at the other end of the bridge by the time I managed to find my way to the near end (I was the tank), and I decided my only chance at helping was to throw a rock, but I think the round ended as I was doing so, and I just assumed you'd made it. I guess I don't pay close enough attention. What got you, and as what? I was quite pleased with how we were doing as the survivors on that stage, but it all fell apart between the two houses. I'm convinced of the importance of keeping moving, but that's much easier said than done when people need healing. Still, if the Infected can keep doing just enough damage to cause you to go back and regroup, you never make any progress and eventually you run out of health. Anyway, as always it left me eager for more. If anyone other than Dan is interested in Survival, perhaps we could do a little before the main game on Sunday. It's probably a good idea to have a defined cut-off point, anyway, lest you succumb to "just one more try" mentality and find yourself weeping in a corner at five in the morning. Or perhaps that would be too much for one session (if we play versus it approaches two hours anyway). I mean, I'd be OK with it, but I understand some people have balance in their lives or something. Anyway, it's just a suggestion.

Shit to a lesser degree? EDIT: Every time I look at the coffeh woman in your avatar my first thought is that she's some kind of murderer or sociopath or something.

So it turns out your team is just more skilled at the game and sexually accomplished than mine! Great!

That's right! I'd completely forgotten about that guy. Why did he have so many watches? Was he a bit of a dodgy dealer, or was he just really paranoid about them winding down? Or is it modern forearm armour? I'm probably asking questions I shouldn't bother with. Oh, and I'm almost certain he was a gorilla.

I also wondered for a moment whether I'd received the wrong thing. OF NOTE: there are actually several advert/programme combinations, and I believe you can switch between them as if flipping channels. I'm not super into the programmes, but the adverts are my favourite thing in the game. That isn't to say that I didn't like the game, but the adverts were so surreal, so unexpected, and so well-made that I can't help but love them. They set a tone for a really weird and sinister world which the game ultimately fails to sustain. I'd love for a game to expand on that idea and style somehow. I guess the problem is expense. I believe they put a great deal of time into producing all that FMV stuff. I kind of wish I'd gotten the special edition so I could watch them in full resolution and at will.

TF2 was good, but we were on a server with a slow map rotation that people seemed to be dissatisfied with and apparently no way to override it, so people started dropping out, making things undesirably spacious. So a few of us switched over to L4D, and although my team lost every round after the second one (I think), it was a very good game, and I have to commend the opposing team's co-ordination (at least some of it had to be intentional). How much (if at all) were you guys voice chatting? I'd be interested to know how much it matters. As silly as I feel repeatedly calling out for help, the fact that half the team got ambushed by hunters and pinned until they were incapacitated before I (and presumably Wrestle) realized there was anything wrong illustrates that it is sometimes necessary to announce all this stuff (and I have to admit that I pay more attention to voice chat than text chat). Anyway, good games all. I'm getting to really enjoy being the tank when I get the chance. Are any of you guys interested in doing some Survival at some point? The lack of progression can make it a bit more repetitive and less satisfying than the main game, but I suspect that it might be quite a good training tool (although whether it's improved my abilities at all is debatable). If I'm honest, a large portion of why I ask is that it's easier with more human players, and often it's just me and my L4D-obsessed friend, who plays Survival pretty much exclusively. We get annoyed at the AI for being supremely daft. Also, I wouldn't be averse to another TF2 game some time, if perhaps we could arrange to use a server that we can at least cast votes on.

That's it! I had a couple of books with really big pages. Good stuff. Looking him up, I'm now reminded that the worm drove a car that was a giant apple.

Then Cthulhu came along and they fought and weirdly the ghost won. Then somebody tried to conjure ghost-repellent, but that's not a thing.

Brilliant. They're using the quote but not the score in a load of marketing, too. The be fair, the former is from a preview, and it's taken out of context (he's referring to his in-game sadism rather than the game as a whole). I remember PC Zone had a bit of fuss when a Daikatana ad bearing a glowing quote from a preview (tactically dropping words along the lines of "if it all comes together, this game could turn out to be...") opposite or over the page from a scathing review.

Does that mean I'll stop seeing you as "Empty Level 1/4" in my PSN friends list?

That's it! I was pretty sure it was Necro something. Anyway, I did suspect that Blood Bowl was similar in its slight RPG-ness, and although I preferred the setting and aesthetic to Necromunda, I think the actual game of Blood Bowl might be more up my street.

Hooray!

I was in theory into a bunch of Warhammer stuff, but I never actually painted very much at all (probably for the better), and could probably count the actual games I participated in on both hands, if not one. I was into the fiction and aesthetics of it, though, although I never fully explored the Blood Bowl stuff. I was interested in it, nevertheless, so I might give this a look. I think one of the main problems I had was that I didn't really have anyone consistent to play with. There were people at school who were into it, but I didn't know them at the time, and I didn't really feel comfortable fraternizing with the people at Games Workshopses. I did have a close friend who was really into all that stuff, but he lived (and lives) some distance away. He later got into some other war games, including stuff with hexagons and so on. I think he attended some sort of club for them a few times. I quite liked the Games Workshop game set in the ruins of an underground city or something. With gangs. Well, I liked the idea of having identifiable named characters and the aesthetic and so on. Again, I never really got any proper games finished.

I haven't tried the spy, but that description reminds me of how I feel when trying to play as a sniper in any game ever. I can be playing as any other class and be making my own merry way around, only to be sniped dead over and over, but when I play as the sniper suddenly there are no effective hiding spots and everyone can spot me within two seconds of settling on a spot.

No, no no. I think it was an American illustrator. Not sure, though.

One I forgot: get vomit over as many of them as possible, then pounce on the rest of them while their teammates are still blinded. In my experience it's been averaging less than two before the last map, I think. Perhaps my experience has been limited and unusual. That's definitely important. It's not normally any fun to feel like you haven't a hope of victory, and it's not much better to suspect that the opposition feels that way. Well, a well-fought battle can end with the survivors being thoroughly demolished, but they have to go into it with at least some hope of pulling through, I think. I shouldn't overplay all this stuff, I suppose. It's always a good time. But it's more satisfying when it's a roughly even match. I will piss on all your faeces.

I remember trying that a few times on my horrrendously expensive and horribly slow connection, and finding lag a real problem. My main memory is that the red dot laser for the sniper was huge and if someone was aiming at you sometimes it would get in your eyes and make everything red. At least, I think that's what was happening. Also, I liked the VIP mode and wished it would come up more often, even though all I did was die. ESCORT MISSION! YESSSSSSSSSS! Actually, all I did in any mode was die. I sucked at that game even more than I do at TF2.

I GET RESULTS

I remember both of those! On looking up Janet and Allan Ahlberg (I recognized the name), it turns out they also did the Jolly Postman books. I think I might still have the Christmas one of those around somewhere. For some reason their name also reminds me of a Caribbean poet who came to my first primary school and read his poetry to us. We bought his book. I think I thought it was quite exciting. I can't remember his name, though. I just remember another book I liked as a child, but not what it was called or who it was by. It had a load of big pictures of quite expansive scenes involving lots of animals dressed in semi-formal clothes, including, most memorably, a worm who always wore a hat (a bowler hat, I think). And it had cars parked on the roofs of other cars and stuff like that. Does anybody have any idea what I'm talking about? I think the author's first name might have started with an R. My description is thorough. Funnybones got made into a TV series, right?

Every time you guys type "MI" I read it as "Mission Impossible".