James

I should be around, I think. I'd vote vanilla, too, although I do miss a couple of things from TLAD. Like the big airport vehicles and the crazily unbalanced shotgun. Well, maybe the latter ruins things a bit, but in an amusing way. Seriously though, why can't we have everything in one game? It's not like TLAD is accessible without GTA4, so it can't be some dumb economic reason.

"It'll bone you in the bone" - IGN.com

Possibly. I generally ram people, but I have dabbled with the hose. I think I had n0wak pinned for ages one week.

Or creating roadblocks or nudging other firetrucks over and not letting them get up. I think those things are pretty sweet, anyway.

Yeah, I don't necessarily think what I said at the time applies in all cases. My point isn't really about story in particular, anyway, although I'd say that what works in a game's story might not work in a film's. Games tend to require a framework in which some basic player actions (shooting, jumping, etc.) can be repeated an awful lot, albeit with a certain degree of variation. Films, on the other hand, tend to do better when moving things along. Which may mean that the very idea of a translation doesn't make much sense in the first place. Like you alluded to, much of the story of SotC is conveyed wordlessly through interaction, and I'm just not sure that can be made to have the same impact without some sort of audience input. Then again, I could be wrong. I mean, Pixar managed to make an extended period of solitude completely lacking in dialogue engaging and arguably better than the rest of Wall-E. I shouldn't disregard the capabilities of those with talent, just because I have none. I think with things like Shadow of the Colossus and Portal games are taking steps to defining their own language, independent of the language of film or books or music or whatever. There will always be connections, and I welcome them; I just want to remind the world (which clearly cares very deeply what I think) that there are some fundamental and sometimes insurmountable (or not satisfactorily surmountable) obstacles. But it's a mistake to see these as obstacles. To think of it as a problem is to assume that one medium should ape the other. There are things in SotC that could be very good in a film, but as a whole it wouldn't really work unless you're in the business of making arthouse epics. I'd agree that cinematography can be as important as script, by the way. You could see the predominance of the latter over the former as a similar struggle films have to go through with preconceptions held over from novels as games have to go through with preconceptions from films. And I'd also agree that for a Shadow of the Colossus film to work, cinematography would be key. Perhaps it come across a little too much like I'm advocating major rewrites. I'm not. What I'm trying to say is "know your environment". And I'm saying it badly and over and over again, so I'll stop now.

One time I wrote a massive sprawl of shit that nobody read about the relationship and disrelationship between games and films, which mentioned Shadow of the Colossus in passing. In a sense, the changes of direction mentioned in the podcast conform to my claim that significant changes are pretty much essential; on the other, they seem to completely miss all the themes and moods that were so integral to the game. I think that it's a mistake to assume that a game which is impressive and cinematic would necessarily make a good film. The things which make good games stand out from other games are often things which distinguish them from other media. Some of the most interesting and engaging things you can do in any medium involve exploring its unique qualities. If a straightforward translation into the language of films was possible, it probably wouldn't have been interesting in the first place. At least, that's what I think. I'd like to make sounds about this subject at length, but it's a busy day at work and I'll probably forget about this before I get home.

"So terrifying you will shit out your skull which will then vomit up your distended anus, but because of how scary the game was, not the disgusting journey it just took" - IGN.com

"It'll bum you in the bum" - IGN.com

I killed some dudes, all was well.

I'm one Aerial Support ribbon short of having all the badge-related medals. It's annoying, though. That one seems impossible unless you actively seek out weird game configurations and play in a peculiar way. As do lots of the others, actually, but they're less infuriating and more of a brief grind. The actual gameplay is good, though! I'll play with whoever if they want to.

Yeah, it's pretty great. It actually reminds me of the classic GTA games more than I expected, but also introduces more of the newer elements than I'd expected, if that makes any sense whatsoever. The top-down view is obviously reminiscent of classic GTA, but so is the auto-correction that helps you stick to the roads, which may take some getting used to if you're coming straight off the back of one of the more recent GTAs, but makes a whole lot of sense. Actually, one of my first impressions on playing the game was, on seeing a zoomed-in view of a pedestrian, thinking "oh shit, that looks exactly the same kind of bad as the pedestrians in the original GTA". Anyway, it's nice to feel the nostalgia, but with a lot of elements from the newer games that make it that much more bearable to play. You know, like saving. I never beat a single city in GTA 1. That's partly because I was obsessive about it and would restart if I did anything I considered a major fuck-up, and I considered quite a lot of things a major fuck-up. My main complaint would be the on-foot controls. Combining the rotating camera with screen-relative controls on a D-pad does not work too well, unless you're not bothered about following roads and not falling off piers and stuff like that. Also, I don't know of any way to switch between different combat targets in the same approximate direction other than desperately flailing at the right shoulder button in the hope that it will suddenly decide to switch to the guy you actually want to shoot, which doesn't really work. Also, the automatic drive-by thing sometimes decides it's a better idea to shoot blameless pedestrians than goody-containing trucks with great big red arrows floating above them. Then again, I haven't tried turning that feature off, and don't know how it works without it, so I can't really offered a fully qualified critique on that. Something that really surprised me is the amount of ancillary details they put into the missions: I'll be on my way to where the main event is taking place, and I'll pass a highway pile-up, or a police chase, or whatever. Actually, it's normally one of those two. Still, it's pretty cool. I guess ideally that sort of stuff should come up occasionally in the open world, but I can understand that to have a really convincing event it helps for it to be scripted, and if they're going to go to the effort of scripting it, they want to be pretty sure you'll see it, so they put it somewhere you're likely to pass. I'd like it if in future they could develop methods for seamlessly working that sort of thing in at arbitrary locations and times, but it's a nice start, and not something I expected to be more prominent in the handheld game than its full 3D counterparts. I mean, there's been some similar stuff in the previous games (I believe in IV there's a mission in which a truck accidentally unleashes a load of lumber onto the road, which for a moment seemed like it might have been a really cool coincidence, but turned out to be a scripted event; the DS incarnation of these events, however, seem less integral to the mission itself, which makes them seem more natural and convincing. Anyway, I'm rambling. GAME IS GOOD. Oh, and stealing from drug dealers is hard but that doesn't matter because dealing drugs yourself will make you a lot of money if you just follow the tips they e-mail you.

Sure thing probably. I might keep up my propensity for lateness, though. XxII+I!

Yeah, GTA races are great. It really perplexes me that they took them out. Wasn't the round before the most recent one in standard GTA multiplayer? Grand Thumb Auto XVV! XVIIIII? IXXI XxII D:

Pretty much everything after that race. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to set up my camera (as in put a big pile of DVDs on my desk for it to sit on), so I missed all the glory. For several seconds at the beginning there my camera was inside my vehicle. I can never be bothered to look through my footage for good bits, anyway. I'm a very lazy person. One day I'll have to watch it all and pick out the best parts. One day.

My favourite thing in Warhawk was running around on foot and having aircraft exploding mere feet above my head, knowing that that was part of a genuine dogfight between real people. It didn't always give this impression, but at its best it captured the feeling of being just one guy in a larger battle really well (better than Resistance 2 competitive, for my money, although I didn't play that much). Also, gathering a bunch of friends and driving around in tanks together is pretty funny for some reason. Tank squadrons: comedy gold.

UNORIGINAL POINT ALERT: It's pretty daft that an industry that in no small sense sustains itself on moral indignation is itself frequently so repugnant and near-psychopathic. People who were once shot at are made of the same fallible and ordinary stuff as the rest of us. Also: Fuck, is Screenwipe back? I keep forgetting to look out for that sort of thing. Newswipe? Is that a spin-off affair?

I read somewhere that they made a Mega Drive 3 specifically for Brazil. Is that true? Is it an official product, or some dodgy knock-off? I find it amusing and kind of heartening that something in a field generally so transient can endure for so long somewhere in the world. Because, you know, it means I don't have to worry about bothering with any of that out-of-date crap. Somehow. I don't know. I don't really feel entrenched enough to be welcoming people (being new and lacking in contribution), but rest assured that if I did I would.

That newspaper looks awesome. Send me one or some, I will pay you. Fuck PDFs. With my eyes on my screen.

If free will is an illusion, wouldn't that make ethics an illusion too, or perhaps a tool for the social contract? On the subject of free will, as I see it, whilst free will may be an illusion, it's a mistake to think of this having less agency than we would otherwise. The alternative to having reasons for your actions is pretty much to act randomly, which, whilst free in a sense, is less connected to an individual's identity. It's tempting (for me at least) to assume that, if our actions are all caused by external influences, we are being denied something. But this is to assume that there's some sort of ideal "true self" that exists independent of the experiences that make us who we are. Our entire identities are formed by causal processes, so to imagine that we are external to this system and are being denied something by having our actions hijacked by it is a mistake. But perhaps it's only me who imagines that. I don't know, I don't really get very far with all this stuff. Still, it's fun to try. Anyway, good luck on your thesis. It sounds a lot better than my Philosophy dissertation, which was 5000 words of thrown-together claptrap. I don't really have a lot to show for doing that degree, other than a 2:1. Still, I enjoyed it and am glad I took it. I didn't do a great deal of this "reading" of "books" that you're talking about. I mainly just said what I thought and got OK marks because I'm some kind of brilliant mastermind but obviously not really.

EDIT: Oh shit, I only just realized how old this thread is. Now I look doubly dumb for posting such a huge list. WELL MY STUPID POST IS HERE NOW AND IT'S GOING TO STAY. I actually get most games I'm interested in the multiplayer of on the PS3, as one of my games-playing-friend-buddies is PS3 only. Thank fuck I've escaped that terrible sentence. Anyway, here's the stuff I have (some of it dumb) that has a multiplayer component: Army of Two, bro Battlefield: Bad Company Burnout Paradise Call of Duty 3 Call of Duty 4 Call of Duty: World at War Far Cry 2 Grand Theft Auto IV (I went kind of crazy and got it for both) Killzone 2 Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga Mercenaries 2 Metal Gear Solid 4 has some form of MGO on it I suppose Rainbow Six Vegas Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Resident Evil 5 Resistance Resistance 2 Soulcalibur IV (mainly so a friend of mine can bash me with swords) does Splinter Cell: Double Agent have multiplayer? Of these, I have played the following online at least once: Army of Two (only with a friend) Call of Duty 4 Call of Duty: World at War Grand Theft Auto IV Killzone 2 (I've barely touched the single player) Mercenaries 2 (again, online co-op with a friend) Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (co-op with friend) Resident Evil 5 (about to embark on third run-through with the same friend) Resistance Resistance 2 I'm guessing you've got most multi-platform stuff that you're interested in already for the 360. If you want a game of any of those, I'll be happy to join you, unless the game is shit or I'm busy, in which case you can fuck off. As for actually responding to your direct request and giving actual recommendations... I don't know. At the moment I'm devoting almost all of my attention to Killzone 2 and Resident Evil 5, neither of which impressed THE REMO much, and I definitely see some of the problems people could have, but I'm getting enough enjoyment from them. Anyway, I'm talking at length to little effect. Let me know if you want a game of something, though. EDIT: Wait, I forgot about PSN titles: Calling All Cars (never played online) Crash Commando Mortal Kombat II (which I bought on a whim, played at a friend's house, realized I had no interest in playing, and have never even booted on my own system) Warhawk (used to be pretty good fun, but now seems to have been whittled down to the crazy guys who actually have some hope of eventually earning those ridiculous medals that requires billions of kills... meaning it's now too tough to be enjoyable for me) Wipeout HD (I'm far too shit to play against anyone other than myself) I don't think any of the other multiplayer ones have an online component. Apparently Noby Noby Boy is getting multiplayer at some point. That's a thing.

Possibly. You can actually use a speaker as a microphone and a microphone as a speaker; they'd just be pretty shit at it. I remember trying to record dialogue for things we'd made in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker at my cousin's house by shouting into one of the speakers for this old record player he had that packed away into the shape of a briefcase, because we didn't have a microphone. MY CHILDHOOD.

Lame, probably to the max. Trust me on this. I believe the officially supported headset types come in only two flavours: wired and wireless. However, the wired variety just uses a standard 2.5 mm jack (a smaller version of the 3.5 mm jack used for most headphones and so on), so you should be able to use all manner of stuff. I believe the old ones also plugged into the other little sockets on each side, but I don't believe that actually adds any functionality. If you wanted to be really low-fi about it, you could use one of those splitter thingies and plug in a separate microphone and headphones. Going by a quick check, the wired headsets are about £13 in the UK. I don't really know whether or not this price is reasonable.

"It'll take your absence of refusal as implicit consent. In the hole." - IGN.com Sorry.

You have a mouth? I presumed you were some sort of collection of featureless spheres covered with a thin layer of ooze. Anyway, the conversation was pretty great this week. I did barely any obnoxiously loud swearing, and I feel everyone had a better time for it. Well, the loudness is generally an indicator that I'm getting quite enthusiastic about things, so the absence would be a downside for me, except for the fact that I got to spout a lot of my pretentious bullshit at everyone with nary a whisper of ridicule (assuming no diligent use of the mute switch). The final round was particularly fascinating.

I prefer dead jokes about sick babies.