Horticulture Tycoon

Oop! Ack! Chee!

My only worry about the game, coming from the point of view of someone who exclusively plays drums in Rock Band and nothing else, that the game isn't going to offer any sort of challenge at all. Not that a challenge is the only thing I'm looking for in a rhythm game, obviously the appeal of playing Beatles tracks with friends is enough to get me to buy it. But still, it's a concern of mine. (Not to get into a whole "Is Ringo a good drummer" discussion, it's just that most Beatles songs are pretty basic in the rhythm department.) Trailer is indeed amazing though.

But see, even though what they were doing might have been well-intentioned and probably beneficial to all involved, I don't necessarily think a local school district should have the power to determine how tax revenues are distributed to the schools. Not only is there obviously a huge risk of a conflict of interest, but let's face it: nobody pays attention to local elections and so you get people running these districts who don't know what they're doing half the time. A big part of the problem is that the local school districts have way too much power over these things. When I was in high school, my dad was the president of my district's school board (He physically handed me my diploma at my graduation, which was pretty cool), and he was adamant about the schools being fiscally responsible and only using the funds to maximize the value of the students' education and their prospects for college. But still, even though the changes he made were probably beneficial for the district on the whole, the fact is his entire decision-making process revolved around trying to get his two kids into the best college possible. Which is probably not the best way to run a school district... not that I'm complaining. So then, after my sister and I both graduated and my dad stepped down, the following administration took the huge budget surplus he left them and spent it on, among other things, buying $10,000 trash bins (each!) for the cafeterias that say "thank you!" out loud after you use them. Tax dollars well-spent! So it goes both ways, whether the decisions are beneficial or downright stupid, the local districts shouldn't have the power do decide how their budget is spent.

Forget remembering, you can fucking feel it beating! Maybe the problem isn't with their intelligence, but rather that their hearts are as weak as a newborn kitten's.

Sometimes I worry that the geniuses of my generation will never write a great symphony or invent the next great innovation in technology, because they're too busy making things like this: sUcpML7KuKI (I apologise if this has made the rounds before, but it's new to me.)

Speaking as someone who has a lot of experience dealing with state-level government programs at work (namely Medicaid), I can tell you that increasing the level of technological sophistication of any beaurocracy has nearly no effect whatsoever on the effectiveness of the program on the whole. Government programs are creaky and lethargic yes, but not because of poor technology, but rather because of the absence of accountability for the people who run these programs, who are essentially allowed to lean on their shovels for their entire careers. I can tell you that most state Medicaid programs are fairly sophisticated in terms of the technology they use, but get someone on the phone and nobody knows what the hell is going on. I'd be willing to bet that an initiative like digitizing textbooks would have almost no effect on either the quality of education or the size of the education budget in the state of California. A school's budget is what it is, and if it does turn out that schools are saving money on textbooks because of this program, they'll just end up spending that surplus on a new football field or teacher's lounge or God knows what else. Because the oversight is probably not going to be there to prevent it from happening.

Hmm... Kind of ambiguous. It might mean you'll be able to turn voice off and switch to subtitles only, or it might mean you can turn subtitles on in addition to the voice.

What Pixar movie doesn't get a little melancholy? Re: Terminator Salvation, it's a minor plot point but it bothered me throughout the whole movie: In the first three Terminator movies, Skynet sends machines back in time to kill John/Sarah Connor after JC leads the humans to victory in the war and becomes a great leader. But in Salvation the war is still ongoing, and Connor is still just a footsoldier. So Skynet shouldn't even know he exists at this point, or if they do, they certainly shouldn't be aware of how important he is. And even if you accept that Skynet does know, even if you assume that the chick Terminator from T3 whipered the info into Skynet's ear or something, they certainly shouldn't know about Reese and his relationship to John. It's typical time-travel bullshittery where a movie can't keep its own logic straight, it really bugged the hell out of me.

"Literally the worst game I've ever played. 8.3/10" - IGN.com

And Nikola Tesla wept.

I would assume using your magic powers to be an evil douchebag would be frowned upon in any era of the Star Wars universe. Though I'm hardly an expert.

No, about Imagine: Fashion Party.

Or you could give Jedi and Sith disadvantages unrelated to their attributes. Say, Jedi aren't allowed to carry currency and Sith have constant, unending bounties on their head. Of course those are just off the top of my head and would probably make both classes extremely unfun, but I think there could be ways to balance Force users back down to everyone else's level in ways having nothing to do with how powerful they are.

This isn't exclusive to the gaming industry, the Watchmen movie was pretty much in the exact same situation this time last year. And as I recall, Warners had to pay 20th Century Fox a huge chunk of cash plus give them a significant percentage of the gross. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a similar outcome here.

It's kinda funny how Activision and EA have swapped corporate personalities ala Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage in "Vice Versa". I'm not sure which one is which, though.

Okay then, no more black comedy from me ever.

If you do it in that order, technically speaking I don't think it's rape. Besides, that orphan corpse totally came on to me.

When you really think about it, everything in Guybrush's life has pretty much come up roses since the end of MI2. He becomes a famous pirate, Elaine inexplicably falls in love with him overnight for no reason, Guybrush finally rescues Herman Toothrot from Monkey Island and reunites Elaine with her long-lost father... Almost as if it was all too good to be true... Hmm...

But again, not to push the Sega CD comparison farther than the analogy will hold, but Sega was the first to the punch on a CD-based console (basically - I know TG16 did a CD add-on beforehand, but it's not like anyone was even aware of it), but because it was an add-on to the Genesis, nobody who didn't already have a Genesis was going to pick one up, and even Genesis owners were put off by the extra cost. I don't think being first to any given technology helps you if it means putting it out into the marketplace mid-generation as a peripheral. Besides, it'll probably take years for designers to figure out how to implement the damn thing anyway. I mean look how hard of a time 3rd party Wii developers have with their control schemes, and I've got to assume the Wiimote is much, much simpler than Natal will be. By the time we're getting controls that work as naturally and reliably as that video shows, it'll probably be the next gen anyway.

Honestly, I don't know why they're rushing this technology out onto the 360 when it could've been perfected and made into the main selling point of their next console. After all, their plan seemed to be to transition the 360 into a more casual system, the way the PS2 has managed to do. Sure, the technology makes the system more accessible, but the additional cost is decidedly un-casual. And really, when has a console add-on ever managed to successfully take root? Have we learned nothing from the Sega CD (or *shudder* 32X)?

"Just when you thought your plasma TV couldn't take any more punishment after you accidentally chucked your Wiimote at it, just wait until it takes the receiving end of a roundhouse kick!" Also, why isn't Left 4 Dead 2 called "Left 2 Die"? Between Army of Two 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, I'm getting a numeral overdose.

I saw a preview somewhere that said that if you get the entire QTE 100% right, you end up hauling the guy into the station and you prevent him from being squashed by that crane tread, presumably unlocking some important piece of information about the crime that you'd otherwise miss. If they really managed to make the game as intricately branched as they're making it out to be, then I think there's a chance that the QTEs might actually be kind of interesting. I agree that QTEs in the past have been complete crap, since they've generally just been situations where the game is giving you something to do while you watch a prerendered cutscene. But I'm not sure that's the case here. At the very least, I'm so happy that someone is actually trying to apply the interactivity of the medium towards its storytelling that's I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Even if it is barely more than watching a movie, if that movie is significantly different each time I play, then I don't really care that much if there's no gameplay.

Are you taking the game's advice and keeping the pedal pressed down between kicks? It really does help. Also I've found that if I lift my heel off the pedal just before a quick series of kicks, I can get through it a lot easier than trying to heel-toe it. So only the ball of my foot is contacting the pedal, I find it makes it a lot easier. By the way, if you think the jump from Medium to Hard is steep, just wait. I still have emotional scars from the first few weeks I switched to Expert.

Well, on a macro level it's fair to compare it to a Choose Your Own Adventure, since if you fail to mash the correct buttons, presumably the cutscene ends a different way and sends the story in different direction. Granted, you're not so much choosing your own adventure as much as the game is choosing it for you based on how well you do at the arbitrary tasks it puts in front of you, but still...

I don't have a DS or a Wii, so for me this is fantastic news. Thanks for running the legwork on confirming this, I saw it reported on joystiq yesterday strictly as a rumor, and I dismissed it as probably too unlikely to bother getting my hopes up. So you've now just made my day. The crowd goes wild for Marek Bronstring! :clap: