JonCole

I wish I was good enough to make one that looks just like yours but have "CODBLOPS" in that blue font.

Seconded Tilt To Live, though only out of experience with the iPhone version. I also heard that the newly released Rage HD plays pretty well in addition to the ridiculously good graphics on an iDevice. Space Invaders Infinity Gene is pretty good, too. If you've poked around these forums enough, you should have seen at least a couple praisings of Canabalt, Edge, and Drop7, so they're all on the list too. Then my obligatory, shameful mention of Angry Birds HD. Also, fantastic "games I'm playing" banner, Thompson. I need to get myself one of those.

You can check my Twitter, I've been calling it BLOPS pretty consistently.

I beat Call of Duty: Black Ops yesterday and actually kinda enjoyed the plot. There's something admirable about trying to be clever rather than cranking out the same boiler plate garbage that gets recycled over and over again in war games. Mechanically, the game was kind of annoying (I was playing on Hardened difficulty) in a few parts where I think they were trying to be cinematic unfortunately at the expense of fun gameplay.

Scott Pilgrim XBLA is 400 points for the Deal of the Week. I checked out the demo and it seems like good stuff.

Yeah, I've burned through a pretty horrific amount of content on Netflix recently... I think it worked out to like $0.06 cents per thing I watch last month, if that puts it in perspective

Tips to eliminate Skypeness - Do a decent amont of pre-show : if you know who is most versed on a particular topic, it's easier to defer to them in conversation and avoid talking over each other. Have each person record their own audio : by having the separate audio, you can edit out blatant screw-ups that wouldn't feel too inorganic (also you will likely get a better sounding podcast out of it) Have an established order of doing things : use the same order to introduce yourselves at the beginning of the show and at the end of the show (like if you want to plug your Twitter feeds or something like that) Set a regular length goal you want to reach : even if you set your sights at one hour and go for 70 minutes, you at least all know that you should probably be a little more brief around the 55 minute mark As for the other stuff, the background music is kinda weird. I'm not really sure what to think of it yet; I guess I'm just curious if you'll be using different music every week and what kind of stuff you plan on using. Also, http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator

I recently burned through Sanctuary... it actually kinda surprised me. I mostly jumped into it because I finished Stargate SG-1 and I saw Amanda Tapping was in this one. The first season was kinda hokey and cliche, but I still felt the potential was there and barreled through S2/currently airing S3. It's kinda nice when you invest in a show and it actually comes into its own before too long. I'd recommend it to sci-fi geeks.

Yeah, this stuff is pretty big. Not to mention the more niche but still good stuff like Banjo Kazooie and Viva Pinata and the first-game exclusives like Mass Effect 1 and Dead Rising 1. And the last bit of compelling exclusive games on the 360 are 360/PC titles, like Metro 2033, Left 4 Dead 1/2, and Splinter Cell Conviction.

Castle Crashers, for sure. Had my girlfriend over this weekend and we had an absolutely blast with this game. I don't know why I've avoided it for so long, myself.

Fuck the autosaving in this game. At first, I thought it was more generous than in FO3 because it seems to autosave every time you enter or exit a building. But there still isn't any safeguard for general exploring... 30 minutes worth of location scouting (about 15 - 20 discovered) thrown out the window.

This is my girlfriend to a T, except with occasional spurts of hardcore gamer-ness with stuff like Borderlands and Mass Effect. That said, she loved playing some of the games in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection... Streets of Rage, Sonic, Columns, Golden Axe; it was nice digging up some old favorites that I hadn't considered playing again since I lost my Genesis years ago.

I've found that both the magnum and the cowboy repeater are really finnicky as far as reload interruption. Several times, it just hasn't let me override a reload in progress, often leading to my death. Other times, it lets me break the reload with no consequence. I'm around... level 11, and I'm still finding myself weak in most combat situations. I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong; the only thing I can imagine might be the problem is poor armor (still sporting Leather Armor) and low strength/endurance stats. Any general tips for me?

Live Messenger and Skype, for me. Neither is particularly amazing at what they do, but I use Live Messenger because that's where all my friends are and Skype because that's my voicechat client of choice.

Just played for about two hours last night and an hour today and had a few random first impressions: The weapons mods are actually appealing to me, for some reason. My silenced, extended mag varmint rifle is actually quite effective. This game is a lot more brutal with respect to Fallout 3... you can immediately encounter tough-ass enemies if you wander too far from the prescribed path - giant radscorpions are a couple minutes walk from Goodsprings Ammunition is incredibly generous. I never feel like I'm rationing use of specific weapons to conserve ammo like I had to in FO3.

Apparently my review of It's Kind of a Funny Story was actually featured on Screened.com's weekly community showcase. TL;DR - I liked it!

So "playing a game properly" means getting better at it?

This is dangerously close to being a ridiculous semantic argument. You don't get to define what "playing a game properly" means. My girlfriend loves playing games... she's recently put about 150 hours into the Mass Effect franchise. But she doesn't really like the combat so much, so she sets it to easy so she can breeze through it and enjoy the story/dialogue. So for her, lacking difficulty settings can make or break her total interest in the game. Are you trying to imply that she should play on higher difficulty settings just so she can be a "hardcore gamer"?

I enjoyed Machete pretty thoroughly, myself. I guess the only distinctly negative thing I can say about it is that the style began to wear on me at the very end... it could have benefited from a little bit of fat trimming.

The Halo example is most cogent for me because I think the AI is advanced enough that a theoretical health/shield slider (which I imagine is some element of the difficulty levels in that game) allows for the AI to be better expressed. So, rather than play on easy, where any Elite can be dispatched with one or two headshots with a DMR, I may prefer to play on Heroic, when the enemy can absorb more of my hits and have more opportunity to flank, take cover, and coordinate with other enemy units. In this case, it's not just a matter of more health --> more difficult, it's a matter of more health --> longer enemy lifespan --> longer time for AI to react to you --> more difficult. That distinction is what separates Halo (in specific) from the examples you seem to cite. Also, I think bringing up the fact that many older games didn't have difficulty settings is a bit of a red herring. Trying to make that comparison seems to imply that developers don't have more advanced tools to give them the ability to craft more complex combat instances.

I just completed a Legendary Solo run of Halo Reach... it was actually surprisingly easy, to be honest. After initially beating it on Heroic and playing a ton of multiplayer, I had a good feel for each of the levels and the pacing of each stage. With that, Legendary was only truly more difficult in that it required me to be a bit more cautious and stick strictly to having one of my weapons be a precision weapon of some kind (pistol, DMR, needle rifle). For anyone looking to attempt it anytime soon, some random yet useful tips - Don't worry about running past enemies - if your only objective is forward progress, fighting isn't always necessary Alternatively, don't worry about sitting back and baiting enemies to come to you - the problem with Legendary is getting overwhelmed by multiple attackers Fully explore each zone after any firefight - the developers seem to be fairly sympathetic to people looking to explore, little weapons caches are all over the place The needle rifle is fantastic for taking down Brutes - three hits (after a shield is down for higher level brutes) is an instant kill Noob combo is great for Zealot-class Elites - even on Legendary, a direct hit from a charged plasma pistol should drop any elite's shields, leaving them vulnerable to a DMR headshot Don't hesitate to use power weapons (rocket launcher, plasma launcher, grenade launcher, sniper) - often times, you can backtrack to pick up that secondary if necessary Almost every level where a vehicle is offered to you allows you to proceed without the vehicle - this might be useful for levels where there are multiple enemy vehicles bearing down on you (headshots can take out Grunts driving Ghosts, for instance)

Just beat this yesterday... makes a really good case for cinematic storytelling in video games. The actual moment to moment combat isn't the best in the business by any means, but it's strong enough to get you through the good story. I'd recommend giving it a try, for sure.

Yeah, unfortunately Rasheda Jones's character was a completely heavyhanded way to handle the ending. She didn't really need to be there at all.

Fincher was pretty brilliant. The second scene (when Zuck is running to his frat house) was truly well shot and the tilt-shift scene at the rowing competition was breathtaking. Don't forget about Sorkin, though, as his dialogue was the driving force behind practically every dramatic scene. The back and forth snappiness was artfully done.

Yeah, this not coming out for PC means that 1) I'm probably never going to play it and 2) I'll probably not buy another Bioshock game for PC (which also means I'm likely not going to play those either, as PC is my preferred format for graphically intensive games). Unfortunate.