JonCole

I believe so... from what I remember, all versions of the game came with both the remade original and the sequel.

I honestly don't think that the implied environmentalism is that overt, I think it's more of a populist anti-colonization/"make sure to use technology right!" message that most anyone can agree with. I mean, when it comes down to it, I think Avatar is such an "experience" that I'm going to have to watch it a second time to really critically dissect it, but that speaks in its favor; if you're immersed, the smaller things quite easily fly over the radar.

Riddick is worth it for Butcher Bay alone. That game was great the first time around on 360/PC and it's even better now with really sharp graphics. I only got about halfway through Dark Athena before I got distracted by another game, mostly because it seemed a bit harder and poorly designed. Either way, at $6.80, it's a no-brainer.

<object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib4xvwc16mM&hl=en_US&fs=1&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib4xvwc16mM&hl=en_US&fs=1&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object> I must have watched this trailer 5 times already. I'm salivating. (Mild spoilers, I guess, if you're really sensitive to that stuff. But I mean c'mon, there's so much more to the story than "this character exists")

Dirt 2.

Yeah, man, I got the package just a couple days ago and was completely baffled by the packaging before I realized it was from Mr. Blix. Thanks a lot!

Honestly, there's so much stuff sitting around on sale that I have no idea what to pick up. If you guys buy stuff, let me know so I can have a little bit of guidance here. So far, I've got these on my mind: Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena - $6.80 The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - $13.60 Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit, for you foreigners ) - $3.40 Borderlands: Zombie Island of Dr. Ned - $6.70 Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Platinum Edition - $10.20 (Are these games still competent? I remember loving the original, $10 is a low price of entry for nostalgia's sake...) Oblivion GOTY Edition - $22.50 Majesty 2 - $15 Machinarium - $10 Eufloria - $10 Tales of Monkey Island Complete Pack - $24.85 Stalker: Clear Sky - $5

Avatar was fantastic. I would recommend it to anybody, no exceptions. This makes my potential "top # movies of 2009" that much harder to assemble, goddamn it.

Since this art discussion is sorta just going over my head, I'm just gonna point out that Giant Bomb just recently put up a quick look for the next piece of DLC, which got me back into the game. Pretty eager to finish up the campaign, too.

I'm generally in the same boat. For instance, when I saw that in the latest GameInformer the ranked the "best 200 games of all time", I was disgusted and flabbergasted. More recently, I read through the GamesRadar "Platinum Chalice Awards" which seems to be a bit more honest and basically creates "awards" for the sole purpose of giving context to games they'd otherwise want to give recognition to.

To usher in the holidays, we decided to do some podcast awards over at CastMedium. Of course, there's the ever-present disclaimer that the choices are of course, fully subjective, and I wouldn't blame you for a second if you rejected any of our choices. Either way, perhaps a couple gaming podcasts to try out if you're traveling and need a timekiller. As a side note, there is also a user poll for the reader's choice of best podcast and I managed to push Idle Thumbs on the list. I think I can easily say that I'm incredibly biased and want Thumbs to win, so you should at least check that out and cast your vote.

I don't really agree. It's not about necessity of multiple playthroughs, it's about the reward of multiple playthroughs. For instance, a game like Dragon Age gets better with multiple playthroughs because you gain more insight into the deep world. Similarly, a movie like Inglourious Basterds has complexity of dialogue and multifaceted characters that may not result in full understanding after the first viewing. In the same boat (for me), Godfather, Blade Runner, Roshomon, well... actually anything by Kurosawa, for that matter. It's not necessarily a replay value -> quality relationship, it's more of a "if replay value is a result of nuance, then replay value may be an indicator of quality" sort of situation. In the case of a game like Half-Life 2 where there are several layers of themes, I think that that particular relationship is cogent.

Saw The Shawshank Redemption for the first time yesterday and after sleeping on it, I'm pretty willing to say that it lands in my top five. Today I got a chance to check out No Country For Old Men - palpable suspense, great acting, great use of silence (lack of dialogue, if you want to say it a different way), and an excellent conclusion.

You mean you can pinpoint the exact moment where it stopped being interesting for you. For many people, while those areas may have been slow, traversing those environments and making use out of the objects to make bridges through the sand were award enough.

I've honestly played Oblivion about 200 hours... it's probably up there on my list too. Nothing to be ashamed of!

I imagine you play a lot of Tetris. Maybe Bejeweled if you're feeling fancy.

Miner Dig Deep - http://www.bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/sit-back-relax-and-dig-deep.html Groov - Twin-stick shooter with a whole musical element tied in. I enjoyed it more than a game like Everyday Shooter, for instance. Pocoro - Simple puzzle game, flash demo available, more levels in the indie game release. Word Soup - I'm sure you can guess.

I really think that like movies, the "replayability" greatly contributes to quality. When I watch Brick (one of my favorite movies), I almost always find something new that I haven't noticed before or a particular interpretation of a scene that I hadn't considered. Similarly, every time I pick up Half-Life 2 I still feel fascination for the world. I feel like the environment is so delicately constructed that each time I play, I feel like my tactics always vary. Honestly, despite Ico's cinematic quality, I just have absolutely no desire to pick it back up. It didn't really affect me as much as other people, so I have no desire to reinterpret the emotional beats of the game.

I think that when the guys over at FlickChart get to work on their game-based ranking site, there will surely be a lot of interesting data that will come out of the woodworks.

Oh, sorry for the double post, but I also wanted to do a little crowdsourcing here... we're going to try to whip up a handful of "podcast awards" at CastMedium, and we'd love any ideas for possible categories that we might not have thought of. Obviously, stuff like "best podcast" and "best produced podcast" come to mind immediately, but we were hoping for more obscure or even "wacky" ideas. If anyone has any input, that'd be fantastic.

Now that I'm out for holidays, I could do Forza at practically any time as long as I know about it ahead of time.

It's definitely top 5 material for me, at the very least. I know a couple of games that I've played through multiple times that would get up there too (Morrowind, Mass Effect), but it's sorta hard to parse all those games without just getting mixed up in the sheer amount of vectors that could influence a GOTD choice.

Crispy Gamer Game of the Decade: :tup::tup::tup: HALF-LIFE 2 :tup::tup::tup: http://www.crispygamer.com/features/2009-12-14/game-of-the-decade-the-end.aspx

I've been listening to them for quite a bit now and I think they've gotten a little bit more casual. To tell you the truth, I attribute a lot of their being "pretentious" to their actual film education, which many film bloggers don't tend to have. I can give them a little bit of leeway to be particularly critical of a film if they cite it with insightful observations that I might not have picked up on. But to get back to your question, they have been a little more prone to review popular films but their focus is still mostly art-house. If that's a primary factor in it being entertaining, not a whole lot has changed. But as far as general demeanor, I think they've been a lot more light and jokey, especially jabbing at each other a little bit more often lately.

And from what I understand, the good ending is the "canon" one. Strange. Also, I honestly didn't mind Force Unleashed as much as others did, apparently, because I felt the combat was decidedly solid and actually took advantage of the force powers in a way that set it apart from other 3rd person action games. Granted, I'm a Star Wars fan so there's some inherent, uncontrollable bias there, but I had a lot of fun with it.