Randall Theil

Without the book club to keep me going, I probably wouldn't have read past the first part of this book. That would have been a shame for me, because the middle section of the book really knocked me out. The subject matter of this book reminded me of the Raymond Carver short story Cathedral, except that story is reaffirming, and I think The Sense of an Ending's outlook on humanity is much more cynical. I agree with the person earlier who said they felt sorry for brother Jack. Tony even says once or twice he feels sorry for making assumptions about Jack, but he still uses him like a jackass right up until the end. Tony seems unable to change his behavior. No matter how much he learns about Veronica's situation he keeps trying to use that information to press the reset button on their relationship. None of the characters in The Sense of an Ending seem capable of transcending their character flaws.

How much imagination is there in spending millions to remake a show that's barely fifteen years old?

Not that much, but you do have to do some grinding to get through some of the later dungeons, and after a while the random encounter rate and the size of the dungeons wore me out. Digital Devil Saga pretty much confirmed for me that I never want to play another game with random encounters.

If you liked Persona 4, you'll almost certainly like Persona 3. The two games are very similar. I own like three copies of P3 at this point. If I had to choose one to get, I'd pick the PSP version for the female game and extras, but FES is an excellent choice that might be easier to find in your region. FES has an epilogue that continues the story after the ending. P3 PSP has a female option with different music, menu design, and some different scenes and dialogue. the PSP version also has a redone voice script which I think flows better than the original, but you miss out on animated and in-game cutscenes (which have been re-done visual novel-style.) Digital Devil Saga and Nocturne are much more weighted towards dungeon crawling. I loved the minimalist storytelling and crazy visuals of DDS, but I really had to power through some of the later parts of the game.

I bought the 360 version this morning and have played through the first two levels. So far I'm very impressed by the amount of fan-service they've managed to cram in, and the amount and variety of unique sprites they created. It's great to see so many characters from the books rendered so well, and the game seems fine too. One problem I've run into that I don't think PS3 users were experiencing (or not to the same degree, anyway) is the game hanging and dropping a few frames every few minutes. It's not a big deal, but it's kind of annoying, and it seems to happen whenever there's a lot going on, which will make getting the achievement for finishing a stage without getting hit a bitch. Unfortunately this game seems to just be cursed with technical problems, but for the price it's still a steal as far as I'm concerned.

I just finished volume 6. Overall impression is they're very clever and charming books. Wallace is one of my favorite comic relief characters in comics. Just the way O'Malley draws him makes me smile.

I just finished this. I played a stealth/pistol specced character and I really enjoyed the game in the middle sections, after I had enough stealth to get through the levels easily enough and enough pistol skill to beat some of the bosses. In the end I thought it was kind of a strange and uneven game. There were parts of it that seemed to be trying for the super-campy 70s spy aesthetic but it wasn't really funny or charming like a No One Lives Forever. I actually found almost all of the characters related to Alpha Protocol/the main plot to be grating, uninteresting douchebags, main character included. It also really annoyed me how every time a plot even was supposed to happen Thorton would jump out of stealth and walk into the room, announcing himself to all of the guards/boss. Weird game.

I'm definitely getting this. I put dozens of hours into GT3. Of course, their last full game came out 6 years ago, and the racing genre has moved on since then. Forza 3 was my favorite game of 09. I'm not expecting them to compete with Forza as far as online systems go, mostly I'm just looking for a more developed campaign mode and larger selection of cars/tuning stuff.

ZWuNf4gxwuM While Morrowind's music isn't sad per se, it always makes me feel wistful. 6miaTf1gF4g Some of the tracks from MGS make me feel the same way.

The difficulty spike is pretty rough, but some of the later levels are awesome. The levels where you orbit around the core are probably the neatest, but my favorite level was the one where you start out packed in a grid with a bunch of smaller and larger orbs, and none of them are moving at the start. Very puzzle-like, and you have to be careful, because just the force of your bubble jets can send a titanic orb on a course where it's going to become huge and prevent you from advancing.

I read some of Yiddish Policemen's Union and it seemed fine, but I lost interest somewhere about 100 pages in. Kavalier and Klay is great, though. I picked up Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe at the library today. I'm pretty stoked. I've only read the books he wrote in the 60s, so it'll be interesting to see how his style has changed across 50 years. A Personal Matter is one of my favorite novels of all time, so I have high hopes.

John Carmack is the wizard. It's amazing that he was able to make the engines for Keen, Doom and Quake more or less by himself. I'm really glad he didn't retire permanently after Doom III.

I like everything but the title.

Well, not long now. I don't think this is going to be a completely new IP. It's a teaser trailer, and Levine said he wants people to see the video before they read any external news about it, so it has to be something people will recognize, right?

something-shock that isn't system shock or bioshock. They've done space and the ocean, so maybe some kind of underground game?

I've been using my PSP 3000 as a digital only machine and I've been pretty happy with it. Some no-brainer PSP catalogue titles are still UMD only though (Final Fantasy Tactics, Lumines, Pirates!) The release of backcatalogue titles has been glacial lately, but at least they've broken some of the popular older games down into the $10-$20 range, which is about what I'd expect to pay for a full PSP game (although I did just pass a personal milestone and fork over $40 for the PSN version of Persona 3 Portable...)

I didn't own a computer until 2000 (I was eleven then,) so growing up, the only games I played were on consoles. The first time I can remember playing a game was Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! I was about three, and my sister had to pretty much hold my hands on the controller before I could beat Glass Joe. Gaming didn't start eating up my free time until I got a Playstation. It was my sister's originally, and the only games I remembered us having were Gex the Gecko and 2xtreme, neither of which were very good. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was a revelation, though. We played just the demo for hours. Later on I picked up games like Resident Evil 2, Final Fantasy Tactics and Metal Gear Solid, and I was pretty much hooked forever. For a long time, I was pretty much exclusively a Console Gamer, with a handful of exceptions (Everquest, Baldur's Gate, Civilization and Sim City,) but in the last couple of years I've shifted a lot more towards the PC, definitely due to Steam. I haven't bought a hard copy of a PC game in years, but I have almost a hundred games on Steam. I have a Playstation 3 and a 360, and I think I pretty much split time between them and the PC equally.

Wait, you beat the game without noticing? What does that say about the ending in the console version?

Yakuza isn't as open-worldy or adventure/time management focused as Shenmue, is it? I haven't played Yakuza 3 yet (though I own it,) but it seemed like the spaces you could run around in were generally more constricted and focused on critical paths. Also you only fought like 3 or 4 guys with the real combat system in Shenmue. They're both great games though. I need to get around to playing Shenmue 2 and Yakuza 2 soon.

Are we going to be able to plant a seed and come back in ten years to find a tree?

I would be interested to see if he likes it. I'm a big Paradox Interactive fan (I've probably played hundreds of hours of Europa Universalis and Victoria,) but everything I've heard about HoI 3 is negative.

My 2009 GOTY is Forza 3. They iterated on everything that made Forza 2 the most approachable serious racing game on the market. There are just more cars, more events and more tracks. They also made serious improvements to the driving model that go beyond just modeling flips. It's just a lot of fun to race. It's also a lot of fun to buy the crazy detailed pop culture decals that people make and plaster them all over $500,000 Ferraris for sweet drift-u action. Also, drifting is fun. Forza 3 just has everything I want out of a driving game. runners up: Plants vs Zombies is a $10 game I've put over 30 hours into. Flower is a gorgeous experience, and I didn't cry, but I was completely swept up by the rich visuals and music. It also features the best motion control scheme I've ever used. Persona 4 technically came out in December of last year, but who finished this whale of a game in less than a month? P4 offers the most robust demon slaying and full-bodied Japanese school girl dating of 2009.

Whenever I hear Bring the Noise by Public Enemy, or pretty much any rap/alternative rock from the 90s, I see Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I can't even begin to estimate how much time my sister and I spent playing the THPS 2 demo.

I haven't imported anything yet, but I'm looking at dipping in pretty soon. A significant amount of these quirky Japanese releases have been translated into English and sold in southern Asia. The first post of this thread is the most expansive PS3 import primer I've seen: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3184340

Thinking real hard about Left 4 Dead over here. How feasible would it be for a complete L4D newcomer to get in and enjoy online matches at this point? Do most people have headsets? Has everyone left for L4D2?