Gwardinen

Ah, sorry! I have done so now, I completely forgot that in this series, just the fact that characters are alive is a spoiler. Yeah, Nemesis the series by Mark Millar. I haven't read Civil War, but I enjoyed Nemesis for its concept and theme. That said, it does perhaps go a little too far at the end with some fairly serious deus ex machina - unlike Ex Machina, which ironically does not have any so far other than the initial reason for the main character gaining powers. The Dresden Files is great, I am really looking forward to Ghost Story coming out this month. The end of the last book, Changes, was a massive cliffhanger that you should be glad you won't have to suffer through a year of waiting for the resolution to.

As it turns out, most of inFamous 2 was pretty daft in terms of the karma, just like the first game. The end, however, was really pretty interesting and divergent. It's just a shame that it all comes down to a last minute choice of whether to press L2 or R2. Although that said, if you want to go with the ending that's against your current alignment, you do have to bugger off and go farm some of the opposite karma. Is that a good thing? Or does that just make it even more stupid and game mechanic-y? I don't know. Also, this is one of the few cases in which the evil ending of a game is actually far more interesting to me than the good one. Usually the good ending is canon and the evil ending is just kind of entertaining if you played that way. This time the good ending is really obvious and cliché, while the evil ending is actually emotional and contains the best scene in the game. Go figure.

For those who may have forgotten (as I did until a few days ago), a Dance with Dragons is out now. After six years of waiting, a Song of Ice and Fire continues! I've read less than a tenth so far, but it's decent. To return some of the great comic-related advice I've gotten recently, I wanted to recommend Black Summer, Ex Machina and Nemesis. They're all twists on the superhero theme with varying levels of darkness, but all of them are well written and inject a great deal more realism into their characters than traditional superhero comics.

Gary Busey was in a GTA game? That's interesting, didn't he do those anti-GTA trailers for Saint's Row?

Did anyone ever play GTA: Chinatown Wars on an iOS device? I'm thinking about picking it up for the iPhone as I've heard great things about the DS version but don't own a DS.

Yeah there seemed to be some rushes to get things out before the end of the quarter. Some of those games might have done better (both from an extra polish standpoint and a less competition standpoint) if they had waited for July or August. Apart from XBLA titles, there's nothing I care about until Deus Ex at the end of next month.

They didn't change the narrator, that's still recognisably the same voice, he's just clearly putting quite a different tone into this trailer than he does in the parts of the game we've seen so far. The narrator actually is (and always has been as far as I know) black, to my memory, but I understand what you mean in regards to the voice work in this trailer.

Quite possibly. I've downloaded it and am checking out the first issue (as it's free via the app). The picture quality is really good and it's either been designed to be viewed on a mobile device or the comic is just fortuitously conducive to that process as it works really well. That said, I only have an iPhone, not an iPad, so it'd probably be even better to see it writ large, so to speak. Each issue after this one costs 69p (during the half off sale for this week), which is $1.11 - does that seem like good value to everyone at this point or would I be better off getting them elsewhere? Worth noting is they're selling 11 parts - I don't know if these are actually issues (of which I believe there are actually 55) or if they're collected volumes of some sort. It would annoy me to end up buying all 11 and only have a fifth of the story.

So I have added myself to the Google Doc, though currently I don't know how much I'll use Plus or how much information I'm willing to share on it. I don't have an issue with anyone from here adding me in any way though, for the most part the Thumbs seem like people I would not necessarily want to murder after a few wall posts. Edit: It is completely impossible to find subbes using it, though. Google+ just seems to think I'm taking the piss when I type "subbes" into the find people box.

I honestly couldn't tell you, my eye just seems to slide off it. A coloured version actually probably would help - is the entire thing available in colour now or just the start?

I'm also free for the next few hours and may be playing it occasionally anyway. If any of you feel like it hit me up on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/gwardinen

No, your raffle tickets remain after you spend the prize tickets. I bought the Magicka cruise ship DLC, and I might get the Portal 2 Goo Goggles if I happen to get another couple of tickets.

Hey, they made a comic out of that video game? (I am joking.) I haven't read any of those, from a brief search Y: The Last Man sounds quite interesting. I've also thought about reading Bone a few times but the visual style has always put me off. Is it really as worthwhile as I keep hearing it is?

I should be available for it - provided it's L4D2, as I don't have the first one.

This is a server owned by a website that I'm maybe-currently-maybe-not associated with: http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.164.11:27015/ I don't know exactly how it's set up at the moment but it is theoretically possible I might be able to get admin privileges if we ended up using it so I could see about making it worthwhile. Also, I did get Left 4 Dead 2 after all so if a few of you feel like playing that any time soon I would definitely be up for it!

The only reason I never got much into TF2 in the first place was lack of a group to play it with, so that might interest me. As for Left 4 Dead 2, since a couple of my friends have been complaining they have no idea what to get me for my upcoming birthday, I'm going to mention it being on sale for the next few hours to them and see if they're interested in gifting it to me. If they're not I may well get it myself while it's cheap.

I have already read the entirety of Transmetropolitan, sadly (I wish I could erase it from my mind and read it again). Doktor Sleepless is very similar to Transmetropolitan, by the way, so if you enjoy one you'll probably enjoy the other. Also for those Warren Ellis fans that don't know, he is currently nearing the end of a free webcomic called FreakAngels. That SVK thing sounds cool, but it also sounds like it's way too expensive for me to try out off my own back. As for Patters' suggestions, I've had a look at some of the early All-Star Superman stuff, which seems cool. I also took a quick peek at the Green Lantern Secret Origin things, which actually got me quite interested in maybe finally actually reading some Green Lantern comics. For such a popular franchise, it's a weirdly complete blind spot for me.

Seeing Left 4 Dead 2 on sale today for less than £4 is really pushing my buttons. Do any Thumbs regularly play this?

Does anyone have any comics/graphic novels to recommend right now? I just finished reading a bunch of Warren Ellis stuff (Doktor Sleepless being the main one that I loved) and I'm kind of jonesing for more comics that have actual characterisation and interesting concepts. I'm not necessarily averse to reading a good storyline in an established brand like Superman or X-Men, but it does worry me that I won't fully understand it because I'll be jumping in at a random point in a huge series.

Somewhat related, since it's Rockstar. I noticed Bully: Scholarship Edition is on sale on Steam today and wondered if anyone had any opinions on whether that's a game that's still worth playing? I only ever played a couple of hours of it and don't remember much.

For anyone that doesn't know, for another hour or so everything to do with Magicka is on sale for about a third of the original price. I heartily recommend getting it! Especially since someone just gifted me the complete pack as an advance birthday present, so I finally have a copy on my own account and would love to play with some Thumbs.

Nice job, Thompson, I've been wanting versions of several of those songs for a while.

Just wanted to say this thread really cheered me up, particularly the visual depiction of the number of Emerald Nights in Rodi's possession and the thought of a handmade Ankh-Morpork coat of arms.

Happy Birthday, 'blix and subbes.

Yeah I actually thought Wave was fairly neat from a technological standpoint. Some friends and I used to use it for keeping track of things during a tabletop RPG session over Skype. But as toblix said, the launch was awful and it was never really explained what Wave was "for". This isn't entirely Google's fault, as it could potentially be "for" many things, but it did mean Wave never really had an identity for people to easily explain or understand.