SomTervo

Can anyone imagine what they could develop with a new Xbox? Or a new next gen console in general. The only things I can think of are: - HDD only, no physical media input. Unlikely for backwards compatibility, let alone most 'punters' buying retail. - New control/ input methods, though the tried n tested joypad is unlikely to change. - Even more social networking/ social media merging. - Improved hardware specs (obviously).

Yeah Dean, your Mum probably liked it for all the Jackman muscle madness I know every woman I met/ heard from did.

I would love a spin-off where we play Shaun sneaking in and discovering his oh-so-high perceptions of his lineage actually comes down to a peasant rolling around in the muck during a famine outside London c. 1665 AD I think Desmond will get a wider skillset, maybe some more equipment, but he's not gonna get anything like what Ezio or Altair have in the Animus. From a gameplay/interface standpoint. I'd like Desmond's storyline to go somewhere more public- with population walking around and side-quests like in the cities in the Animus. Speaking of out-of-animus gameplay, anybody got any idea what happens if you collect all of those funky items that were hidden around the modern villa in AC: Brotherhood? That was weird, but really cool and kinda exciting. I found 3 or 4 out of the 7 or whatever, never met anyone who got them all.

ENFP Extraverted Intuitive Feeling perceiving E- 11/I- 62/F- 25/P- 11 - Slightly expressed extravert - Distinctively expressed intuitive personality - Moderately expressed feeling personality - Slightly expressed perceiving personality 'Idealist- Champion' type apparently. All sounds very like me though I think I'm more feeling than that suggests. And less perceiving. Apparently only 3-4% of the population get this, so that's nice. EDIT: A lot of the stuff on the Wikipedia page, about problems of misunderstandings with others and what they arise from- are issues I've had IRL frequently. This is weird.

I'm not interested either- it's clear the guy barely played the game though. If you're reviewing something, you should play it a lot.

I really am not too interested in this, though I did like Singer's movies. At Kapow this year they did a secret screening of Super, which was meant to be great- everyone expected the secret screening to be First Class. Can't be as bad as Scott Pilgrim. BURN! Um, a.) Scott Pilgrim is awesome. So, not so much a 'BURN!' as a 'fail'. b.) This is is NO WAY related to X-Men, except the comic origin, but even that's not really relevant considering the pedigree.

That is bad like. Especially seeing as it will have dragged down the aggregate site's rankings, which is just so not cool. Still, I reckon Brink will sell alright regardless. Good publicity.

Jesus christ... This is too fucking hard. 1. Shadow of the Colossus. 2. Silent Hill 2. 3. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. 4. Max Payne 2. 5. Jet Set Radio. 6. Metal Gear Solid. 7. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. 8. Braid. 9. Ico. 10. Freedom Fighters. 11. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. 12. Halo: Combat Evolved. 13. Halo: Reach. 14. Uncharted 2. 15. Timesplitters 2. Jesus that's heavy. And I'm probably too late to be counted. But oh well. Lots of honourable mentions, so many things that would probably be in the top 10, but I've forgotten about. Pretty sure my top 5 is solid, though.

Yeah, the general consensus seems to be: if you rate the multiplayer and singleplayer seperately and focus a bit more on singleplayer (as almost every mediocre/bad review of the game has done), it's not a great experience. If, however, you play the game as it's meant to be played, online with good teams, it's a great experience and a fair success. Apparently almost all of those out-the-door bugs have been patched up on 360. They say it was a string of bad code that was messing up a lot of the networking code. Damn straight. I remember when Multiplayer parts of games used to be far more fun, and there was literally no unlocking of ANYTHING. Though to an extent it's good, for customisation etc.

Yeah the means testing of EMA was serious fail. My flatmate and homie got the largest amount you could because his parents were seperated and he only counted his Dad's income, which was technically £0 per annum as he was self employed. Pulled the same trick for Uni loans/buraries. The damn fiend. Still, I don't think EMA should be scrapped, but maybe it shouldn't be means tested. I like that suggestion of credit on student cards, Jimmeh. Still, maybe we should move this to the 'UK Politics' thread? ;P On-topic: I've got a book currently from the library called International Varieties of English. It's an interesting read if anyone's interested in the English Vs English issue. I've got an exam on the subject this Thursday, so that should be fun. It seems Noah Webster (1758-1843) was the main advocate of codifying (read: publishing, thus solidifying) spelling reform in the United States. Lots of his work exists to today- taking out unnecessary letters (colour/color, publick/public), and rearranging existing letters to make sense (centre/center). His text 'an American Dictionary of the English Language' was the first work to publish most of the ideas, and is pretty much the most significant to today- although there were a lot of omissions, and further, a lot of his new spellings didn't last very long and don't exist today (trowsers/trousers, traveler/traveller). Good shit.

Why shouldn't Shaner be in on it? Why shouldn't anybody be in on it?! It's basically just a prototypical bit of fun.

Huh. Scottish system's pretty simple: Nursery- age 4/5. Bit more than half a day, I think, finishes early afternoon. You get some pre-school clubs but they're basically all private. Primary School, P1-P7- from age 4/5/6 (I think) to 11/12. Tests are simply for teacher's guidance to help with problems. Secondary School, S1-S6- from age 11/12 through to 16/17/18. You study under the Primary school grading system in the first two years, you study give/take 8 Standard Grades in 3rd and 4th year. You can leave at 16, after your standard grades if you want, but most stay on for Highers or Advanced Highers in 5th and 6th year: S5 and S6. Further/Higher Education- College or University basically. University is 4 years, unlike in England, unless you go to England, but you have to pay there you can also go up to 5 years, or to 7 for a PhD. At University a Bachelors is 3 years, Masters is 4. Uni is seperated into Colleges (I go to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences), and each Uni College is split into schools (I go to the Language and literatures one). You apply to both college and Uni through UCAS, by the manner Dean explained. Regular polytechnic/ national College lets you do any course you want, really, and they all vary in length from a year to a 3 year Higher National Diploma/Certificate. Also, Dean, it varies, but I'm pretty sure for paragraphing you either indent the first line and leave no line break between paragraphs, or you don't indent and leave a line break between paragraphs? More of a nitpick of mine but it always makes posts look neater.

Kinda sucks for some of us. I bought PlaystationPlus not weeks before this whole thing happened, and I already have almost all of the titles I'd be interesting in having from their service. So after purchasing a whole year, and all the games I want, I get one measly month and maybe a couple of extra titles I don't need...

What's the deal with Prophecy? I love DarkEnergy's take on game development, highly iterative even after the point of sale.

It's The Dark Knight Returns, man! He is over middle aged, probably bitter after the events of Brotherhood. He now has more technology- the grapple/zipline thing is like, Batman's best friend. Batman also loves his types of bombs- in Year One he makes use of thermite a lot, and also uses smoke, sleeping gas, etc etc. 'Eagle Sense' now lets you predict what guards or going to do- again Batman and his extremely refined prediction and deduction skills, though maybe that's a bit of a stretch. I too was bored with Ezio, but I think this sounds like a good direction! However, the 'memory seals' thing sounds a bit Inception. Re-live a memory within a memory. As a game alone I think Revelations sounds good- I like random events and that the Borgia towers can get retaken. I would. My main reason is that it did a great job of adding incentive, the one thing I felt ACI and II totally lacked and failed at. In ACII, once I had done the story, I felt no need to do the side missions and felt bored by the game world and the game. In AC:B, even before I had finished the story, I was happy to roam around doing side missions, being immersed in the world, furthering my Assassins and collecting items for the inventory. It's all the little detail and refinements they added in Brotherhood that made it that bit more special and immersive for me.

Yeah I'd recommend Gotham Central, though it's more a unique story, not entirely Batman or DC. I'd recommend reading AllStar Superman before watching the flick. The film's good, but doesn't flesh it out anywhere near enough and feels a little too fast/ badly paced. The book is the true version. Dark Knight Returns has one of the most jarring openings of any comic I've ever read- but when you start to see where it's going and it sucks you in, it's incredible. Yeah, I like Reynolds but loads of people hate him. I look forward to reading the comics! If you finish your load of comics and want any suggestions, gees a call any time. The Bruce Wayne through history, onwards, arc is pretty great.

Yeah most of it is the acting and voicing capture, apparently. I'm so going PS3- one disc mofos!

I'm pretty sure we're talking about that huge mother who's flying out of his body just below center of the screen! There's only one of them! Nice! Will def check it out. Reckon Reynolds is a good call for Hal? For Superman I'm just getting started, but AllStar Superman is amazing for anyone. That and Superman for All Seasons are meant to be the best, though I haven't read the latter. Batman: you ain't read The Dark Knight Returns? You pretty much have to. It's ridiculously great, I don't rank it with other mainstream superhero stories, but with Watchmen and V for Vendetta for how important and masterful it is. The Killing Joke's pretty good, and Batman & Robin (with Grayson and Damien) is shaping up really good, too! Grant Morrison is an incredible writer, he did B&R, and Allstar Superman, along with other older classics like The Invisibles. I love Year One, and I'm currently reading Gotham Central; a Batman story without Batman in it. It's about Gotham City Police Department, and is more like The Wire but set in Gotham- they're all at odds with Batman, and have a day-to-day struggle with the worst criminals, and supercriminals, the world has to offer. It's great. For more indy, great superhero stories I'd recommend Morrison's breakthrough run on Animal Man which is touching, hilarious, and entertaining. And I'd recommend Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame's) Invincible- like a coming-of-age superhero story. Mix between teen comedy/drama and a galactic superhero story. It's hilarious and absolutely brilliant, though seemingly losing steam now (around the 70-80 issue mark).

Copied from my rants in the Updates: I don't get all this... Sure, they're relatively "milking" the IP, as an IP. But from a 'game' standpoint, it's great. ACII was a huge improvement over ACI as a game, and Brotherhood was yet another huge improvement over that. Ezio's okay, but in this one we'll apparently also spend a lot of time playing Altair and Desmond, so the story will be pushing forward a lot. Also it suggests Ezio's going on a journey that Altair took, following in his footsteps kind of thing- so maybe it won't be so much of an open world situation? I'm all for constant iterations as long as it is unique and improving the series. This is nothing like the CoD milking or the old Prince of Persia milking (after Sands of Time). I've found these games to each be actually unique, and pushing the quality envelope constantly, so I'm really fine with it. Even the multiplayer in AC:B was great. Took a different mindset, but it worked well, in the story and as a game.

I can't see that leg anywhere! I read an intro blog post somewere about Lantern, and it's actually a great, great story. I'd love to start reading the comics. What Batman and Superman have you read, man? Batman's my forte, but I'm getting into some serious Superman now, too. Small-label comics are my actual forte, but Batman's my mainstream forte.

YEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS ...To AV. Doesn't look like we're going to pull it out of the bag though. I hope, but the minority of politicians who support No have got most of the British media on their side.

Damn, I know loads of Uni folk who didn't get to vote because of that. Up here in scotland we had the Scottish Parliament vote too, of course. It's brutal. We have one of the best voting systems- but we double it up on itself really arbitrarily and confusingly, which leads to lots of spoilt ballots and demands for recounts. You have a constituency MSP- like the "Westminster" constituencies. You have a "Regional" MSP. Or rather, 6 of them. There are 6 for each region, region's basically being the same as constituencies. There are 6 regional list MSP's under the PR List system- and while this is good for representing the countries votes at Hollyrood, it means in every constituency there are basically 7 MSP's, one that everyone knows and hlods accountable, and 6 who are just faceless job titles that are basically not held accountable to anything. Messed up. Although the 6 List MSP's do bulk up for the empty seats in parliament, and make sure the % of people who vote for a party get that % of seats at Hollyrood. I don't know why I'm explaining this as many probably know already. Still, on the one hand I'm looking forward to the Tory's being raped- on the other hand I'm not looking forward to the stealth-Tory SNP (a bit harsh maybe) getting into power. SNP aren't all that bad, but they are master politicians and Alex Salmond is a master rhetorician. He will win any argument by seeming genuine and throwing out random shit that makes the other parties look bad. The Scottish labour leader Iain Gray is a good guy, but faffs about in the public eye, the Lib Dem leader is a nice guy but a tool, and the Scottish Conservatives leader is actually great, Anabel Goldie. What did everyone vote on AV? I nearly lost a friend today by arguing vehemently over it. I'm praying Yes comes through, but it probably won't.

Here we go. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4030965/fear%20and%20loathing-%20a%20children%27s%20tale.mp3 My rendition of the first paragraph of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As a fucking children's story. P.S. Does literary genius count as poetry, 6264? EDIT: I'm GMT so whenever, you can work it out. I can't really do tomorrow anytime but Sunday would be grand, I could do Saturday but will probably be partying after my exam.

Wow. I differ in opinion almost completely. While the story doesn't progress much, as it's a sort of .5 iteration, it still is interesting. The Truth was great, and the end of Desmond's storyline was pretty damn sweet, and is going to leave people hanging on the next game if they haven't played it. On it being a cash in? Pfff. While the story wasn't the best for progression, the gameplay was goddamn superb. The open-world level was better than any of the levels in the other AC games, the side-missions were given more incentive and made far more interesting and challenging, the story missions were all incredibly varied, and were more 'gamey' than any of the ACII stuff. I loved it. The combat was still piss-easy, but was also better. It had some actual puzzles in it, that were satisfying to work out. I love how they added incentive and so much more content- this kept me playing for far longer, and made moving around the game world actual feel purposeful. The multiplayer as well- great. You have to have the right attitude- to go for stealth/quality of kills rather than quantity- but once you've worked out how it goes it's great. On-topic: I've completed loads of stuff but I can barely remember any of it, jeez. Halo: Reach. Fight Night: Champion. Bulletstorm. Mafia II. Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway. Others, too, but I can't remember...

I'd quite like to be in here. Only problem is a lack of decent PC/ laptop, my decent one's charger is broken, so I'm using my gf old horrifically battered old laptop. Still, I'll do a recording late tonight and send it out if you feel it. EDIT: I'd like to add that the possible outcome of using an old laptop is that the computer crashes midway through the podcast. That's quite likely, especially if we're looking up/discussing things in the background. I think the quality of the mic I have is fine, though.