deanb

The combat is pretty well designed within the game, but the death/"checkpoint" mechanic does kinda suck. You die, you lose the XP/Cash you spent the first run making, until you then repeat the same stretch you just completed, killing off the same enemies in the same spots, in the hopes of then recouping the souls, and if you die again it means re-repeating the same stretch/enemies until you do advance. Losing all of your souls upon death also means that you generally aim to avoid risk too, so if you're down to just 1 flask you're not going to be jumping around the corners too quick, which means going back, re-bonfiring then repeating the level to the new section and taking out whatever is new around the corner. Phalanx was probably one of the better bosses/levels for this between the two games since you opened up a short-cut midway through the level, thus cutting out the need to repeat the whole stretch of the level as and when you die (especially if you die to the boss). It's an entire topic of it's own though with "difficult for the sake of it" kinda games. The combat alone works well enough, the complete failure upon death is unneeded.

Going by some of the screenshot comparisons of GTAIV to GTAV either this game has been touched up/or I'm pretty sure if it's in-engine trailers being made it's on a PC engine.

Damn that's a pretty good deal, and a nicely put together collection.

Bunch of images for the upcoming Dragonborn DLC. Not quite desktop resolution though :/

One of the films I'll definetely be keeping an eye on. So much CGI, but it's the kind of film that is perfectly fine with, in fact pretty much requiring, a shit ton of CG. I'm kinda curious on the plot though cos given I'm assuming this leads up to Wizard of Oz, and potentially not fucking up the mythos too much, he doesn't accomplish his task. oh and:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20325001 So doctors have gotten together to form a new political party due to a dislike of the increasing privatisation of the NHS. I doubt it has much, if any, chance of actually gaining any seats but it'll likely do well to raise awareness and weaken current MPs.

A few other bits in the World Politics front. Israel declares war on Hamas via Twitter http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/israel-declares-war-hamas-twitter-hamas-responds-twitter-welcome-2012?cmpid=tw China has a new group of guys at the top of its communist party for the next 10 years http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20322288 And here's a great piece about the president of Uruguay http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493 The poorest president in the world. I liked this bit: Which is a pretty fair sentiment, having bigger and bigger houses and such does not necessarily mean the country and it's peoples are any better off in the grand scheme of things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20336898 BP to be fined $3-5billion over Deepwater Horizon, the largest fine in US history.

The change in size for hard drives when formatted has already been covered. That's not what is happening here, and even then going from 250GB to 237GB is only a change of 5% and still leaves you with plenty of room compared to the 60% eaten up from the advertised space on the Wii U. So certainly far out of the ordinary. On top of that the firmware for the device is also stored on ROM, and even if it was put on the HDD it amounts to about 140MB or so. Here the formatting change accounts for a few hundred meg, with a further 4.2GB gobbled up at initial boot which if it is an amount Nintendo were aware of then they should have put a chunk of system usable ROM in instead to store it, leaving the advertised 8GB to the user. And we're not doubting that the basic model may be popular, we're taking issue that the number on the front of the box is a rather large leap from the number that's actually there in reality.

It's modern not-Blu-Rays so speed shouldn't be an issue any more so installs of the full retail games isn't to be something expected. But if you're wanting to grab digital games, say a GC game they're going to be selling on the Virtual Console, that's 1.5GB a pop. Saves are around a few megs each, and there's potential updates, and any DLC the player may want to buy. Apart from Pre-N64 games this things is pretty much no go for digital purchases. If this version outsells the 32GB version then it could make third party studios pretty wary of publishing to Wii U except for GOTY editions, you know how much modern studios like their DLC. edit: And there's what Ethan is saying too. I made similar notion when it turned out the MS Surface 16GB only has like 8GB usable. There's the whole "1000GB HDD" becomes 950GB when you actually format it to NTFS, but losing more than half the advertised space is bullshit. I guess in the UK at least we'll wait and see how ASA deal with it.

Yeah I don't get their demonstration either. As I said, it seems to be a bit stupid. Expanding it to 16GB would give much more space left over, not cost Nintendo much more, and mean that it's much easier for the user to grab games digitally thus making Nintendo more pennies. As for the 4.2GB I haven't a fucking clue, I can't even begin to speculate. I have to assume it includes the N64 Library because I see no reason, even if it was console OS in that space too, for it being even .2GB never mind 4.2GB.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120641-Nintendo-Uses-Colored-Beads-to-Explain-Wii-U-Storage After formatting and initial setup the basic 8GB Wii U becomes just 3GB of usable space. You can use external hard drives to expand the space but why even bother offering an 8GB version if it becomes nigh unusable within moments of it being turned on? Nintendo aren't even selling extra space like MS do so it's not even worth Nintendos time offering such shitty space never mind the consumers. I assume they don't plan to expand their digital sales over the next 5+ years either.

http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm Gaze into 1996 politics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741 Woman in Ireland dies after being refused an abortion as Ireland is "a catholic country" (she was Hindu). Seems it might be a turning point on that stance.

http://hiddenpassageway.com/ I'd probably build one of these into my house "just cos".

Someone needs to tell Bioware what a PrtScn button is for. Kinda cool that they're sorting things out that is something Activision need to be resolving. Also if Montreal are the team behind the MP itself than that further my thinking that the next Mass Effect game will likely be a shooter. Probably EA's answer to Halo since Danger Close doesn't seem to be doing to well.

It is GIF, not gif.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/press-releases/uk-word-of-the-year-2012/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/press-releases/us-word-of-the-year-2012/ So over here our "word of the year" is Omnishambles. Over in America it's GIF (Which is kinda cheating cos that's three words). Also it's now apparently a verb "to gif, gifed, gifing". I think whoever came up with it as a verb misread when someone told them they were gifted. I've a feeling Tumblr is to blame.

I saw where it went when he posted about ME2 so I'll save some time I'm gonna go with Ethan in that you did play the "new and improved" ending, and in playing the games so close together, and thus not having the lead up of Bioware going on about how amazing it'll be and all the different endings from all the different choices would likely have put you on a lower pedestal. And you also knew what to expect. In other news Mass Effect 4/spin-off is seemingly in the works, and will be dropping Unreal Engine in favour of DICE's Frostbite engine. It'll also be made by Montreal, the satellite studio. Which means I assume there's a new Bioware franchise coming if the main Edmonton studio isn't dealing with ME4. I've a feeling given the move to Frostbite which is even more shooty than Unreal they'll be focusing more on the random soldier stuff of the war? Given the whole shit storm with regards to original trilogy and it's choice system and such it wouldn't surprise me if they drop all pretense of RPGness in future titles (Especially as the MP side seems to be going well for them)

So every year BBC runs a telethon called Children In Need. It'll be on again this Friday. As part of that there will be a new Doctor Who Short (and also likely an Xmas trailer/lead-up) Here's some media as part of that (and I'll throw up the short as n when it's up) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p0114bb6 Oh yeah last years wasn't too good. So I'll leave you with a good one

I might grab it, no idea what I'll be playing, on gave a casual glance cos it was a subbed game way back when so I've not really much of a clue beyond it being jedi n sith what the classes are. I guess whatever the mage/support class is.

I did their FB deal so have a months free. Housemate is interested in the Ratchet n Clank game but it's 15GB :/ I'm interested in giving Crysis 2 a blast on console and that's at least a bit smaller (but I'll likely just pop on console overnight). Grabbed Scott Pilgrim too, so hoping to maybe have a bit of co-op gaming this weekend.

It seems to be pretty much the same as last time, earn souls, souls = exp/currency. You die, you drop souls, you pick them up = woot, you die again = lose them.