WTF

True but it's only going to sit in my shelf so it should be fine, till I have kids of course.

I totally agree. Though to be quite honest I feel that people who do that are generally somewhat educated on the matter but not quite erudite. To me it reads like the highbrow version of U Mad? O he mad type of memes. This is the problem with the internet, with the exception of a select few. Most people post from their gut. They do not think logically. These kind of people need to vent out their pointless frustration and they just do it on a forum viewable by people for thousands to see. It makes no sense at all why they do that. I am sure some might be embarrassed initially. But as more people say the same thing - they feel like their voice has meaning and their diatribe worth it. And then they go on and on about it every single time. It's futile really and they're being immature but some people lack self-control. As for DLC and similar things, there are plenty of people who do not understand any sort of business and they have now been given a voice. Not to mention there are kids too. I'd like to educate these people on how things work in the real world and how the money they spend while feeding a company also feeds several people and the company. Obviously these people would have no idea what running capital or factors of production means, why companies need to do more than break even to innovate and what growth of a business means and that it's not just about paying salaries and rent. The truly sad thing is that there are intelligent people out there giving productive ideas but it usually drowns out in the midst of other words. That's the problem of the internet, it's like every idiot on the street now talks to you and you really are at a loss to figure out who's the smart one since you need to go through every opinion which many of us do not have time for.

The thing is when you're younger you can have an irregular diet. It can also be if you've got insane work schedules and you travel a lot. For those people when they do try to be regular it rarely works since their schedule puts them on irregularity again. However this is usually the case only for those below 40. After 40 it is best for you to have a regular diet, especially if you are a man because of the various gastro-intestinal disorders that plague most men of a certain age.

Well that's always the problem these days. Sort of why even though I'm indifferent about steeltins I like the current Sony Steeltins for PS3 games as the sleeve removes off all the logos with it and you're left with a nice shiny collectible that's only £2 more than the regular game most of the time (for me).

That was pretty easy. Man my geography sort of slacks today. 10 years ago I could locate every iron ore and bauxite deposit across a few countries. It's a bit odd when you think about the education that certain places provide and how much you know vs how much someone else your age in another country would know.

I'm surprised that it's lasted 6 pages with no one bringing up the Batman: AA box art. I'm waiting to see the inevitable Greatest Hits version (for NA) of that version which will ultimately get rid of Batman as well from the cover . I've just posted the platinum hits version as well just to show the real estate even before the GOTY version hit. I know there's a GOTY platinum somewhere.

I have one pet peeve only and that's people being far too serious about everything in life. It's one life, try to enjoy it as much as you can and do whatever you can possible. Everything else well you're going to die one day not too far in the future (even if it be another 80-100 years time flies very quickly) so why not make the best of it instead of whining about everything. But, that's my pet peeve. I also dislike it when kids act way too grown up and adults act immature (childish is fine, immature is not).

I agree with peeter. I'm not Japanese (at least I don't think so though I'm pretty much a lot of things) but that's pretty much what I'd been raised with as well. Or rather an extension of it being - Have a nice breakfast, lighter lunch, skip tea and a lighter dinner/supper if you really want it. I'm in good shape for my 30 years at the moment and that's got nothing to do with the gym. I practically walk everywhere I need to go (unless it's over 10 miles and I'm in a hurry). However I also sometimes have to lug heavy equipment (though these days it's not that heavy). I will say one thing it really depends on the individual. You see a person who eats irregularly needs to continue to do so and a person who eats regularly needs to carry on with the same. Any change to that pretty much reflects on your body. For instance while at uni, most of us ate at 2am and we did manage to have a decent figure at the time, it had more to do with lifestyle rather than times we ate though. The gym works for some people, the issue for a lot is motivation, finding a gym buddy and continuing with it. It's easy if you're always in one city or constantly on the move. Not so much if you shift locations every 2-3 years or so. From my former gym days I can say this be careful of how you exercise. You can convert muscle to fat easily which doesn't really help if you stop because you'll build a lot of body mass and any fat you gain in the future will be layered onto the muscle and it doesn't really help you lose weight. It just gives you a better build. If you're strictly looking to lose weight you probably need to do more number of lighter weights and lighter exercises where the numbers are more and the weights are less. If you want the other it's a bit of the reverse. I used to work out in a gym where people competed professionally in weight-lifting competitions. Here's the amusing thing about that, they had good upper body mass but chicken legs. It was weird but apparently that's what happens in that sort of training. A change in diet does help to an extent. It also depends on what goals you seek to achieve really . More muscle or losing weight. p.s. It is easy to quit drinking. Just think of it as for health reasons, especially if you do have sinusitis or something. I do drink socially but my drinking's severely restricted these days. Not to mention family history of hypertension and high (father's) and low (mother's) BP.

Congrats Here's a tiny hint. Most game journos these days are lurkers on Gaf. It would be smart I guess in a way to join the site and discuss and do articles too. Since sometimes some of the members do some insane amount of digging up to find info about games they may or may not like. And they have a fair number on there as well who write for press.

Bah! Now I've to add Hyperdimension Neptunia to the list. I was going to cancel my preorder today and wait for a pricedrop but the rotten £%&%^(*%$ pretty much charged me and shipped the game already. Which is insane because the game is only out officially next Friday in this country. Hmm now I'm going to have to sit out on some game next month... The next two months are going to be expensive anyways business-wise. Edit: Extremely extremely surprised about my shopto delivery which was sent at 4pm and I got it this morning? I mean seriously WTF, Royal Mail are never that efficient.

Argos mini-shelf! You know it's rare to see a house these days without one of those. I've got one since Ikea didn't have the right colour to go with the room.

Feb Pickups 360 Deathsmiles Deluxe Edition Fable 3 (£10 which was my price point for it) PSP Crush DS Contact (lost my copy during a move) PC Psychonauts (double dip just to play it without the discs) Europa Universalis 2 LC & GoL dlc 1 and 3. PS3 MvC3 Killzone 3 Dante's Inferno (It was £2 for a new copy) Wii Kirby's Epic Yarn PS2 Primal (repurchase) Drakengard (same) PSN Stacking Explodemon Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess That's what I can remember. Jan had quite a few pickups as well. I know March too will have some.

It's a Noir title the boxart should have been minimalist to fit the theme. Something like this I guess.

Probably means £90 for the white one on an 18 month contract with o2 at £35 a month.

Actually if you don't mind linking your serial to your EA account via EA Download manager you can pretty much have it digitally without you ever putting the CD in. It works pretty much for most currently released EA games. You will need EA Download Manager installed and be willing to download whatever filesize the game is (usually between 2-8GB) and make sure that the drive you install isn't something like FAT32 as it won't initiate then . It does render your retail copy pretty useless and you'd have to uninstall before proceeding with this. Games that currently don't work registering with EADM are the first Mass Effect (2 is fine). I think Spore too, the incompatibility is mostly to do with serial keys being of a different string length and older system.. Most older games work and they're planning on bringing support for most games via that service. Wish they'd just steam it already but they do want to pimp their service (which isn't even required after the game installs). Handy if you want to keep your disc drives free. As for today's Demo it's going to be slow going on the network. Not to mention for those interested Shogun 2's Demo is up on steam as well today. I LOVE YOU. I can still use the code again for the EA DM??? This is so great! Yeah I'd registered Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age on bioware's social thing (and with EA's site too I believe) before and then just entered the product key again in EADM back in December and it worked fine. Apparently EA's trying to help out in case you do lose your discs but have the keys. I just wish all their games are supported because it's quite handy (since they're still being douchebags about steamworks).

Just finished the demo and uh it's not bad but like Dex says it's definitely more like a fantasy based Mass Effect. I get the feeling Bioware wants to keep their narrative type structure they've been working on since the last decade as opposed to what was Dragon Age which was in a nowhere land really between BG work and their modern stuff (DA:O is actually an indicator of a project they probably started internally the same time as KoToR possibly though never officially announced). It's more streamlined is what I'd say than would be necessary for a fantasy setting. Though there's still the whole 'make choices and the world will change thing' they keep talking about that I'll investigate when the game's out. However I must say that they needn't have made the good, bad or neutral choices as obvious in the selection menu. Not to mention if there's graphical issues, this is supposedly an earlier build. Pretty much similar to what was shown at expos (Still don't get why companies bother to release really early builds as demos this close to release unless they want people to get the feel of the story (which is what trailers are for, early build demos don't highlight current tech as we usually notice)). It does download faster on Chrome got it done in 30 mins or so even if you don't use download managers or accelerators. Steam has the demo right now. But looking at how slow Shogun was yeah I've 'moved to Romania' to get it done faster. One thing I'd like to say is that it felt more medieval than DA:O which felt more fantasy than this. The demo still has the bloodspatter thing and sometimes it decides to play on windowed mode even when you set it as full screen. (turning the option off and then on again sorts that issue).

Well it's a little more complicated than it seems at first. It all started when UTV one of India's more successful production companies from the 90s started to do international ventures. With that more money started to come in from Indian investors. In fact these days some of the production houses have Mittal and Reliance capital funding them. When Cameron visited India and was looking into Indian investors they were really looking at adding into the Film Finance industry as that brings in a lot of jobs, increases the co-production factors with the US and it's a complicated web there. It was them then killing off the UKFC (which now exists via the BFI) that sort of sent mixed signals. A lot of post-pro work for Indian films is now done at production houses here and there's a lot of priority given in certain studios to these works as opposed to even say films like The Dark Knight due to money invested. This hasn't really changed things here but it has disrupted certain post-pro houses. Some of them no longer make the best work like they used to because they find it harder to compete with the capital investments that come from India. For instance Framestore used to be a major player but the most prominent work it has done of late is the Andrex CG dog advert which is pretty bad. D-Neg is probably numero uno now because of the projects they've got and that they've done good work for Nolan (He's one of those guys who likes to stick with people he's worked with, hence the whole recycling of actors in his films). There's a lot of money coming in from these Steel Tycoons who're pretty much either invested or are set to invest more into post-production houses. Each time a new one comes up they keep buying it till well pretty much they'll be the only ones. An somewhat unnamed post-pro house rose up after one of these buyouts and they pretty much do a lot of broadcast stuff these days (commercials too) and it seems they're the next to get bought out. Despite there being a lot of talent, there just isn't anyone willing to invest in these except for the current investors. It's a strange thing really and it mostly has to do with how conservative the film market was and risk-averse they were. These buyouts have slowly started to change that and it's an interesting environment really. There's more but I'll probably leave that for later.

Being a member of the film industry and formerly advertising I think there's some truth to it but in general all this doom and gloom about innovation and films not really working out is a bit malarky. Some do and some don't. The post post-modern era does not work with blockbusters for film retail instead it works more on the long tail distribution system. Cinemas are not the primary source of profit. In fact only the major studio backed productions would seek to earn a profit at the cinema. What the cinema is today is 'Glorified Advertising'. Now I've seen lots of films released, unreleased, shorts, features, About 60% of them wouldn't be heard outside of film circles. Just like outside of gaming circles you wouldn't know of some machinima, webcomics and the like. Just like every subculture there's a set of nerds, geeks, fanatics and obsessive folks who would know about releases that somehow make their way to the public. But to the vast majority you've heard of a film since it ran at the cinema. That means someone's heard of it. This makes it easier to be bought, even if you paid to get it played at a 5-10 cinemas. If the source material is engaging then people will want to watch it either on their TV, at festivals for the public (where film-makers get paid - they are fewer than the pointless funfair filmfestivals but they do exist) and they will have some run for digital and regular distribution that you can get some money back. Now we've got crowd-sourcing which works for some people. Not for everyone but some. There's film incentives in some countries where public money is used to make films which are then distributed through public channels. Most of the expenses for the film would've been paid for in advance. So a marketing machine is in place. Just like with games, music and other media films also rely on conventions, on blogs on people promoting their stuff for free. When you hear about a film before its release it's free promotion. Unlike a game, there's few occasions when anyone says a film that has a mid-sized studio backing is terrible. if it has atleast one actor of note, they'll either be positive or neutral. You won't have day one releases in digital for cinemas for major films. You can have it for certain low budget or independent films. This is because in a lot of countries, particularly in continental Europe, distributors who usually are part of a cinema group pay for films in advance. Unless these people have a stake in some digital distro they won't do day one. Sometimes Artificial Eye and BSkyB do some ventures. Similarly sometimes IFC does some ventures but you're not going to get a day one digital distro yet. There are plans for it. Sony-Columbia TriStar, Paramount and WB are working on a scheme for 'families' but as you can guess family is the focus there and it's probably going to be more of the family focussed features first before it's the teen audience movies. The largest demographic for the cinemas is always the 15-34 audience particularly the 16-24 age group. The rest usually fall in the long-tail or licensing category. Everyone marks up costs for films because of licensing. These are big budget examples but for instance each time a Bond Movie gets played on a channel they get 1Million. If memory serves me right that 1million pays for 2-4 showings of the film. Movies are never dead despite poor showings in the box office, right now if you look at the buyers market they've realised that there's more avenues for distribution than there used to be and the long tail lasts for a much longer time than before. Hollywood isn't the definitive market. In fact over 70% of the movies made by Hollywood these days are coproductions. This is why there was a big hue and cry when they said they'd stop funding films in the UK. Mostly because of the tax breaks and film finance options the US did invest in the UK, which brought more jobs and right now the UK or rather London is still the number 1 post-production hub in the world (though a lot of them are currently owned by Indian investors or companies which is a totally different story). The reason why there's fewer original films is because of infrastructure and to keep businesses alive. Once the economy becomes better it'll change a bit. There's been lots of cutbacks, cancellations and the like in the past 2 years. The industry had to rethink its strategy in digital distribution as well. However the independent film-makers have just found that their budgets are increasing when it comes to features. Mind you anything below 45 minutes is still a short which is why certain ideas don't do well and funding for shorts is a bit more difficult as there's no clearcut return from a short as opposed to a feature where you can get some returns so long as the production isn't financially disastrous. I've seen some amusing, sad and even wonderful things in this industry. p.s. I'd recommend reading The Undeclared War by David Puttnam (Lord Puttnam now) which will give some interesting insights into the schism between European and US film-making industries.

Actually if you don't mind linking your serial to your EA account via EA Download manager you can pretty much have it digitally without you ever putting the CD in. It works pretty much for most currently released EA games. You will need EA Download Manager installed and be willing to download whatever filesize the game is (usually between 2-8GB) and make sure that the drive you install isn't something like FAT32 as it won't initiate then . It does render your retail copy pretty useless and you'd have to uninstall before proceeding with this. Games that currently don't work registering with EADM are the first Mass Effect (2 is fine). I think Spore too, the incompatibility is mostly to do with serial keys being of a different string length and older system.. Most older games work and they're planning on bringing support for most games via that service. Wish they'd just steam it already but they do want to pimp their service (which isn't even required after the game installs). Handy if you want to keep your disc drives free. As for today's Demo it's going to be slow going on the network. Not to mention for those interested Shogun 2's Demo is up on steam as well today.

I see crap films on a daily basis so I shouldn't comment. I've even been responsible for promoting one unfortunately. But if you want to see bad films in the UK and don't work in films all you need are Movies24, Movies4Men (they've even shown the original Inglorious Bastards which was spelt that way) and the Horror Channel. There are some atrocious old school sci-fi films including one where a guy reboots an evil robot with a cd from his discman in 2085.

Majin was cheap it's a loveletter to adventure gaming from the ps2 gen. It has it's flaws but is quite an enjoyable Zelda room dungeon based partner ai platformer. Lbp2 is way better than lbp1 and there's way too much content and some rxellent levels. Controls arethe same and grabinator rocks while grapple sucks and is sometimes worse than jumps but when in doubt press r1. I enjoyed the game with friends. But it's ok for solo too.

Well I thought of onlive but that depends heavily on stream speeds. My suggestion is to have a third party that's tied to the central ip of a country but available for midbudget to a larger consumer and is platform tied. No extra console. It needs retail support. As for mid budget titles, that can be made if companies realize that they can cut prod costs by hiring fresh-inter talent instead of award winning movie tie-up talent. Btw you can buy magika at greenmangamimg for 6.49 and it's steam activated. Currently I'm getting trained on 3D for low budget production and break's up

I actually quite enjoyed Ninja Blade (because I went in expected a rubbish story and mindless action). It wasn't a DMC or anything and had QTEs but definitely quite enjoyable. I enjoyed The Saboteur despite some if its flaws. Accents were terrible but the game was actually enjoyable. I know the internet sort of likes Nier despite sales and reviews so there's little point mentioning it. The game was really mostly a shmup disguised as an action adventure game. However the banter was really memorable as well as the stupid shit it puts up on your status when you play it on the PS3 (haven't played it on the PS3 as yet, though I did play the 360 version last year - which I sold to get the PS3 version for this reason). Battletoads Technocop. I know there's not much hate for these games but I love the old roguelike games starting with Rogue of course all the way to ADOM (mostly because I loved the randomised character creation and then the synopsis of the character when you die).

I honestly believe we need a tier system when it comes to games production. It exists but it's not very refined. Over the years it's more or less refined in the film industry. We know that there's game developers which are pretty similar to production houses for films (particularly when it's outside the Hollywood system). I've got an equation. Currently iOS and Android releases are pretty much equivalent to youtube, vimeo and other similar digital platform released videos. There's quality in a sea of filth. There's some well produced stuff on both, but generally it is a free for all. Games on PSN, XBLA and Steam-only(DD Only) are similar to films created by a production house and in some case indies (but most indies particularlty the ones whose work isn't aired are more like XBLIG which is almost like IFC even with the bureaucracy) too. This is because there's a budget usually associated with them, some proper developers with development time and more public awareness that they can create some awareness before release. We have the games on retail. These usually fit the AAA games which are like blockbusters and other games which while having a major budget still are less than AAA just like say how the smaller studios within a big studio house like Screen gems and weinhouse pictures, etc operate. What's missing is well TV movies, shows and that category. While they fit in broadcast the dev cycle for a show shares similarities with films. Episodic gaming tries to fit into that bracket, but it doesn't really work with the exception of telltale games because people price the episodes too high. However the TV movie category doesn't even exist in games. In fact there needs to be this category of games, These games may have a decent budget, use voice actors, actors, talent, studios, etc who aren't busy with a major game to release a mid-budget game that has good gameplay mechanics and an iffy story. The focus should be to give cheap and quick entertainment but higher QC. They need to differentiate themselves from the offerings on PSN, XBLA and Steam releases by being of a higher quality than your average £8/800pt game. It can cost £20-25. A title that should have been in that category is Enslaved. Everything about that game is like a syfy movie. I'm sure if they went that route it would have helped them. I didn't like the game as much but I know that it would be good entertainment for £20. It would also be good if there's a service from a company that's separate from the current digital platforms. Lets call it tiered gaming. Basically you will be paying £5-15 a month for a subscribed service by which they give you games of different types as part of that subscription. You don't get to keep all the games permanently (in that way it'll be similar to PLUS) but it'll be more similar to Cable TV. You have 60 days(minimum, max would be subscription period) from activation/download of the game to have total access to that game. After which you pay a fee (the rate depends on the type of game - minis and small games should be free while titled games would be priced higher) to own it permanently. Just like cable, it will provide you with new games (shows), new films (tv movies) and games that were out 6months ago as part of your subscription. To have added ownership of the game you pay a little extra. But this way you do get to try games instantly, games you might have missed out on. But it'll also come with all the problems of cable. Currently as is ownership of any game is dubious as we only own the 'license' to the game and most online portiions of the game pretty much are killed in 5 years leaving you with just the barebones singleplayer in some cases which may or may not be supported in the future. At least this way you do end up getting more out of it. Not to mention there are many games that people play for the first two months and then don't care at all. So long as trophies/achievements associated with the game are connected to your account most casual customers will be pleased. it also could help promote games to people that might not normally try those games. Mind you it will come at a cost, since it's expensive to maintain such a network. But if they can tie up with internet providers to come up with an interesting solution we'll actually have some change. Of course the logistics of this is massive, so for it to actually work will take a long time to never. The companies who would come with this idea will need to be retailer friendly of course as physical games will still be sold and these guys need to support it which will help lower digital costs instead of the current climate where physical retail will be cheaper than digital for the most part as they pay for advertising particularly for 3rd party games.