Hocking

Absolution just got downgraded from a day one purchase to a bargain bin purchase in my eyes.

I love both franchises for different reasons. I wouldn't say either of them is my favourite franchise, but they're certainly among my favourites. I've had a load of toys from both and own a reasonable video game collection from both, as well as having every available aspect of two franchises on DVD. I actually have a model of the Consular Class Cruiser from SWTPM on my desk, a sand crawler next to my landline and the JJPrise on top of a DVD cabinet - plus a Voyager phaser on my TV stand. I did have little die-casts of the TOS Enterprise and the Enterprise-D on display as well, but sadly the weak stands for those broke. I honestly find it quite hard to put into words why I do enjoy them equally. Star Trek is a Space Opera and Star Wars is a saga. They're both really rich science fiction experiences and they're both enjoyable. I disagree there, Star Wars has the Expanded Universe and Star Trek has Soft-Canon. I've got quite a lot of Star Trek books and most of the time they are enjoyable (I could not get through Articles of the Federation, that one bored me to sleep) and add some really nice content to the soft-canon of Star Trek. You'll hate me for this though; My favourites are the series of books that follow on after Voyager ended. There are four of the fifteen Star Trek books written by Christie Golden that do an amazing job of sorting out the loose ends left by Endgame Pt I & Pt II. I also really like the String Theory Voyager novels and the multi-era Gateway novels were excellent.

I've just done this with Red Faction: Armageddon. It seems to be getting mixed reactions, but I absolutely love the hell out of it. Conversely, I was rather disappointed with L.A Noire - a game I'd followed in the media quite a fair bit. I hadn't been expecting anything from RF:A other than the ability to repair on the fly. L.A Noire was a disappointment for me because it didn't have as much depth as the old Law & Order games or the original CSI games, but I was expecting it to be so much more. Seems to me more like a complex tech demo for the animation technology. I've still not finished that off, only up to the second case on the third desk. Thinking I'll probably get around to it later in the summer.

Picked up Red Faction: Armageddon on Friday. Cool, guess I'll be going with Dead Nation and Wipeout then. Thanks.

Burnout: Paradise All things Call of Duty post COD4. Halo 3 Ditto. I reinstalled it last night after talking about it with a friend and thinking I must've been wrong about it. Reaffirmed my hatred for it. Absolutely love TS2 though.

What do you think of those? I'm having trouble choosing between those and the Ratchet & Clank game as part of the PS3 welcome back deal.

Big big fan of the Hitman games. It's the only franchise where I own a copy of one of them on several different platforms. I've got all of them on the PC, but I have Blood Money on the PS2 & the 360 as well. Although it seems the 360 version of Blood Money doesn't work with the 360 slim. It throws up a message about not being able to display on a 50Hz screen, despite having worked on it before with a circa 2005 360. Thinking about that actually, it could just be it doesn't like the HDMI cable, I should perhaps try using the component cable. If you liked Contracts, you should see if you can get the first one going. Looks pretty dated, but a few of the Contracts missions are re-vamped from the original but missing some details and areas that were in the original.

Oh..wow...I'm laughing so hard after watching that. It's like some kind of twisted into for a 1980s XBOX detective show.

Really looking forward to this, fantastic trailer.

The Gamespot pre-EA stream pretty much sums up how I feel about Kinect; "tacked on" and "shoehorned." Also, more from MS Conference;

Exactly. If they were able to do something with the silly view distance that Kinect has, it would maybe be more significant, I mean most people don't have the room for it to be usable. Which I think is why it's not getting very significant software developed for it.

I would imagine it wont actually appear on the XBOX until the beta has come to an end in November though. The messy updates are part of the beta process.

I'm disappointed that I'm not going to be able to watch the Sony gig. I'll be in bed by the time it starts. Edit; Spelling fail.

I hated the MS conference last year, hated it this year. I think I have a Kinect allergy.

Ooh, I didn't know about that, could be interesting.

I'm currently downloading Origin to see what happens when I log in with my existing EA account. I'd be more interested in the software if it had options for managing the licences for the EA games that have machine limits thanks to SecuSHIT, which as far as I know so far, it doesn't. As it stands though, I'm not going to be buying anything through Origin unless there is some kind of overwhelming incentive. For example, say The Old Republic goes with regional servers; If buying through Origin allowed you to play on any region, then I'd buy that instead of going retail. That probably wouldn't happen though. I agree with pretty much everything you've said so far Dean, although my mind keeps wondering in the direction of Impulse as well as GFWL. The only reason I ever install Impulse is to update Sins of a Solar Empire, the expansions for which I've refused to buy through Impulse and only got them when the Trinity pack came out. Everyone I know with Impulse installed is the same, the only reason they install it is for SoSE. I can't help but wonder if Origin is going to be a one trick pony like Impulse, in that lots of people using it are using it purely because of The Old Republic. Edit; This is right at the top of the EULA. Talk about bad first impressions. Edit 2; *Clicks cancel and deletes the installation executable.

It was the combination of the music, voice over and fog horn at the start that did it. Really looking forward to the game regardless however, GoL is the only part of the franchise I've not yet sank my teeth into.

I couldn't take that trailer seriously.

MGS & ZoE HD? I skipped on MGS3 and missed ZOE2, so this is relevant to my interests.

I need to have a big clean before I can take pictures. The carpets in here are new so the fibres haven't settled at all; there is currently a medium layer of cat hair, dust and carpet fibres covering almost every surface in my living room.

6"0"

I had gotten really excited about this game, having mistaken it for Subversion from Introversion Software.

Picked up 'How I Met Your Mother' season four on DVD, as well as 'True Blood' season 3. I've slowly been picking up the former in the HMV sale as they rotate stock and in out of it. Managed to get the whole lot for about £40 instead of paying £85 for the Seasons 1-5 box set.

Greetings from Planet Bob.