TheForgetfulBrain

Hmm, I can understand that. It's happened with a fair few bands. Jimmy Eat World's "Clarity" is an amazing record, and I sort of feel the same about it.

I can't really vote on this, because I think it really depends on the game. For the mainstream competitive games like Halo or MW, particularly in ranked mode, I think matchmaking is a must and makes a whole lot of sense. For games like TF2 or any other PC game that has a lot of custom content and is based off server communities, it would be a death knell. Not in all cases, but I think typically matchmaking is better suited to consoles, hosted servers to PC.

Hmm, that's a Palit card. My pre-built came with a GTS 250 'Green' edition (it's weaker, but supposedly far more energy efficient). It was an okay card, but I think they're one of the cheaper brands.

I basically never play my PSP. I haven't touched it in years. Between this and the 3DS I probably won't get either. Still... it's nice to see the dual sticks finally.

I got a star randomly from Totilo, for trying to organize a Kotaku MWF2 match on the 360, during the book club for that game. Later, I got two comments of the week, one for rambling about WoW, and I can't remember what the other was for.

Heya, new folks!

ATI Equivalent would be the 5770 or the 5830 (one difference is, the 5830 is a newer budget release on the 58xx line). My friend had a 5770 and it ran stuff pretty spiffily. I have a 5870 and it runs just about everything (except the obvious problem children, such as Crysis and Metro 2033) at a pretty consistent 60fps and max settings, and I lurv it. If you're going buy ATI, or any new card really, I recommend XFX. They offer a double lifetime warranty - meaning, not only will they replace your card if it dies, but if you decide to upgrade eventually and want to sell your card on Craigslist or Ebay, etc, as long as you transfer the registration, that person too gets a lifetime warranty for the card. I nabbed mine off eBay, and since I knew it came with the lifetime warranty, it was as good as buying the card new even though it was used - because even if it died or had issues, they would send me a brand new one.

Yeah Kenshi, Requiem for a Dream was the first Aronosky film I saw, about seven years ago. It was the first time I sat through the credits of a film because I was just rooted there. That movie left me feeling like a hollowed out husk. So depressing, but so many gorgeous scenes and such amazing music. I didn't get the same effect with Black Swan, and I have to agree - 'relentless' is the perfect term for that film. It never allows you a moment to breathe. Also, I just saw True Grit last weekend - excellent film, every bit as good it looked like it would be.

I totally want to play with you guys. RAGE.

Yeah, I saw it with the gf as well. She had wanted to see it since she used to do ballet and we've been to a few live ballets in the city. I'd been wanting to see it because even Aronofsky's not-so-good movies have visually stunning moments (The Fountain), and the Wrestler blew me away. I was amazed at how different the tone was. While the Wrestler was tender and poignant, Black Swan had absolutely none of that - it was just this dark, vicious film, and I loved it. There were moments in that film that scared me more than any recent full-on horror film. Damn awesome film, but not one that leaves you walking away feeling 'moved.' And that's fine - it's just not that sort of film.

By that token, Killing Floor is some pretty excellent fun as well.

While I love Bradbury, his writing style is very, very vibrant and flowery. It has its place, certainly, and is wonderful in his novels like Dandelion Wine, or Green Shadows, White Whale, where the work just shouts with life - and it's appropriate to the tone of the novels. I am also, however, very fond of good clean writing. I see so much fiction that goes overboard and is completely self-indulgent with, "Oh, look at all these big words I'm using, and all in one sentence," and that style tends to nauseate me unless really, really well done. When the writing is clean, flows well and has excellent sentence transitions, loads of concrete imagery - then when the metaphors or similes do hit, they tend to have so much more impact because they're not cluttered by a constant overload of flowery language. I would have to read the novel again for specific examples, but I remember reading 1984 back to back with Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and the transition was very jarring at first. I hated that book initially (but ended up loving it later) because the writing just seemed so elementary next to the clean hand of 1984, but it's really just different styles, and when you switch between novels quickly, you really feel the difference in styles of writing.

The themes and content are of course the primary focus of the novel, but aesthetically, I think the writing is outstanding.

Themes aside, the writing in the book is stunning. It is just beautifully written literature. The fact that Orwell's work has proven to be prophetic in many different instances and to such varying degrees is also quite startling. Also, how many bits of popular fiction have been inspired by this book. It really is something else. I wish they had taught this at my high school instead of Animal Farm.

@FLD, Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things about Uncharted 2's campaign. I'm actually quite looking forward to it!

I dunno why I've never seen Dredg live. I mean, they've been one of my favorite bands for almost ten years and I now live where they play constantly. What the hell, Brain, too lazy.

Fiiiiinally beat Uncharted. Just gonna say it - boy, that game was annoying. I adore the MP of Uncharted 2, but there were just so many annoying parts in Uncharted. Lame, unresponsive QTEs, the Jet-Ski portions, the overall irritating pace. I loved the 'movie' aspect of the game, but I just wanted to finish the stupid thing most of the time. Also - screw the treasure pick-ups. 45/60 and no strange artifact, on my first playthrough. I hate pickups like that - it gets me obsessive and makes me not want to move forward in the game, delaying and extending the game time in a bad way.

So does anyone here like Envy? They're like your average post rock band (the instrumentals actually sound a looooot like Explosions in the Sky), but with hardcore screaming and Japanese spoken word. They are kind of awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJRKqANcDBI

Long day of work and awkward relationship management, then saw my sister (who is also my boss) in person for the first time in months because she was visiting the city to go wedding dress shopping with her friend (who drove me to school for a few years back in high school), so that was fun. Finally home and drinking some beer, probably going to play some Uncharted SP and I dunno what else, post on here.

Yeah, but it also depends on who is on, I think. On the XP weekend, when I tried leading matches with no one really above 40 in our party, we kept getting matched up with parties with 3-4 Roman Numerals in them, which was just a joke.

I had one of the neaaatest dreams last night. I was up at this house somewhere, and there was this parade I guess, but the floats were in the sky, and there were these massive LEGO creatures/constructs flying through the sky. It was amazing cool, but I remember wondering how the people were flying something like that and being vicariously afraid for them. Gosh darn that was neat to look at, though.