Thursday Next

How bizarre, it worked fine yesterday. I'm not subscribed to it.

If it's about identity then is America's identity wilfully (and pridefully) ignorant? It's like not learning maths because "you will never use it" or not learning biology because you aren't going to practice medicine. As I said above, if AC3 like the others, uses the events of the revolution as a backdrop for the struggle between the Templars and Assassins then fine. If it's "How the Assassins and the Americans vanquished the British" then I'll be a bit disappointed. So long as the gameplay is fresh (I think AC is suffering a bit of franchise fatigue) then I'll pick it up and enjoy it, but the narrative in these games does interest me. I'd be fairly impressed if they pull a twist and the founding fathers are all Templars but I doubt Ubi would be so ballsy.

The video... The live action one that Maritan posted a whole page ago. The one that lists "having to learn British History" as a decent reason for an uprising. It's pretty much a minute and a half of anti-Britishness.

Boom! Recognise bitches!

National courts can make decisions that have an EU effect. Most cases on EU law are held in national courts. Relatively rarely do they go up to the EUCJ. The Half Life 2 ruling was made by the highest court in Germany. That makes it a precedent in EUCJ. The new EU ruling does not contradict the previous German ruling. They sit alongside each other. If the Court sought to overturn Half Life 2 they would have said so.

It's the marketing I find offensive. I don't recall any marketing for previous games pointing out what villainous freedom hating scum the Crusaders, Roman Catholic Church or Byzantines were. Yet all the marketing for AC3 so far seems to be anti-British. If the game ends up as balanced in it's execution as the rest, fine, but if it's going to be 5 hours of a game telling me a totally one sided story about how awesome America is and how crap the British are, then I'm not down for that.

If XIII-2 was up there, I'd vote for that in a heartbeat.

Playnig Revelations it feels really fractured. You've got the books stuff, the other story stuff and the limbo stuff, but I'm never sure which is the "main" story line. As such I never know if I'm progressing or killing time. I also, since Brotherhood, make the games way too easy by getting a gang of master assassins together at the earliest opportunity. I had all my other dens set up and fully defended before I'd even trained up the storyline assassin apprentice.

VG means "Very Good". Early analysis suggests that the situation is even less of an issue (for Publishers). The German courts recently held in what's colloquially known as the "Half-Life 2 Decision" (http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ae91fb8c-a811-43d4-9b4d-995ba41242d5) that: 1. It is legal to bind a copy of game to a particular account. 2. It is legal to state in T&C's that user accounts are non-transferable. So what this means is that you can sell your 1's and 0's to someone else, provided you delete them from your PC. They can then copy those 1's and 0's to their PC. Valve and EA and so on can still ban you for transferring accounts and without transferring accounts the software you sold is useless.

Ummm, I have quite honestly declared "Day One" upon seeing a teaser for a franchise I like. I did it for God of War Ascension, Beyond: Two Souls and will do it for pretty much any PS3 Final Fantasy title Squeenix care to announce.

Not so much different laws as different interpretation. The UK Judge felt that the US company's patent was weak and so didn't grant an injunction against the Korean company. The US Judge felt that the US company's patent was totally legit and issued a ban against the Korean company. Not that I am for one minute suggesting that the US Judge expressed bias in favour of a US company... oh no.

Hahaha, oh Maritan, you are so correct. What about all the other great things the Oosah did? Where's the guy shooting a Native American saying "When I forcibly displace an indigenous population."

Ok, so here's how I see it. What this ruling says If a fictional game company "AE" were to become aware of you selling your account to another person in order to transfer your games to that person there is nothing AE can do about it. They cannot ban that account. They cannot take the person to court for a violation of their copyright (unless the person does not relinquish their access to the games upon transfer). Why this doesn't matter on its own To be practical, no one is going to do this. Firstly, unless you want to transfer an entire account you will have to set up a new account for every single game you want to transfer. That would destroy any community features, achievements, etc. And would be a total pain in the arse for the consumer. Secondly, it would require a phenomenal amount of trust between seller and buyer. Either the seller gives the buyer the account access and hopes that the buyer doesn't just change the passwords etc. Or the buyer gives the seller money and hopes that the seller actually transfers the account, that they account has not been banned for other stuff and that the game desired is on that account. So right now, there is no practical impact for this except where the account has only one game and transactions are between friends etc. What the ruling doesn't say It does not say anywhere that AE have to help you sell your games on. Why that is important This is what is key. If AE can keep their systems as they are, then, as illustrated above, it's not really that big a deal. If the court decides that AE have to build systems to allow users to sell on digital content then they will have to give AE time to build such systems. That is, something that can delete the game from your system, revoke your access and spit out a code to redeem for access to that title which you can then pass on to a third party. That will give AE plenty of time to go from a pay up front client download model to a subscription based or streaming system. Basically, this ruling is a pain in the butt cos it throws up some uncertainty, but all it is really doing is pushing subscription, microtransaction and streaming along even faster.

Agree with pretty much everything you said. No one is asking them to change faith. It's not North Korea, so you won't be forced to sing to your God-Queen every morning. You just need to learn what the words are. I can understand criticisms that having to read, write and speak English in a country with a perceived pretty crappy literacy level is unfair, but at the same time they are very important skills.

I find it no more ridiculous than any other religion. Slightly more insidious than some perhaps, though it is at least overt in its efforts to screw its congregation out of their money. I've also got to give them a bit of credit for targeting celebs. It's a genius system. Appeal to the egos of Hollywood stars who spend hundreds of thousands to look young by telling them that they are some sort of immortal superbeing who has forgotten how to live forever. If their "therapy" can help them remember how to be immortal, then they will be young and attractive and useful forever. I have to disagree with you there. I do agree that it's an ingenious scam, but even as an atheist I find the whole Xenu story way, WAY more ridiculous than just about everything in the bible, and that includes Revelations. I mean, if I have to explain why the idea that Jesus raised from the dead is less stupid than the idea that an evil alien overlord shipped billions of people to earth in DC-8s and dropped nukes on them before capturing their souls and forcing them to watch 3D brainwashing movies then I really don't know what more I can say. There's pretty much the same evidence for both. I find an evil alien overlord planting us here no more stupid than the concept that Eve was made out of a spare rib and that the entire population of the Earth came from one family interbreeding.

Should've called it the "Good Spider-Man".

It's just a turn of phrase. Language changes over time. People used to promenade, now they take a walk. Besides, calling the single player campaign on most modern FPSs "story" mode is an insult to stories everywhere.

I think the "Live Screen" thing needs a little work to be more useful. If instead of "Start" there were panels for "Continue", "New Game" or similar that would be handy. At the least they could give the option to auto-start when you select the icon. We've seen with Uncharted that it can be used to directly jump to a feature with the game, so again it could be useful say to choose a multiplayer or singleplayer campaign, or with something like MGS HD you could pick which title you want to play (unless they all load as different icons?).

I found them all. Once you have finished the story mode it will tell you how many you are missing in each area. Once you know where you are looking for them they aren't too hard to find. I find them fairly tough, obviously much easier with max throw. I do wish it wouldn't make me float when I pick stuff up though.

You're a Lensman?

Exactly what I was thinking. A service layered on top of PS4. It'll also be a chance for PlayStation to be ahead of Xbox having previously been behind with regards to online services. Streaming demos is a good idea, I also like the idea of being able to stream a game immediately after buying it and downloading a version for offline play. You'll have all the benefits of digital plus the instant access of dropping a disc in your console. From a DRM /Piracy perspective, streaming would make the console pretty much bulletproof, except for account hacking / sharing, not that the PS3 was particularly prone to hacking itself.

SOLD! Assuming this is a retailer exclusive. Also... pretty shameful this: http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchstring=ni+no+kuni&searchsource=0&searchtype=allproducts http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ni+no+kuni&x=0&y=0 http://www.game.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/AjaxCatalogSearch?storeId=10151&catalogId=10201&langId=44&pageSize=20&beginIndex=0&sType=SimpleSearch&resultCatEntryType=2&showResultsPage=true&pageView=image&predictiveSearchURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.game.co.uk%2Fwebapp%2Fwcs%2Fstores%2Fservlet%2FAjaxPredictiveSearchView%3FcatalogId%3D10201%26langId%3D44%26storeId%3D10151&searchTerm=ni+no+kuni&searchBtn.x=0&searchBtn.y=0&searchBtn=Search So two "jack of all trade" online retailers have references to ni no kuni, but the "specialist" retailer is apparently utterly unaware of the existence of this title.

I didn't even know they were in a Twilight film; I just know that people go on rants for how much they hate Muse. Sticking to stereotype. I think that pedantry bit was aimed at me. I happen to be a huge Muse fan. Don't see how anyone can consider that a guilty pleasure though. The Twilight thing is a bit repellent, but apparently they inspired the Meyer woman (from the Muse wiki: "-- And, finally, thank you to the talented musicians who inspire me, particularly the band Muse - there are emotions, scenes, and plot threads in this novel that were born from Muse songs and would not exist without their genius. --" The Meyer Woman) and, Muse's bassist did basically say that they sold their souls to get some exposure in America. So it wasn't anything personal, it was just business. You ask any professional musician if they would be ok with their song appearing on the soundtrack to a guaranteed blockbuster film and I reckon they'd say "Sure!". Otherwise, they are (in my experience) widely regarded as technically talented musicians, who tend to experiment with a lot of different sounds with varying success, and are one of (if not the) best live acts in the world ever.

I find it no more ridiculous than any other religion. Slightly more insidious than some perhaps, though it is at least overt in its efforts to screw its congregation out of their money. I've also got to give them a bit of credit for targeting celebs. It's a genius system. Appeal to the egos of Hollywood stars who spend hundreds of thousands to look young by telling them that they are some sort of immortal superbeing who has forgotten how to live forever. If their "therapy" can help them remember how to be immortal, then they will be young and attractive and useful forever.

Could mean that the PS4 is a very different beast to the PS3, if Sony bring a whole streaming cloud game service it's going to make the WiiU look even more like a last Gen console than it (imho) already does. I'm hoping that the Vita will get some streaming capability too. I was only kidding about relocating the thread. It was just a nice segue into posting about the takeover. I'm curious as to how MS will react to this. Lots of talk about OnLive and MS pairing up to counter it, but it's all just fevered speculation. Also, 380 million is CHEAP given that you are buying an entire platform and all the infrastructure at the cutting edge of the industry. Makes Facebook's purchase of Instagram and Zynga's of Draw Something seem even more silly by comparison.