Thursday Next

And I totally agree (and was pretty unequivocal about my opinion earlier) that this carpet bomb emailing is a deplorable practice. However there's an old saying that goes: If someone does something that is perceived as unjust, you doing something else that is generally regarded as bad behaviour neither repairs their wrongdoing nor absolves you of your own misdeeds.

Do you mean are they allowed to change parties?

Exactly. I can get behind pirating a game for demoing purposes, but playing the game, deciding to buy it and then changing your mind after a scare-tactic? People are supposed to believe your self-righteous reasons after that? You're implying that he's fibbing to get games for free. While I do not like it when someone decides to play through a game to completion and then not pay the creator, Johnny's hardly the kind of person that would lie to make his actions appear to be justified. He may do something that I don't like, but he's not going to be dishonest about it. Not accusing Johnny of dishonesty (beyond dishonestly acquiring a copy of the game of course...). It's you who is inferring that. I'm just that his argument that it is a stand against tyranny appears somewhat undermined by the fact that he benefits from his protest. Going for a somewhat clumsy analogy, if you turn up to an anti-fur protest wearing a mink coat you aren't going to get away with telling people that it is ok cos it's freezing out and you stole it from the local mink coat shop because you hate how evil they are... It's also a bit odd to get up in arms about a company who made a game that you pirated sending out letters to people who they suspect of pirating the game. I mean you can't exactly say that they are way off the mark in thinking that some people may have pirated the game can you?

True enough. Though I did find it a little more intuitive than the DS3.

I suppose it is a somewhat different take given that we are post outbreak and into the last survivors bit of the zom-pocalypse. Maybe that will give it a fresher feel? Dead Rising 2 is in a similar post Zombie state, but they have the Zombies under control to an extent. I'm still waiting for someone to do a Zombie game with an I am Legend twist. Where you start off defending humanity against the infected hordes and end up (Spoilered in case someone has not read the I am Legend and wants to without it being spoiled. Even if it is totally in Rosebud / Aeris territory by now.)

Resident Evil 5 is Move compatible and a great fit (Resi 4 Wii being the daddy of that one). Heavy Rain is super with it too. I've not tried Resistance 3 yet, but I intend to have a go with Infamous this week.

@Johnny: The reason people are taking issue with you is because you say that you disagree with the practices that the company engage in, but you still use their products. If you're going to make a moral stand against a company's practices then you ought to carry that through and boycott their products altogether. Personally, I simply do not get this concept that you have a right (or as it seems sometimes a duty) to consume everything that every developer puts out there. Would it have been so difficult to say "These guys suck, they and their products can all go to hell."? It would make your argument seem more like righteous indignation and less like jumping on the first flimsy reason you find to get an already reasonably priced title for free.

Jesus.. Is Alton Brown related to Emmett L?

Combine one of these... http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/hasselback-potato-slicer/ With one of these... http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001CDLL7K/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000TAPCEA&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1JQXPG3VYN5XY8MGCCD2 And I will make Hasselhoff potatoes all day long.

Really? The general rule in the UK is that the loser pays.

Forget that. There is more to life than cutting almost all the way through a potato. Unless there is a "hasselbacker" machine, these things can piss off to the same place as cutting radishes to look like flowers.

I don't see how asking for €911 ($1219) for a single game is reasonable at all. Just because they won't get everyone doesn't suddenly make the remaining people responsible for extra damages. That's probably to cover damages and legal fees. Corrupt lawyers who like to make a living by scamming innocent people don't exactly come cheap.

It should of course be known as, "The Primary Gifting Period" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2hBZcQiQek#t=6m20s

You rang? I am in fact, totally against this crap. If you can prove that the person has an illegal copy of your game (which is not a back up), then fine, take them to court and get your money. Scumbags like ACS:Law http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12253746 are no different to the parasites that call you up about "your recent accident" and "your mis-sold ppi". They are easily as bad, if not worse than the pirates they claim to be chasing.

Can a candidate disagree with a personal belief and still uphold others' rights to hold those beliefs? I like to think an ideal champion of human rights would campaign his/her heart out to defend the people's liberty to live their own lives, regardless of his/her own personal opinion on those choices. Ok, I think I wasn't clear in what I meant there. No candidate would campaign for a policy that they don't think is right. If Obama campaigns to remove the restrictions on gay marriage and so forth, it's because he disagrees with restricting the right to choose who we marry, not because he thinks that gay marriages are fricking awesome. It seems from his campaigning in support of removing the restrictions that his personal belief is that people should have the right to choose who they marry, even if they don't choose what he would, Bachman (based on the video) believes that you do not have the right to choose who you marry, you just have a choice of marry the opposite sex, or don't get married.

The problem is they're already regulating. You need an Obama to de-regulate them. If Obama were too "butt out" then nothing would change. Which is not what the LGBT community wants. Besides which all policies centre around the personal belief of whoever is in power. No leader would ever campaign for a cause that they fundamentally disagree with. It's not so much that Obama is LGBT friendly, rather that he is not LGBT unfriendly.

At least no one will need to ask what her husband does.

So you think an acceptable difficulty curve is: 1. Sit back and do nothing. 2. Sit back and do nothing. 3. Sit back and do nothing. 4. "Ninja Gaiden". I shouldn't have to make a choice between cake walk and hair pulling frustration. Hardened should be difficult, it should at least require your participation if nothing else.

Hmmm, well, it's not out till next week on PC, so I wouldn't panic just yet. What territory are you in? It might be that the link isn't showing correctly in your region.

Are you on PS3?

Apologies, wasn't trying to be patronising. Just illustrating why retail / digital hybrids aren't great for retailers and are a bit of a waste of time for 1st party. While my comment was directed at you, that's just because I didn't want to quote the whole wall-o-text, I intended for it to be read by anyone on the forum, not all of whom may know how these things work. To your point, Sony could sell codes to game for £26.25, but then they might as well charge that on the PS Store, they'll achieve the same profit. Of course they could push their price up to match whatever the retailer does, but if they do, why drive down to the shops to buy a retailer code when you can get the exact same product at home for the same price at home? The only way retailer codes work for retailers is if Sony start (continue?) profiteering on direct-to-consumer sales, charging physical goods price or higher and let retailers undercut them on in-store digital prices. But then you lose a lot of goodwill and brand loyalty along the way, something that Sony could definitely do with building up on a new console in uncertain times.

@WTF: The problem is the way that digital sales work. Sony control the cost of the codes and they sell direct to the consumer through the exact same channel that Game codes will be redeemed. If Sony sell the codes to Game for £20 each they might as well sell the game to consumers via PSN for the same. So either Game will have to have a minuscule markup, or Sony will (perhaps massively) undercut them. Or some sort of price fixing will occur where both sides agree to charge £30 for digital and £35 for physical copies but that would be a dangerous game to play. The only benefit of buying digitally in store would be that you can then gift the game, since it'd be a bit more "thoughtful" than just PSN credit, while the gifting market for video games is pretty big, it is even more seasonal than the current one.

Exactly, there's a difference between playing an easy game and a game playing itself while you watch. If Rage can make the game easy but at the same time, still require you to actually do stuff other than turn up at a checkpoint, then why can't CoD do the same? I'm happy to accept that not all of CoD is like this (I've not played it myself and have no desire to so I can't say either way what the % is actually like) but it is CoD's trademark in the single player FPS arena. They coined the whole scripted battlefield thing. Everything dies or blows up on cue so you can't really take things at your own pace. You go where the game tells you, when it tells you, and you wait there till it is time to move on. It's "movie-fied" gaming.

Limitations? I can understand baulking at the cost of memory cards, but what limitations are you referring to?