Thursday Next

Except that by lending a disc to your friend you are depriving yourself of it for that period of time. So it's totally different. In essence, I sell my copy to my friend who then sells it back to me afterwards and the transaction zero-sums. That's not stealing, it's just reselling / loaning. Piracy means that you both get simultaneous use of the game. It also means that it is very easy for a pirate to feel altruistic about "just sharing things" when they don't lose anything in the process. I wonder how many pirates would be so keen to "share" a game if it meant they could not use it until it was returned? Piracy is not considered stealing because you are not "depriving" the owner of anything other than a potential sale and the law takes a dim view on potential. 1. Pirate because DLC sucks. I hope you bought the game as well and just played the pirated copy. Otherwise this isn't so much a moral stand as it is taking stuff for free with a weak excuse. 2. Pirate because DLC is made during game production. EA make a lot of games at the same time, do you think you should get all of them on one disc for the price of one game? DLC has to be started at the same time the game is finalling. It takes months to program, weeks to test, it then has to be submitted to first parties. That means that you could be waiting up to a year for a piece of DLC if the company waited till the "full" game was out the door. Given that EA want to keep the games with the first purchaser as long as possible they need to get some substantive DLC out within the first month or two of launch. That means it has to be in testing before the game launches and that means they have to start work on it while the game is being made. Further, if you need to blend DLC in with an existing story then it has to be planned concurrently otherwise it will looked tacked on rather than an extension of the universe. Yes this means empty rooms on the Normandy that you know are for DLC characters, but would you prefer that the characters started double bunking? Or that an extra lump got glued to the Normandy for expanded living quarters?

Oh, here's another one... I'm not sure if this is a US thing, or an ignorant thing (I do acknowledge that the two aren't always mutually exclusive). But "Addicting"? No. It's "addictive".

Yeah, it's "mate" where I'm from. One of my mates uses "guys" but he's posh by my standards... well not posh, just a touch snooty. On the other end of the scale, my cousin is from the lower end of the class scale he uses "geeze" an abbreviation of "geezer" ("g" pronounced as in "get"). Now for a bit of mythbusting: Do the US really not use the word hell much? In the UK "bloody 'ell", "what the hell" etc are all pretty common, "heck" just doesn't work for me.

I'm 29, most of my friends are there or thereabouts... perhaps that explains it. Thanks for making me feel old.

If I recall correctly, Uncharted 2 seemed much longer than could be finished on a single setting. I'm sure Uncharted 2 on crushing took some time (though easier than Uncharted 1 on crushing). But it's been a while I recall platinuming the game in barely 7 days since it was a lot of fun. One of the first to platinum it in fact for some reason. I remember some people were surprised that I was done so fast. I agree that MP isn't a bad thing at all. it's just some games do not implement MP in an engaging way. If you plan to bring Multiplayer to a game then you should think about it from ground up and not just some random hobbled rubbish which annoys players and prevents a community from forming. I do agree about your points on MP though that it's not all just a bro thing. I'd like to think that AC's multiplayer was done well because they had the concept down for the iPhone and all they needed to do was implement it for HD and it worked for them. Dunno, second playthrough always seems to whizz past on Uncharted games. The length stems mostly from working out where to go / what to do. Crushing takes longer cos you need to be so cautious in gun battles, but I normally knock it down to easy to collect trophies / treasures, get my headshots up and such, then it is super short. Which raises a good point. If I want to, I can blast through games rather swiftly, but, I tend to be a bit of a wanderer in games, I like to backtrack when I shouldn't (which paid off when I played through Limbo last night) so that adds some time, and complete side quests before continuing with the story. My infamous playtime is huge but that's because I always did all the side missions before the next story bit, then collected all the shards and dead drops before I went on to the endgame.

Length definitely plays a part in the bang:buck perception. However, I consider replayability as a big part of that equation. Infamous (and its sequel) pretty much demand to be played through twice and it's not a short game. I played through Resi 4 several times and the Uncharted games, I could beat in a single sitting but thoroughly enjoyed each time. I don't mind if BF/MoH/CoD have a short single player campaign as I consider them to be story based tutorials for the multiplayer game. It's somewhere to get a feel for the controls and learn how the gadgets work before taking to the battlefield proper. Similarly, Little Big Planet's single player campaign is more of an interactive tutorial than anything. Oh, it's also worth noting that not all multiplayer interactions are a bunch of brosefs trying to validate themselves with high scores. I find that generalisation somewhat insulting. GT5 online sessions are a great deal of good clean fun and you will often find people apologising for running you off the road, not giving enough space in a corner for an overtake or tapping you from behind when they out brake themselves. It's just good manners. Many online games are civilised affairs, even in BFBC2, I have a regular squad we hook up, play a few rounds, generally do fairly well but we have the most fun when we get pushed right to the end rather than when we steam roll over the opposition. I've definitely had more fun playing with others than in single player campaigns, just as I've had more fun watching films with friends than on my own. I get a different kind of enjoyment playing games on my own, I still like it, but on a more personal / emotional level.

Finished Limbo and inFamous 2 (ebil playthrough) last night.

Maybe it was the bullet that was ringing???

Will not be able to watch this due to the fact that I consider this character to be a second world war propaganda throw-back that has aged woefully. You might as well say that Uncle Sam's hat is made of adamantium, have him hurl it at people Oddjob style and make a movie of it. The shield actually serves to make him look like more of a pussy than the non-supers around him. The GI's are running around with flack jackets at best, charging towards gun wielding baddies while Cap is prancing around with an impenetrable shield acting like he's some sort of badass. EDIT: ^^In my opinion.^^

Bwuahahaha. Has anyone pulled them up on it?

inFamous. Blast shards. 350 of the fecking things and no way to easily track them all down. I mean, they could have had them tagged on the map permanently when you manually sensed them so that if you're in a mission and can't stop to dick about getting shards you can just tag them and get them later. They could at least have made them detectable based on the mini-map radius rather than a sphere so that I could sail around at altitude and pick them off rather than having to cock-hole about at street level clicking the R3 button. I've got about 100 left to find. Collectibles should never total more than 100. Shard sense in inFamous 2 was a god send. I'd probably pay £1 for that power as an inFamous 1 DLC item.

Quite. That said... sex, with your shoes on? Let's go with making out. It's more PG-13.

Only if one of them is a dwarf, otherwise there would have to be knee prints, not foot prints.

I picked that up the other day too. Nice little 2D platformer that makes me think of Mario Galaxy. Also been playing "Gravity Wars" basically it's Worms in Space. Both on Android.

Holy toledo! That's pretty pricey. Looks rather swish though...

Hehe. Seriously though, this looks pants. Why not just have human boxers boxing? Why must we have crappy CG robots?

While we're on a roll with the last gen discussion. I think the "first to market" thing was vital for Xbox 360. PlayStation had such a massive following at the time that had PS3 got there first Xbox would have been very under-subscribed. Anecdotally, a lot of PS fans I know got an Xbox because they "couldn't wait" for the PS3, then when the PS3 dropped, Xbox had already established a community, it's a lot harder to leave friends (IRL or otherwise) than it is to leave a box, so they stayed with Live and the community there (though gradually most have migrated to PS3).

Didn't realise you were in Sweden. This is true though. My CD's have all the music I like on them.

Question is, are Nintendo the first to market with a new generation, or last to market with the current gen? I think it's the latter as they're pitching at the PS3/360 crowd.

You really need to check out mflow. They've got a lot of what's on your list including 3 of 2 dan le sac albums...

The issue with that is so much of it is going to be repetition, filler, or just boring. Very few games are fun to platinum outside of the need for completeness Like I say, it's just a bench mark. Some of it, like complete on easy / medium / hard has no bearing on content, just as collect all the (effing) blast shards on inFamous is pointless from a content perspective (though you could argue that it ensures that you've visited every corner of the world. With, for example Heavy Rain, it's a good way of knowing that you've seen everything there is to see.

Please decipher this sentence. To be entirely truthful, the image above is commenter Trjn Rabbit's claim to fame. However, by association or some other mention or what have you, the blog site Press X or Die is happy to bask in its brief reflected glory.

That's not really what most people in the UK would consider a roundabout. That's more of a gyratory system. "Roundabouts" would normally replace a traffic light junction and occupy the footprint of a small house, rather than being a couple of blocks wide. Something like this: For the ultimate in roundabout technology I present to you the "Magic" roundabout in Hemel Hempstead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Hemel_Hempstead).

Sent to your PXOD account.

Got this, so I can huddle. It's cheap as, but it's not like I'm doing science with it.