Thursday Next

No idea what the daily play numbers are on 1943, it is one of the best(subjectviely speaking) and most successful XBL/PSN games out there. Also, don't read too much into DICE's Gun Wall, it's been there forever.

Ahhh, I see. Yeah some cataclysm that the Doctor was involved in that made the Grand Canyon or the like. Or something in Ancient Greece where he gets mistaken for a god. Thought it was the villains in general you wanted rid of, rather than being concerned where they came from.

You are suggesting that they drop the mild peril? Are you quite mad? I'm all for dropping the Daleks for a bit, if they do have to include them, they should give the Daleks a victory, a real, meaningful win. Have them off Amy or Rory or something, permanently not the way Rory normally dies. At least have them wipe out a civilisation. Moffat is right when he says they are the most reliably defeatable enemy. If they're going to keep their "arch nemesis" crown then they should be allowed a win every now and then.

I always read the manual, normally while the game is installing and I am having a poo. FFXIII was basically one huge narrative tutorial leading up to the actual fun, challenging gameplay of completing all the hunts. The fact that you can't actually unlock the top tier of skills for your characters secondary roles until after you have beaten the final boss and watched the credits roll is testament to this. It definitely wasn't the way to go, as evidenced by the consumer backlash. In fact, I think FFXIII thought it was a lot more complicated than it is.

You do have a point though. Chewie's chums are no David Bailey.

Yeah, but "PSP" tripped off the tongue.

I like the name "Vita" on its own. Think "PlayStation Vita" is a bit of a mouthful and "PSV" just reminds me of the Dutch(?) football team PSV Eindhoven.

Made up words like "Wii" are easier to get trademark protection for. Same goes for words unconnected to the product description like "Vita" and "Dreamcast". Descriptive terms like "Dual Screen" are hard (if not impossible) to protect, at least initially, in time they can earn enough brand equity to be protectable in their own right, which means that they always, or at least in their formative years have to be accompanied by a brand name like "Nintendo". A name like "Vita" could imply that Sony want to be able to call it the Vita™ without having to use the whole name "PlayStation Vita" or trying to establish brand equity in both "PSV" and "PlayStation Vita" at the same time. That said, they could just like the name.

Yeah, seeing the Vita / Vista confusion. Don't much care what it's called to be honest, I don't find Vita offensive but it's not setting my world on fire. I'd have been as happy with "PSP2". This is a deeply sexy system though. Day one purchase.

I can only imagine that this looks something like the beginning of 2001. As soon as one of them learns how to use simple tools, we're in a lot of trouble.

Yeah, ok, that works for me. Let's go with that then.

I do love it when the Doctor gets all "Oncoming Storm" on people. The Jen monster was a bit contrived, but they did manage to justify it with the discarded alive Flesh (at least I felt it was justified).

Someone needs to make this movie. I'm looking forward to seeing this tomorrow. Just need to find a willing partner to Wednesday a l'Orange it with me.

Oh Activision, you crazy, crazy cats. Why are you charging for Need for Speed Autolog? Most likely because you can.

This about sums it up. The trailer did not appeal to me. It makes the film look like Team America played straight. Being not an American and unfamiliar with the comic I have no interest in seeing Captain America. Apologies for the wholly unintentional de-railing, I'll get back on track with an opinion on X-Men First Class tomorrow.

The Xperia Play has dropped Memory Stick in favour of MicroSD. Don't see why NGP wouldn't do the same.

Is it possible to "professionally" give knee jerk reactions with absolutely no background knowledge? I mean surely, if someone said to you: "Hey, want to come see WH40K and write a short piece about it?" you'd maybe, just maybe hit up Google to see what it's all about. I'm not saying that he should necessarily know an Eldar from an Orc, but even the most cursory image search would clue you in on the general art direction of the universe.

Jesus... that there is some special breed of ignorance. The THQ guy even told him that Warhammer pre-dates GeoW, but it didn't even make him break his stride. I've not even read anything this ridiculous on Fauxtaku.

It's rarely even a look at the culture, it's more like pointing at a car crash as you drive past on the motorway.

Definitely a classic. Much like Alien its ability to build suspense. Sam Neill has always been a creepy guy, "In the Mouth of Madness" and whichever Omen film he did being prime examples. People always seem to find it odd when I think of him as a scary mo-fo (I put it down to them seeing him for the first time in Jurassic Park).

Michael Caine was a bit like this. He has done loooooooaaaaaaads of films and a lot of them are utter shite. On the other hand, he's done Get Carter, The Italian Job, The Prestige, Zulu, Batman, The Ipcress File, Sleuth etc etc etc... Actors like Caine and Cage I think look at acting as a job like any other, so they just take roles as and when they come up, not really sticking to the roles that they really feel passionately about.

I think everyone from Pirates to Publishers would love an answer to that question.

Metalcaveman has covered the weapons special properties, so just to clarify why I suggest always carrying one (once you get to a higher level). Generally, if you get invaded, it's by someone with good equipment who knows what they're about. Because the scraping spear wrecks durability it will in all likelihood cost them more in souls to repair their equipment than they are going to gain by killing you, so most of the time you can avoid PvP combat by brandishing it with intent.

I think they'll announce something for other regions pretty soon. It will be EA Store exclusive, or something like that. As for me, I don't care about these things. I must buy new PC for this game, now that's a problem. btw, what's wrong with your regional EA store? I think you might be right.

The emails are amusing sometimes, like the one that said that unlike Greek Mythology in God of War, Norse mythology in Too Human and Thor, there were no games of note about Christian mythology released in NA apart from El Shaddai Rise of the Metatron, despite the fact that they spent a whole 3-4months burning cheques, opening boxes and so forth during the Dante's Inferno advertising campaign. I mean seriously, how can you talk about Christian mythology in videogames without referencing Dante's Inferno? Especially where the games are similar in genre. I get that a lot of it is quotes from the guy making the game, so why not put the question to him? How does your take on Christian mythology differ to Dante? Would it be that hard? Slap-dash, shoddy reporting as usual.