Thursday Next

I completely agree with the second guy. Who has always been about cowering behind sofas. The fact that the effects have improved is irrelevant. Back when the villains looked like men in rubber suits television screens and signal were crap. It didn't matter that the men in suits had visible zips because you could barely make them out even with a "massive" 20" tv. Children get more advanced with every generation, in fact, people get used to new fakery all the time. I remember Jurassic Park looking as real as could be, I go back and watch it now and wonder how I ever fell for cartoon dinosaurs. We'll look back on Who in 10-20 years time and think, "how did anyone find something so preposterous even the slightest bit scary?" It's the reason that films like Alien (which barely show the monster except for fleeting glimpses) retain their scare factor while other monster films like Jaws become laughable when you see the ridiculous rubber shark. Who's scariest villains (imho) are still the weeping angels. The Silence have a certain creep factor that lurks in childrens' imaginations, but you see those angel statues all over the place and you can never really be absolutely sure it hasn't moved just a little bit while you looked the other way.

I'm not sure if I need to be stoked for Brink... I think I want to be, but I'm just, sort of not. When's it out?

Saw Thor last night. Really enjoyed. Film has a great sense of humour and there's some classic lines in it. I can't wait to get back from a drunken night out and announce "we drank, we fought, we made our ancestors proud."

In Black & White the game would whisper names and the "deeeeaaaath" (I think when a worshipper died). It only worked with common names, but any "Steves", "Johns" and "Daves" out there were rightly freaked out when they heard the game whispering "Steeeeeve... deeeeaaaath..." at them.

If you're saying you can't empathise with that, fair enough, but I think it is a fairly... understandable/comprehensible motivation. I mean, if you're gonna be a serial killer, you've gotta have a screw loose somewhere no?

Yeah, I think the point of that decision was less about getting different outcomes and more about trying to elicit an emotional response from the player. Like, it was meant to be this tough moral decision. Whether they succeeded or not is arguable, but I know I hesitated slightly before doing it.

"So, is there anywhere you've been in the last year that you don't want anyone to know about?" Ummm... no actually.

I'm loving all the fan rage out there at the moment. "How dare Valve charge me $80 for day 1 DLC!" It's cosmetic you prat. Here's how to get every piece of DLC you need on day one without spending a penny: "Don't buy any stupid wanky little hats you prick, they're pointless so don't buy them." "This game is like 2 hours long." No. It isn't. It took me around 8 hours first time out, I was moving at a fair clip, but taking in the sights now and then. Sure I could probably do a run in 4 hours once I've got it all down but... "Valve promised it would be 5x as long as Portal." The fastest I've seen Portal completed is ~15minutes. So as long as Portal 2 is ~1hr 15mins long. Mission fucking accomplished. Besides, who cares how quickly you can get to the credits? You can finish Super Mario Bros. In ~5mins and Super Mario Bros 3 in ~15mins. When you do you miss all the content. I can pretty much guarantee that every person who finished in sub 6 hours missed a hell of a lot of amusing conversations with Glados and Wheatley as well as all the humorous dialogue from Cave Johnson (the guy from the ads). I can scan through most books in a few hours, I'll know the sequence of events, but in doing so I miss all the story, characterisation and such.

Since we're distinguishing between the two... Finished Portal 2 Coop the other day. Loadsa fun. Also loadsa frustrated pinging at the spot you want a portal put. *PING PING PING PING* Yes, there *PING PING*. Where I'm *PING* effing *PING*ing is where. No you prat. The red portal was fine where it was! Now put a *PING*ing portal that goes from *PING*ing there to *PING*ing there you *PING*!!!!

More like valley floor-ing. That's what she sa... no wait the other one... Heyo! Or something.

About the Also, cooped PS3 - Steam last night with a friend who emigrated to Australia from the UK. One word. Seamless. You wouldn't know he was in another room, let alone the other side of the planet on a different platform. Everything worked, invites, voip, the lot without a hitch. Couldn't be more impressed.

Not a Monk fan. Not at all.

Given that screens are rectangular, and touch screens have no buttons... the hardware couldn't really look too different. As for software, grid displays have been around for hundreds of years. The only thing I can see Apple having some sort of case on is the bottom row of icons.

@WTF: Interesting article: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/04/game-writing-naomi-character Speaks well to your point "Everyone who speaks for games to be art is either a gamer or most likely someone who works in the industry." I think you and I agree on more points than we disagree. I think we both agree that not all images, written works, etc. are Art and I also think we agree that some games are Art (at least you seem to agree that Flower is Art). I certainly wouldn't disagree if you said that CoD is not Art. I agree with you that the mainstream doesn't consider games to be Art yet, I could produce a handful of Gamey / Arty installations but we both know that they are somewhat novelty pieces and would probably be described by the majority as "a game turned into Art", rather than "a game as Art", in the same way that a Campbell's soup tin is not art on its own. I just think that more games could be considered Art than are currently. The medium does not prevent games being Art, generally the execution does. P.S. According to Wikipedia ballroom dancing has been a competitive sport for over 100 years (just), so it depends on how you define "recent".

I zoomed with R2 and saw just that.

Bioshock was scary...until you realised there weren't really any consequences for dying. Are there ever really consequences for dying? I mean this isn't playing Final Fantasy VII for 10 straight hours only to lose concentration and get wiped out just before you got to a save point...

Okay... for those of you who have finished the single player campaign...

It's a weird thing with that walled garden approach. I've seen people go to ridiculous lengths to jail break Apple products so that they can load Windows or run flash on their phones and such. Yet when you ask them "Why not get a device that does what you want to do out of the box?" they'll say "My [iDevice] just works!" Yes. Just works after hours of hacking, cracking, swearing and warranty invalidating it "just works" just fine. Apple's devices are a triumph of marketing. It's almost become a badge of honour to be willingly fooled by it. People will happily tell you that they are going to queue up for the launch of the [iDevice 1] even though "I know that [iDevice 2] will be out in about six months and will be much better." It's a form of consumer masochism. I think that's why people who don't buy Apple products are so against them. We see people repeatedly getting conned by the shady character playing cups and we want to shout "Can't you see this is all just a scam!?!"

Siren - Bloodcurse. When you play as the girl while your creepy possessed uncle and some other scary possessed folk stalk you around some decrepit old hospital or summink. You're utterly defenceless. Scary as all hell.

I've got plenty of space for some warns... mwuhahahaha!

Or you can do neither and let Dean do all the work.

I lurk the forums waiting for an excuse.

I have indeed. A few months ago. Huge maps. Huuuuuuuge. It's gonna be awesome.