Thursday Next

I had the grave misfortune to catch the first 15-20 mins of "Meet the Spartans". I've never seen a worse film. Seriously. I was actually offended by what I saw. It was utterly devoid of a single moment of humour. It's like the film troughed and then just nailed itself to that level. The celebrity look-a-likes were so terrible that every single one of them had to be introduced by name. I've never been a believer in "So bad it's good." but even if I had been, this film goes all the way past "so bad it's good" and deep into "So bad that you want to kill everyone who was involved in the creation of it and the people who went to see it in the cinema thus encouraging more of this bilge." This film was unrelentingly awful. It should be banned by the Geneva convention and Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer should be tried in the Hague. If Gaddafi is captured by the rebels and they are looking for a way to torture him, I think it would be kinder to water board him than to make him watch this film for even 30 seconds. I'm going to have to watch Shawshank and the Big Lebowski simultaneously on repeat for a week just to counteract the incredible badness of this film. I could actually feel the IQ points sloughing away from my brain as the film progressed. Had I watched it for one minute longer I would probably have lacked the intelligence to identify the TV remote and been reduced to a vegetable, fortunately, I was able to change the channel in time. I've been weaning myself back on to visual media by watching the Teletubbies, by the end of the month I'm hoping that I will be able to understand the story line of Hollyoaks and in a year I should be fully rehabilitated.

I loved the remixed classical tunes on M(P)SMP. You can download them all, free (and legally) here: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/06/10/monsters-probably-stole-my-princess-soundtrack/

It's a solid game. The suit adds a bit of variety though I wish they'd focussed more on stealth. Armour mode seems to last forever while you struggle to run from one piece of cover to the next in Stealth. I love how you can customise your weapons on the fly and change your suit perks about as you upgrade tem. Not played multiplayer yet. Might give it a bash this weekend.

Based on Dean's edit. I think Heavy Rain was a good choice. For NFS: HP, I enjoyed the multiplayer when I was in a race/pursuit/whatever. But actually getting there was (imho) poorly executed. Given that Hot Pursuit is a team mode, not being able to pick your team is pretty awful. I'm one of the few on PS3 who has and uses a mic for tactics as opposed to using it to introduce you all to my latest fave hip-hop track, being unable to team up with a few friends save by happenstance or planetary alignment was quite annoying.

What's your problem with the story? There were a few unanswered questions, but generally, it was well played and the reveal near the end was brilliantly executed. I know people have issues with the casting, but the story is good, imho. Perhaps it is, as you say, a matter of opinion.

I liked the way they handled the Riddler in AA. It was a cool alternative to beating the snot out of folks, a sort of Boss Battle - of wits!

@1:45 "You're the best shot." @2:03 Half the Hotel is destroyed. You could have pointed Stevie Wonder in the general direction of the hotel and the sniper would still be dead.

Drake... I am your mother. Called it. Note the date. Also, agreed on English villains. We're also really good at doing them. Finally. Head mook = Jason Statham? Discuss. P.S. I know it's not actually Statham.

Heat > Righteous Kill

Pacino > De Niro.

The legal position is well covered. Working in CS must be a bit of a bitch though. One Important thing to note. Just because EA give themselves the authority to do whatever the hell they want, it doesn't mean that it is their policy to do so. EA's legal team spend a lot of time ensuring that they cover for every eventuality, sometimes this makes their rules look onerous, but on balance, EA rarely exercise that power. There are loads of idiots on EA's forums. Plenty of them eat a ban, not all of them lose access to their games.

You rock! Also, love the name.

GoW 3 and Uncharted 2 were great as playable intros go. Abe's Odyssey was a brilliant cinematic one.

GTA San Andreas was a pony ending too. After all that graft you end up moving back into your god awful neighborhood? No thanks. I didn't buy all that property to live in a shack and eat microwaved dinners.

I don't find them to be like Nazis. I think they are painted much more like Soviets. The "impossible to invade because the homeland is inhospitable" thing. The names are all Russian-y. Like Orlock, Volari, Stahl. The language looks vaguely Cyrillic. Not forgetting the questionable foreign policy. Like I said, it has the potential to be ambiguous and balanced, I wish they would capitalise on that.

I've always found it odd that such a balanced back story has such a one-sided viewpoint. I mean the Helghast were driven from their sister planet of Vekta and forced to live on the inhospitable Helghan. To be honest, I'd quite like to play as the Helghan in KZ4.

Somewhat ironically, I'm admittedly guilty of oversimplifying the broadsheet/tabloid thing. You should watch as much Brian Cox as possible. He's the most accessible physicist evahhhh!

I think there is a line between "misinformation" and "over simplification". My English teacher once explained the difference between "Broadsheet" and "Tabloid" newspapers as "Broadsheets will present both sides of an argument and try to leave the reader to choose which one they prefer whereas Tabloids will present the side of the argument that the author believes is correct." In essence, a Tabloid will simplify the matter. "I think this." a Broadsheet will not. This doesn't make Tabloids "bad", they just simplify the argument. Sometimes, people need a simplified argument because they don't get or don't care to get all the detail. Case in point:

Check out this link: http://muse.mu/page.aspx?page=christmas2010 360 degree videos (from numerous angles) of MUSE at Wembley. So much to love about this. Awesome band, awesome songs, awesome technology. I've seen them three times now and every time they just blow me away.

To say that a game cannot be art because it is written in C++ is as ridiculous as suggesting that a book cannot be art because it is written in English. Both must be readable, both have to conform to rules of spelling, syntax, and so on. Badly written books are no more useable than badly written games. This doesn't mean that all games are art any more than all written media is art. The cooking instructions on a microwave dinner are not art (I'll come back to this). From Cyber's quote: I agree that "Artistic Intent" matters. For example, "That Game Company" and "Team Ico" seem to build games from an artistic viewpoint. Their games feel "Arty", like there is something to be found beneath the layers of Coding. Titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA, Pro-Evolution, Forza feel like they are less about "Art" and more about entertainment. There's no deeper message in these games, they can be taken at face value. I also agree with Commander Sheppard's point on "Artistic Interpretation". Take "Pong", at the time, just a paddle/ball game. Now it has a "Retro", "Minimalist" feel to it. Similarly, though I said that cooking instructions are not art, they could be interpreted as such. You can infer a sense of bleak despair in the instructions on cooking for one. Hell, if Tarantino is able to make a discussion on Global Burger Nomenclature into art, then why not lines of code? In conclusion, people who make games and want to call them art should feel free to. People who play games and want to call them art should feel free to. Anyone who disagrees, well that's fine too. Art is a matter of opinion.

I'm not offended, but I am a little confused: have I ever actually mentioned my own piracy habits? I thought I'd been careful not to, to only speak in theoretical terms. Oh well, I'll break my rule: I pirate to demo, but that's the only time I ever pirate (I know you don't agree with this justification either). Furthermore, I only pirate to demo in two situations: 1) there is no official demo, and I'm still on the fence about the game, even after reviews and word of mouth has come in, or 2) there is an official demo, but I didn't like the demo, and I've heard that the final game is better than the demo shows. In situation 1 I'm not going to buy a game I'm on the fence about without trying it, so either I pirate it or I don't buy it. In situation 2 I've already decided I didn't like it based on the demo, but I'm giving the full version a second chance to change my mind. In either situation the pub/dev stands to benefit because in the absence of the piracy I'm not buying the game (at least until a future price drop), but the piracy may get them a purchase out of me. Apologies, perhaps I infer it as you tend to argue pro-piracy (in some situations), and "Hypotheticals" are in my experience often confessions by another name. @Johnny: Don't think I was "being a dick", I just didn't sugar coat it. There's not much point pretending you and I get on when we don't is there? Doesn't mean we can't be civil and have to resort to name calling does it?

I'm sure this would have been sorted eventually without my involvement. If I helped speed the process along, so much the better. It's quite possible that it was a case of human error where the person who cancelled the account didn't restrict it to the forum only by mistake, but I honestly don't know. As the situation has been resolved I'm not going to ask any more questions.

@Dean & Cyber: When I ask why the call for more regulation, I mean, why should regulations aimed at publishers be any more effective than the laws that you regularly ignore because you don't agree with them? @Ethan: Agreed. Technically binding, but eminently challengable in court. @WTF: You're right in that EA's focus is more console than PC, especially for multiplat games. BF3 is a huge exception to this rule. It's a PC title through and through. P.S. I've told CS that I think this was a little OTT, it's being flagged to CS management.

I have invested as much as I can (which isn't much) in buying games. I buy mostly indie titles nowadays, but I own a lot of Valve games, some even bought as soon as they were released (L4D1/2, prolly Portal 2 as well). I think the only EA game I own which I got for my birthday is Bad Company 2. Crap like numbers of activation, needing to be online or DLC exploitation is enough for me to not warrant a purchase. I was considering saving up money for Dead Space 2 eventually, but this event is making me reconsider my decision. (You could argue that "I just don't need to post on forums," but if I put up with this, I'll blame myself for contributing to whatever publishers' methods will evolve into.) There is a reason Valve gets my money and most other publishers don't. Most publishers consider pirates scum and go from there and eventually we get all these workarounds like day-one DLC, DRM and whatever else. Valve considers pirates unhappy costumers and go from there and end up with everyone owning a copy of Half-Life, Portal and/or Team Fortress 2. That doesn't answer why you think more regulation will fix a problem, when you consider regulation to be optional, or to only apply as far as you want it to.

EULA's are a contract between the customer and EA. They are legally binding just like any other contract you agree to anywhere, that said, they can be challenged in court. I'm not aware of any EA games that require an "always on connection" our games almost always use 5 x Activations. Any game he has Activated should work fine so long as he doesn't go online. You're not so much getting banned from a forum as you are getting banned from EA's services, this includes forums and game activations. Anyways... I'm having a little nose around CS to see if I can find anything out. @Cyber Rat: Given how you and many others openly flout copyright laws, I'm curious as to why you think any more rules will make a difference.