Thursday Next

All volumes must be even numbers and/or multiples of five. When out in restaurants I always stack the menus the right way up before handing the pile back to the waiter / waitress. I flinch if they pick them up and some are upside down or rotated through 180 degrees or what have you. My friends know this and will purposely mis-stack menus and refuse to let me have them so as to annoy me. I also stack plates when everyone has finished eating and always return emptie glasses to the bar when getting a round in or leaving. That last one is because I used to live in a pub. When in the UK this is normally acknowledged by the staff, but not considered "odd". When I did this in a restaurant in America the manager (who happened to be serving our table) asked me if I wanted a job. I'm not 100% convinced he was joking.

Need to see a price. That's about all I'm waiting on. This definitely has me more interested than the 3DS though.

Haha....yeah. Just about about videogames. Seriously, I do love how everyone rolls their eyes at yet another dull, brown, shooter like CoD and BF. Take the mick out of Gears for it's ridiculous attempt at serious characterisation, then get all snooty when a game comes along and says, how many ways do you wanna kill this dude? I don't think it's still in the game, but one of the early versions had a great MP map where you were at a nuclear weapon test facility. Every few minutes an alarm would sound and you had like 15 seconds to get to a bunker before it sealed shut. You'd be in the middle of a firefight then be scrambling to the nearest bunker only to find you were the only red guy in a room full of blues. Hilarity and explosive death ensued until the dust settled and the bunkers opened again and the survivors stepped out. Anyone caught outside died in a nuclear holocaust. Fun times.

I lost my star by linking someone who was kissing Crecente's arse to the Mirriam-Webster entry for "Sycophancy". Also this exchange: http://kotaku.com/comment/34511888 (No, I don't like Crecente, not one bit.)

I love Crank. Guilty pleasure.

Really glad that Staysick picked up on the not taking itself seriously thing. I try not to evangelise about my companies games too much, but I do think Bulletstorm is a significant break from the norm. Melee combat is actually enough fun that you don't mind running low on ammo cos it just means that you get to focus on kicking and leashing enemies into hazards. The whole game is obscene in every respect, the violence the machismo it's all turned up to the max, it's totally brutal fun with none of the melodrama of Reach or at least not that I've seen. It's pretty much the "Crank" of video games.

The game does tension so well. It teaches you early on that enemies can come from any direction and there's rarely a time that you can retreat down a corridor, but your back to a wall and take your enemies out without the nagging feeling that something is going to either crash through the vent behind you or drop down on you from above. They've also got that "something in the walls" sound perfected so you never really feel totally safe. And finally, areas with save points and benches and stores would normally be considered "safe" areas. Not so in DS1. It really keeps you off balance.

C-c-c-c-combo Breeeaaaakeeerrrrrr was one of the most joyous sounds in fighting game history.

I liked Eternal Champions for the backstories (I was young at the time!). I also quite enjoyed KI Gold. My fave unappreciated fighters were Fighter's Destiny and Bushido Blade. I loved that those games both had an instant KO. Also, getting the final boss in Bushido blade was frickin' hardcore.

OBJECTION! It's Metallica.

So it was... I coulda sworn I checked. I definitely saw your post and didn't see Ico. Ho hum!

I have high hopes for the new Bloom and Knightley-less Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

Depending on which time you faced that boss, it could be really cheap. However, the bosses were the only times (outside of monster hunts) where you got to really play with the paradigm system.

"Tag: The Power of Paint" it's the tech demo that got the devs picked up by Valve. It'll give you something of an idea of what you can expect in Portal 2. The game sites link is no longer active, you can find the developer here: https://www.digipen.edu/studentprojects/tag/ the download can be found by using that there Google.

No love (well hate) for... Especially compared to...

Here's the trailer, for all your catchy uppy needs. (It's spoiler heavy - obvs). http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/32451

There's a trailer on PSN that basically summarises the plot of the first one in about 2mins. It leaves out specific details of what happened to Kendra and Hammond. But at least you'll know roughly what happened on Ishimura and why /how Isaac got where he is. Apparently he does talk in this one. Though I didn't mind/notice that he was silent in the first one.

Haha, Arch is easily the most negative entity in all of Kotaku-dom. Even when he says something good he has to suffix it with something bad. Personally, I'm looking forward to Dual-wielding Move controllers in Extraction.

Epic Space Battles! Armies! Just two of the things you won't see much of in this film! At least it isn't spoilerific I guess... Also, very glad that special edition artwork tends to veer away from Orange/Blue-itis.

I smile as she cries out.

If I were to actually accuse you of something, I'd be pretty obvious about it instead of trying to include you in an explanation as to why pirates are generally so overly defensive. For example, in my last post I'm accusing you of not reading my post properly. In the one before that I'm accusing you of ad hominem (as I've already admitted, pretty foolishly) and of pretty terrible psychoanalysis. Ok, this is getting a little personal and I didn't intend that. I incorrectly inferred that your description of white knight, codblop, sheeple was directed at me. For that I apologise. As for the Robert Ebert thing, a rebuttal is not a generally defensive attitude. It was a direct response to an accusation. If you are asked the (debatable given the negative connotation of the word "pirate") neutral question "Do you pirate games?" and the response is "Yes, but..." and then some form of excuse, it implies, or rather, I infer, that you are of the belief that piracy is either wrong or at least perceived as wrong by the person asking, or the audience listening to your response. If someone said "Have you heard the latest Muse song?" I would reply "Yes." If you said "Have you heard the latest Justin Bieber song?" I would reply "Yes, but only because I was getting a lift to the station from my younger sister and she had it on in the car." I don't feel the need to defend listening to Muse because they are awesome on a stick. I feel the need to defend hearing a Bieber song because I know that listening to it is morally wrong. Admittedly this speaks more to my mentality than to that of every other person in the world, but as I'm the only person whose thoughts I can read, I kind of have to project that attitude onto the wider populace even if it is inaccurate.

Yup. More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12275913

Yup. I just love that they aren't being allowed to wriggle out of it now that they have court expenses looming and (presumably) less than brilliant chances of winning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12253746 A lot of people have accused ACS Law of basically trying to bully pirates for cash without any intention of going through court proceedings. The ACS gambit is to send you a letter, tell you that they're going to sue you on behalf of the copyright holders agents, and try to sting you for ~£500. Well, 26 people have gone to to court with them and now they are dropping all the cases. Or at least attempting to. The Judge in one of those brilliant moments of making a lawyer squirm because he can is making it very difficult for ACS / Mediacat (the Copyright holders agent in these cases) to back out of what they presumably believe to be a losing battle. Judge Birss: "I want to tell you that I am not happy. I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny," I don't really agree with the lawyer acting for ACS getting death threats and such, that's going OTT, but the database leak could cost the firm a LOT of money, which would be delicious justice.