Thursday Next

Approximately 2 million sales for Mirror's Edge. Not amazing, but not terrible. I think it suffered from being too different from other FPS's without the marketing clearly branding it as such. That left reviewers playing what they thought was an FPS with parkour elements, finding the FPS elements lacking and being a bit down on the product. In retrospect, reviewers who have revisited their opinion have looked at it in a different light and feel that it was a fantastic free running game let down with some less than brilliant combat and worthy of higher praise for being different and bold and executing what it did differently really well. I honestly believe that Mirror's Edge could go on to be an amazingly successful franchise, especially now that it has some more games to be compared with. Assassin's Creed, Brink, Infamous, all embrace a new way of moving.

Batteries or wireless power transfer. If we can get wireless power transfer perfected we can just cover the whole freaking planet in the stuff and not have to worry about charging things.

I'm a coop gamer too. It's why I like BC2 for its squad play. Also a big fan of some of the PSN titles like Pixel Junk Shooter and Shank for the same reason. Local coop is awesome I really appreciate when a game has split screen / local mp these days, it's troublingly rare, especially on titles like Hot Pursuit where you could easily have two racers against the AI cops or vice versa. I find it odd that when I had a 14" CRT games had 4x split screen play and now that I have a 37" TV (enough that each quadrant would be an 18" screen) no games allow split screen.

Not into shmups, or rts or mmorpgs, but I'll give the first two a try, the only thing I don't really play is mmorpgs. I just don't have the time to invest that is needed to enjoy the experience.

I'm not about the KD at all. I'm all about the objective. Probably why I'm a much bigger BF fan than CoD.

I never quit. Even if I'm getting totally hosed. I'll always fight to the last. It's mostly because I'm an eternal optimist. I genuinely believe that until the screen says game over, there's a chance to turn it around, or at least salvage some dignity. There is no defeat so utterly complete as the person you have just thoroughly trounced quitting in a fit of despair. Why, there have been games in BFBC2 where the team-balancing has put me and my three friends attacking a full team of 12, we've been worn down to almost nothing, the first base still stands, Alpha long since destroyed in a sneak attack, Bravo still standing strong against our hopeless advance, the battlefield a smouldering ruin with not a single building standing, when, from no where another 5 or 6 people drop into our server, on our team, our numbers bolstered we overrun the team of lackadaisical defenders who have all long since switched to recon in order to increase their KD. We sweep through their defences, a tide of fury, of frustration now unleashed. Crate after crate falls under our advance, the defenders, battered, bloodied, sensing that where victory was assured, defeat now awaits them, dwindle in number. As the last crate detonates the teams are evenly balanced and I rejoice. If I quit every time I was getting pasted I'd only play half as much as I do, you can't win 'em all.

Yante, software prices won't drop. Ninty never drops their software price.

Donnie Darko

Got an email from Game.co.uk trade in a DS lite and a 3DS will cost you £190. Trade in a DSi and it'll only be £160. That's much more palatable and I can totally live with trading in my DS lite.

OMG! Teh emo's! Where's Nihil?

+1 For Hathaway love. She's stunning. Also +1 for Bane is an awesome villain. They damn well better not make him some roid-tard, I have faith in Nolan though. Can't wait for this film!

If $250 is too much then £230 is definitely too much. NOTE: £230 is too much. £200 tops.

There's still Fal Cie about no? Or they could have "residual magic powers" or some such..?

Are all types of gas filtered? Butane? Methane?

The Big Lebowski (1998): The Dude goes bowling, he is not "Jeff Lebowski", there's a beverage involved man.

Because it is an anagram of Ape Porn?

Yup, same with FFX, after doing all the monster hunts and dark aeons, the final boss was a total breeze. It would also be nice to bask in the glory of having just saved the town / world / universe / existence (depending on your FF).

VictorAnalogy Please let me know that you're from TAY or I won't add you. Oh, and don't ask me to game share either.

I agree with what someone else said about an "Epilogue" I'd love an epilogue mode in rpg's so you can see the results of your climactic struggle. It would have been great to have travelled round Gran Pulse settlements the excuses for sidequests there would be numerous "we've moved into an area and need to get rid of all of X creature.", "I'm building a thing and need you to get some stuff.", and it could all go towards getting uber items to take on some great big creature looming over Gran Pulse. It would also lend itself to DLC, you could sell an entire town with some quests a la Fallout.

Haha... whateva. It's one of those things that you're allowed to spoil. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PopculturalOsmosis

@Slithy: Yup agreed on the weapon system. Not "hard" in the "difficult to achieve" sense (though farming traps was a ball-ache), more utterly impenetrable in a "how do I even start?" sense. Oh another annoying thing about 13. Every time you get an item in your inventory that you had previously used up it labels it as "new". I hate "new" tags on menus. They vex me. I have to eliminate them. That they pop up again because I sold, refined or whatever my last potion and then stumbled upon one is irritating.

Red wire or blue wire? BOOM!

@Kenshi. Seriously? Citizen Kane. "A dream scheme. Does he wake?"

The "bad" ending. You've fought through waves of enemies, hours of cutscenes, some tacked on vehicle sections to get to this, the final confrontation. You get to the bunker, my elite personal guard are everywhere, their corpses pile up as you mow through them. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am no fool, you've slaughtered hundreds, thousands even, all supposedly better trained than you, and certainly better trained than me. I know I stand no chance against you. As the clouds of dust settle you see me, slumped over the desk. The poison was quick, painless. My final act was to steal your victory from you. The "good" ending. You've slipped through my defences, largely unnoticed. Several of my troops have disappeared or died. I assume it is through desertion or negligence. You enter the bunker. My elite guards, though numerous do not expect your relentless, precise assault. They fall one by one, none of them has time to reach an alarm. They will be discovered soon, but too late. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am caught off guard, I panic, scramble for a gun. You are calm, a squeeze of the trigger, a thrown grenade, a knife to the throat, who knows? My life ends before I have even raised my weapon. Your allies rejoice, the world questions my end. Should I have stood trial? Was the force that ended my existence a noble one or a more subtle form of evil? The "really good" ending. You've slipped through my defences, largely unnoticed. Several of my troops have disappeared or died. I assume it is through desertion, negligence, or an ambitious and violent captain, I care not. You enter the bunker. My elite guards, though numerous do not expect your focussed, precise assault. They fall one by one, none of them has time to reach an alarm. They will be discovered soon, but too late. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am caught off guard, I panic, scramble for a gun. You are calm, a squeeze of the trigger and searing pain shoots up and down my right arm, before I can react my left arm is also disabled and I am restrained. Your allies arrive in force, mine are swiftly subdued. I am hauled before the world broken, defeated, I spend the rest of my life in a prison (unless there is a sequel) a lesson to others who follow that there is no glory to be had in their inevitable defeat. The "standard FPS boss" ending You've killed everyone, corridor after corridor of bodies litter your trail of destruction. We meet in a curiously open space, probably a rooftop. I absorb countless bullets to the head and chest before teleporting to within melee distance of you. We knock the guns from each others hands and engage in a fist fight interspersed with QTE's. Then I probably fall off the building or some shit. Fin.

Things I liked about 13: Lightning. She was a strong character with a clear sense of purpose, also, eye-candy. The battle system. I liked that each of the characters had strengths and weaknesses so that there was always an optimum team for a given battle or style of play. I also liked that the system was flexible enough that if you went in with a sub-optimal team everyone was a jack of all trades so you could muddle through. The paradigm system let battles flow quickly without ever making me feel overwhelmed. Continues. As a counter to one of the things I didn't like, I did appreciate that dying did not obliterate your last 5 hours of unsaved gameplay with retry option. Gran Pulse. Seriously, that place was amazing. After being cooped up in corridors for so long, being able to roam free on the plains, see all the creatures out in the wild, it was awesome. Even more so when I got to a point where I could take down all the major threats without a worry. Things I didn't like: Hope. Say no more. I hated that when your "main" died it was game over. Especially when the other two characters were still going strong, and especially when the boss would target your main and constantly spam death. No towns. I missed being able to interact with people to do little quests and such. That there was only one such quest (that robot dude thing) in FFXIII was a disappointment. I do like monster hunts though. Things I hope will happen in FFXIII-2. Tweak the battle system, keep it largely the same, but remove the main dying = game over thing. Do something to make the armour / weapon upgrading make sense. I couldn't make head nor tails of it so I didn't upgrade anything until after I beat the game. Include towns. Make it an open world. Hopefully setting it on Gran Pulse will fix this. They can have towns in the locations that were available in FFXIII populated by Cocoonians. No jpop. Please. I don't need Lightning to be some sort of Idol on a quest to sell records or some such.