BardicKnowledge

Yes, this. It's going to be ridiculously good this year, can't wait! Also, a fourth person to complete the already awesome room of me, prophet, and DrumUltima would be epic -- someone get on that please.

Rama, you should just plan on drinking for free the whole weekend actually, as I'm in on the $162 tickets also. OA, when do your flights leave? I wanna know if we'll end up on the same plane

Yeah, I've also discovered Day in the Limelight, and it is fun as hell. I really like how well integrated some of the powers are (Cut and Ice Man especially so far).

I'm in again this year Wes -- I'll PM you my address when I get out of class later today (currently sitting in my Debussy class).

Happy birthday! What are you doing to celebrate (besides magically find time to review another hundred wips?)

For anyone who hasn't stumbled across it yet, NCFC is an online convention with virtual "booths" for people to visit about various Nintendo fangames. Many of the booths provide free demos / games to try out -- go check out the site! Especially good this year so far are Super Mario Bros. X and Project AM2R. Many others are also worth your time though -- have a look!

Don't be so quick to dismiss "amateur" tools. Look at the AM2R project -- the demo for that is the slickest 2d Metroid I've seen and it's all done by one guy. Regardless of whether that engine will "work" on a console, it _is_ working on PC and is running perfectly. I'm not as familiar with Sonic fangames as much but will assume that a few are at the same level (and I'm only arguing about high-level, near complete fan projects here). If they are making better games than the parent companies, then regardless of their commercial viability or workability on a console they are still better games. Better level design, better physics decisions, and better innovative additions to core gameplay are all independent of both platform and engine.

Go to the Capcom Unity site and comment on the blog announcing the game -- they have said that they will look at that to determine the amount of US desire for the localization.

I still have high hopes for it! I must also be the only person that didn't hate Sonic 4 apparently (at least the demo), so take that with a grain of salt.

Crazy-afro hair me = Napoleon Dynamite. Dunno who would play me normally though. Brock > Justin for him hands down -- OA remains a champion! Earthbound is the only one I came up with using all three: French (fry pan), Laser (gun/beam), Banana

I'm officially getting a 3DS on day one now. This is the best crossover idea ever, haha.

Compare it to the previous SIX Sonic games and tell me it's not a marked improvement with a straight look on your face. Also remember that I have only played the first level -- which plays the way "it should" to me.

This, essentially is also the way I understand it.

Actually my preferred method of playing Civ is PBEM mode, which I was extremely happy that they included in Civ IV. Dunno if play by e-mail made it into Civ V or not, but the idea is that you play one game over the course of many weeks with 6-person multiplayer...it's not a LAN friendly game. Also, with grad school taking up more and more of my time recently, I really enjoy playing a game where I only have to spend 10 minutes every couple of days to be at maximum efficiency.

I know that most of the people here hated on it, but I really enjoyed the demo -- regardless of some smaller issues here and there, they have nailed the overall feel of what makes Sonic fun, at least for me. I also really enjoyed creative use of the homing attack to extend spring jumping sequences (bounce off of multiple enemies in a row, etc). I also really like the music to the first stage, though I'll admit having a preference for Gecko's Genesis synth version. That's nostalgia getting in my way though and I acknowledge it. If Colors is of this high of quality or a step beyond, then I think Sega will have finally brought Sonic up to speed (pun intended) with modern technology.

Everything in FFXII is auto-pilot if you prepare correctly.

How is the multiplayer human vs human, or via LAN with 6 people and no AI? If everything is great except the AI's combat skill, that's something to let the rest of us know about.

Why does anyone want a TI-84 anything? Isn't the 86 still the best Z80-based calculator? And if you don't want it for that you may as well get an 89 because they do a shit-ton more things out of the box.

Hahaha, this! Thought I was the only one who recorded via minitape recorder as a kid.

I just stumbled on to your Mirror's Edge photo shoot yesterday -- good stuff! Glad to have you stop by. Do you also do the photography professionally, or as a well developed hobby? It's unclear from your blog.

Happy belated birthday! Hope you had fun!

Saw these -- they're awesome!

His point was that she's not exactly a well defined character, as illustrated by the fact that you didn't type her name the first time -- both her and Louis come off as "token" characters more than anything else (though none of the L4D1/2 cast is well defined, so in context it's not like the minority characters or women are less defined than the white males).

Are you guys really getting that much negative feedback? It's a topic that needs to be addressed badly -- the only critique I have is that I found myself looking forward to the indepth episodes covering just one topic instead of a lit review episode (geez did I just type that? Grad school is killing me) that was largely to identify the problems.