Necrotic

Oh yeah, almost forgot. This is going to be rad. Co-op Portal is like a dream come true.

Hopefully there'll be some new details about the next Zelda game. Kojima usually has a surprise up his sleeve every year, and I'm curious to see w hat he's going to announce or hint at this year. Anyways: Last Guardian, new Castlevania franchise, Golden Sun DS, Metroid: Other M, Arkham Asylum 2 Plus the new Shantae game and Hudson's Lost in Shadow.

Red Dead Redemption. It's pretty fantastic.

"Suave! Goddamn you're one suave fucker! " Hopper's role in that was fantastic. I love David Lynch's quirky dialogue in that movie. Rest in peace, Mr. Hopper. You were a legend.

I lol'd. I was thinking the same. David and Anna, I wish you guys the best. I hope you two have a long and prosperous future together!

So wait. Is this a thread about Red Dead Redemption or a thread about some idea you had. Because judging by the first post this thread has nothing to do with RDR at all.

Before they were merged.

Happy birthday to you, my fellow brother of bone-crushing death-riffs and blood-curdling metal.

The GPU on my current PS3 is dying. Graphical spikes, textures and lighting maps corrupting. Graphically intense games are starting to become a mess. I'm hoping if I ask for another 60GB (or the same console refurbished) I can get one back. If I get a console without PS2 support I will rage. I've gotta agree with Stevo though, who knows if we'll see PS2 emulation happen any time soon (if at all), whether it be done through homebrew or delivered to us from Sony themselves. The best we can do is hope that in Sony's blackest of black hearts they actually have enough sympathy to deliver us such an alternative.

I do wud I want! D:<

It's not even big publishers absorbing small publishers anymore, we're long past that. Now it's large publishers merging or absorbing eachother. Activision and Blizzard merging (the Vivendi merger was pretty huge too), and Square-Enix just took Eidos over. I just took a look at my games collection and basically noticed that all of them in the last 2 or 3 years were basically published by 9 juggernauts not counting console manufacturers. That list is narrowing pretty fast. Juggernauts ActiBlizz (this would also include former publishing giants Sierra and Vivendi) EA (I can't even begin to count the number of smaller publishing agencies these guys absorbed.) Take-Two (has been in danger of aggressive takeovers recently by EA, and no doubt ActiBlizz is eying them as well.) Square-Enix (just absorbed Eidos) Ubisoft (has talked about the possibility of a merger with EA before) Namco-Bandai (the Namco-Bandai merger is probably doing little to raise profits and I'm sure they're going to be the victim of another merger/takeover within a couple years) Konami Capcom 2K Games Plus of course: Microsoft Sony Nintendo Not as relevant: THQ SEGA Atari Majesco (lawl I can't believe they still exist) Midway (double lawl)

Because Valve's endeavours were funded by two very well-off individuals even when they were starting out. Game budgets are ridiculous these days and the only way to make your title a possibility in a majority of cases is to get, essentially, loans from a publisher and give up your intellectual property rights as collateral in case the product fails (which is why most game developers don't have the right to sell their products through digital distribution without going through a publisher first. Which, in that case, once again the publisher wins.)

A lot of people said that. This isn't a case of prophets. It's a case of profits. As long as the cost of porting (in both time and money) is outweighed by the amount they'll make off of it, you can count on it.

Actually, you're right. A better word would be inconsistencies, especially when it comes to characterization.

Eh, not exactly. Even if Japanese games developers emphasize telling a story, it doesn't necessarily make their stories good. It also doesn't mean their stories are more intricate or complex, meaningful, and lacking in pretension. All it means is that you spend more time watching cutscenes and reading dialogue. I find half the time Japanese stories are confusing and incomprehensible because of a combination of quirkiness and this inane Japanese preconception that the more abstract or philosophical ideas you fill your games/anime/media with, the more thoughtful they are. The point isn't to fill your media with those things, it's to present those ideas well. I guess that's what bugs me when you say Western producers spoon-feed their games: basically, just because Japanese devs spend so much more time on their stories, I don't particularly find those stories more meaningful, inspiring, or thought-provoking all the time. I'm not willing to let Japanese writers off the hook, especially not in FF13's case. Best example I can give on the Japanese side of things is Shadow of the Colossus. It doesn't take playing through 60-70 hours of overly complex ideas to make its plot good and that's what I love about it, yet it has some pretty striking commentary on death and sacrifice. Cool right? Yeah, and then on the other hand you have FF13. One of the main themes presented in FF13's plot was prejudice, but I didn't feel at all that the story showed that aspect in a realistic manner. It was like "Oh? You were from Gran Pulse all this time? Oh, okay. Man, guess we were fed some real bullshit." I've met some racist people in real life and trying to convince them to let go of their pretensions can actually be a real struggle. I don't understand how it can suddenly go from being this major plot point to being completely unimportant. Plus the fal/Cie and l'Cie stuff is really jarring, not that I can't make sense of it, but the whole concept was something that took well over 20 hours to fully reveal and explain. Then half-way through the game you're told the most critical parts of the story, all at once. It was kind of a mess. On the other hand, I will give a big kudos to other certain aspects of the plot: Any scene involving Sazh and Dajh, and Hope struggling to reconcile with his father were some of the most heart-warming and relatable moments in the game up to the point I played. Lightning defending her sister's honour in that big sisterly sort of way of way was really cool to see too. Other aspects of the plot and characterization can sometimes be disorienting or just plain stupid. Just look at Vanille for the first half of the game. Plus the lack of explanation of cutscenes and how you're either expected to infer things that aren't really the type of thing that should be left open to interpretation, or read them in the Data Log is kind of silly. There's only a handful of Japanese story-tellers that are classically known to tell a good story. Same as in the West. We're blessed to have Bioware's writing staff, Blizzard's writing staff, Marc Laidlaw, Michel Ancel, and Ken Levine on our side of the planet to be honest. Actually, it did. I got to Chapter 11 and haven't touched the game since. The game was grating enough as it is, with annoying and inconsistent characterization. Even when I let myself get past that and there was a good 10-15 hours where I was enjoying myself, the game took a 180. I was back to square one and I'd already put up with too much facepalming, groaning, and wincing on my part. I'll probably pick it back up again one day, but I'm gonna laugh at anyone that tries to argue that the story in this game is good.

They just announced that four of the six games from the Indie Bundle will be released for free and will be made open-source. (It's in a note at the very top of the webpage in the first post.) I ended up donating $10 even though I already own World of Goo and Gish and those are the two games I'd probably want most out of that bundle anyways. Figure it's going to a good cause and I can see what some of these indie devs are all about.

This is awesome! Thanks for the heads up. Also, the 'rap' in the promotional video reminded me of .Or Jon Lajoie.

Also both L4D games in one bundle for $33.50. Which I'm totally buying.

I know what I'm going to be doing for the next hour or so to kill time. This is pretty stellar, thanks for this.

Seriously just go as far left then as far right of him as you can, and just keep doing that in front of his face till he turns to his side. It should leave more than enough room to go past.

It's possible to shimmy past the Phalanxes if you're good at dodging enemies. Just have to get him to turn to his side and run past. If you wanna run back and fight some easier enemies it's pretty easy once you slip past. It's better than going back to an older save. I'm sure you won't need to though, generally I think the Eidolon battles are designed not to require any grinding, just a know-how of the battle system But yeah if you wanna beat the Eidolon do what Arcana said. It's what I did too, the points you get from spamming your Saboteur spells and Healing is enough that you should build up the meter fully. Then Fang can eat up all the damage in the meantime. I've never had to grind for any fight in this game and I've avoided a lot of fights by slipping past enemies, so I'm sure you'll do fine.

I like the Datalog, but I agree with Arcana in that ends up being TOO necessary to read it and make sense of what's going on and it probably shouldn't be. Things like that are generally for people who want more insight into the stuff that's going on behind the scenes, not an explanation of what just happened because the cutscenes themselves didn't do the job properly. But yeah, I'm not really playing the game for an amazing plot anyways. Unless there's some super spectacular plot twist or something I don't really think I'm gonna be wowed by any of the writing by the time I'm finished. Plus FF has never really been the shining example of good writing like pretty much ever.

I think it really is just that I'm a fidgety person. Even though I'm mentally engaged in a film my body's nerves nag at me to try and find things to do with it. I guess in that sense I get bored of sitting, not of the movie itself. Although the more I think about it, I've been dragged out to a LOT of bad movies in theaters. A lot of my favourite modern movies never really had a wide theatrical release like a lot of David Lynch films and stuff. You might be on to something, Archaon, at least for some of the time.

Actually, speaking of ticket prices and theaters, I feel like what I'm about to say is a good time to bring this up. The reason I hate going to the theater is actually because of it being a place where you're expected to do nothing but sit and watch. I'm certainly courteous enough to not talk when I AM forced to go to a theater, but I get awfully bored just sitting there and watching. I think it's funny that movies are considered a social activity but you're really not doing anything social until the end of the movie. I like it when people talk (quietly though!) during movies because it can lead to interesting comments and jokes or even to someone saying something insightful you never would've realized. That's why I like watching movies at home and inviting people over instead. Plus I'm a fidgety squirmy energetic can't-sit-still type of guy and if my hands aren't busy with something or I can't make myself comfortable for more than a couple minutes I need to find some way to fix that and those theater chairs REALLY don't help. It actually gets to the point where, yeah, I'd actually rather wait a handful of months and buy the DVD so I can watch it at home. Anyone else feel the same way about theaters? That said... watching movies in 3D doesn't really add or take away much from the experience for me, especially not to the point where I'd spend more to go see them, and it just makes me want to stay away from the theater even more than I already do. So I think the movie industry is really shooting themselves in the foot here.

you and me both man you and me both