Vivi22

You'll enjoy it when you get it though. I got one for myself almost a year ago and I love it. Great for keeping the old noggin warm when playing TF2.

So am I. Crappy time of year for this to happen since we were supposed to fly to visit her family for the holidays (and I still haven't met them), but it kind of helps keep a lot of stuff in perspective.

I got my fiancee home safe and relatively uninjured (save some stitches and a fractured thumb) after she had a fairly serious car accident on the 23rd. I've given my time in staying home and looking after her until she's feeling better (she's in a fair bit of pain). Nothing else I gave or received really matters in comparison if you ask me.

I'm just going to have to call bullshit again. Giving more abilities doesn't make a game more strategic, or somehow give it more depth. In fact, by limiting the abilities of the TF2 classes, there is more team strategy required. All that aside though, despite the limits placed on class abilities, I have seen some creative people come up with some pretty off the wall, and completely effective, strategies that you would never see in TFC. Believe me, I played TFC for years, but never have I seen the potential for team coordination and strategy that TF2 allows. TF2 was designed so that classes would have built in strengths and weaknesses. This insures that not only will they be favoured in certain situations, but barring an exceptional player they'll need to rely on their teammates to do the things they can't do well. This wasn't the case in TFC; at least not to the same degree as TF2. So from what I can gather here, you've played few FF's besides VII, VIII, XII and X-2, and based on the fact that you somehow think X-2 was good, I can only further question your taste in games. VIII may have been filled with characters with no development, more plot holes than I can shake a stick at and a battle system that was broken and easily exploited, but at least it wasn't designed from the ground up for hentai loving fan boys. I may have enjoyed the actual battle system of X-2 a great deal, but the rest of it was pure garbage.

You don't actually know what game balance means do you? Instead of a game where a good portion of the classes are useless 95% of the time (or 100% of the time in the case of the Pyro) Valve cut back on the different weapons and abilities available to each class in favour of giving them more defined roles and making them more integral members of the team in various situations. And in the process, they also opened up more opportunities for people to master each class. Is something like aim as important to be a successful Spy as opposed to a Sniper? No, but a Spy can benefit more from playing smart, and using some unorthodox thinking to get behind enemy lines and take out sentries, or half the team. For all of the Team aspect of TFC, it didn't require team work and coordination on the same level TF2 requires against a good team. It was possible (and happened often) that individuals could solo it and be successful going off on their own to cap the flag or some such. The classes did offer differences, but most of those differences did little to nothing to encourage working together. TF2 put the team back into Team Fortress, and created a game with more depth in the process. If you actually believe that then there's no point in arguing with you. You just invalidated every opinion you've ever had.

Three parts or not I'll buy it. Especially if all three parts are essentially three games. Haven't seen that video but I'll check it out at home later. Starcraft is easily my favourite RTS ever so I can't wait to play SC2 next year.

You (like many people) seem to confuse a game where it's easy to pick up and understand the underlying gameplay concepts yet has a great deal of depth and takes skill to master, and games that are made easier to attract casual gamers but require no real time investment to get the most out of. TF2 has more depth than you give it credit for. In fact, despite my love of the original TFC, I have to say that TF2 is not only far more finely balanced, but it requires more skill and coordination on the part of an entire team to really play well. As much as I like TFC, there were plenty of times where a single really good player may be able to roll a team, or battles came down to which side had more grenades. Granted the problem of really good players can still happen, but it seems to be less of a problem now if a team is aware and working well together. All that aside, I wouldn't mind playing some TFC again if other people are up for it. It won't be anytime soon since I'm away for Christmas, and I have to put all of my games back on my computer (just switched my OS last night and formatted my hard drive). Just avoid inflammatory statements like that TFC has superior gameplay to TF2 and the thread might not have degenerated into an argument over which is better.

It's probably for balance, especially in vs. Wouldn't be very fun if a Zombie could just run into the car and set the alarm off to call the horde.

I get it now. Actually a pretty good title then if you ask me. I approve.

Is Zirc trying to burn a hole through my soul with heat vision or something? Congrats guys. Took long enough.

I'm fairly certain that when bLiNd was sick he was on a pretty strict diet. Oddly enough, I didn't get that title either until I saw your question right now.

Had the chance to listen to the whole thing yesterday a couple of times and I'm listening to it again. I just want to take the chance to say great job to everyone. This album rocks.

I think walking on a treadmill while gaming is a great idea. Walking isn't super intense so there's not really a requirement to focus on form, which really lends itself to staving off boredom by doing something else at the same time. I've been keeping up with crossfit WODs for the last month or so. I only get to do maybe 3 or 4 workouts a week tops, but I'm already noticing a difference. I've gained some noticeable muscle and definition in my arms, and all of my muscles are hardening up. Chin ups are improving; hopefully I'll be back to pull ups soon. Not sure how much weight I may have lost since I don't have a scale right now.

Glad to see it released. Makes a nice early Christmas present. I'm downloading it on a crappy hotel internet connection. I hope everyone enjoys it.

Can't read the link right now, but is this another case of RE4's "you've fought Umbrella for five games now but instead of letting you finish the job, it turns out the government shut them down between the last game and this one"? Talk about a cop out.

I wasn't really talking about being bailed out by the government. If anyone gives them financing then they're bailing them out and with no real gain I can see except for saving probably a few hundred jobs for a while longer. I'm honestly surprised Midway has managed to go this long on the string of crappy games they've put out.

Hmmm, bad escort missions? RE4 style gameplay? Sounds like I'll be skipping this one as I don't like either all that much.

49 days to find $150 million? A year ago, they might have been able to pull that off somehow a year ago. With credit markets what they are though, I will be very surprised if they manage to wrangle anything close to that. And to be honest they haven't made a great game in years that I can think of, and there are plenty of companies and industries that employ a lot more people and would be better choices to lend financing (not the automakers if the status quo remains though), so I'm not even sure I can say they deserve to be bailed out by anyone over other failing businesses.

Awesome stuff. I've missed being able to go to the climbing wall at my former University since I've moved. Definitely a good workout. Also, great job to everyone who's gotten closer to, and even surpassed their goals. Great to see everyone keeping up with the working out. Went to the gym myself today and did 8 rounds of tabata set chin ups, push ups, sit ups, and squats. I can already feel my muscles getting sore as I type this. I've been keeping up with cross fit workouts when I can. I typically do a workout of the day, unless I lack the equipment to do some of the recent ones; then I'll usually put together my own. As far as progress goes, I've already noticed improvement in a lot of areas, such as my chin ups; last week I could do a set of three straight, today it was five. I've also dropped five pounds in the last week.

You can't use your speakers to comment on arena games, therefore, you can't use your speakers.

That wouldn't even make sense considering the 60GB models had PS2 chips built in while Sony went out of there way to include software emulation in the models that came after. Not to even mention the backlash they'd get. I don't think Sony would go to the trouble of doing that when it has no purpose other than to piss off PS3 owners with backwards compatible systems.

Thanksgiving was a month ago silly people.

Went out and bought a physical copy today anyway. Since I'm home a full two days before being gone again for the next two weeks I didn't want to wait that long. Even still, if I manage to sneak in some game time at all tonight, it will be for TF2. I do want to play L4D more, but I won't miss out on the OCR TF2 night if I can help it.

I may actually get on tonight. We'll see. Funny thing about that password; I tried to get Left 4 Dead last night but Steams purchase option must have been screwed up. It kept declining my credit card, despite the fact that there's tons of room on it, and I used it just last week to buy Audiosurf.

You're thinking of the DS remakes, not the GBA versions. And I would say the GBA games top this in terms of offering a new experience since they got extra dungeons and new translations at least (some of those translations being pretty sorely needed). This is pretty much the same game we got in the PSX re-release but with only the new dungeons as additions (couldn't give to craps about this online mode), and that's not enough for me to pay $40 for a game I already own.