mikeszekely

What? Newfangledstuff? Hate it. Too many buttons. What's with all the buttons? Back in my day, we only had one button! It was a volume up button. There was no volume down button, so you had to be damn sure you wanted to turn the volume up. That's the problem with you kids today, you don't think! You just say whatever garbage that pops into your head on that Tweeter nonsense. You know how we sent messages during the war? Why, I had to get on my bicycle and ride five miles to old Thompson's drug store. Only telephone in town back in those days. Then I'd call up my best girl... still remember her telephone number: 8. Course, telephone numbers were a lot shorter back in those days. We didn't have no fancy flim-flams like "area codes" back then. Didn't need 'em! Life was a lot simpler then. We worked hard, we telephoned infrequently, and we listened to the radio loud! And to be able to afford that radio, I had to work 14 hours a day at the mill. Payed 3 cents an hour, and I was glad for it! Kid's today, you just don't know the value of a nickle! You toss them into the fountains at the mall you're always hanging around at. Didn't have time for loitering back in my day, no sir. Kids today. Too much time. You don't know what real work is. Ah, where's my pills? Is Matlock on? Where's the volume up button?

I do kind of remember hearing something about that, now that you mentioned it. So who's still in Daimler's portfolio? I'm assuming Dodge went with Chrysler, since this new 300 has a Hemi. Yeah, I read the link. I realize it's about a sedan. It's just that I'd have to try REALLY hard to come up with a more generic-looking sedan. The thing looks custom made for a government motor pool. If you really want a Hemi, there's gotta be better rides than that (though I freely admit that you're unlikely to find that much horsepower in another Dodge/Chrysler sedan, probably have to go with the Challenger).

I agree enthusiastically with 1, 3, and 5. I personally don't care for Facebook, but its existence doesn't bother me. I like Twitter though, and use it to keep tabs on several of my friends. It's like low-maintenance social networking. As for blogging, while I'm sure there are a ton that are junk, I get more news from blogs like Kotaku than I ever did from print. Lastly, I love smartphones. Freaking LOVE them. I can't wait to replace my very dated HTC Touch Pro2 with a new phone... I'd have bought the Droid Incredible by now, if not for leaked info on the Droid Incredible HD. Other tech I hate would be... 1.) DRM. A good idea in theory years ago, in practice it's made life a bitch for the paying customers and has done nothing to deter piracy. Yet content providers are hell bent on making us use it anyway. 2.) The "Cloud". Hard drives are cheap as all get out, my Comcast-provided internet seems to drop at least once a month, and providers are already whining about how they don't have enough bandwidth to serve all the Netflix we've been watching. I can't imagine why people would want to do on their computing in a cloud. 3.) Dashboard displays. Sure, it's nice to have a bunch of info at your fingertips, but my current car is way to patronizing. My old car had a light on the dash if the driver's seat belt was unbuckled (and I didn't feel it was necessary to buckle up just to drive trash from my apartment to the other side of the complex where the dumpster is). My new car beeps once if the passenger doesn't buckle up, and beeps continuously until the driver either buckles up or shuts off the car. My tire pressure is supposed to be 35psi. I like that it lets me know if it's low, but I don't like how it beeps every time you turn it on, with a "Low pressure" message on the display that won't go until you add air when one tire (can't tell me something useful like WHICH one) gets to around 30psi. The absolute worst is the beep and the "Roads may be icy" message that comes on not when the roads are actually wet or icy, but EVERY TIME you turn the car on and the temperature is below 35 degrees. At that point, it's not warning me that the roads seriously could be icy, it's pretty much telling me that ALL roads have a potential to be icy should the temperature be below freezing, and that the temperature is in fact below freezing. Really? I guess that explains all the freaking snow you're buried under, Mister Genius car! 4.) Motion-controlled gaming. Let's all be honest now, the Wii is pretty terrible. Once a year, a must-have game comes out for it that makes you wish the Wii had the power of the other consoles, and the rest of the year is fueled by gimmicky crap. But hey, that gimmicky crap sells! So now that crap has come to the PS3 and Xbox 360, too. Joy.

I don't think that the GTR looks bad per se, just not great. It certainly doesn't look as exciting as other cars with similar performance. As for the 370Z, at least it's an improvement from the 350Z. The lines are less Audi, more Porsche. The Daimler-Chrysler group should do the automotive world a favor and kill off the Chrysler van. I think the last time Chrysler had a car that wasn't flat-out boring was the PT Cruiser. And even then, the PT Cruiser might not have been boring, but it was kind of stupid.

Well, I wanted to give it until I'd seen all five parts of the first story arc to form an opinion. I've got a few. I'd rather Orci and Kurtzman stay the hell away from Transformers. Bayformers have been the worst incarnation of the franchise, and Prime is at least 70% Bayformers. The writing so far is pretty bland. It's mostly hobbled together elements from the disparate Transformers universes, and without the imagination that Animated had. The Transformers are pretty bland. Ratchet is grumpy Ratchet from Animated, but without the cantankerousness of age, he's just unlikeable. I hate to criticize Peter Cullen since, in my ears, he IS Optimus Prime, but while Peter definitely has the market on Prime's wisdom, compassion, and determination, I think Gary Chalk's Prime is more energetic. Likewise, while it's cool to hear Frank Welker doing Megatron again, his Megatron sounds a little cheesy compared to, say, Corey Burton. That's not too bad, because Megatron in Prime is definitely more crazy megalomaniac Megatron than Animated's brutal and cunning version. As for the rest of the cast, Bumblebee and Soundwave have no dialogue, Arcee is your stereotypically guarded tough-gal, and Bulkhead is your stereotypical dull but compassionate tough-guy. Bulkhead makes me sad especially, because he lacks most of the character that he had in Animated. Surprisingly, though, the humans aren't too bad. Jack can be a little emo at times, and Miko can be a little annoying, but I think they might be my favorite humans in a Transformers show so far. Well, regular humans, at any rate... Detective Fanzone was kinda cool. Bottom line, I'm going to watch it because it's Transformers. I hope that it'll get better now that they've got the "epic" premiere out of the way. But in the back of my mind, I'm always going to be thinking, "They canceled Animated for THIS?"

I actually kinda like it. He sorta reminds me of a tiger.

I was feeling bored, so I decided against my better judgment to take a drive over to my local Target and Walmart. At Target, I was surprised to find Cliffjumper and Skullgrin, as well Red Alert, Megatron, and Darkmount. No sign of Blurr, Dirge, or Thunderwing though. At Walmart, it looked like it was going to be a total bust, as they didn't have beans in the toy aisle. On the way to electronics they had some holiday shippers out, and one of them had some of the new Hunt for the Decepticons figures on it. I picked up Terradive because I like jets. For the pros, I like his jet mode a lot. Unlike a lot of other recent jetformers, there's not a huge hunk of robot underneath. Transforming him is pretty neat... it's really like unfolding a jet, then folding it back up into a robot instead. There are obvious jet parts on his body, but very little actual kibble. The result is a bot who's surprisingly slim and posable. Oh, and I was worried that he might be a melee-only character, but was pretty giddy when I realized that if you don't finish his arm transformation, his jet engine forearm is a dead ringer for a Mega Buster. On the con side, QC doesn't seem all that hot. On mine, the balljoint on his left hip is a little loose, his right arm falls off just below his shoulder if you so much as sneeze at him, and it doesn't matter how many times or how hard you try, his left shoulder will not stay pegged into his chest. So, here's the deal... if you like transforming jets or very poseable transformers, and don't mind the movie aesthetic, Terradive's a blast. But he really doesn't fit with the Classics/Generations/Universe/whatevers.

Oh gee... it's been awhile since I've used XP. I know people gave Vista a lot of flack, but with enough computer and SP1, it made XP seem positively primitive, so I never went back. IIRC, though, you said you were going to switch to Windows 7 in the near future? Anyway, out of curiosity, has your computer identified your monitor and installed any drivers for it?

As a PS3 exclusive, I was kinda wondering why you brought up GT5 in this thread instead of the PS3 one. Then I went out and bought the game, played it for two hours, and realized that it might be impossible to talk about GT5 without bringing up Forza 3. Within the vacuum of the Gran Turismo series, GT5 is a worthy addition. More than any Gran Turismo before it, GT5 is really about racing... F1, Nascar, and even go-karts supplement the regular car racing. The car list is impressive at around 1000 cars, and in Travel/Photo mode, the premium cars look fantastic. And the improved physics have me sorely tempted to pick up a Driving Force GT wheel. GT5 is handily the biggest and best Gran Turismo to date. The problem is, in the time between Gran Turismo 4 and Gran Turismo 5, three Forza games have been released. Forza was drawing comparisons to GT from the get go (I'm sure the fact that each series being both high quality and platform-exclusive didn't help). While GT5 has a better physics engine (Forza never really had me interested in a wheel), more variety in events, and more cars, there's a lot of things that Forza does better. Sometimes that seems like it's because Turn 10 tries really hard. I think that Forza 3 has more tweakable gameplay settings that help make the game more accessible to more people, and I like how breaking the cars up into classes prevented too large a gap in performance between cars in a given race. But sometimes it feels like Polyphony Digital was slacking off. Like, the 200 premium cars look good, but the other 800 look like crap. Even the premium cars have their share of jaggies and blocky shadows, and the tracks look like they pulled right out of Gran Turismo 4. There's no use in having 1000 cars if you can't make them look like they weren't for a last-gen console, especially when a dozen of them might be different years of the same model that you'd have a hard time convincing people they wanted even one of. And the menus... navigating GT5 is done primarily by drilling moving a mouse cursor from frame to frame with the dpad and steadily drilling your way down through the menus until you get where you want. It's actually a lot like browsing the PlayStation Store. And while that might work for a store, it's a mess for navigating a game. The bottom line is, GT5 is a good game. If you're a fan of the series, you'll almost certainly like GT5. I just don't think that, despite the years of development and related hype, that GT5 is as groundbreaking as the first three games in the series is. What's more, for those of you that own multiple consoles, I can't help feeling like Forza 3 is actually a better game than GT5 (although GT5 is still worth playing).

The world just lost a little funny.

I think the first season is 26 episodes, and I think the first five make a mini series. And I'm not sure what the regular schedule is supposed to be, but the first five eps are supposed to air one a day, Monday through Friday this week. What we got on Black Friday was like a preview, and those eps will air Monday and Tuesday.

Shut up! Someone in Hollywood could be reading this! You're going to give them ideas!

Yeah, except that at 12" it's really pushing what you'd call a netbook (really just because you're still stuck with the painfully slow Atom processor), and at that price you could have bought a 14" or 15" laptop with a better processor, more RAM, and a DVD drive. Unless you're not using it for your main computer. If you've already got a computer, and you were just looking for something small and light to play some media files and surf the net... well, that's why tablets are all the rage now.

You really make me wish I had more money to make you a serious offer with.

Do not want. Wahlberg's WAY too serious to pull off Nathan Drake's wry charm. Almost anyone would be a better choice than Wahlberg. Although I have to say, I kinda disagree with... well, most of the internet, in that I'd probably not go with Nathan Fillion, either. I think Fillion's a terrific actor who'd nail Drake's wit, but I think he looks a little too... worn, I guess. It works for him in Castle, and it really worked for him in Firefly, but I just can't picture Fillion doing the running and jumping and climbing that'd surely go with the role. Actually (even though he's actually a year older), Drake's voice actor, Nolan North, would be a better choice. But let's suppose for a minute that Wahlberg wasn't going to play Drake. Let's imagine they got a guy who looks, acts, and sounds just like Drake instead. The supporting cast doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either. Not that I have anything against Danny DeVito or Joe Pesci, but c'mon. Uncharted is kind of like a modern Indiana Jones, with that just-right blend of comedy, action, and adventure. Writer/director David Russell seems to think that it's about gangsters.

For me, I want a strong single-player component, even in FPS games. I've never played online with people on my PS3, and VERY rarely on Xbox or Xbox 360 (and then, usually with people I know in real life). On PC, the only games I've played multiplayer are the two Left 4 Dead games (and again, with people I know in real life). That's one of the main reasons that Call of Duty has lost a lot of its luster in my eyes. Call of Duty 2 impressed me for actually engaging me with its cinematic qualities despite being the umpteenth time I'd done the Normandy landing. Modern Warfare was still fun, but the change in focus to multiplayer was starting to become apparent even then. So if you ask me to pick a personal favorite shooter franchise, you're going to be way in the minority. With multiplayer being something I do on the Xbox when friends come over, with my interest in single player story and presentation, well, I'd have to go with F.E.A.R. Sure, both games in the franchise had their flaws, but I cared enough to figure out what was going on and who the characters were, which is more than I can say for any of the Call of Duty games.

Call of Duty springs to mind right away, but I wrote that off to Bobby Kotick being a greedy bastard. I think Medal of Honor did it too, but I'd kinda hoped that was just EA trying desperately to convince everyone that MoH was Call of Duty. I know New Vegas was only $50, and I've seen Force Unleashed II and War for Cybertron for $40. So while a couple of games are going for $60, we're not there yet.

Sure. I mean, I can't really speak for everyone, but it puts my personal universe back in order.

If you go to my Target, you can pick one of two Transformers: WFC Bumblebee or Sea Attack Ravage. Which tells me they sold WFC Prime and that gray Harrier-looking dude since the last time I checked two weeks ago. As for TRU, no way I'm setting foot in there until January. I like Transformers, but not as much as I love not being in crowds of desperate parents and not having my car dinged and scratched when said desperate parents inevitably forget how to drive and park. Seriously, I swear the holidays decrease people's ability to drive by at least 25% around here.

Sure, except the computer I built 3 years ago was playing even new games at or near the highest settings, and it only ran me $900 or so when I built it. I didn't need to replace it (as my wife is fond of reminding me), I wanted to have a comp in the bedroom, so I chose to build a faster one. That still only ran me $1100. So yeah, maybe my hardware does cost more than PS3... it's also much more powerful and gives me the option to use a controller or a mouse and keyboard as I see fit, with games that run between $10-$30 less than their console counterparts. PC might look like it's behind the curve, that's just because it's so far ahead that it's about to lap this console generation.

I take it you're referring to Black Ops (which I honestly didn't have issues running, but maybe my new hardware just took it better, I dunno). Or maybe craptastic ports of console games instead of games actually made for PC. Or you're just thinking of a different curve. 'Cuz Sony can talk about the potential of the Cell until Ken Kutaragi and Kevin Butler for a tag team wrestling duo, but I'm pretty sure my old PC could outperform the PS3, let alone my new rig.

I suspect that Black Ops is rife with those kinds of errors. Like the first Vietnam mission, "S.O.G.", for example, opens with the song "Fortunate Son" playing on the radio. They're pretty clear on the fact that the mission (the majority of the game, actually) takes place early in 1968, but "Fortunate Son" wasn't released until fall of '69. In any case, I thought the game was mostly so-so. I give Treyarch credit for trying something different and setting the game during the Cold War instead of WWII or the present. Still, I think the franchise has definitely worn a little thin by now. In fact, Call of Duty reminds me of Shymalan's movies. The first couple of Shymalan movies were cool because of the twist, but then you started to see them coming. Likewise, it was the "holy crap!" moments of Call of Duty that made the franchise... the huge battles, tanks busting through a fence, etc. But again, I think that maybe after getting killed by the nuke in Modern Warfare, the scripted wow moments sort of lost their impact. The result was a game that was moderately entertaining, but one that was less appealing to me than replaying Crysis now that I have hardware that can actually run it on the highest settings.

Figured I'd give the new Hot Pursuit a try. On the positive side, it's probably the best-looking NFS of this console generation, and the cop missions are crazy fun. Oh, and I think it's the first game I've played that actually has the moving spoiler on the Bugatti Veyron. Something else I like is that you can play your single-player career, but if you have friends playing the game it'll keep track of what they're doing. For example, there's a cop mission where you want to take out as many racers as you can before they cross the finish line. So you not only have the challenge of trying to take out all of them to get a gold medal, but you can also see what your friend's time was on the same event and try to beat him. On the downside, it's very much a throwback to pre-Underground, and it lacks a lot of the franchise's evolution. In fact, it reminds me in some ways of Burnout 3. The career consists of a map, and events pop up on the map. There are events for racing, and cop events. Depending on how you do, you can either get a bronze/pass, a silver/merit, or a gold/distinction. You also earn points. The more points you have, the higher your level and the more cars you'll unlock. And that's pretty much it. Of the six NFS games of the current console generation, I'd say Hot Pursuit is one of the better ones. Maybe not as good as Most Wanted or Undercover (which was good, I don't give a flip what the magazines said), but better than Carbon, Shift, and ProStreet.

I wasn't collecting during Beast Wars (as good as the show was, by and large I find myself in the "Trukk not munky!" crowd when it comes to toys), so I can't really comment on those three. But I'd say Mudflap's going to have some serious competition from Hunt for the Decepticons Ravage and Generations Bumblebee. TRU's really the only place around my area I can still find Mudflap, but judging by what's on the hooks Bee and Ravage aren't selling at all (which might explain why it's so hard to find newer Generations figs... like they won't put any new ones on the shelves until the old ones go, and they won't go because they're all Bumblebee and nobody wants Bumblebee anymore.

Which disc? As long as it's not the play disc, you could install it from a downloaded ISO. No one should buy a netbook. Ever. For smaller, portable web-browsing type devices tablet slates are the new hotness. For real computing, netbooks aren't just cramped to work on, the Atom processor is slower than Duke Nukem Forever's development.