mikeszekely

Thanks for the suggestions, Az. It's funny that I use Newegg for all my computer needs, and I hadn't considered buying a phone from them. After shopping around, though, the phone I want seems to be $600-$700 unlocked. I guess I'm going to have to suck it up for another year, but hey, maybe Windows Mobile 7 will be out by then...

Unlocked. I mean, I have a little more than a year left on my two-year contract with Verizon, so it'll be that long before I qualify for contract-pricing with them again. But I'd like to replace my phone now, if I can find a better deal that what Verizon's offering on the same phone (likely the HTC Touch Pro 2) without a contract. But since it's Verizon, and it's never as easy as swapping a SIM card with them, I'd still need to find a deal on the Verizon version.

Out of curiosity, anyone know a good place to get deals on phones without a contract price? I'm a WinMo user, so I don't have a lot of (decent) choices. I've been using the Omnia for a little less than a year... it'd be a great phone if WinMo supported capacitive touch screens. The resistive touch screen on it is so bad that I have to change the keyboard settings to type the number "1", and I rely on xt9 to know when I mean "a" instead of "s". I'm not sure if I can make it another year without a hardware keyboard. The HTC Touch Pro 2 is really tempting me, but I don't really want to spend $500 on it.

Stopped at Target to get stuff for my work's Black Friday shindig. On a whim I walked through the toy section and found the Target exclusive Universe Voyager Leo Prime in the BWII Lio Convoy colors. I'd passed on the first Universe Leo Prime because red and blue works for trucks, but not so much for ligers, so I picked this one up. Naturally, the colors are much better, IMHO, and more evocative of the character he's supposed to be. I also give Hasbro big props for doing a new head mold for Leo Prime (either color) instead of just straight up repainting Leobreaker. I really appreciate that, because while I've bought all the Classics and I'll buy Universe figures if they're G1-ish, I have a soft spot for Primes from other lines. That's pretty much all the good I have to say about it, though. It's a terrible mold, with lousy articulation and a transformation that makes Animated Leader Megatron look complicated. He can spread his legs and bend them at the waist and knees, but there's no rotation in his legs. Or his hips. His ankles have some forward/backward bend, but this is mostly due to his transformation and doesn't aid in posing him. As for his arms, his shoulders rotate and he can lift his arms up about 90 degrees to his sides. His elbows bend, but they rotate below his elbows which limits his range of motion. Transformation consists of popping his tail off, standing him up on his back legs, folding out some panels at his hips so that you can rotate his torso downward, playing with his front legs until they're arms, then popping his head robot head out and sticking his tail into his hand like a whip. I guess you can turn him into an arm for Cybertron Leader Optimus Prime (which I have) or Megatron (which I don't). He doesn't come with the instructions to do that, but I saw a picture and worked from it... and the result was so stupid-looking that I searched for Leobreaker's instructions online, only to realize with dismay that I'd done it right. I say it's stupid-looking because the only way it looks like an arm is if you imagine that it's one upper-arm that splits at elbow to have two forearms and two hands. If you've just got to have a Leo Prime (besides trying to track down the original Leo Prime/Lio Convoy), this would be the one to get, and I don't regret adding him to my collection. It's just that, after getting so many great new molds in Classics/Universe like Mirage, Cyclonus, and Hound Leo Prime feels like a huge step backwards.

He means Assassin's Creed 2. Many games with those initials, but only one released this week.

Maybe you were thinking of the old Galoob one? I had it as a kid. I remember not only the saucer being kind of loose, but the engineering section being coming apart into three pieces (not by design, but because it didn't hold together very well).

It's new Dragon Age DLC.

Don't collect anime Barbies. Got it.

You summed up my thoughts on Modern Warfare 2 pretty well.

It's pretty good, but not as good as his Fallout 3 review. *opening credits* "Yeah... it's pretty good." *closing credits* And yes, I know the credits stopped and he actually reviewed the game after, but after weeks of Yahtzee verbally raping every game he played, that tiny bit at the beginning made the whole review.

That case is really nice, but not exactly a "freebie." My local Target's asking $30 for Enterprise-case Blu-ray... so I bought Star Trek at Wal-Mart, where they only wanted $20 for the regular Blu-ray.

Yeah, it seems shorter than the first Modern Warfare, and a lot shorter than World at War. See, I have mixed feelings on it. There were some awesome levels (infiltrating the Russian base in the snowstorm) mixed with some really crappy ones (Brazil). And the story didn't make a lick of sense.

Everything you could want to know about Broly. Probably more.

Might want to lurk in the "Games" area now and then.

There's no difference. You have to be wapanese for words like "hikikomori" to be part of you vocabulary. And the irony is arguing that some anime is "mainstream crap" as if that made watching more obscure anime hardcore... Depends on your perspective, I suppose, but I'm going to say you're alright, Pete.

And yet Counter Strike began its life as a Half Life Mod. And lets not forget that many PC gamers greatly prefer the mouse and keyboard combo for FPS games over the Xbox 360's controller. So Activision screwed up on my platform of choice for Modern Warfare 2. I'm not going to do anything crazy like sign some stupid petition floating around on the internet, but I'm sure as hell not spending what's traditionally $10 more for a PC game that's a screwed up console port. I'm not blaming Activision for going the road that's going to make them the most money; I just don't think the final product is worth my money.

What level? I was thinking of going back to kill it later.

Oh, it's irrelevant now. I'm done with Orzammar, and I haven't taken Ohgren with me since. My default party is Leiliana (ranged fighting and lock-picking), Morrigan (massive spell damage), myself (slice-and-dice tank) and Shale (back-up tank).

Hurry up and re-beat it then! Arkham and Dragon Age are both great games. So much so that I was thinking Arkham was the best game of the year... right up until I started playing Dragon Age.

You're probably playing like a good guy. Morrigan always seems to want to do the evil thing.

She looks kinda like Tara Reid in that picture. Like David, Leiliana is usually the last go down for me. Amusingly, though, I took Ohgren with me right around the time he joined my party, because I figured there might be some plot stuff relevant to him. I didn't have any decent gear for him on me, and it seemed like he was rushing headlong into every fight, where he'd promptly get slaughtered. By the time we got to the... boss encounter... of that area, he had something like eight or nine injuries because I wasn't wasting my injury kits on him anymore. What amused me, though, was after one encounter he was getting up and muttering, "This usually never happens to me." I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me? It's happened a dozen times already since I brought you down here!" If I had to guess, probably mid-20s. I know 36 or 38 for the best heavy armor, so...

Yes, for the Xbox 360 version. I think you have to buy PSN points for the PS3, and it's EA points for the PC. The consensus we reached in the other thread is that the Warden's Keep isn't really worth what they're asking for it. If you buy a new copy before April, though, you get the Stone Prisoner content for free. That's worthwhile.

I guess, if you're actively trying to experience as much as you can, that could be a downer. I look at it as an upside; sometimes I like to replay games, and I appreciate it when I can see new things during those replays.

Fine by me, since I have a feeling Modern Warfare 2 is going to take over the VG thread.

As David noted earlier, the party banter in general is great in this game. Some of my favorites have included Leliana and Morrigan exchanging some catty dialogue while fighting over me, Ohgren suggesting that Morrigan's shapeshifting might have some perverted uses, and Shale questioning why the Maker would create birds during a theological discussion with Leliana. As for Modern Warfare 2, as much as I loved the previous Infinity Ward Call of Duty games I'm a little unhappy with the state of affairs for the PC version and sick of the ridiculous hype surrounding the game, especially from the crowd that doesn't play much more than Halo and Madden. So I'm actually skipping it for now. I figure after the holidays I'll find some used copies for the 360 or something.