mikeszekely

The first one? It's one of my all time favorite FPS games.

The opposite of what she needs.

Casting a hot body with a dude's face is never a good idea. And that's really all Megan Fox is... smoking hot legs supporting a jaw so square she could play Batman if Christian Bale doesn't want the role anymore.

I still can't find Universe Inferno anywhere. I'm getting pretty frustrated with that. In brighter news, I found Animated Waspinator. He's a pretty interesting figure, and I can't complain, since I found him at Toys R' Us, which is still charging $9.99 for Deluxes. His alt mode is a little weak, and his transformation isn't much more complicated than pulling the alt mode head down to his chest, turning his back legs into his bot legs, and sticking his front legs together to make arms. But the bot mode's pretty good, with decent poseability, and he's a solid homage to one of the few Beast Wars characters I actually like enough to include with my Classics/Universe figures. Now, to just come up with an internal continuity that works for me...

If only Animaniacs was still on... It's time for another "Good idea, bad idea." Good idea: Making a Fathom movie. Bad idea: Casting Megan Fox in a Fathom movie.

Since they ported the console version without thinking, does it work on the PC with a 360 controller?

Vizio, honest-and-truly, really is a decent brand that's gotten a bad reputation for being the "cheap" sets at Wal-Mart. That said, my dad only paid $787 for his Philips, and while the larger TVs in Samsung's Touch of Color line seem a little pricey, I'd probably buy the LN52A650 if I was in the market for a new one right now. But since I don't seem to be sitting on large piles of cash right now, I guess I'll still with my four year old Toshiba DLP.

So I'm a little wired tonight, and figured I'd try to wind down a bit by playing a console game for a change (I've been really into PC lately). It's been ages since I've bought a new console game, so after some thought I decided to give WipEout HD another go. Now, I'd been stuck on Headthrash, with two points to go to unlock speed freak. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought that WipEout HD is hard, right? Well, imagine my surprise to see that there was an update. I downloaded the update, WipEout restarts, and there's a note about what they changed... the difficulty! Specifically, they added two new levels of difficulty. The previous only difficulty is actually the hardist, Elite. They added Novice and Skilled modes. You don't have to restart your game, either. You can toggle the difficulty before any race by hitting square. This is great news, as far as I'm concerned. I've been a fan of the WipEout series since the original, and even the Phantom tracks in WipEout XL didn't give me as much grief as HD. In fact, I'd noticed that some of the Time Trials and Fastest Lap events were easier on the same tracks in Pulse. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'd more or less shelved the game because I was racing darn near perfect (zero collisions, just trying to find the best lines and best spots to use the turbo) and not even ranking a Bronze. I'll take it down to Skilled and get back into the game. I wish we could get Studio Liverpool to release more content (ships, tracks, etc) for it, though. Pure had a ton of content free content, and Pulse had a good bit of premium content, if I'm not mistaken. I'd love to see them bring back all the missing teams and some tracks from the older WipEout games. And yes, Sony, if you're reading this, I would pay money for it. So get to it already!

As far as I know, the mAh rating is something like the maximum storage capacity. You should be alright with a higher mAh rating, but be careful to make sure the battery's dimensions are the same. I know with cell phones, batteries that have a higher mAh rating often come with a replacement battery cover, because the battery is physically larger.

That's funny, I just bought the first one on Steam for $5.

When I see a movie that's based on a book, often the movie fails to live up to the source material. I say movie first, then book. If you do that, you're likely to enjoy the movie, then be pleasantly surprised when the book is better. If you read the book first you'll wind up disappointed at how the book was "dumbed down" for movie audiences.

Are you playing with the same toy I am? Deluxe Bumblebee is probably the worst figure in the entire Animated Line. Aside from being out-of-scale with the others, which I could live with, he's got terrible articulation, largely due to shoulders that pop out if you look at him the wrong way.

It seemed to take a little longer than usual, but it loaded fine. But if it makes you feel better, I was having issues with Blogger over the weekend, and Blogger's another Google service last I checked.

It's cool, I like Logitech stuff myself. Heck, I've got a Logitech mouse and keyboard on my HTPC (I'd use it on this computer, but I do like the feel of the Microsoft mouse better, so...), Logitech controllers for both the PS2 and PS3, and a Harmony One remote in addition to my X-540s. They make some of the best computer accessories, and their computer speakers are fine for what they are, or I wouldn't have the X-540's. And the G-51s are a reasonable upgrade, too. But comparing Logitech to, say, Denon is like comparing a hamburger to prime-grade rib-eye steak. I love a good burger, and I'm not trying to knock Logitech by saying that they're no Denon any more than I'd say a burger's no steak. By the same token, a dedicated sound card is great for audiophiles who are going to rip all their music in a lossless format like .flac and hook their computer up to a $2000 Denon receiver with $1000-each Paradigm speakers... they're steaks. But the onboard audio on that motherboard is still a good burger, and when you hook your Logitech speakers up to it, you're going to be happy with the results. And like we've said, if you're not, the wonderfully modular nature of a PC means you can always add the sound card later. Damn, I'm hungry now... it's after midnight, so I think I'll wait until lunch, but I think a trip to Red Robin is indeed in order. You're from Australia, then, Kensei? Any good burger joints there?

I only played the demo once, but I think the defaults for the HUD were metric.

You seem to be under the impression that a dedicated sound card is going to be that much better than the onboard audio, and it is... if you plan on hooking it up to real sound system, like an Onkyo or a Denon. While the G-51s are definitely better than the X-500 series, we're not talking that huge a leap. Far be it from me to tell you how to spend your money, but what's only $130 to you still isn't my definition of pocket change. With most PC games being between $20 and $50, that's 2-6 games and a tank of gas that you want to spend something you're likely to notice a difference on anyway. Absolutely. I completely forgot to mention that, even though I was thinking about (since my own HTPC has a 7100/630i board). Intel video chipsets are good for office computers that are never going to do more than Word, Excel, and Outlook. For most multimedia, a dedicated graphics card isn't necessary, but yeah, you should still be shopping Nvidia and ATI boards.

Not up to the task? It's overkill! Straight up, unless you're trying to future proof because you still want to use that computer seven or eight years from now, it's overkill. Oh, and check with your friend to make sure that copy of Vista Ultimate is 64-bit, otherwise go with a trio of 1GB sticks instead of 2GB sticks. I agree with Az 100% on the hard drive... the slightly faster spin of the Raptors don't come close to justifying their ridiculous prices. It's easily the worst performance/cost upgrade you can think of. Stick with a 7200rpm Seagate Momentus or a Western Digital Barracuda, and spend your money on extra gigabytes. As for the monitor thing, unless you're swimming in cash (and the rest of the components you're considering suggest you might be), a 24" monitor might not even be necessary. It's true that they tend to support higher resolutions than the 22"ers, but I think quality is more important than overall resolution. I've seen plenty of 24" and 26" monitors with washed out colors, dim screens, poor color, etc that look like garbage compared to mine. Be advised that contrast ratio isn't really all that important, since what criteria a manufacturer uses to define contrast ratio isn't standardized. Response time is more important, especially if you're gaming. Don't go higher than 5ms; get 2ms if you can. (Also consider the optimal distance for viewing a screen of X size... no sense parking a monitor right in front of you, then constantly turning your head left and right to try to see everything on it). Logitech X-530 speakers? Skip the sound card, at least for now. The ADI AD2000b audio chipset on the motherboard is already plenty good enough for X-530s (and I'm not knocking them... I have the X-540's myself). If you find yourself disagreeing with my assessment, you can always upgrade later. Yeah, I've done the home theater PC thing. I can be useful for doing stuff like watching streaming video, or formats like .mkv that other devices don't. In my experience, though, it's better to have one excellent computer at your desk for your everyday gaming and computing, and a separate computer for an HTPC. Get a micro-ATX motherboard with solid on-board audio AND video, then match it to a higher-end CPU. Then buy an HTPC-specific case/PSU combo. You'll end up with a much smaller footprint in your home theater area. HD video is easier for most PCs than modern 3D gaming, so you don't need a high-end graphics card (or the extra power they draw).

Yes. I mean, I hate it. I'll concede that it's a good idea, if poorly implemented. But as long as it's optional, I'm not going to hold it against the game. Does anyone know if there's any advantages/disadvantages to any particular version? I'm used to playing those sorts of games on consoles, but I've been getting a lot of use out of my PC lately. If one version has some great exclusive content, I might want to go for that, but if not, I'm thinking PC, if only for the mods that could turn up... first one to get a Valkyrie in the game gets a cookie.

Yes. Warpath and Rodimus too, but I only bought Warpath. Mentioned it just one page back. Wheelie's okay, but way better than the original. His transformation reminds me of Brawn's a little. Cosmos is the weakest of the three I bought, because his arms are always curved. It's still a pretty good toy for $5. Warpath is the best of the three. His tank mode looks a little weird with the gaps around the treads, but his transformation is pretty involved for a Legends class. I suppose different people will get different mileage out of characters they had more attachment to than others, but for me, Jazz is the only Legends figure that I still want a Deluxe for. I wouldn't have minded Warpath, I suppose, but for Wheelie, Beachcomber, Brawn, and Cosmos, well, I'm just not into them enough to really have been interested in more than Legends. For that matter, I would have preferred a Powerglide that was more red, and a Legends figure. My question is, where are all the Decepticons? The Autobots were already outnumbering the Decepticons, and with the added Legends figures, they've really pulled ahead. The Legends class is a good place to add a few simple Decepticons that don't necessarily rate a bigger toy. I'd love a Legends Rumble, Frenzy, Reflector, Bombshell, Shrapnel, Kickback, Runabout, or Runamuck.

I totally didn't know there was a dedicated thread for this game. I'd played the demo, and posted my thoughts in the "All Things Videogames" thread. I'll just cut and paste what I put there to continue the discussion here.

I'll look into it, but I honestly haven't booted my MacBook in months (my main computer is a Windows desktop I built for gaming).

Went out today to pick up a new cell phone. Wasn't planning on hitting any other stores, but I figured, why not, I'm driving right past Toys R' Us. That had the wave 3 Universe Legends, so I picked up Cosmos, Warpath, and Wheelie. No sign of Voyager Inferno... I ultimately even swung by Wal-Mart, and no dice there, either.

Many thanks. Truly, you are a noble among cannons. If you don't mind my asking, what software do you use? I tried reencoding the first IGLOO awhile back, but the audio came out badly out of sync, and the whole process was a pain in the rear (extracting the subtitles, converting the subtitles into an srt file... no hardsubs, then covert the video separately).

I'm gonna wait and see if GRAND CANNON re-encodes episode 2. I'm pretty impressed with how episode 1 came out. Which reminds me... thanks for the work and the upload, GC!

Interesting what they're working on, but less useful considering that you need a Swap Magic disk. I guess I'll keep my modded PS2 hooked up for awhile longer.