mikeszekely

All well and good, but when's Serenity and Transformers coming to Blu-ray?

It's correct that if it explodes tomorrow, we have 8000 years before we have to start worrying. But it's also true that that it could have exploded 7999 years ago, and we won't know until we see it a year from now. If scientists see it exploding, it's already too late.

Aw man, I totally didn't think about that! She's not just hot, she's Asian hot! That would have killed them! And she goes to bed early most nights, but she even stayed up because it was the weekend. Of course, she didn't want to spend Saturday night at a Gamestop; she stayed home and played Puzzle Quest.

Thanks. Well, I like Norton, and it looks a little more actiony, which I guess is what most people wanted. But I'm with you; I actually liked Ang Lee's version just fine.

Link?

This sums up my thoughts pretty well. At this particular moment in time, I've got three desktops with Windows XP, I'm putting Vista on a fourth, I intend to stick Windows 2000 on an old Pentium III 500MHz that someone tossed once I find a few parts for it, and I have a 1st gen MacBook that dual boots Leopard and Vista. At its simplest, if you're asking which is the better OS, I'd go with Mac OS 9 times out of ten. XP looks old and ugly compared to Tiger, and Vista looks just as old and ugly compared to Leopard. OS X is just cleaner, easier to work with, and less prone to develop the sort of problems Windows does. Almost every major application that most people use on a daily basis either has a Mac version or a Mac alternative, including Adobe Reader, Firefox, VLC Media Player, and Office. Macs do tend to be a little more expensive, but I think a bit of that is that they don't have any super-cheap entry-level computers, aside from the Mac Mini. When it comes to notebooks, I'd rather spend a little extra on a Mac than buy an el-cheapo Compaq or something. Apple does have two issues worth paying attention to, though. First is gaming. If you plan to game at all, you can pretty much forget about a Mac. While the Mac's been getting a little more loving lately, typically Mac games are about a year behind the Windows version, and almost always cost more. The original Neverwinter Nights is still $40 or $50, but for $20 you can buy the Windows version with all the expansions. The other issue is the proprietary nature of the hardware. You can pretty much only upgrade the hard drive and RAM in most Macs (and in some cases, it's difficult to do even that). To me, that's not a big deal for a laptop, since you can't upgrade laptops much anyway, but as someone who routinely digs around in the guts of desktop towers, I find the iMacs and the Mac Pros a little too closed off for my tastes. For my primary use, then, I stick to Mac for my laptop, and I build my own desktop. But for fun, I'll clean and restore just about anything I can get my hands on. When given a choice of Windows, go with XP, especially if you're going to do any gaming. That's not to say XP won't give you headaches, but they'll be familiar headaches.

In Japan, which probably doesn't even figure into any deal Microsoft struck with Namco. I don't think it's been that long since it hit the US. Forget games that already came out on the 360, I want a date for WipEout HD.

No, they did the same thing with Soul Calibur II. PS2 version had Heihachi on the cover, Link was on the Cube, and Spawn on the Xbox. View. I'm not surprised. Anyway, although I usually go with the 360 for multiplatform games since the Achievements are usually the tiebreaker for me, I'm going to part with tradition and get the PS3 version of Soul Calibur IV. Vader > Yoda, and vague mentions that the other character MIGHT be DLC aren't enough for me.

Man, I was just at my local Target last night, and they didn't have jack in their clearance section. Soul Calibur II had three different covers, each featuring its exclusive character. So this is really nothing new.

I think the load times on Brawl are horrendous, but other than that I haven't had any issues. I finished Classic mode three times, and I did the first 10 Events, but mostly I've been playing the Subspace Emissary to unlock characters. I'm down to just Sonic, Wolf, Toon Link, and Jigglypuff.

Well, I picked mine up after the tournament. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, since I just got up a little bit ago, and I have to go to my parents'. Just waiting for the missus to get ready. Stupid DST. Oh, for those of you that were wondering, I got my butt kicked. There were only a few kids there; I guess they have bed times. There were a few normal people as well. Honestly, though, that tournament brought out some of the worst examples of humanity I've seen in awhile. These were people that, if they hadn't imported the Japanese version, gathered every scrap of Brawl information they could find on the net while playing Melee obsessively. They seemed genuinely shocked and offended at the suggestion that it's been years since I've played a Smash Bros game, and worse, that I'd brought a PSP and God of War to pass the time instead of a DS. Very few of them were familiar with the concept of hygiene; the stench from one person was so great that I let a few people jump the line in front of me to create a buffer.

I noticed that too. Ironic, since I've been watching Masterforce. I love all the little G1 easter eggs in Animated.

That's actually what I said. Sorry for the poor wording, what I wrote could easily be read as "Force Unleashed doesn't track the Wiimote's motion, which Zelda did." Read it instead as "Force Unleashed, like Zelda, doesn't track the Wiimote's motion." I ate at a Red Robin that's in the same plaza as my local Gamestop, so I swung by to see if I had to wait until Sunday morning to pick up Brawl, or if they were doing a midnight launch. Somehow, I got roped into doing their Smash Bros tournament. On top of that, tonight we spring forward in the Eastern Time Zone. This means that I'll be up late tonight, probably being humiliated by some 11 year old, only to have to get up early tomorrow morning for breakfast at my parents' house. On the plus side, if I somehow miraculously beat a store, district, region, then nation full of people who play Smash Bros. much more than I, I hear that part of the grand prize is the entire Wii library thus far. That'd be pretty sweet.

So, I'm working my way through the Japanese G1 sequels for the first time. Is it just me, or is Masterforce magnitudes better than Headmasters?

But those videogames and computer games are directly descended from geek programmers trying to emulate D&D on the computer. I mean, World of Warcraft wouldn't be what it was today had Ultima Online not come before it. And Ultima creator Richard Garriot was a D&D player. The original Final Fantasy had a class system, extra attacks, an 8 level spell system, and spell slots, all ripped from D&D. There's nothing "quite the reverse" here; without D&D modern RPGs, be they computer or console, western or JPRGs, wouldn't exist. You might not like him, and you can marginalize his creation of D&D or the actual game of D&D itself, but you're really kidding yourself if you think you can marginalize D&D's impact. That's like saying, "Henry Ford wasn't so great, all he did was rip off the carriage, which had been around for a long time before, and combined it with a combustion engine that the automotive industry is moving away from." (Yeah, I know that despite research into alternative fuels, no one's really moving away from combustion engine. But I figure the analogy is apt, because no one's really moving away from dice... D&D is still king, and 4th edition is still d20. Even storytelling games like World of Darkness use d6's to resolve actions.)

I'm enjoying God of War, but I still can't get used to holding L+R+analog stick to evade. Honestly, if L is just block, why didn't they make it L+analog stick? Why did they need to add another button to that? Anyway, the result is that I'm finding the game, especially bosses, to be slightly harder than its PS2 siblings, just because I'm taking more hits.

What's your thoughts on the multi-touch trackpad? I really like the whole multi-touch bit in the iPhone/iPod touch, but I'm not sure I'd like it on a laptop trackpad.

Screw the Federation's socialist utopia! I'm going Romulan.

I'm not sure that there's really a "debate" anymore or that there's a legion of hardcore audiophiles/videophiles swearing by Monster Cables, so much as Monster Cables are still being thrust upon the uninformed masses. I mean, we think in terms of what it costs us to buy something. To us, a $1000 LCD is more expensive and a bigger purchase than a $125 HDMI cable. But to Best Buy, that TV might cost them $800 to stock, and that cable might only cost them $25.

How long ago did you buy your PS3? I bought mine in July, and didn't get the Blu-rays until November. My results might not be typical; a lot of people on this very site have claimed a turnaround time of only a few weeks. Even if there's some issue, they'll usually send your submission back with a note on why they sent it back. Happened to be with the free HD-DVD offer.

That's hilarious! I heard the markup on those cables is obscene, that's why stores like Best Buy push them so hard.

Heck, you get yourself a motherboard with integrated video and borrow an optical drive from another system, you got yourself a computer. You could always add a solid video card later. Heh, I'm not ready to upgrade quite yet, as I already have a 13" Intel Core Duo MacBook. I'm not sure I could justify the cash for a MacBook Pro. But even if I did, I heard the Penryn MacBooks aren't supposed to be major leaps over the previous MacBooks. Best Buy has their entire line of MacBooks (minus the Air) on Clearance to make room for the Penryns. My friend bought the Pro yours replaced for $1800. He's not sure about spending even that much, so I might trade him laptops and pay him the difference.

That's true, but he's still got a bit of a point. Looking over the last two or three pages of this thread, a few of them were basically "Look at all the 360's RRoDing in the wild!" Maybe I'm an anomaly here, but I own a PS3, a 360, and a Wii, right? So I visit all three threads to talk about what kinds of games and news are relevant to each system. And we gripe enough about the 360's hardware problems in the 360 thread (and I apologize to Engadget, Kotaku, and anyone else who ran stories about the 360 RRoDing at GDC, but its not news when a console with known heat issues fails when stuffed into an enclosed plastic bubble and left running all day, regardless of where it was when it failed). The report about the 360's failure rates? News in the 360 thread, fanboyish gloating in the PS3 thread. There's a lot going on in PS3ville. MGS4, which admittedly has its own thread. Kotaku was reporting on a possible Heavenly Sword sequel. I haven't picked it up yet, but I hear that the PSP God of War has a teaser ad for God of War 3. There was a ton of Home news at GDC. I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I just recently finished Ratchet & Clank and wouldn't mind talking about how great that game was. There are pros and cons to both systems, and I'll even grant you that with 90% of the games coming out hitting both consoles a fear of the RRoD could be a legitimate reason to stick with the PS3. But if that's the best thing you can think of to say about the PS3, well, the N-Gage didn't RRoD either.

Dueling Analogs.

Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. (Which is why, to David, I say you don't know what you're missing.) I mean, even in a game like Neverwinter Nights that's got the D&D label on the box, there's only so much you can do. Trolls, for example. In D&D, Trolls regenerate unless they're hit with they're weakness. For 25 years, players have been burning run of the mill trolls with fire. In a videogame, either you kill it with fire or it kills you, or maybe they ignore that whole bit about having to use fire as long as you can bring its hit points to zero. Our DM thought he'd throw us a curve, and pulled some kind of crystalline trolls from outside the standard Monster Manual. We took them down, but we didn't know how to kill them, and we'd only have a round or two before they started regenerating. Our solution? We had our rogue poke at them to keep their HP down, while the rest of us dug holes, then we buried the trolls. DM allowed it, rationalizing that yeah, the trolls would regenerate, but by the time they regenerated enough and dug themselves out, we'd be long gone. Oh, and it was sonic, by the way. Sonic energy breaks crystalline trolls.