mikeszekely

I had a Stylus a few years back. Granted, it was CX3200, but I absolutely do NOT recommend them. The ink cartridges were some of the more expensive at the time, and it went through said ink like green beer through a lightweight on St. Patty's. It wound up being an expensive stand to elevate my newer Samsung. EDIT: And LPT ports? The 90's called, David, and they want their tech back. Next you'll be telling me you back your data on ZIP drives...

Yeah, Battle Royale was better than Battle Tactics, And Chronicle was better than Royale.

Quebeley. Wait until you have a Quebeley. I don't think the MK II's had stats on part with the white one, which I used, but it's special attack seems to fill faster than GP-02's. You just have to keep switching targets. One special is enough to take out Quin Mantha, even with it's I-Field, and two, three tops, will take out both Sazabi and Nu Gundam.

Sad face? Seriously? I don't think I could afford any more games right now. I'm glad that Smash Bros got pushed, so I'm thinking I definitely do without Left 4 Dead this fall.

That was really the situation at Staples, too. I was surprised, and I totally underestimated Staples deals and the people who go nuts for Black Friday. I thought most of them would be at the mall (but then again, the big department stores at the mall started at 4:00 am), and since Wal-Mart already did a pre-Black Friday Friday, and since they're open 24/7, I didn't know what they were doing. I went over to Wal-Mart at 5:00, and it was a nightmare. Lines from the checkouts to the back of the store. Turns out that they let people in whenever, but they had to wait until 5:00 for the Black Friday prices, so they loaded up the carts and started lining up. Electronics wasn't too bad, and all I wanted was Mario, so I got out pretty quick, and got to Staples at 5:40, a good 20 minutes before they opened, only to find a line of 200-300 people at the door already.

I didn't go nuts, mostly because I hate people and get really irritable in crowds, and partly because I'd already spent a bit buying Mass Effect, Rock Band, Hasbro MP Starscream, and preordering a reissue MP-05 Megatron. (Oh, and I haven't seen him to get it off him, but I set aside money to buy Call of Duty 4 off my buddy when he's done with it). So, my actual Black Friday haul was limited to: Super Mario Galaxy, $35 (from $50). Logitech Quickcam Orbit AF webcam, $20 (from $130) Samsung CLP-300 color laser printer, $100 (from $250) I got Mario at Wal-Mart (had to make them price match a Circuit City doorbuster), the rest of my loot came from Staples.

That's pretty twisted. I've got Wal-Mart to match prices on me twice, once for 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime ($5 less at Target), and once on a 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo ($29.99 at Gamestop). Heck, at my Wal-Mart, I've seen people carry stuff over to the register, tell the cashier that it's a couple bucks less somewhere else, and the cashier just says, "OK" and marks it down without seeing so much as a sales flier (and I have the Circuit City ad). The only reason I could see them not matching it is because it's a doorbuster, but I'll be at Wal-Mart by 6:30-7:00, so I figure it's worth a shot.

He's a mecha designer. He did Konami's Mecha Musume line, as well as OVAs like Strike Witches and Sky Girls. And the way I read his comment, it sounds like he thought Expert was too hard. As for David, I'm just joking, I'm sure he knows. I'd be happy to know even a third of what he knows about military aircraft.

Circuit City has Super Mario Galaxy as a doorbuster for $35. Closest one to me is a little over a half an hour, though, but there's a Wal-Mart near the Staples I'm hitting at 6:00, I'll see if they'll price match.

David was wrong about something aircraft related? I feel like the foundation of my belief system has been shattered! In all seriousness, apparently Shimada Fumikane is less than happy with Ace Combat 6.

Well, it sounds like you're unplugging it, and when it powers back on after a period, it reverts to default settings. It also sounds like when it's asking you about the HDMI cable, it's not making a distinction between the video and the audio, it's all or nothing, and when you say "no" because you don't want audio over HDMI, you're inadvertently telling it "no" to the video as well. I can really only suggest three things. First, you could leave it plugged in so that it retains your settings. Second, you could try audio over HDMI and remove the fiber optic: I don't know which is supposed to be better, but HDMI does carry multi-channel sound (of course, this is only a viable option of you're receiver's an AV receiver and not just an audio receiver). The third option isn't going to solve anything short term, but you could try contacting Sony, explaining the issue, and request a fix for it in the next firmware update. I'd like to think that it wasn't a coincidence that I complained to Sony about some issues I was having with 2.00, and then 2.01 hit a few days later with no new features, just bug fixes.

I liked it in the sense that in every other game, if your back story isn't decided for you (like the whole orphan bit in Jade Empire), you don't really decide your background until having a wholly artificial conversation with an NPC. In Mass Effect, it was kind of cool to do it when you create your character, then hear people talking about you later.

I'll download it, even though I don't have GHIII for the 360. Once you play Rock Band, especially if you have some extra people and can really play as a band, you'll realize that's like saying, "I've got a Murcielago in the garage, but I don't know when I'll put the new tires on it. But hey, I always have my station wagon!"

The encounters play a little like a lite third person shooter, and are totally different than either KOTOR or Jade Empire. Mass Effect is very much like those two games, though, in the way everything else plays. I played for maybe an hour and a half, and I was probably shooting guns for under ten minutes total. You walk around, you explore, you look for crates, you talk to people, and each person you talk to is giving you little bits of the puzzle. I've only played to the beacon (I doubt that's a spoiler, because you're all probably farther than I am, and the crew is talking about the beacon pretty much from the moment you start the game), and I'm already thinking this is probably my favorite 360 game so far. Seriously, this is the first game since probably KOTOR that I can see myself playing and doing a "Holy crap it's 4:00 in the morning!" thing. As for the technical issues, the only one I noticed was a cutscene at the beginning when one character, Nihlus, ducked behind a crate, and it took a second for the texture map on his face to appear. It was only like a second behind, and while noticeable, wasn't really distracting and certainly not game-breaking. I don't know what games you usually like to play, meh_cd, but I can't imagine that there's absolutely nothing else that interests you on the 360. Even if Mass Effect really is the only game you want for it, yeah, I'd say it's probably worth it.

I have no idea what they're going to be selling and at what prices, but I did get an e-mail from Apple this morning that pretty much said "Hey, we're having a Black Friday sale!" Honestly, though, knowing how tightly Apple controls pricing of their products, I'd just shop the Apple's refurbished deals. They're all certified by Apple, and there's some pretty decent deals to find.

No, I apologize profusely, I tested the Xplorer for 360 on the 360 version of Rock Band. It works fine, so I'm actually assuming that both Les Pauls worked with Rock Band on their individual systems. Big mistake on my part. According to this article, the Xplorer and Les Pauls are confirmed to work with Rock Band on the 360, and Harmonix says that third party guitars should work as well. Again, that's for the 360. As it turns out, the PS3 Les Paul does NOT work with the PS3 Rock Band. No idea why. And neither Strat works with any Guitar Hero games (this is being blamed on Red Octane). Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, I was lucky that my best friend and his wife are visiting from Cleveland, and with my and my wife we actually got to play Rock Band with all four instruments. It was a blast... if any individual instrument is as fun to play solo as Guitar Hero, playing as a whole band is that much more so. We stuck to easy, which meant that I was pretty much acing the guitar parts, and my buddy turned out to be very good on vocals. My wife performed passingly on bass, and my buddy's wife turned out to be a natural on drums, so we actually had a pretty good synergy going. We didn't have a lot of time tonight, but they're going to come again tomorrow to try the band career mode. Sadly, they're heading back to Cleveland on Thursday.

I've played it a little bit, in solo career with the guitar. In that mode, it's pretty much like Guitar Hero with a cleaner interface. On the plus side, the Strat controller is much better than any of the Guitar Hero controllers I've used (The SG, the Xplorer, and the Stryker), the cash you get is good toward new threads for your rocker. You get bonuses for perfect solos, you can see before you finish the song if you're going for five stars or four, and when you hit the "energy notes" while in "overdrive" (read "Star Power"), it extends the time in Overdrive, instead of you missing out because you're using Star Power. On the minus side, as much as I love the Strat, Gibson has better variety when it comes to guitars versus Fender. Oh, and for those of you at home keeping score, the PS3 Les Paul works with the PS3 Rock Band, the 360 Les Paul and the 360 Xplorer work with the 360 Rock Band, but the Rock Band Strats do NOT work with Guitar Hero II or III.

Not too much. That's not to say that the PS3 doesn't have good games, just that a lot of them aren't exclusive. Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted are pretty good, Resistance and Heavenly Sword are worth a look.

I only played Starfleet Command 3. I liked it a lot, but it's buggy as hell. I got to the final mission in the game (Federation campaign, if you played in the suggested order) and finished the first part, but the event that was supposed to trigger the second part never occurred.

My Gamestop's doing a midnight thing for Rock Band. Should have it in less than four hours.

Congrats, my friend. I'll settle for saying I know #2. I can't figure out my US ranking, but I'm 7770 in the world. That at least puts me in the top 25%. I might go back and play it some more after the holidays, but Rock Band, Mass Effect, Mario Galaxy, and Call of Duty are all begging to be played right now.

Oh. I guess I was reading through too fast and got excited. Glad that's cleared up. I actually despise my local Wal-Mart. Not because I'm anti-Wal-Mart or anything, but because my local WM sucks. The parking lot was poorly designed, it's always packed, even at the odd hours, people drive like idiots in said parking lot so I've had more close calls and near misses in that parking lot than anywhere else, and on nights and weekends it becomes the local hangout for redneck Fast & the Furious wannabes who think they're bad ass because they put neon and a fart can on the rustiest hunk of crap '92 Civic they could find and wear wife beaters when it's 40 degrees outside. All things being equal, I skip it for the Target down the road. The only reason I'd been in Wal-Mart at all lately was because I was looking for MP Starscream.

Wait a minute, you guys are telling me that Wal-Mart has WSTs? In the same section as the rest of the Transformers? I gotta go look for them.

I'll pay $100 for a Masterpiece, but it's too much for a G1 Prime, if you ask me.

See, I don't think of Mobius-1, Blaze, Talisman, Cipher, or Gryphus-1 as characters in the same sense that I do Shamrock, Chopper, Edge, Archer, or Pixy. The wingmen are characters with personalities, but the main character is me. As Gryphus-1, I felt nondescript. As Cipher, I felt like a good pilot, but mercenary. As Talisman, I felt like a good pilot who was paving the path for the ground forces to win the war. As Blaze, I felt like a great pilot who led of team of good pilots that were instrumental in winning the war. But as Mobius-1, I felt like a god. I flew entirely without wingmen because no one was worthy. Yellow-13 was an Ace on par with Blaze or the others, and he was like nothing to me. Was Ace Combat 4 the best of the series? As good as it was, no, I thought it was a little short and the missions felt a little repetitive after the variety that Ace Combat 3 offered (my main gripe with 6, also). But I had the most fun being Mobius-1. It doesn't hurt that Mobius-1 is associated with the F-22. Yeah, the paints for the F-22's have mostly been mottled blues and shades of gray, but it's still my favorite.