mikeszekely

Sometimes you just gotta be patient. It's been, what, about a month since MP Screamer started showing up in stores? Since then, I've been in and out of my local Wal-Mart, not even bothering to drive around looking at other ones. All the while, I'm hearing people go on about how their Wal-Marts have been raided by scalpers and Screamer's going for double or more now online... but today I checked my local Wally World on my way out to get groceries, and they had a whole display full of them. I love him almost as much as I love 20th Anniversary Prime (yeah, i know MP Prime was better, but I rarely if ever import). Transformation is complicated, but not too complicated (as opposed to some of the movie toys and their damn automorphs... I doubt I'll ever take Bumblebee out of bot mode). He looks gorgeous in both modes, and as mentioned, the stand is great in that it holds all his accessories. I haven't tried cleaning him up yet with the alcohol, but I think I'll try it later, although I don't mind the score marks the way a lot of people do. I do want to clean the silver nose cone, though... part of the reason I was psyched for this one was the G1 accurate colors (if I want F-15 accurate colors, I'll buy a model F-15, dammit!). I'm passing on the Takara Skywarp, Prime Trailer, and Ultra Magnus, but I do think I might import Megatron, since he doesn't really stand a chance of getting a real release in the States. But if Hasbro releases any other MP figures domestically, I think I'd be inclined to collect them all. EDIT: The silver nose cone stays, I think. Yeah, I know just about every other G1-based Starscream toy has a blue nosecone, but I don't want him to be toy accurate, I want him to be show accurate. I don't feel like digging around for clips from the cartoon, but I did watch the 86 movie from the part where Hot Rod shoots down the ship until Starscream shoots himself in the foot. He's show in jet mode about three times, and all three times the nosecone is the same color as the rest of the fuselage.

Timmy & the Lords of the Underworld is a Rock Band Bonus Track. It looks like a lot of the other tracks are from guys who did bonus tracks in Guitar Hero I and II.

Well, I mean, to each his own. Judging by the games you listed, you obviously get a lot of enjoyment out of multiplayer, but as those games are built primarily around multiplayer, I haven't played and won't play them. You're probably looking for a different experience than I am; you're looking for competition, and prefer humans to predictable AI. You could say that I'm looking for the satisfaction of task completion. It doesn't matter to me if the game is easy or hard, I just want to finish it (although narrative matters to me, as my favorites are games with good stories where my moral choices directly affect the outcome, ala Jade Empire and KOTOR). The difference between us is really summed up when you said you were still playing Vietnam after BF2 came out. You were still having fun and content to keep playing, whereas I would be anxious to move onto a new one.

Well, I'm not much of a PC gamer, even with FPS. The only PC games I've bought in the last several years are Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, and the related expansions. Between the consoles, I think Persona 3 was the last PS2 game I'll buy new, and the Xbox and Gamecube are honestly dead. For the Wii, I buy just the exclusives, since there's little reason to buy a dumbed down multi-platform game with tacked-on waggle. That just leaves the PS3 and the 360. Exclusives obviously go on their respective consoles, but I try to read reviews that give a clear indication if one version is clearly better than the other. Sometimes it comes down to the controller; the PS3 has a better d-pad, the 360 has better triggers. All things being equal, though, I'll usually buy the 360 version. I prefer the 360's Dashboard to the PS3's XMB, I prefer Xbox Live to the PlayStation Network, and meaningless as they are, I enjoy getting Achievements.

I don't think you get the GP02 until you finish the storyline, so... I'm hoping that, by now, you know how to use your special attacks? If you do, ignore this, if you don't, don't feel too bad, I didn't figure it out until I got to Neue Ziel on the EFSF side. Just in case (and for anyone else who might be reading this topic), it's your primary ranged weapon + melee. Don't waste your SP gauge on powered shots (guard + primary ranged). Now, remember that the GP03 has a I-Field, so you need to use a Mobile Suit with a good solid ammo weapon and either a solid ammo special or a powerful melee special. As Dendrobius suggested, the Gelgoog Marine (either one) is actually a better choice than the Gerbera Tetra. Also, take a look at your upgrades. You want to upgrade the attack of the weapon being used in the special, as well as your HP and beam weapon defense (mobility and turning will help too), even into the red beyond the "maxmium." Hope that helps. Good luck!

Well, that's my main reason for never really playing online. I love gaming, and I've been doing it since my Magnavox Odyssey 2. I've never lost interest in it, and I'd rather play a good game than watch TV or a movie. But with so many good games out there, the older I get and the more responsibilities I have, I end up buying a game, beating it, then selling it and moving on to the next one. I don't have the time to devote toward mastering a game to be competitive in online matches, and even if I did, I generally find playing around online a waste of time that could be spent diving into the next game.

A friend of mine picked it up, and I played the first mission (not counting the training course bit). You can definitely tell an Infinity Ward Call of Duty from a Treyarch. CoD3, despite looking and playing identically to CoD2, was kind of dull IMHO. But (without giving any spoilers away), CoD4 felt more like CoD2 despite the difference in setting. Infinity Ward has a knack for well-executed "Oh crap!" moments that go a long way toward getting your adrenaline going and really drawing you into the experience. After he finishes it, I'm going to buy it off him.

That's my choice of weapon period. Even on air-to-ground missions, they give you enough regular missiles to take your time and peck away at ground targets with them... it's just easier to pick off enemy planes, which are always in even the most groundy air-to-ground missions from a distance with the XMAAs. Planes in general seem harder to hit with regular missiles (no more picking off enemies coming in from head on), and the QMAAs aren't nearly as godly as they were in AC4. I'm in, my hand's a lot better. But I can't usually get on until after 10:30 Eastern.

A quick tip before you get started, if you know the manufacturer of the hard drive, go to their website (of if you've bought a hard drive recently, you might already have a disc with it), download their "Data Lifeguard Tools" (or whatever they use, I know that's what Western Digital uses), and burn it to a disc. Back your data up, and then start the computer from the disc you burned. You'll totally reformat the hard drive, but the tools included will partition the disc for you. Then, when you reinstall Windows, just pick the C:\ partition. Works like a charm.

You've actually summed up my feelings on Akira and Ghost In the Shell as well. I'd thrown X/1999 in there too, but at least that was pretty.

That is a nice-looking faceplate, but I like the F-22.

Meh. We've got time to watch anime, collect expensive toys, and post on a message board dedicated to a 25-year old Japanese cartoon, we can handle the holiday game crunch. It's a simple matter of prioritizing the must-have-now's from the must-play-eventualy's, since hardly anything comes out between March and September.

Even though there is physically only one hard drive, the computer sees it as two. A smaller section, say, 15-20 GB for Windows leaves room for updates and essential software. The rest of the hard drive can be used for storage and stuff like games. The advantage is, when Windows starts to get f-ed up, and let's be honest, it eventually will, no matter how careful you are with your antivirus and anti-spyware and firewalls and all that, you can reformat the just the C partition and reinstall Windows without losing any of the data on the D partition.

Not as bad as you might think. I, too, avoided SP2 for the longest time for fear that it would break something I needed. But I bought an iPod touch right when they came out, and it required SP2 to sync with my computer (naturally, this was before I'd put a 250GB hard drive in my MacBook, and the 60GB hard drive it used to have wasn't really big enough to comfortably store my iTunes library). If you follow azrael's link, though, you can see that there's really not a lot that's known to be incompatible with SP2, and most of what is has newer versions. I bit the bullet and upgraded, and honestly, the biggest issues I've run into were that my Windows install was so old and busted I had to do a fresh install (fortunately, my hard drive is partitioned so that C is just big enough for the operating system, with room for updates and a few other essential programs, and D is where I keep most of my data and larger programs). Oh, and Windows Defender is irritating. But nothing broke, the sky didn't fall, my iPod worked, and by now I honestly can't tell the difference. My advice, though, is to try to install COD4 before upgrading. A lot of software I bought that said it required SP2 worked fine in SP1. My iPod was the first thing that actually refused to work in SP1.

I guess. I'm not buying this whole "it's interesting because of the politics" bit either. The countries of the real world may be mentioned as one of the three factions, but other than that, the three factions have been largely interchangeable targets for the Gundam pilots, resulting in a quintet of dysfunctional kids taking on the world. Gee, I wonder where I've seen that before...

Gamerankings.com has it at 96.5%, but that's only with 10 reviews. Bioshock is at 95.3% with 83 reviews. And although Mass Effect only has one review in, that leaves in at 97.5% Orange Box is clocking in at 96.1 with 36 reviews. I'm not trying to take anything away from Super Mario Galaxy, but I don't see it winning Game of the Year on any list except maybe Best Wii game or Best Action-Platformer.

Hey, what can I say? Lately I've been listening to a lot of teeny-bopper bubblegum pop (Jimmy Eat World's new album's pretty good), but Hysteria is still one of the best rock n' roll albums off all time. I got a chance to play the drums today on Rock Band (as well as have another go on the guitar without a group of kids breathing down my neck for their shot at it). It totally reinforces my notion that Rock Band is a better game than Guitar Hero III. I wasn't very good, but I remember when I played Guitar Hero for the first time, I wasn't any good at that either. But I played well enough to finish Paranoid, tapping my foot as I drummed (which is good, since the real drum controller is supposed to have a foot pedal) and, despite the notes I was constantly missing, feeling for all the world like I was really playing the drums. It totally recaptured that magic I felt when I first played the original Guitar Hero. Going back to the guitar, I was again struck by how much better the Rock Band Strat is than the Guitar Hero controllers. The paddle is thinner, so it feels more like picking than pushing a paddle. The second set of buttons at the base of the neck are closer together and allow for faster play than the ones at the top. When playing solo, either with drums or guitar, at some point in the song it'll look like a rainbow is coming down at you. This is your cue to play whatever you want as fast as you can to build up a bonus. There's a catch, though... immediately at the end there will be some real notes again, and if you miss them, you lose your whole bonus. Seriously, November 20th can't come fast enough.

That's not a bad answer, and it's essentially what I'm doing. But you can have both and still think one is better. I like Guitar Hero III, but not as much as the original or II, and I'm thinking Rock Band will turn out to be better. Didn't stop me from having my brother over to finish the co-op career so I could unlock all the songs. But, just to add more fuel to the fire, Activision is apparently using the same 3 song in a pack model for Guitar Hero III that they used in II. Not a Who fan, so I can't really say that Rock Band's method of whole-album content will be better or not, but I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping that Def Leppard's Hysteria album turns up for a Rock Band download.

Rock Band, hands down. I've already posted about this in another thread, but I'll spell it out again. Guitar Hero III just doesn't have the heart that the Harmonix ones did. You can follow the formula to a T and still not capture the same soul... those of you who played both KOTOR games know what I'm talking about. The game plays the same, but something intangible is missing, and you're left with the feeling that Neversoft just doesn't get the music like Harmonix does. Not to mention that the track list is still hit or miss, the new character models are beyond ugly, the new star power meter is awful, and pop-up messages about your current note streak are distracting. The bottom line is that you're not playing bad game, but you're missing some of the magic that made the original Guitar Hero such a classic. Rock Band, on the other hand, brings a lot of the magic back. It doesn't just look nicer, it takes the idea of co-op and runs with it. Instead of failing a song because your partner sucks, only your band mate fails. You can quickly bring him/her back with Star Power if you have enough, and if you don't, the timer's ticking. Of course, if you don't have any friends, there's supposed to be a solo career for each instrument, so if you get tired of playing the guitar solo in "Wanted Dead or Alive" for the umpteenth time, give the drums a whirl. Getting back to the guitar, for a moment, the Fender Strat that comes with Rock Band is a lot nicer than the Gibson SG for the PS2 or the Xplorer for the 360 (haven't gotten my hands on the Kramer or the Les Paul yet, but I'm pretty sure the Strat still wins). It's closer in size and feel an actual Strat (I'll have a better chance to compare when I'm at my parents' house for Christmas and I can size it with one of my dad's Strats). It also has more detail, right down to the cord for the 360 connecting to the guitar in the same metal groove an actual Strat would plug into the amp at. And the end of the day, you have a choice. You can either stick with the franchise and play a game that follows the original formula so closely it's obvious that the new developer is afraid of doing anything to rock the boat, or follow the developers to a game that's the logical evolution of Guitar Hero's tried and true gameplay. Or get both. I mean, I just finished Guitar Hero III for the PS2, and my preorder's already down on Rock Band for the 360, and when I have some extra cash, I may very well pick up Guitar Hero III for the 360 with the Les Paul, and I already dumped my second SG to be replaced with a Kramer later. Then just do the guitar, bass, and drum careers, and never let your friends play with the mic. Or just play the guitar career. You're still getting a better game than Guitar Hero III. The ability to play the guitar is always something I've envied. My dad started playing when he was around 12, and I grew up around guitars. I've tried to learn several times before understanding that I failed to inherit any of his musical talent. Harmonix has already said that games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band aren't meant for people like you (although I certainly know a few guitarists who have enjoyed the games), they're meant for people like me, who love music but probably won't ever get closer to playing it that "air guitar with colorful buttons."

You guys are all crazy. I mean, yeah, it is too early to say for sure... but so far, this series has dysfunctional kids piloting Gundams more boring and uninspired than SEED's for reasons that still aren't clear. I mean, we know what Celestial Being wants, but we know next to nothing about the people in Celestial Being. What exactly about this series am I supposed to like?

A couple of weeks ago.

March, you get all that done and the only reason I'll have to go to mahq.net anymore is for the Gundam stuff.

Ditto, but am I the only one that actually prefers them wired? I know on the 360 Rock Band Strat, the cord connects to the controller where the amp would plug into a real Strat. Having that wire to the console is just like having that cord to the amp, and for me actually adds to the experience.

To build on what JsARCLIGHT said, my friend that bought it also bought the HD-A1 when it first came out, and it still works quite well. He likes the HD-A2 better, but continuing that logic, if you spent the extra money, the HD-A3 (which I believe is Toshiba's current flagship model) would be even better.

Back when IGLOO was just fansubs, I tried to re-encode it. I had no trouble getting an avi with the audio and video streams, but could never figure out how to keep the subtitles.