mikeszekely

You're almost making me wish MGREXX was still around to read this! Kind of odd though, if the GPU doesn't exist how can they have dev kits already out? Something smells real fishy in all this. The way I understand it is that there are different levels of dev kits, with the earliest kits being little more than PCs with approximate hardware and tools that they can use to get started. As the hardware gets closer to release, finalized dev kits are sent out so the developers can finish tweeking their stuff and finalize it for the actual hardware. This is, incidentally, the reason why a lot of the 360 games looked so unimpressive. The final dev kits were late shipping, and the demos weren't designed with the final hardware in mind.

Gotta love things like this! People SOOOOooooo want to make the bad guys super evil titanic god-like power mongers(think DragonBall Z) and the good guys incredible heroes without equal skills that they'll make up anything they can just to get back that first RUSH of feelings that they got the first time they watched the movies. It's BEYOND silly sometimes. It was a personal victory because NONE of the people in the throne were directly involved with the battle taking place further within the DS2. The throne room battle was for Vader, not the rebellion. Not to save the DS2. It was cinematics all the way. If Luas wanted to be THAT heavy handed then why not have the scene in the movie to begin with? There's no real answer to that because unless Lucas writes it himself it's only guesses. Yes you can be a "central, powerful evil that had been the cohesive force to the Empire." without having cartoonish superpowers of near god-like levels! History is littered with them. The thing to do with Star Wars is to treat it like any other story. Enjoy it while it lasts. Feel sad that it's over. Move on taking with you something that betters you from it. What about the EU saying he was using Battle Meditation to boost the Empire's fighting power? That he had Battle Med beyond that of Nomi Sunrider that his Battle Med streatched across the entire galaxy? is that a cartoonish superpower? Remember Lucas helped with the Tales comics so I'm not so sure battle med isn't a cannon power. Regardless of whether it is or isn't canon, and regardless of what his intentions were when Jedi was filming, the prequels are canon, and with them, the sextogoly (hexology?) is about Anakin's story. The official story seems to be that the moment Vader tossed Palpatine down the required bottomless shaft, the Dark Side was defeated and balance restored to the Force. Anakin's personal victory was key to the Rebels victory... and incidentally, with the story now being about the life of Anakin Skywalker, the Rebellion itself is reduced to a vehicle to move the plot along.

The nex gen consoles will be much better. I Have the Nvidia 6800GT and on Doom 3 it stutters on Ultra High, Ultra High is for 512 MB cards or the SLI setup. The PS3 GPU will be more powerfull then 2 6800 Ultras in SLI mode. I am not sure were the Xbox's GPU fits in the scale but the next gen will be better than anything on the market now even for PC at least till Nvidia brings out the G70 GPU or 7800. The 6800 Series is better in performance then the FX series. Plus they fixed alot of the DirectX 9 issues in the 6800 series that the FX series had. Right now the 6800 Ultra Extreme is the hightest Nvidia card. It is 2 cards above mine. I have no issues with the latest PC games. AMD 3200+, Nvidia 6800GT. Both are overclocked. I am looking forward to the Xbox 360 and the PS3 since they will be better than the 2 best PC cards right now, ATI 850XT PE and Nivida 6800 Ultra Extreme. So rest assured the next gen consoles are going to be beasts. They are going to be at least 22 cards ahead of the GeForce FX 5200. The 6800 GT is 19 cards ahead of the FX 5200. So say I didn't want to spend more than $150 for a new video card, what would you or anyone else recommend? I bought my computer 2 years ago thinking that I'd be okay for at least 5 years before I had to upgrade again. It's year two and I'm having to already upgrade my video card. For PC, you'll be upgrading forever. but you will need to upgrade your videocard if you want to play the latest game with everything at high setting. You can try the nividia 6600GT or the 6800 you can probably find them around the $150-$200 range. Or the ATI 9800 pro around $130, which is still a very good card. If you always play the latest games on your pc then the normal upgrading period of a videocard is about 2 years. But if you just play it once in a while and don't care too much about setting everything at high then your videocard should last you much longer. The ATI 8500 lasted very long for me 4-5 years, it was even able to play Half life 2 pretty well. The ATI 8500 was the best $200 I have ever spend on a videocard. Rgiht now that card is about $50? but still better than the 9200 See, this is why, while I have nothing against PC gamers, I've always tended to lean toward consoles. $300 every five years on hardware sound fair to me. You're almost making me wish MGREXX was still around to read this!

Sorry, double post. Internet malfunction. Mods please delete.

I could see not knowing that her name is Secura, but you've honestly never heard the name Twilek? I'm one of the most casual fans of the series around, and even I know a Twilek when I see one. You do know that the little teddy bear guys in Return of the Jedi are Ewoks, right? I've got a big friggin laser ball. I keep in in my closet and only bring it out for special occasions.

Thanks for your thoughts, Abombz! I'd thought about importing it for awhile, until Bandai actually released the cover for the US release. I preordered the US version for PS2 (my Gamecube is the first of my consoles to get sold to make room for the next gen, but my PS2 is modded, so I'm definately keeping it, regardless of whether or not I get a PS3). I hope it should be as good... IIRC, the only big difference was that the Cube version supported four player multiplayer splitscreen.

I see what you're saying, and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with it. But the important thing to remember is that Robotech isn't Macross canon. And while the EU books have been a great outlet for fans seeking to and their own creative interpretations to table, they aren't canon either... they're little more than endorsed fanfiction (and I mean this with no disrespect to some of the talented authors who wrote EU books, especially Zahn). Lucas could release a 7th movie that smacks the entire EU down, if he wanted. He doesn't, though, because whether or not we got the meaning he wanted us to get from Star Wars, it's pretty clear that all along he wanted to spark our immaginations. Thanks for the compliments, you guys, but don't let it go to my head!

Just out of curiousity, what makes you say that? To me, they're fairly similar. The only reason I liked AEUG vs. Titans over Fed vs. Zeon was because I liked Z Gundam better than the original. From what I've seen, Gundam vs. Z Gundam looks like a good combo of the two, but it's starting to beg the question... why not create one massive Gundam Vs. game with this eninge (maybe an visually upgraded version for next-gen hardware) that starts at the beginning of Gundam, then runs through all of the major events and battles straight through the end of Char's Counterattack? One side would be Federation/AEUG/Londo Bell, the other would be Zeon/Titans/Axis/Neo Zeon.

Last I heard, Microsoft was looking to release Halo3 on the same day that the PS3 launches That's what MS hopes will happen... Gates confirmed it. To be fair, though, they are assuming that the PS3 won't realese any earlier than they said it would. If Sony decided to move up the time table, I don't think Microsoft could cope. But then again, I don't see Sony moving up the timetable. In fact, I don't see their planned Spring 2006 launch as being worldwide, but rather just in Japan, with a US release to follow in September, and I'm sure that Microsoft is aiming at the US launch. It's hard to say what exclusives are going to turn up on each console, but something like 60-75% of the games released today release on multiple consoles. The Xbox 360 is as good a place as any to start your next-gen gaming (perhaps better, if the PS3's controller turns out to be as uncomfortable as it looks). In fact, one of the games I'm hoping to pick up at launch is Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006, which will almost certainly be an upgraded version of a game released on the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PSP (as is Need for Speed Most Wanted, but barring any huge differences in cars and tracks, screw graphics... I want it for PSP). I am holding out that the 360 exclusive Perfect Dark Zero will have some solid gameplay, even if it won't be the prettiest FPS on the block.

With art... and I mean all art, not just Star Wars or movies in general, there is always two sides. There is the artist's intentions... art is, after all, a method of expression. But there is also what the people experiencing the art take away from it. Abstract art is a great example of this... three people could look at the same sculpture, and come up with three different interpretations of it... and not of them could be what the artist was actually thinking of when he or she created it. It is usually a good thing to think critically about art and find the meaning that speaks to you personally. It encourages discussion, creativity, and free thinking. However, the artist is the creator. He or she may hear other interpretations, and even agree that they are good ideas that he or she never thought of. But artistic expression is ultimately a form of communication, and the artist's intented meaning is ultimately the correct one. You might see Pablo Picasso's Guernica as a tribute the the glory of conquest and the defeat of your enemies, but you can't deny that Picasso meant the painting to illustrate the horror of that attack and the senseless slaughter of unarmed peasants. The bottom line is, we could argue about the finer details for years to come, but if Lucas says that Anakin was the Chosen One, and that it was the act of killing Palpatine and destroying the Sith that brings balance to the Force, than it is so... even if if he does change his mind from time to time, which we have seen on some things (Han shoots first, Greedo shoots first, Han and Greedo shoot simultaneously...). It may be important to note that, while we can't be sure without more updated quote from Lucas, we have no indication that he has changed his mind about the prophecy. Nothing in Episode II or III contradicts what Lucas said during Episode I about Anakin killing Palpatine to restore the Force to balance. If it does make those in the Duke's camp feel better, though, remember that the EU books are endorsed, but not canon. It is just as likely that Leia never became a Jedi (I don't think that was anything more than foreshadowing for the potential third trilogy, which Lucas may have abandoned fully), and Luke may never have created a new Jedi Order. Perhaps the last of the Jedi died when Luke died, leaving the galaxy with no real Force adepts, light or dark.

To see the Force like that is to look at it in a purely good vs. evil way... that is, there is one aspect of the Force that is ultimate good, and one side that is ultimate evil, and both sides balance each other out. If you think of it that way, then sure, having all light siders and no dark siders would seem to upset that balance. But if you think of it in a more taoist fashion... the Force isn't inherently good or evil, it is simply a part of the natural order, then think of "the Light Side" as a the path of following the natural order of the galaxy and of the Force. Then consider "the Dark Side" as a way of manipulating the Force in a way that goes against the natural order, creating an imbalance in nature and the Force. Balance in the Force, then, isn't achieved through equal use of light and dark, but through elimination of that which goes against nature, or the Dark Side.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean you specifically, or to imply that you had an anti attitude. I was referring more to MGREXX and other fanboys with inability to even consider that a console besides a Sony console (or whatever brand they've pledged their soul to) has merits. If you come to a rational conclusion that a particular console does or doesn't interest you, that's different. There's no reason to spend that kind of money if you're not interested (like me and iPods... a lot of people love their iPods, but I don't listen to music much outside of whatever CD I have in the car... so iPods are not for me). For me personally, gaming is pretty much my number 1 hobby, so I'm optimistically curious about the next gen. I share your concerns about Sony's track record with defective consoles, but I'm still interested, and as for Microsoft... well, I enjoy good games in just about any genre, FPS included. Ironically, I think Satoru Iwata is a dumbass. While I do agree that Kutaragi is losing with his whole "supercomputer entertainment center" bull, I blame Iwata for Nintendo's "this is innovation, so it must be good" attitude that kept the Gamecube mostly offline, that's just now using the DVD medium on the Revolution, and then squandered the real potential of the DS with gimmicky touch screen games, ran it up against the PSP, and then returned with, off all things, a tinier Gameboy. I still really like a lot of Nintendo's software, don't get me wrong, but they need someone who's going to go after consumer interest if they ever want to get out of third.

He raises a good point. Lucas' quotes about Anakin being the chosen one aside (he could always contradict himself later, since he has a habit of "editing" his works over and over), who says the Force needed to be balanced? Perhaps the very notion of balance is alien to the Force. Both the Jedi and the Sith talk about the Light Side and the Dark Side, and have their one perceptions about what those sides mean... but these could very well be mortal limited understandings of an immortal and unlimited... um... Force. Perhaps then, it was a Jedi prophecy, and the Jedi who prophesized it though "bring balance to the Force" sounds more mysterious than "gets rid of all the Sith." A very interesting and very plausible theory. While the EU stuff was never made canon, it has sort of struck me that Lucasfilm endorses the books, at least, and it seems that Lucas has been conent to let the EU authors run with the story. Also, like Knights of the Old Republic has shown, there's a lot of untapped potential in the thousands of years before the prequels. I personally think a story about a young Yoda and his Jedi companions battling to wrest control of the galaxy form the Dark Lords of the Sith would, in all likeliness, be more entertaining that a story about the tedium rebuilding the Republic and creating a new Jedi Order (with all respect to Zahn's novels, which are in fact quite good).

I'm taking it as good news. After arguing the merits of the other consoles and arguing the flaws of Sony's consoles with MGREXX, it feels a bit weird to come back with something positive now on the PS3. But it looks like the PS3 stands a fair shot of being reasonably priced after all, so I'm breathing a sigh of relief. For all the arguing about Xbox 360 and PS3, I've intended from the beginning to get both, and voted thusly in the poll. My philosophy is that if there really is nothing that interests you for a particular console, that's one thing, but if you have an anti attitude against some consoles just because you're a fanboy of another, you're the only one who suffers. This is absolutely true, and you'll get no arguments from me over that. But when you don't really have games yet, you just have some demos and renders, specs are like a estimate of what you can expect, and not just graphically. When I look at the specs for either the 360 or the PS3, I'm seeing things like GTA with larger areas with fewer loads and more things going on in the city, I'm seeing Dynasty Warriors with even more enemies on screen and none of the old fog and pop up. I'm seeing Tiger Woods PGA Tour load the entire course instead of loading one hole at a time. In fact, some of these things like faster and fewer loads matter more to me than just how much prettier the games look. After seeing games like Ninja Gaiden and Doom 3, I'd be satisfied with just the regular Xbox graphically. As far as talking specs between the consoles, about which is more powerful and such and such, I think it's moot, for the most part. Like I said early, who cares if the PS3 supports 1080p if the developers are only going to support 720p in their games? And while console exclusives might show off what a particular console is capable of, look at the current generation. Probably at least 75% of the games that are released are released on at least both the Xbox and the PS2, with little or no difference between the two. I don't see that changing in the future... most of the games will come out for both the 360 and the PS3, and look the same on both. From what I've read, anyone with a broadband connection can use all of the new Xbox Live features for free EXCEPT to play games online (excluding subscription-based games, like Final Fantasy XI). You can download new skins and demos, grab downloadable content for your games, maintain an online profile, keep a "friends" list and see what they're playing (all 360 games, regardless of whether or not they can be played on Live, will be Live enabled), and message/voice chat/videoconference with your friends. I've also heard talks that, kind of like HBO or Showtime, sometimes there will be free weekends where you can play games online without paying for the Gold service. Like Max said. The GPU's in the new consoles look insane, but the gap is already closing. By the time the PS3 is released, it may still be impressive, but not as impressive as it is today. Within a year after, especially after Microsoft released a new OS, PCs will start to have even more powerful GPUs. But something else to consider, along with JB0's very informative post on how resolutions come into play, is that a console is a more standardized platform. Developers often shoot for an average when developing PC games, and allow for tweeks if your system is above or below the average that they were shooting for (further complicated by the fact that some developers are shooting for a higher average than others... hence why people with relatively powerful machines still have trouble with Doom 3 etc). But with consoles, every console is identical. As the console's life cycle progresses, developers learn new tricks to get the absolute most out of that console as they can.

Why would EXO be the lemming? Lemmings are animals that just follow their group blindly, without stopping to think about what's really good for them. And so far, you're the only one blindly buying into Sony's hype machine. No you haven't. Seems to me like Sony's been telling you what to think for at least a month now. Oh, BTW, Sony says don't post at Macross World. More people chosing a particular console doesn't make it "better." Look at the PS2... worldwide it's outsold the Xbox and Gamecube combined (perhaps because everyone ends up buying at least 2?), yet it's got the weakest hardware and is infamous for having the drives go bad. Bottom line is, there are a lot of people out there who have a thing against Microsoft for their shady PC dealings, or they think Nintendo is too kiddy... or people like you, who are convinced that it's the best simply because it says "PlayStation" on it.

Yeah, we're glad you're horny for video of Sony's next exclusive FPS... but this thread is about Hellgate: London. Besides, aside from the fact that they're both FPS, it's like comparing apples and oranges, and there's certainly room for both games on the market (after all, the market has supported how many Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games).

So far, just for PC. It's being developed by a lot of the guys who worked on the Diablo team, and their idea was something like Diablo in near future London... but as a FPS this time.

That's more what I meant. Sony or otherwise, only a very small ammount of games utilized the HD... and then, only to reduce load times. Microsoft has come up with a lot more practical uses of the Xbox hard drive, which is why everyone was so up in arms over the possibility that the 360 wouldn't have one. Gamestop is cheap, what can I say. Used consoles are always excluded from promotions. Hell, I'm suprised we still get the employee discount on used consoles (we don't on new).

I not arguing against anything you said in your post, but the X-box games you listed are only good to you because of your personal preference. Not one game you listed (for X-box or X-box 360) would make me want to buy a X-box 360 because they are not the type of games I like. That's why currently I'm only getting the PS3. Well, of course those games aren't going to appeal to everyone. And of course, if none of those games interest you, or if none of the exclusives on any give console interest you, there's no reason to buy it. I cited those examples because they were games that were reviewed well in general. To look at it another way, I actually have an extreme dislike of all the 3D Zelda games. They might not be my cup of tea, but (at least Ocarina of Time and Windwaker) were reviewed well and recieved well by fans. So, it'd be hard for me to argue that the Gamecube only has so-so games just because I don't like Zelda. But, there's a good chance that the Revolution won't appeal to me personally. I think, to some extent, they still are, and likely will until Satoru Iwata steps down. The 360 is confirmed to have a 20GB external hard drive. The PS3 is supposed to have a port for a hard drive, but no plans for a hard drive are announced. I really hope that if they do announce a hard drive it'll be more useful than the one that was eventually released for the PS2.

Ooh, my bad. Hmm... now I wonder if we do have a Skullone. I think we should. And then we should include him in our little cabal of people who like to argue with each other...

Thanks David! Yeah, it was cared about too much... by Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is like those parents who make excuses for why their 10-year old is out of control even as they buy him the newest Grand Theft Auto game. But the rest of the Jedi kind of a-holes to Anakin. If they would have confided a little more in him, he would have returned their trust with reguards to Palpatine. The Council didn't have to always treat Anakin like and unwanted child, and if they really had a problem with his behavior, they could have expressed concern with how Obi-Wan was training him, instead of constantly telling him what a great Jedi he was.

Hey, Hikuro, try Spencer's. It's not the first place I'd have thought to look, but I noticed that the one at my mall is selling them.

We aren't? Seriously, Skullone, you and JB0 are some of my favorite people to disagree with, because you tend to have the most well thought-out arguments. I'd say the simple answer is that the size of games hasn't really grown at the rate that the storage media for the games has grown. Most of the PlayStation's library fit comfortably on 750MB CDs, and the largest barely spilled onto four... let's say 3GB. The average PS2 game today is around 3GB, with the largest I've ever seen barely hitting 7GB, most of it video. I could count the number of games that actually needed to be on dual-layer discs (some of Sony's first party games, like God of War, would easily fit on a single layer, but they split the game onto two layers to make it harder to pirate) on one hand. I'm not going to say that FF7 didn't help move PlayStations, especially in Japan... but in the US, Finaly Fantasy and RPGs in general were more of a niche genre before FF7. I'd say that Sony Nintendo more on marketing. Videogames have been on the decline for a long time in Japan, while the American market has been getting bigger and bigger. A large part of that was due to Sony, for better or for worse, marketing to a larger, more mainstream audience. Videogames went from being for kids and geeks to cool. Using optical discs alone wouldn't have saved the N64 anymore than it saved the Gamecube (or likely the Revolution). They may take props for not marketing to the mainstream the way Sony and Microsoft do, but it's the reason their in third. The Intellivision and Colecovison were both on the market around the same time as the Ataris. At that time, the market was mostly American. So again, the Xbox has been the first successful American console since the Atari family. Although, since you pointed out that both of Atari's successes were pre-crash, maybe I should say that the Xbox is the first successful American console since the crash?

It seems to be the attitude of the Sith that an apprentice will prove he or she is ready to assume the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith once he or she is capable of betraying the master. That is, a Sith Lord comes to power by betraying his/her master, accepting that one day he/she will be betrayed in turn.

Hey, here's a question that was never really answered. In Episode II, the Kaminoans told Obi-Wan that it was former Jedi Master Syfo-Dyas who placed the order for the clones, years before, right? But who exactly was he? And if the clone army was part of Palpatine's plans, how was Syfo-Dyas related? Not really. I mean, they never struck me as intimidating at all, until I played Republic Commando. I think it was embedded in their training/programming.