Calax

From what I can understand (Haven't watched the show since the end of Villians or whatever), Basically all the momentum they built up during writing and production just flat out died during the writers strike (which is why season 2 was short and garbage).

Probably has to do with showing dealy or something. I'm happy burn notice was renewed but am amazed at the fact that Law and Order (which has been going for what, 22 years?) is finally being canceled.

I'd say the first MW and Battlefield 2. But it should be noted that both are primarily multiplayer (the campaigns aren't that long) MW would be worth the 20 odd bucks it is now if you're just getting it for the single player, but MW2 and BF:BC2 aren't worth it.

Turned in two papers... one of which I forgot an item that drops my grade like a rock >.< I'll write that bit and email him with apologies.

Provocation is an affirmative defense in the legal system to bust charges down. In terms of a school, this would mean that if the kids did get beat up they probably also would have recieved a stern talking to and the students who did the beatings got off lighter. That said, your suggestion basically amounts to giving people carte blanche to taunt each other and if they get hit they can recover, and sue the guy who threw the punch. Either way, the school is not a court room. What works out here doesn't work within the schools grounds. for the top item, to use Dagons example, bacially what they did was go, alone, as black folk to a KKK rally on national "We love Hitler/Kill the non whites" day. And their shirts have the confederate flag with a **** written on it in sharpie. As to burn out rates, sure, there are jobs with higher burn out rates but generally they don't provide the benefits that teaching gives to its practitioners. From what I've seen from teaching, and human behavior in general, is that (in this sort of situation) being proactive rather than reactive will generally lead to much better results for everyone involved. Feels kinda like we're rehashing a previous discussion http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showt...de\+school But with everyone taking different sides.

Volo, why do you assume that somebody saying that "Don't be a jackass and specifically wear something to get somebody pissed off" is anti-american?

Basically what Enoch said. The router is in the room next to mine, but my parents will never let me run about 100' of cable to get from my computer to it (because i have to go around the wall etc) and thus I get to play wireless... whupee... of course that'll change when I go to school but meh.

As in romance-able friend? If so, good luck. You are correct sir!

Ok, I'm on a wireless network right now and I need a new card. The current one hiccups every minute or so making any FPS style game lag for about three seconds before it lets me back to playing (causing me to splatter usually), I KNOW this is the card, and am looking for another one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833166037 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833156267 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833156054 are my three big possibilities, but before I jump in and buy anything I wanted a bit of advice on other possibilities or on the ones above

Well, they're trying to kill used sales because they get no money for used copies sold of a game. instead all the money goes to the pocket of the seller.

Finished writing a repeat of a paper I did (basically... I had to shift the first papers overall purpose a tiny bit), and think I might have a female friend but I'm not toally sure yet.

I suppose the "art"(using the term differently) of game making now a days is getting the story and gameplay to mesh well. On one end of the spectrum you've got Doom, and on the other you've got Metal Gear. Anyway, the original article, I believe, was trying to make the point that shoe horning a gameplay style or segment into the game to change the pace on the player, often leads to the player being stuck and bored because this was not what they picked up the game for. I recently stopped playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 because at one point about 2/3 the way through the game, your team leaves you (to go play the first game basically) and you have to run solo in a complex with a small army of goons. Problem with this is that the game is almost entirely designed around having two other AI allies that shoot back at the goons so that one level becomes artificially hard (to the point of frustration) and thus not fun.

*shrugs* I'm not trying to say that there isn't a place for complex narrative etc, but you can't let it get in the way of gameplay.

I wasn't necessairly trying to make a dichotomy, but most of the time when you play or watch something that's considered "a work of art" it usually... how do I put this... moves at a sloths pace across the ground and the chosen few connoisseurs of art point to how the camera angles and characters are all symbolic of X Y and Z. I look at it and wonder "Why is this art?" One of my teachers once said that Pop Culture was created by the mixture of Art (of the high class) and entertainment (of the low class). I don't think this is true, anymore at least. The thing is that some games loose sight of the purpose of gaming (To escape and have fun) in favor of trying to be artistic and over the top. Some accuse Heavy Rain of this, other Too Human, and in all honesty I'm betting both have at least some of this going on. I think that's the point of the guys article that I posted. Devs are constantly trying different things to add "variety" and "depth" to their game to garner more critical acclaim, and end up creating points that are really slow and boring. The question, if you're stuck in one of those points, is why are you even doing this if it's more work to play than it is to work. The puzzle he mentions in Uncharted does nothing except slow the game down as you flip through the journal thing and figure out what to do. Which makes you wonder why the devs even put it in there. I mean the two core mechanics of gameplay (in Uncharted) are shooting and platforming, puzzle solving is a nice break from those, but if you have to keep skipping between the game and a menu for 10 minutes, it breaks flow, and ultimately will ruin the experience for most people. Can a game be "art" and fun? Yes, but usually I've found that if something is considered a "work of art" by it's critics then it usually turns up pretty boring for me. I may be a vapid, live in the moment, person who likes shallow things, but it's who I am.

Well, I personally haven't played Ico, or Shadow of the colossus, but a lot of the games that get high reviews are either MASSIVE titles like Halo, GTA or Street Fighter, while games with less visibility and follow a fairly typical formula that people find fun (if a bit shallow) get relegated to average/below average scores because they "don't add anything new" to the media. My co-workers at gamestop grumbled until the sky fell that GameInformer gave White knight chronicles a 7/10 when it was obviously a good game, just because it was "standard JRPG stuff". Because of this phenomena, devs seem to throw in one useless, boring, or grindy mechanic into their games simply to say "LOOK WE TRIED SOMETHING NEW!" because EVERYTHING has to move the genre foreward. You see the same thing in movies where Things like the first Iron Man, while a good movie, was given ok reviews because "its' just a popcorn flick".

To be honest I still haven't played Final Fantasy 7 (read a Let's Play some times ago, but that's not exactly 'playing' the game), so going with the whole 'Final Fantasy VII is the reason people think FFVIII sucked' is a bit unfair. Yeah, there's no doubt some people went into the new game with that kind of perception but a lot of people actually have legitimate issues with the game. I wasn't saying that "VII is the reason VIII sucked" or anything. But rather, that just the way there is a fan base behind VII saying that it rules and VIII sucks, there is a similar (but significantly smaller) one behind VIII. Spoony has a couple hour long lets play where he basically goes over the overall idiocy of the plot in general and the battle system http://spoonyexperiment.com/ He's doing one for X (which is personally my second favorite) but he only has the first bit up. They're both fairly good games, but VIII probably has more problems with it overall.

http://kotaku.com/5535475/i-3-stupid-games Do games really need to be overly complicated art flicks like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus where there are themes and heavy narrative, just in order to become critical darlings? I mean, I personally love dynasty warriors because it's a hack and slash game that lets me slaughter people, and it's really well done. Tight controls and a fairly deep but shallow combat system. And yet, every time a game like it comes out, it gets at best, an average score because it's not "deep". As the guy points out in the article, there were puzzles in Uncharted two that served to break up the gameplay and ultimately were boring. And if you got stuck on em why were you even playing the game in the first place? I suppose this all goes back to my views on "art" in general. Art is a boring pretentious world where boring is considered great, while entertainment is considered to be vapid and stupid. I mean if I wanted to look for depth, extreme character development, long winded discussions on politics and ethics, and start symbolism, I'd Watch a pretenious and boring movie or read it in one of my books. I play games to escape the dull boring world, not get social commentary on how it works or get blasted with messages about good, evil, and my morality. Anyway, discuss.

I wasn't necessarily speaking to that it was the best in the CUSTOMERS eyes. But overall, between customers and publishers, it seems like the best balance between profitability, bonuses to the customer, and the fact that if somebody is FOUND to be pirating a particular item, then they get banned and loose all the games they'd had, thus giving a fairly significant consequence for people who do break the law. I mean steams model is so successful Blizzard is incorporating a lot of it's stuff (digital downloads, the ability to see people in other games etc) into the new Bnet that they're launching around the time of SCII.

It should be noted that some people swear by the awesomeness of VIII and hate VII. And that VII did create most of the public perceptions of the Final Fantasy series in general (Spikey haired emo protagonists etc).

I think most people feel they are getting screwed over because DRM does almost nothing to prevent piracy yet inconveniences legitimate users. Using your examples above, just imagine if you still had dial-up. Or if the company servers go down and you cant play your game for a few days. Or if 5 years from now they take the server offline and you cant play at all. Well, Steam, from how things have been, probably won't be shut down for a long long time. That said, the thing about constant internet connection is already brought up by wals. But one thing that does need pointing out is that Steam has the offline mode that you can play with. You do need to get online to start the install etc, but once you verify that it's authentic, then the game itself is available offline. Steam, thus far, seems like one of the best DRM schemes out there, because not only does it act as DRM, but it also provides the social network that Wals mentioned. Some people just don't like heavy DRM schemes like Ye Olde Starforce or the current Ubisoft BS, mainly because they would kill your ability to play the game for no fault of your own. Such DRM schemes tend to make people more and more reactionary and hardline about "NO DRM EVAR!" But the thing is, DRM does work on the more casual market. Not everyone who is interested in a game knows how to pirate it. Many do, but not all, and thus they still get some benefit, but not as much as they dream of getting.

Playing The Sith Lords with the TSL restored content mod. So far I can't tell what was added, since its been years since I played the game last, but its been fun so far. I also felt MSG3 was far superior, just because there was more game to it. MGS4 felt more like a series of cutscenes with moments of gameplay mixed in. 4 was still great, I think I enjoyed more for the nostalgic moments from previous games as you mentioned. 4 was a game designed to tie up EVERYTHING previously done in the series. Thus they had to have a HUGE amount of story to tie everything up. I'm not saying it was the best game in the series (I personally view that as MGS2) but it wasn't an all out terrible game, or as bad about cutscenes as people made it to seem.

Well, it's worth sitting through all of them once. Not the Codec descriptions of the Beauty & Beast unit... while sad stories they tell you nothing about the games plot overall. But most of the actual cutscenes are pretty nice.

So you're prepared to 'play' 25 hours of cutscene and 5 of gameplay? Actually it's more like 50/50 in terms of gameplay to cutscene ratio... I actually tested it.

Well, a agrophobe neighbor stepped outside for the first time in 3 years... and broke her ankle in the creek behind our houses. Family finally heard her calling for help and went to find her, things happen and we have to get her daughter to talk to her and the cops (we called 911). Cops try to get her away from mom in order to explain what they need and she flips out. I wasn't there, but apparently she took a swing and then ended up biting one of the cops. So she's "in the tank" cooling off, her mom is at a hospital (possibly with cuffs on as well because of the level of freaking out that she was doing), and their dog was stuck in the garage last night, making everyone have a bad nights sleep.

the VO is better than some of the other VO's I've seen.