Calax

Heavy Rain. This suck grabs you by the painful bits and drags you through it. Controls take a bit of getting used to (at least movement wise) but it does have some AWESOME cutscenes. So far I played for about 2:30 (1:30 of those I found after a "HOLY CRAP! IT'S THAT LATE!?" moment) and met three out of the four characters. The character who seems to be playing Marcus from Indigo Prophesy is Mr. Mars, the prologue (which teaches you how to play) shows his family life that led up to an accident where one of his kids died because he couldn't keep track of the kid after buying something. Then we have a private detective hired by the victims of the oragami killer's families to find the guy, so the only bits I've played of him have been going to parents of victims and asking for information. Then there's the FBI agent, who has quite possibly one of the coolest pieces of tech I've seen thus far implimented in his ARI toy. It's basically a pair of projection glasses that link with a glove. You remember the movie minority report? With the doohicky that they used to scroll through a persons future crime? (checks youtube) It's basically that, only portable. At a crime scene he uses it to check for evidence (trace evidence) and in the cops office he uses it to pass the time (bouncing an invisible baseball off an invisible wall while cops look on saying "WTF!?"), and then to go over the case files in an empty room with a holographic environment. The third character who I haven't met is the Journalist, she's the fairly famous one from trailers and controversy because it's her breasts that will fill the screen. Controls are a bit better than in indigo. At least the PC version of indigo, not really sure about PS2, but the game does use SIXAXIS quite a bit (sometimes a fight has you throw a punch by rapidly moving the controller one way or another. And you dry off your characters after they get out of the shower by shaking it). There is also a persistence on the character models, FBI agent falls down a mud hill? His pants are COATED in mud when he gets back to the station to analyze things. And graphics are the best I've seen. Particularly the faces (you'll see a LOT of closeups of faces because basically the loading screen is the character you're about to plays face), but also it's pretty easy to see the characters muscle structure underneath their skin when they need to strip down for any reason (there are two shower scenes that I know of, one male, one female. Plus the scene in the nightclub.)

Worked a bit, VERY slow. Kinda surprising but I guess that's because most people who got heavy rain had already picked it up. Was happy because I saw a few parents who actually, you know, parented rather than just "What's that? The game has you brutally eviscerate opponents and spill their intestines over the ground in front of children? He can get it... Wait!? HE CAN SEE A NIPPLE! FLEE!" Other than that not much.

Yes they do, it Most boxes state "requires internet access and paid subscription". At least the former, not sure about the latter.

I just finished the "Arthas" book. It's basically a novelization of Warcraft Three, from the perspective of Arthas. The book makes the change between Paladin to serve the light and his people and Lord Death Knight SIGNIFICANTLY more jarring than the game makes it feel becuase the book makes it seem like he goes to icecrown and BOOM DK. As soon as he's a DK he enjoys being a lord of the slaughter, where as in the game, I always felt like he was just being prideful and envious which caught him in the Lich Kings trap, then had a bit of an issue after he killed dear old dad. He then took a 2 month hiatus where he basically forced himself to loose his humanity before becoming the DK he is in the Undead Campaign. They do discuss how he's still got the human side, but it's so incredibly over played (literally the last 1/3rd of the book, 90% of his acts that we'd consider horrible always send some sort of emotion through him, of regret, or memory of jaina, whatever) that you get bored. I mean I understand that they're trying to tie it to a string of FRIGGIN SWEET quests in WoW's Icecrown zone that have you running around as the Lich king doing various things because he literally ripped out his heart and tossed it aside, but come ON! Also the book is just flat out depressing. I mean I like darker things (see my constant love affair with Glenn Cook) but this is just... to much. I mean the author goes into long discussions on how Arthas is either uncaring or taking joy in the slaughter of the other characters. And while this is ok if it's a backup character, or the main villian in the book (which I suppose he is) but having it come from the person who's perspective you're seeing it from just doesn't feel right. It's better than Richard "I love Rhonin so much he's gonna fight the gods one day" Knaak but not by much.

gotta say, for an overall olympics thread you're only talking about hockey.

So if it's got intent, it's worse than "accidental" or "incidental" or "collateral" deaths due to actions, no matter the body count?

Except in this case the collateral has SIGNIFICANTLY more bodies to it than the targeting.

Boy, short track is interesting. Just got done with the womens 1500 where the final had 8 (standard is six) women on the field because in one of the previous heats the top three went down due to one of the competitors being a bit of a cheat in trying to not let others pass her. One of the americans (who they made a big deal about her being able to return from a massive injury) got advanced from her round, but honestly, when you're watching it you can tell that she's unable to keep up for it.

What's better, directly targeting or shrugging it off as "Collateral"?

The land is rightly Palestinian, and Israel is a brutal, racist apartheid regime which engages in regular attempts at depopulation of Palestine. My opposition to Israel has nothing to do with the ethnicity of its population; if the situations were reversed, I'd be opposed to Palestine. Attempting to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is an obvious attempt to deflect any criticism of the indefensible Israeli state. Israel belongs to the Jews, because they were there before the Palestinians had a Quran (or however the hell you spell it) to worship. Israel doesn't attempt to depopulate Palestine, it attempts to win back its territory that is occupied by people who constitute invaders. And even if they were "depopulating," your beloved Commies aren't against depopulation themselves. By that logic, america belongs to the french and english, europe belongs to greece, north africa belongs to Macedon along with india etc etc. I mean "taking back" is just a matter of perspective, Israel is trying to take back their "holy land" from the Canaanites, Palestine is trying to have their land that they were forced out of by the UN post WW2. That place has been fought over for millenia and probably won't settle down simply because "Oh, they had it first". I mean if Israel didn't utterly have a stranglehold on what's considered Palestine you'd probably have significantly less abuses. I mean Israel is putting up fences to discourage attacks, but these have the double usage of killing the economy of the Palestinians and putting many families through hardship because those who work in Israeli sectors are arbitrarily kept out depending on who's on duty and when they get there.

I'm sure somebody made a mccain and a Bush...

not entirely sure what teh is saying, but like others said in the thread, really anything is a rpg. It's just that what is considered the current RPG genre is based around what used to be the territory of pnp. Really anything in terms of genre is just a magic pigeon-hole you stuff a game into. Anything falls into "action adventure", and while FPS's are designated by their perspective, are they really that different from third person shooters? I think what we consider as an RPG is a choice/story driven game where YOU are the primary protagonist. And the Story is a MAJOR part of the game, not something that's tacked on to lead you from point a to point b (like in some FPS games, they're getting better now, but they generally don't meet the level of an RPG) also, most people want something akin to an open world (akin, not necessairly gta style run from anywhere to anywhere on the world map, but the ability to run back to previous locations is almost a requirement these days) in their RPGs. And really those are the only two major connectors between each of the rpgs in what we consider the RPG games.

Best one I saw was Vin.

Well in the trailer in the link I posted he mentions that he's "been around for thousands of years".

http://kotaku.com/5476148/see-command--con...rittier--darker Actually looks like it'll be pretty fun, a departure from previous titles but it'll at least wrap up a few lingering plot lines (Like Kanes immortality). Haven't seen much on it but previews say that you'll get three "classes" to play, Offense, support or defense. (Basically Tanks, Air, or Turtle)

I suspect the PS3 has an inferior attach rate. AFAIK, a lot of people are buying it because its the best blu-ray player on the market, they won't be gobbling up games at the rate the fauxhawk fratboy x360rs do. Except that now a days the PS3 299 bundle is overall a better deal than Xbox for the same price http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/productDet...aspx?sku=020315 vs http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/productDet...aspx?sku=020321 And on the ps3 for 50 bucks more you get double the HD space. Honestly I've been noticing the Wii has the lowest attach rate, because most people will buy it after seeing it at a friends place, then take it home and find that they NEVER use it, so they bring it back and sell it to us.

Actually I'm expecting PS3 sales to start rising as the exclusives and graphics get markedly better.

I hated getting that when I tried to play Tiefighter back in '96.

So, we're proposing to attack a country because of it's leader who possibly got put in place via voter fraud, when we're supporting a leader who was put in place via voter fraud (Afganistan)?

The new battle system looks like it'll be interesting.

Eh, not really. Resistance vs terrorism vs freedom fighter is really just a matter of perception.

Went to class this morning, freaked out because we had my old phil teacher subbing for my current one (the old one was the one who had to curve the grade so hard that an F became a C). Then went to my night class to find that my teacher decided not to show up (after the entire class waited for 15 minutes), so we just posted a roll on the door and took off.

thanks! the thing is, i've been playing this series since i was a little kid, so its particularly awesome for me, it's actually hard to recommend to people who dont have that history because of how damn bizarre the games are. if you are at all curious, play metal gear solid 1, the original playstation game. play it through in a day or two (its only about 6-10 hours long depending on how fast you are). if you aren't a huge fan after that, then just don't bother with the rest Metal gear solid 1 is on the same level of classic console gaming that Ocarina of Time is on, the two games are completely different, but both share that same Master Class status of quality that only rare games achieve. those two games are imo the pinnacle of console gaming. The one big problem with MGS 4 was that the most of the plot holes were closed with the brand new form of magic, NANOMACHINES! (In all the MGS games except 3 the characters communicate through nanites that are running through their bodies that stimulate the bones in the ear to receive and take sub vocalized words to transmit. They run of the human bodies power, and ultimately can do ANYTHING!)

Wasn't the only time we could have invoked the Monroe doctrine properly (as in not bending the rules for that) at the Falklands? At least, that's what one of my history teachers said way back when we learned about it for all of five seconds and then it was forgotten in favor of hero worship. That said, I personally think that the US is way to supportive of the Israeli government, and often our view of what's going on there is skewed to be pro Israel because of the fact that they're using "Woe are we, we nearly were wiped out by Hitler, please, save me from those who want to do anything to me!" card so much it's not funny. As to the "support iranian democracy!" schtick, That's something for the iranians to decide, america is already in the midst of trying to extract itself from two titanic foreign policy screw ups and is just barely getting back on the worlds good side, and to mettle in iran (and yes, it'd be mettling) would simply make the world start to throw up it's hands saying that we're a lost cause. You know, if we ever actually want change in the legislature, we need to implement term limits.