Amentep

No longer having full range of motion in my left ankle pretty much rules out manual transmissions for me (unless I got a wheel on the right side of the car, in which case my difficulty would be the gas peddle so still out).

Pretty sure that this phrase is a reference to "bloodguilt" or unlawful killing, of which killing during legitimate battle in warfare is not counted.

Isn't the point of businesses to make money? Is Gamestop doing something that any other secondhand market (eBay, used car lot, used book store, flea market) does - scale doesn't count (as Best Buy and the late Media Play both did used sales with less success so selling used games alone is not a winning model by necessity)? I can't blame them for wanting to find a way to tap the market themselves. I can blame them for punishing the end user. The only reason why I ever buy used games is availability, something that this move really won't address. It was also nice to be able to get rid of a game that you bought that ultimately you "played out" rather than have it sit in a box in your storage bin somewhere or throwing it away as there's nothing else to do with it. This argument is fatuous. I see it being made over and over, but the situations aren't really similar since used game sales have an initial purchase, the question is about controlling the secondary market. Piracy doesn't have the first purchase, but "might" lead to sales in the primary/secondary market.

Did you forget how to Star Trek? Must every Star Trek discussion turn to "slash fiction"?

Pretty much, at least it doesn't use half of its memory like the Wii U. I suspect the PS4 uses less considering they were planning on only having 4GB up until recently. Do console gamers really complain about installing games on HDD? "Ahhhh they're going to make my games load multiple times faster, now I will have to pause to make coffee". I never complain about installing games on the HDD; in fact its how I managed to avoid the RROD for many years as constantly running the disc drive increased the heat of the system (still ended up RRODing though on a hot summer day with bad circulation of air).

My condolences astiaks.

I think the biggest problem with the PC vs Console is that the strengths of the PC don't seem to be leveraged very well (which probably helps perpetuate some of the anti-Console feelings of the PC player). The PC can have a lot more robust input via the keyboard which can leave a lot of room to do complex things a controller can't. I don't think that makes consoles bad - not every game has to be the same - but it does seem that PCs strengths aren't really being played with. I certainly don't remember anyone I knew caring whether you were playing on an Amiga, an Amstrad, a C64, bbc micro. Didn't know people cared about such things until I got online - and it was never kids, it was always adults arguing their SNES was better than you Genesis, their PC was better than your mac, their AMD graphics card was better than your Intel graphics cards, etc.

Also important to note that boars do the most damage with their tusks, which they rake upwards after ramming with their head. If I remember my nature documentaries correctly, the boar's height puts their tusks in the upper leg range which could become problematic for attacks involving short men, really high boars or falling backwards during an upward thrust and getting disemboweled entirely...

I know I don't care what anyone else uses as a gaming system. I don't actually care what *I* use as a gaming system so long as it works and I'm playing games I like. So you are admitting you are selfish , where is your empathy for all the people that own consoles and are subsequently suffering? You mean where is my empathy for myself since I own consoles? "The Xbox One was revealed this weak" - Typo or intentional you think?

I don't like them either. For no particular reason other than not liking them That's cool - there's no accounting for taste, my own included! I'm just curious sometimes why people don't like certain things. It's definitely to do with the chords they use, IMO. That and they always seem so bloody miserable. Well Roger Waters was pretty miserable for their stuff leading into THE WALL (including contemptuously spitting on a fan at a concert at one point, IIRC). Syd Barrett's stuff in early PF is usually pretty upbeat psychedelia (well and slightly crazed or fantastical).

I know I don't care what anyone else uses as a gaming system. I don't actually care what *I* use as a gaming system so long as it works and I'm playing games I like.

I don't like them either. For no particular reason other than not liking them That's cool - there's no accounting for taste, my own included! I'm just curious sometimes why people don't like certain things.

No I don't have DSL.

I'll agree the future is going there, but my area isn't ready to go yet. And I've never used Steam - no point unless I can get a faster connection, which I can't without moving.

Being forced to get online at all is ridiculous. X-Box is a skip; I don't have an online connection for any of my consoles and I'm not going to move to a new location just so I can play games. I can't remember if PS4 was going to do account verifications either, but my memory was that it isn't. If it is I won't buy it - got enough paperweights around the house.

I'm also trying to make sense of their numbering scheme... XBOX > XBOX360 > XBOX One What comes next? XBOX ThreeSixty? #WTF!? XBOX One, as for "One box for all entertainment". Quite simple and intuitive, actually. Cue LOTR "one ring" references in 3... 2...1...

Any particular reason you don't like Floyd? Not trying to change your mind, just curious.

Australia looks suspiciously like places I've driven past in the US... I got 9397

I love soundtracks, I could easily list fifteen soundtracks that I've listened to often and recently - Jerry Goldsmith , Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, John Williams, Michael Giacchino, Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone ... all great talents who've done wonderful soundtracks. That said, I will not use soundtracks as they're not really created to be a musical album and will instead concentrate on music released on albums that did not double as soundtracks (which sadly rules out Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds and Queen's Flash Gordon and A Kind of Magic as well...). I'm also excluding collections which are typically going to be great by their nature of including great singles from other albums. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd (probably my favorite PF album - but I like most of their work) The Madcap Laughs by Syd Barrett (Syd's best solo album, IMO) Paranoid by Black Sabbath (I could have put their first 4-5 albums on the list) "the Four Symbols logo album" by Led Zeppelin (toss-up with Houses of the Holy) Revolver by The Beatles (toss up with Sgt. Pepper, White Album) Dummy by Portishead (I like the other albums too - they wore the influence of the wonderful John Cameron soundtrack for PSYCHOMANIA on their sleeve on this album and I love them for it) Nice by Puffy Ami Yumi (they have an expansive catalog of good stuff - lots of reissues too) Version 2.0 by Garbage (I like the first album pretty well as well) Destroyer by Kiss (coin flip between this and Queen II by Queen) Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise by Art of Noise (wonderful group; bit hard to keep track of the variations of their songs through albums and EPs and singles...) I imagine, like others, it'd be easy to create a top 50 or top 100 list.

I guess that's why people are complaining that battles are "scripted", if every one of them starts with the aliens ducking for cover and continues with pew pewing over cover, majority of the time. I dunno, I don't think the battles felt scripted (although I understand now why so many people liked the "terror" levels since the aliens seemed more active than reactive there). I just felt that it put a greater emphasis on careful placement of troops and skill choices than on being the first one to surprise an enemy and shoot it down. Mind you I'm playing Resident Evil 6 at the moment and enjoying it, so I'm a bit off the curve anyhow, apparently.

Watched STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS which I thought was pretty good but suffered a bit through some clumsy plotting I also kind of feel they felt too beholden to the previous continuity. It kind of makes sense here to address and they manage to move Starfleet back to the science exploration focus from the military focus that I know many worried about after the first film, but they really need to hit us with something brand-new next time out. I later watched WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US a relatively low-budget Universal werewolf film. They kept me guessing who the werewolf was going to be for awhile which was nice. The movie is sort of B-movie fun, kind of over-the-top in its way with its semi-steam-punk Van Helsing influenced Werewolf hunters. Even later in the weekend I watched PRIMEVAL the highly fictionalized account of giant killer crocodile "Gustave". It was a bit ridiculous and somewhat vacillates between wanting to be about the rebels/war going on vs being about a killer monster crocodile. But I enjoyed it. Also weird to see Gideon Emery in front of the camera after years of hearing him doing voice-overs for video games (a bit disappointing that he doesn't get to go all Fenris from Dragon Age II on the crocodile though... ) Even later than the previous even later in the weekend I re-watched SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN. Its an enjoyable film, the villains are quite hissable in the classic sense. The biggest complaint I had - this time and last time - is that they give one half of the titular duo - Snow White - very little to do. I know its cool to diss on Kristen Stewart (I've only seen her in one other film - as a kid in Cold Creek Manor) but I don't think its a problem of the actress so much as the character spends the majority of the movie reacting to what other people do around her rather than being the central character who does things herself.

^l never could figure out that game.

They already semi-explained magic in THOR. I don't think the issue with the Mandarin is ever going to be he's a magic character. The issue is that he is - in many people's eyes - a racist caricature, a "Yellow Peril" villain like Fu Manchu, complete with being a conquering descendant of Genghis Khan (as well as being a descendent of English nobility as well). What they did was take the terrorist aspect of the Mandarin (who was motivated by revenge against the societies he felt had caused his family to lose their fortune) into Aldrich Killian who also wants revenge against the society that rejected him (more or less) and his scientific ideas. Essentially both are out to address the wrong that they haven't been afforded the proper status in life they feel due to them and I think that's a reasonable trade off.