Uncle Mike

But they are entertainment, in a lot of cases. Which is no different really. It's still 'fun'

I read someone, somewhere saying that the Beach Landing level in Medal of Honor was a really ceffective way of doing 'war' in a game, because you'd died so many times by the time you get up the beach, that it makes you think about all the dieing, and stuff.

They should put them on kebab boxes too. Genius!!

They have. There's kebab shops giving away demos of PoP too, as I understand it.

I'm not especially pushing that argument I'm just pointing out that there's a significant difference.

OK. I'm not convinced there is a significant difference.

I really don't seee much difference between pushing a few buttons to make a game-dude do something despicable, and rooting for <Famous Actor> when he sneaks up on <Bit-part actor>, and breaks his neck on his way to do whatever he's doing.

Either way, I reckon you've got a similar emotional involvment. In fact, I reckon you could make a case for films being worse, as few people wish they were Game Character X, but loads of people wish they were Film Character Y.

"Are you looking at me?"

"I'm funny how? Funny like a clown?"

The difference between games and films is that in a game you are the protagonist; with a film there is always a distance. I don't think you can say 'it's just like an adult film'; games ARE a new medium.

I'm not in any way convinced by the "it's worse; in a game you're actually doing it" argument.

I don't see any real difference between making your game character do something bad, and being on, say, Will Smith's side when he blows up another ten generic ethnic slurs in Bad Boys 2, for example.

...and that the N64 should be included because it was part of that hardware generation, regardless of that the marketing department says its number of bits was.

No, no, no. Psx and Sega Saturn ONLY. That is the law.

That's a shit rule. My A1200, and the ill-fated CD32 were 32-bit.

I hate it when he's right.

Exactly. I had to shut up, faced with debating skills like that. Plus, you and others running back to Harvest with your tails between your legs has got me interested enough to pick it up after Christmas.

You're a bad influence. When I go mental, and slaughter a school, I'm blaming you.

The first third of the game is little different from Tenchu, really - all it lacks are the ace grappling hooks and the option to play as a supercool ninjachick. Hide - sneak - kill - repeat. Lacking the inherent aceness that ninjas bring to everything, it is rather quite dull but does have a rather wonderful atmosphere reminiscent of a low budget 70s exploitation film.

This is what I was endlessly telling poor Harvest the other night, actually, Ulala. "Oh, It's just like a slower, poorer version of Tenchu, but without it being supercoolninjaness", I said.

Then he said "Shut up, Mike."

are people that buy a car without doing research first not idiots then?

Look even my brothers friends dog knows the game is crap.

Exactly what kind of 'research' are they supposed to be doing? If they check out reviews, they'll see it getting good scores.

Arse. I was talking about NFS:U. I've fucked this post up good and proper.

It's not their fault of course, but it's true. I can totally understand going into a shop, seeing Prince Of Persia and LOTR, and just thinking "PoP? What's that? Ah, LOTR, I've heard of that, I'll buy it"..

And not only that, but when LOTR actually gets good reviews, and probably good word-of-mouth reports from their other friends, it's an easy choice.

Yeah! I win! Yaaaarrrr!

I didn't even bother punctuating my insult. That's how low you are.

I doubt it. It's only £20 new.

Anyway, I like it. It's fun, and slow, and wandery-atmospherical-nicety.

I was returning 'Return Of The King' to GAME this evening (for obvious reasons) for a refund and the guy behind the counter looked at me and said, "That'll teach you to buy a game from EA!".

I whole-heartedly agreed, collected my £35 and walked out of the shop. It felt like finally cleaning that crusty bit of dog shit from your shoe.

spaz

I'm only messing really. But on a serious note, the one issue I have with LCD tellys is that they make a poor signal look really, really shit.

And Dixons-type shops don't generally have a good signal going to the tellys, as they're all run off splitters, and crappy cabling, non-RGB this, that and the other. IMO. And I'm not an A/V nerd, either.

My next telly's going to be a fuck-off LCD one, though. A friend of mine bought one recently, and when we plugged it in, we were all "this is a bit shitty." But, once we'd set up the cable box to be using RGB, and so on, it looked gorgeous.

Dont like LCD's for gaming, its way to pixelie, and even more so for TV.

You're such a lovable spaz.

Nightmare Creatures, on PSOne, was a good attempt at a 3D beat-em-up, I thought. I had quite a bit of fun with that.

we've always hated EA. they are the masters of polished shit. take NFSU, shit racing game but OMG flashing lights under the car = best game ever ever ever.

Tell me, in your own words, why its shit. Not someone else's review, not the recieved opinion of the 'enlightened', but your own feelings.

they're still just releasing the same generic line-up every year, you just know Harry Potter, LOTR, Fifa and SSX will be ready for next years Christmas too. Shall we call them polished turds?

LOTR would surpise me. There's no more films, and they story is done.

And they might be polished, but you'd be hard-pressed to call FIFA, SSX or LOTR 'turds' even if some of them might not be the best games ever.

In other news, why have we gone from a Ninty-mentalist forum, to an EA-hater'z' forum in less than a week? Weird.

That's when you use all your power tanks, and freeze everyone. It's called the mega-freeze in the manual. (presumably, to differentiate it from the normal press-triangle freeze)

It's R1-L1, or something.

And Keep the mega-freeze for when it gets hairy, if you can.

I did that bit twice. The first time, I was kicking ass, but not quite efficiently enough to keep Farah alive. Trouble was, I'd used the Mega-Freeze when they first started appearing, and wasted it.

Second time, I save it until I'm well into the fight, and give them all a huge whooping.

For example, I think I'd need to be convalescing following a broken leg to really give F-Zero GX its deserved game time.

Oddly, it doesn't work like that for me. I had an extended period of convalescence a while ago, and the problem then is that whatever you do, you're already bored before you start.

So you need quicker and quicker fix gaming, in shorter and shorter sessions. Variety being the spice of life, and all that.

Or at least, that's how it worked for me.

Shut up Mike.

Yeah! That's me told. I can see why people come to you for your sagely wisdom.

MJ2K - your mate's a sheep. A sheep that prefers to be led by the flock rather than the shepherd. But there are many. Help them, if not with your intellect, then with a hammer. (Book of Poet, Chapter 14, Verse 11)

I disagree. Or at least, I don't necessarily agree.

Just because we, (or at least, a subset of 'we') say one is better than the other, doesn't make it so.

What if he buys Burnout 2, like what our man here recommended, and doesn't like the fact that you can't do anything to customise the car? Perhaps he enjoys that bit.

It certainly doesn't sound like Burnout 2 inspired him to realise he'd made the wrong decision when he played it at a later date.

Sometimes, you have to realise that other people don't care about things some of us care about. That doesn't make them stupid, or wrong. Just different.

So I saw him again on Saturday, "Guess what I got!?!" and before I can happily say Burnout 2, he's already gone and said Need for Speed: Underground. Inside I start screaming.

And does he like it? Knowing what scores things got isn't the same as giving good advice.