Daeval

For all of its faults, Steam is actually a pretty good system. In fact, there's really only one major fault, and that's the temporary server issues at release time. But maybe I'm biased. Anything that could lead to greater creative control, and therefore variety, and/or lower costs in games is ok by me.

Democracy Just the demo though. Seems really interesting, but the damn thing crashes like it's Windows ME.

I'm curious about this portal technology thing. Your quote is all I've heard of it, but it sounds like something the Unreal engine has been able to do for a while now.

How's it inconsistant? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It doesn't make much sense? As in a lot is not explained well enough or at all. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed. The storytelling is excellent, but the story itself is so far kind of shoddy. They're going to have to start filling in holes eventually, if they have any plan for a real storyline. What they fill it with could make or break the background that they've laid out.

I love the little blue guy, and his crew, as much as anyone else, but it sure feels like they're beating his franchise to death lately.

VirtualDub can cut a chunk out of a frame? Sheesh, and I thought it was only good for format tweaks and audio editing.

Your system restore files might have been corrupted by Kaspersky, assuming you're talking about the WinXP system restore. For the keyboard thing.. that's a weird one. You could try fdisking from a dos boot disk, but you're eventually going to want to install windows anyway, so who knows? That does sound like a decent place to start though. Have you checked Norton's site for information about this thing? They usually have some tips for reducing the pain of removal.

Rock's bad ass specifically because he's "not a ninja," as you put it, but opinions are opinions. Personally, I'm sick of Sasuke in general. He's more of a whiny biatch than Sakura, and his character is even more two dimensional than most of the others in the series. He's strong and he's out for revenge.. Oooh, never heard that one before. Itachi too. I couldn't care less about how powerful he's supposed to be, but at least his motivations might have more depth. Sasuke has room to grow into a decent character, but so far he reminds me of Akuma/Gouki - "Strong and aloof" makes a fan favorite, but not a good character IMO. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> sasuke was kool, but all these talk about him trying to kill his brother and gaining power is just very annoying. at the end he's not gonna be stronger than Naruto or Gaara( tis how u spell it) but if u guys have read the latest chap. in the manga. i think sasuke COULD have one of those fox demon thing in him but that's just random guessing <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah...Sasuke definately has room to develop, and sure his reasons for living are not the most original..but I think that's sorta of the point. He's driven for revenge, and that's all he's focused on. Kakashi had a talk with him about ppl who lead such lives...I think that once Sasuke deals with his "issues" with his brother etc, he will begin to change into a more interesting character... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's exactly what I was hoping. Hopefully, that talk was an early sign of some actual character development.

Rock's bad ass specifically because he's "not a ninja," as you put it, but opinions are opinions. Personally, I'm sick of Sasuke in general. He's more of a whiny biatch than Sakura, and his character is even more two dimensional than most of the others in the series. He's strong and he's out for revenge.. Oooh, never heard that one before. Itachi too. I couldn't care less about how powerful he's supposed to be, but at least his motivations might have more depth. Sasuke has room to grow into a decent character, but so far he reminds me of Akuma/Gouki - "Strong and aloof" makes a fan favorite, but not a good character IMO.

So thats the style they choose to stick with eh? Well... I expected more... I figured Atomis would be a new start for SNK... Guess not <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It still has time to be a new start. A company's first game on a new system rarely taxes said system to its limits. Once they're comfortable developing on AtomisWave, things will (hopefully) look up. And Rumble Fish is a fighter with a really weird animation style. It looked like fun, but I have no idea about US releases. Oh, Troll?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought he looked evil.

More Gran Turismo 4. I'm up to about 21% now and I've got myself a few genuine race cars, like the Motul Z and the RX8 LM. It's kind of sad how they let you take the LM version of a car into the model-specific race for that vehicle. No standard tune-up is going to save you from a Power-to-Weight of 1.5, coupled with insane handling. My goal for now is 25%, though the endurance races scare me. I never finished more than 1 or 2 of them in GT3, and even that was a relay with a bunch of friends. There are at least 3 24 Hour races! Ack! Ma Chao IS the coolest, but I always thought it was for the helmet and spearwork. I had him almost maxed out in DW3 before someone told me to try putting him on a horse. And what a coincidence, the girls call me super horse too. I need to get DW5 badly. No, I don't even pretend to know Chinese, but that's what they said his name translated to in some FAQ I read. Don't bite my head off about it.

Just watched eps 123 & 124 - I didn't think Rock Lee could get much cooler after the fight with Gaara, but they done proved me wrong.

A lot of stuff gets #1 that doesn't deserve it. The preview for it looked pretty terrible, but it was in a string of craptastic horror movie previews so maybe that baised me. Post if you see it and it's any good!

I like GameCrazy, because after I lost my copy of Suikoden 2, I thought I'd never find another copy for cheap. Then about half a year later, my brother, who works at a Hollywood Video that was connected to GameCrazy, managed to find another copy for $20. He even managed to get a discount, becuase he was technically working there. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I used to work at a GameCrazy, and Hollywood Video employees get discounts their too (and GC employees get free rentals and pre-streaks like HV employees). As far as the game-specific retail stores go, they're a halfway decent store. Their used games have a tendency to be cheaper, and they usually give more for trade ins. However, their membership card blows chunks compared to GameStop's. It's the same, but costs twice as much and you don't get the Game Informer subscription (one of the few decent mags). Also, Game Crazy has a really low priority for pre-orders, so if you're hoping to get a huge title (like halo 2 huge) on launch date, pre-order through someone else. I've heard this is because they order under the Hollywood Video moniker, so the big distributors don't consider them specialty retail.

I still want to try it for myself, but I'm somehow relieved to finally hear this from someone. Brings it back to reality somehow. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And yeah, it sells sex. As usual, sex sell, especially to under-aged kids. They blantantly show off boobies, as if it is part of the Greek culture........(it is the Greek culture, I think ) Anyway, I will sum it up as a DMC wannabe. Graphically, this is one cool dude. Gameplay wise, been there done that. In fact, most of the monster can be killed with just the few combos that you can learn. There are no special needed So, slash away. Now, let me get back to DW5 which is also slash and slash but with better feeling on it <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That was my impression from the ads and reviews: That they might be riding the rockstar wave and trying to sell the game based on nudity and voilence, while shirking gameplay to a large degree. I guess I'll have to rent it, if the rental stores even carry it.

Gary Grigsby's World At War It's like Axis and Allies on steroids. I'm still not entirely sure if I like it or not, but I'm leaning towards "It's cool, but it's not for me." The graphics are awesome and kind of fresh, especially for a turn-based war sim. There also appears to be a lot of depth to it, though I'm afraid I'm missing most of it. There are about 6 numbers that all seem to boil down to "do I have enough to build an infantry here or not?" There are seemingly minor interface issues (pop ups that give vital information, but also get in your way, etc) that bog it down slightly as well. Combat "animations" are boring as hell, and any player who values his sanity will turn them off immediately. This isn't a big deal, as individual combats aren't really the point. The game tries to be historically accurate to a fault, simulating the complex diplomacy of the time with a variety of country-specific rules. Maybe I just didn't understand the system enough, but it seemed like there was very little room to change the course of history. Accurate or not, I found this sucked a lot of fun out of "what if" situations. This effects some countries more than others - Russia and the USA have to wait for attacks before they can go on the offensive, while China is so bogged down by attempts at historical accuracy that they are hardly worth playing at all. If you love Axis & Allies, you have to at least give this a shot. But I would recommend that anyone who's at all interested play the demo before they buy. I still want to try it for myself, but I'm somehow relieved to finally hear this from someone. Brings it back to reality somehow.

Sounds like a lot of work.

Yeah. Originally, it was "Team Fortress 2" that was supposed to be the Half Life mod. It was taking forever, so they released "Team Fortress Classic," a (piss poor, imo) remake of the original to tide over the fans. Obviously, TF2 never came out. In short, no. Quake 3 was made in response to (in order to capitalize on) widespread online gaming. QuakeWorld, a special internet optimized version of Quake 1, was the game that spawned GameSpy (Then called QSpy). Mods for Quake 1, most notably threewave CTF and the original TeamFortress, got pretty big online and the community was that much larger. The rest is history. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> At the time, Q1 did have an amazing community, then with the release of Quake II, more and more (some of the best of their time) mods started appearing into the light. It was in 2000 when Half-Life took Quake 2's "Best engine to mod on" with the advent of Counter-Strike Retail and Day of Defeat beta. But Quake 2 revolutionized the modding community because we all know, the single player sucked. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's basically it. Quake 1 and Quakeworld started the big online boom, and really opened up the modding community with the relatively simple QuakeC programming language. Quake 2 took it a step further, and the mods were numerous and high in fun factor (Superheroes Q2 was friggin' awesome), although very few of them had large online communities. Half-Life stole Q2's thunder when Counter Strike started gaining popularity, eventually releasing in a retail release. I don't get it... At least the Unreal series had female player models from the get-go. :\ Both series are very good, but comparing hits to misses I've got to give it to Unreal.

In short, no. Quake 3 was made in response to (in order to capitalize on) widespread online gaming. QuakeWorld, a special internet optimized version of Quake 1, was the game that spawned GameSpy (Then called QSpy). Mods for Quake 1, most notably threewave CTF and the original TeamFortress, got pretty big online and the community was that much larger. The rest is history.

I loved Quake 1 and Quake 2. Quake 3: The Machinegunning can rot in hell for all I care. Quake 4 I am looking forward to, mostly for the single player. I'm having dreams of reliving the QuakeWorld days (still the heydey of online gameplay IMHO), but I'm not holding my breath.

A few nights ago I played some Beyond Good & Evil. That game rocks. And I just played "5 Chapters of Calculus in 2 nights." I'm longing for some GTA4 or Silent Storm or some such, but I have to beat the test which is the final boss before I have time for anything else.

My faith in rockstar is not the greatest, but I'll be keeping an eye on this anyway.

Yeah, the games are great, but have you ever had to clean a "well-loved" DC that the new employee, whose standards are not yet up to par, took in? Ugh.

It shouldn't have happened, but it sure was amusing. A 12 year old throwing a hissy fit probably isn't a good reason to call 911, and this dispatcher had the balls to tell this woman. People need to raise their own kids these days, but that's a rant for another time.