jayseven

@Iun I'm far more interested in what the 'once a decade' leadership change in China could mean. I've not heard anything about it except one tweet BBC have on their live feed at the moment. Elsewise I'm feeling extremely cynical about this whole thing. I mean of course I prefer Obama; I'm a liberal who knows nothing about running a country but has throwback 60s hippy ideals for how the world can run on peace and love, but I'm just surprised at how surprised (inorite) I am that everyone non-american is so... passionate/zealous about the whole affair.

Start off with David Mitchell's other works. Structure- and narrative-wise, Cloud Atlas is reasonably individual (of course it'd be foolish to say completely individual) but the scope of imagination and depth of subject material is prevalent throughout his work. Even if you disapproved of his 1800s, his book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a great read (set in 1700s), though I do recommend turning your reading glasses to number9dream and Ghostwritten first (personally I've not even been able to finish Black Swan Green yet. Otherwise perhaps look at Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (I read that and Cloud Atlas in a close timeframe and found both addictive, though SC end-story isn't perfect) - technically cyberpunk rather than the pop-philosophy pseudo-life-is-art category that CA (and Life of Pi) fall into. Shorty once recommended to me Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland, and I'd highly recommend that. A Secret History by Donna Tartt is another must-read (again I read most of these books in a similar window).

EDIT: AAAAND do it the next attempt. Fair enough. Thanks tales sorry my last 'edit' appeared to dismiss your post.

I'm going for the 100% synch in one run, and generally I'm patient enough to let a bunch of guards kill me if I've missed a secondary objective. Having to shoot three carts of gunpowder whilst in a horseback chase with basically NO spare time SOUNDS alright, but when you shoot the first cart and your horse can't move round/over it... well you've just got to redo it 12 times (and counting!). Of course, there might be more than 3 gunpowder carts altogether but I don't want to 'risk' it so I'll keep doing this controller-twisting annoying thing. (otherwise I'm very much enjoying it) EDIT: Lol just did 3 and the last blast blew me off the horse. DESYNCHROMINIREDZONE.

Started playing with some snazzy Sennheister headphones late last night - they are making the experience amazing. Walking into the theatre royal was such a sight/sound! I spent about 45 mins, soaking it up. When my cousin was playing I was mostly just in the room but not watching once the story started progressing seriously. Knowing, though, that there's 4+ sequences of 'intro' means I can relax and not rush. My only wonderment is whether I should try to 100% sync the first time through or just hit the story up and return to bits... I suppose I'll give it a go. That board game - I forget what it's called - was quite addictive to play. It's like a mix between othello and draughts. Took me 3 games to pick it up -- the person you play against is charming; leans one way to fart loudly the other. Lovely.

@Guy I practically lived off those pasta salads for a year's worth of lunches (and sometimes breakfasts and dinners...) There were these pasta 'pots' -- just tomato and cheese - for £1.40 that were filling and 'healthy' and great quick food for work lunchbreak. My MSG-Free version of Pot-noodle. @Murr I'm very jealous! That's dirt cheap and well worth it. @Eenuh catan ftw! Dan Dare taught me, shorty and nami how to play... and it was at least a year before, while teaching others to play with the rules, it was revealed that Dan had taught us the wrong moves :P I still play "Silly Rules" with some of my friends; basically you didn't have to have an empty imtersection//two roads between settlements... so tehre were games where people wer ejust camped out on one tile with 3 settlements and 3 cities! It actually played fairly well... [/nostalgia]

@ipaul arent Zepp notoriously difficult when it comes to lending their tracks to movies? I heard that for School of Rock, Jack Black sent a tape of him freestyling the intro to Immigrant Song, pleading them to let him use it in the movie (the first minute makes it I think?).

Whenever I read posts by people who know all this stuff about a made up thing it just makes me realise how little I know about anything. Star Wars makes money. Everything they have done has made butttonnes of money (three t's worth). ERGO: Star Wars works. I'd love to see new installments simply because, as can be seen by the universal reaction to the news; this shit is big. This shit is going down in the history books as big. It's always awesome to actively know that something that will last beyond your years on the planet is happening as it's happening. Even if it's shit.

I've started playing this -- I'm about 4 hours in on nightmare mode. I really thought the game would be something just about bearable, but actually so far it's extremely playable and much better looking than I anticipated. It feels similar to Red Faction: Guerrilla (another game I really need to go back and finish), and is surprisingly linear so far. I can admit that there's nothing extremely unique about the game so far, besides cramming a few different types of gameplay/minigames together (i.e. racing/card game/other mini games), but even these are shared with other FPS games out there. I have no particular care about the story line. The silent FPS protagonist is usually backed up by some form of character-building input from some other source but in this world nobody knows who you are and, really, it doesn't seem to matter much at all! Did anyone struggle with any of the achievements? I've been spending ages in each area making sure I've got all the pick-ups and might turn to a guide before I get to the next disc to verify that I've not missed anything.

See, it worked! I have no idea what Magnus was doing that was so wrong, though.

How about a sign-up thread? If it's a 14-player game and there's 14 players on an auto-sign-up list then it's not fair on those who like to choose their games (like me :P)

without the dots :P

My cousin's hit sequence 5;

Try using the code I put, but without the dots..? I can definitely be tagged @notetoself. There were arena fights in the game remember? Those 'psychic spots' where you had to clear rooms of enemies (same room often, so essentially the same as waves of enemies). But it'd be very unlikely for more of these to be DLC because, as you say, there's no expanded story doing that! Wish I hadn't sold the game - they didn't release it in Aus because it would have, most likely, been refused classification... However they are finally introducing an 18+ certification for games (currently MA15+ is the highest it goes) -- but I'll be back in sensible EU by then. I might purchase the PS3 director's cut anyway, and take it to a friend's house to play. All depending on how new the experience is and what dlc is available.

Yeah I saw that and was a bit disappointed (what with not having a PS3). It's another game to add to the short list of games enticing me to get a PS3, but sensibly speaking there's no need. I'd love to see what the DLC would be like. I'd be a dissapointed buyer if it was just arena stuff. Perhaps back-story? Updated graphics will draw more buyers, hopefully. That it's getting an update is encouraging for hopes of a sequel (considering I bought the game for the price of a used game brand new as soon as it came out). Do you have a PS3, with thoughts on getting it? And tagging me works but you have to enter the mention; [.mention=565.]jayseven[./mention.] Should work. Surprised not more people have taken advantage of @tagging people inappropriately. You may well be the first, magnus!

plateaued at 1, 10, 20, 50, 200, 400 and 800 words but kept going. About 2 hours later and 1162 words later, but hoorah! Nothing special, but words on a page, eh?

In total you were waiting for around 8 hours(!) would you say that's standard for theme parks? I guess paying an extra £10 would've saved you a few hours wouldn't it?

They won't give up on you gaggle! They will understand the situation because, frankly, it's a piss take of a situation to be in in the first place. The world isn't out to get you but sometimes the leaves fall in just the right pattern to spell out "fuck you" on the pavement, eh? Add in Christmas day and you've completed the hattrick! :'(

Been watching my cousin play for a few hours. he spent $130 pre-ordering the big fancy box o' stuff. He doesn't seem particularly enthused about the game thus far... I think the 'prologue' is taking a lot longer than expected. Personally I'm not enjoying the british accents. I know that's going to be historically accurate but it just irks me. It's not exactly the most awesome part of british history. The currency being in real money is pretty sweet though! In terms of glitching... yeah there's been a few. Mostly with the horse collision detection. The combat is 'different' -- not had a hands-on myself so I don't know if that's just my cousin being a flid. He also spent about 10 minutes trying to open a chest, and did not succeed. The terrain seems quite claustraphobic - though this again may be due to the 'prologue' limitations on the character..?

re: lucasarts games, would it be a stretch to imagine a smash bros/sony all-stars type game with disney, pixar, marvel, lucasarts movies and games...MINDSPLOSION! I looked some of this up earlier - I saw that Land Before Time had twelve straight-to-video sequels, none of which were associated with Lucasarts. Similarly I think Labyrinth would bea Jim Henson IP, though I'm not really certain!

It must be about 3 years since I watched, but I do remember thinkiing Mr. Vengeance was my favourite. Oldboy was great, don't get me wrong, but I appreciated the slower and more introspective narrative of the first film. Lady Vengeance was my least favourite even though, iirc, it is full of artsy flourishes. I can't remember the details but I do remember coming on here and someone basically saying I didn't 'get' something important/significant.

[in reply to Dannyboy] ^That was my first thought. ... I mean come on! Disney basically owns everything. and $4billion+?! That's a mad sum of money just for George Lucas himself to get. I'm flummoxed by it all. I guess we'll see more Indiana Jones, too? I remember Lucas once stated that he always had the idea of 9 movies. Christ. Kathleen Kennedy's wiki page is an interesting read. 2nd most successful producer, co-founder of Amblin Entertainment, with an incredible list of movies to her name.

Aw man... that would've been awesome! But yes, for shame; I've been without gold for 6 months now. I can afford to get Gold again but I do feel like I need a better reason to do it -- being out of whack with timezones is the biggest reason, though!

Ah ok! I say because my shotgun currently gets something like 34% more damage due to proficiency level 35, which means that it just makes more sense for me to get the shotguns than my co-op buddy who has proficiency of 3% damage increase. You and your play buddy sound just like me and mine - I'll lay a turret down and run to the other side of enemies. It's great fun. I've just checked, and Borderlands is one of a handful of games that I have more achievements than @Hero\-of\-Time on!