AnonymousBroccoli

There's a Linkin Park one that's pretty well done. I remember doing a Legend of Zelda scene, though I used the Nintendo Power guide to make everything.

I'm pretty sure the system alone will upconvert DVDs over VGA or HDMI, without the HD DVD drive.

I managed to get it about a month ago for something like $70. Got the Buffy set for $95 in November. It's nice to finally have the whole Whedonverse on DVD.

MTV sell out? Say it ain't so! yea thats what I was getting at, that Activision is selling themselves to the MTV audience Ironic, since MTV owns Harmonix. Meanwhile, Rock Band is getting 6 Grateful Dead tunes on Tuesday. Did they actually raise the price on GH song packs? I could've sworn it was $2/song, and the No Doubt one is $6.25. Between download prices, a weak PS2 port, broken Wii port, and ridiculously spec-heavy PC port, in-game advertising, blocking their guitars for RB on PS3, and trying to do the same for 360, charging $70 for stand-alone guitar controllers, charging full price and more for offshoot games, and probably some other stuff I can't recall, Activision's really pushing hard to turn this franchise into just another soulless money machine. Edit: My memory was off. It's always been $6.25/pack, going back to GH2.

I'll make a different post for non-hard drive stuff. I don't know that it's a great time to get a 360 just now. There's no bundled games anymore, and in my very non-expert opinion, I think a price drop may be coming. The lone 360 drop in the US was in July/August last year, and it was only $20-50. There's rumours it'll drop again once Grand Theft Auto IV comes out in April. Makes sense, since they'll want new system buyers to steer towards a 360 rather than a PS3, and a bigger price gap would help. PS3 picking up in sales, and 360 coming in last in January (barely) may fuel the price drop fire a bit. Though you could say the same for the PS3 in regards to GTA. It's not an exclusive game for either platform, but it's big enough that a lot of people will be buying their first new console since the PS2. Not to mention the possibility of marketing Blu-Ray as the clear high-def winner, with a lower price to help push that format. I'd agree that Wii's the only one likely to stay the same for now. If being the big, hot item of the moment doesn't sell systems, Super Smash Bros. Brawl will. $250 is more than I want to pay for it, but it's clearly not for a lot of people. It'll probably come down to $170-200 by this coming Christmas, unless demand continues to be crazy though the summer/fall, or 360 & PS3 both dip dramatically.

The Xbox 360 hard drive does a variety of things. Keep in mind that the Pro console's hard drive is 20GB, the Elite's is 120GB, whereas the memory card you'll get with the Arcade unit is 256MB. (If, for some reason, you run into a Core model, it didn't come with anything.) Without having used the system myself, these are the hard drive advantages I'm aware of: - Allows you to play many original Xbox games. You need to download patches for them to work, and they won't fit on a memory card, as far as I know. I think it's also because the original Xbox had a hard drive, so it's required on the 360 for compatability reasons. - If you want to buy something from the digital online store (Xbox Live Marketplace), you'll need to store it somewhere after you download it. A memory card will work for a lot of stuff, but if you end up buying several things, you'll probably need to keep deleting and re-downloading it to make room. As for what's available, there's the Xbox Live Arcade. Which has updated versions of games like Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Game, or new stuff like Zuma, Uno, Geometry Wars... They're usually $5-10 each. You can check out what they've got here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/livearcadexbox360/ There's also additional content for games. Extra songs for Guitar Hero or Rock Band, more maps for multiplayer games, new modes, costumes for characters, updated rosters for sports games... Some of it's free, some of it isn't. Free (usually) game demos are available for a lot of titles, though they're typically several hundred megabytes, so they'll only fit on a hard drive. Certain movies and TV shows are available to rent/buy, if you want. I think they're too expensive, but others may disagree. Some TV shows may fit on a memory card, but I kind of doubt it. Again, you can click around here to check out what's available. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marketplace/ - Some games may use the hard drive as a data cache to reduce load times, or otherwise speed up gameplay. I think Oblivion may be an example of this. - Some games don't allow you to play online without a hard drive. I believe this is a data-caching issue, as mentioned above. Burnout Paradise comes to mind as an example. - Store music files for custom soundtracks, or just regular playback. There's other options for this, like USB storage devices, or streaming over a network from a Windows PC, and a memory card may work, in an obviously limited capacity. You can play certain types of video files, too. Not to mention that if you change your mind down the line, and decide you do want the hard drive, it'll cost something ridiculous like $100 for the 20GB unit, or $180 for 120GB.

GTAIV will probably finally make me get a 360. Aside from that, Spore, inFamous, Prototype, Fable 2, maybe Alan Wake. Alone in the Dark looks like it has potential. I'm very cautiously optimistic about TNA Impact!, though I am aware of the developer's wrestling game history. And whatever Harmonix does next.

I've hung out at the GameSpot boards for several years, and been a mod almost as long. It's quite a circus over there.

Yay. I don't see much happening with it, though.

Of those, I've gotta go with the Lesnar match, though Halloween Havoc comes close. I'll toss in Eddie vs. Edge, No DQ from the September 26, 2002 SmackDown!.

I don't know where along the line NYPD Blue took a dive, since I only started watching with Rick Schroder, but it was definitely a shadow of its former self by the end. (Schroder's entry may have been the beginning of the end, for that matter.) I watched it to the end for the sake of Sipowicz, but it wasn't especially good by any means. I watched ER until last year's premiere. It also wasn't especially good for several seasons, but that episode was so thoroughly over-the-top dopey. John Wells seems to have a habit of blowing things up on his shows just for the sake of doing it. Sometimes it ends up being memorable, though more often than not, it comes across as cheap drama.

Matt Hardy gets away with popping a loose version of the Shocker as his signature hand gesture. The Undertaker's looks like he's fondling balls.

The Undertaker can not slap a tornado.

Hugh Laurie getting hosed again kinda sucks. I wonder if he gets overlooked somewhat, since he's in the dramatic category, while a lot of his better moments are comedic. I noticed three cut-aways during the west coast feed. Ray Romano, Sally Field, and another one in between. Reminded me of TSN's crowd shots during Raw.

If they really wanted to have Kennedy be the guy, they could've made it work. Didn't they only announce last week that the son would be revealed tonight?

Kindly forgive the two-week-oldness. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/08/29

Indeed! Comin' to Detroit in two weeks for the ROH show? Naw, I'm ridiculously out of touch with wrestling right now, especially ROH and the indy scene. Looking at the scheduled talent for the Detroit show, there's about a dozen names I either don't recognize, or haven't seen in a match. Including Morishima. I haven't watched much of anything wrestling-wise since WrestleMania, and nothing since Raw is Benoit. It's disheartening reading that things haven't improved in TNA since the start of the year. And that Angle is every champ, and... err... polishing his medal on TV. As a side note: TNA's website sure has some shitty banner ads.

Interesting posts, tigeraid. Nice to see another Londoner, too.

I'll only have it installed on one computer for the immediate future. I don't support the concept of requiring someone to approve of me using a game I paid for, either now, or 5 years down the line. And I haven't opened the box yet, so a return shouldn't be a problem. As for the rootkit allegations, I don't know enough about them to make a call one way or the other. I do know I have a SecuROM entry in my registry, and I'm not entirely pleased about it. There's some attempt at explaining how SecuROM works in the FAQ, though I'm sure they can't be entirely forthcoming about what it does, lest they reveal their secrets to crackers. http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/pc_faq.html

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html Starting immediately, we will be upping the activation count to a 5 by 5 plan. We will be raising the maximum amount of computers a user can have BioShock installed on simultaneously from 2 to 5, and allowing a user to reinstall BioShock on each of those computers from 3 times to 5 times. Also, we have in the works a revoke tool which you will be able to run on your machine if you want to free up that key and move it to to another computer (this works very much like Steam or iTunes system). We are also working with SecuROM and 2K customer service, so that when you do need to call in support problems, you get answers to your questions faster, without much waiting or being bounced around. SecuROM has been given much more autonomy to help fix your problems quickly and effectively. I am personally sorry for anyone who got bounced around in the past couple days (I even think I contributed to this problem) and we're going to make sure that does not happen in the future. It's an improvement, but doesn't really resolve the issue. My concern isn't the specific number limiting installations, but that it's being limited at all. Oh well. Doesn't seem like they're stepping down from this position, but they still have 26 days until I have to return the game.

According to the reply from 2K Elizabeth, you essentially have two activation credits. So you can have the game installed twice at any given time. (Two physical machines, dual-boot partitions, whatever). If you uninstall the game, I guess the credit is returned to you somehow. Not a terrible idea in theory, assuming you know that the system works that way. I somehow doubt it's spelled out in the EULA, which 90% of people don't read anyhow. Plus, there's always hardware failure to eat your credits. I'm not a fan of DRM, especially something like this, where I essentially have to ask permission to use something I own. So unless something changes, or I come across someone who wants and can't find the LE, it's going back within 30 days.

I played the PC demo on Monday night, and was impressed enough to spend what's pretty much my last $80 on the limited edition. (The old Warhammer geek in me got all jorny over the pewter figure. ) Unfortunately, I'm now reading that you may only be allowed to install/authenticate the game twice before your registration key craps out. If that's the case, it's going back.

Nice to see some non-technical love for Battlestar Galactica. Assuming it hasn't improved dramatically over the past 3 years, it still pains me to see Two and a Half Men get so many nods.

I am so thoroughly pissed off right now. God damnit.

Season 6 seems to have started in Canada on CH. I think it's the second episode tonight.