AnonymousBroccoli

I am also the surprise new co-owner of a Wii. (And the software sales-padding monstrosity known as Wii Play.) It may very well end up being a glorified Wii Bowling machine, much like my DS is a glorified Sudoku machine. But it's cool to have. I'm gonna try to find No More Heroes for $10 if I can. I might have a few options there. And there's Boxing Day sales for Super Mario Galaxy at $30, which I may take advantage of. If I can get Rayman Raving Rabbids for about $10, I'll do that too. (The Rabbids' wailing just cracks me up.) I'd like to get the Trauma Center games. Unfortunately, I missed Amazon.ca's $15 sale on the second one. Resident Evil 4 seems to be best on the Wii, so I'd might as well get that. I had it once for $10, but used it as trade fodder. Zack & Wiki might be worth a look. I seem to have missed a $10 sale on that too. A maybe for Super Paper Mario, since I liked the previous RPG games. I saw Metroid Prime 3 for $20 used recently, but if I got that, I'd feel obligated to go through the first two, and I'd never get that done. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is also kicking around for $30, but I've never traditionally been an SSB fan. Maybe online play would change that, but I doubt it. I played Boom Blox very briefly, but I don't think it'd be worthwhile to buy, unless I can find it for $20 again. I'd forgotten about Okami. But I don't know that 480p/16:9 and maybe a bit of a graphical improvement are worth twice the price and possibly some control issues. Especially since the Wii is on the SDTV upstairs. I'm not a big fan of Nintendo's philosophy re: the Virtual Console, or online in general, so I don't know if I'll even bother getting a Wii Points card.

I did the Infinite '90s Marathon once. 35 songs on mine. I got $180 for it. But a ton of stars, I assume. Now it says it's in progress, because The Colour and the Shape is all in there. If it's in the Challenges section, and not Tour mode, you can pause and quit, and it'll save your progress.

Is Carson Daly going away?

DLC double shot! http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107391 FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107162

Pearl Jam's Ten is being re-released on CD in March, and it'll be available as Rock Band DLC the same day. http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106563

http://www.drumrocker.com/products/index.php Unfortunately, it is $400 in Canada. (Anywhere that has it in stock, that is.) As opposed to $300 in the US. I was waiting in line at Future Shop the other day, and a guy was buying them. If I had money to burn, I'd probably pick them up, to be honest. I like drumming, but I'm not a huge fan of the stock kit. Even with the RB2 improvements.

I think it's a maximum of 5 free Golds per console.

http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104472

Buy 2 games, get 1 free at Toys R Us Canada. It officially starts on Saturday, I think, but apparently people are getting the deal now.

When I get called for strict NAT, I usually turn on Universal Plug 'n' Play (UPnP). It's possible it's already turned on for yours, since I think that's the usual default for routers.

The difference is, the GameCube isn't a well-documented piece of shit hardware-wise. :-\ If you're buying used, maybe ask the seller for the manufacture date (on the back of the console), and if possible, the lot number, and team (on the back of the box). Then you can punch the information in at this site, and get some idea about the innards. http://www.360drives.com/list

The PC version is out now. It's got some cool video editing stuff in there. Unfortunately, my single-core CPU won't cut it, and it's got SecuROM, which is a no-no for me.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Force-Unle.../dp/B000R0URCE/ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 360 for $30

(Kinda NSFW)

Epic epic is epic. I try to catch every episode of X-Play, and sometimes I just wanna throttle whoever is writing it. I know the games this time of year are big, major deals, but STOP SAYING EPIC.

Unless I can think of something else I want that's coming out next year, I'm probably gonna snag the PC version tomorrow. Hopefully I can figure out a way to play on the keyboard & mouse, but use my 360 controller and its headset for communication.

I don't think you're allowed to copy MP3 files from a device to the 360 hard drive. I'm not sure if there's any files you can copy from a USB device or networked computer. To be honest, I haven't played with non-gaming functions much. And my hard drive isn't big enough that I'd want to store anything I don't have to on there.

I think it might be random. There are new "Premium" themes that will change those friend backgrounds. The only free one that I'm aware of is for Gears of War 2, called "Last Day". Unfortunately, they way the UI is set up now, if I'm looking under New Arrivals for Themes/Gamer Pictures, the point prices aren't displayed in the menu. I have to click on each one to see whether or not it's free. For some reason, I suspect it's deliberate, but that sucks.

Also, Thoth: My batteries are re-charged now, but I still suck at Gears.

To view your full-bodied avatar: http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/YOURGAMERTAGHERE/avatar-body.png The server's taking a pounding for obvious reasons, so if you manage to get through, you're probably best off saving and re-hosting the image somewhere else. Here's mine: Needs more beard.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2039/ Half-Life is celebrating its 10th anniversary today, and is currently available for 98¢ on Steam.

I picked it up today. I like it so far. Though it's definitely not a perfect game, by any means. The platforming bits are generally fun, though I find I'm not always grabbing ledges when I think I should. There was one part in a sewer, where I grabbed on to a concrete ledge, but I couldn't climb up from there, and I also couldn't shimmy slightly to the left to the metal walkway. So I pretty much had to fall to my death. Or I'm not able to climb on to some surfaces, for some reason. I just got past a part where I could climb on to shipping containers, but not a building ledge to get to its roof. And it wasn't because it was too high. And the proper path isn't always clear. A lot of times, I end up having to cheat with the B button to just figure out where it is I'm supposed to go. I do like the general game concept; the art style; the voice work; the controls are pretty good for the mostpart. You will die a lot, but you're re-loaded pretty close to where you died within about 4 seconds. Technically, it looks really good too. There's a few minor pop-in issues here and there, and the animation when the guards fall over is kind of goofy.

I'm doing some time trials now. That's pretty fun. You've gotta casually run through the first time to get a lay of the land. Second time, you go for speed. Then you screw around with that path for a while. Then you go back and try to find new paths, and improve your time there. It uses the same environments, but based on the different checkpoints, it can change things up quite a bit. It's interesting how subtle things will affect your speed. I think you might be allowed to strafe just slightly, but if you go too far, you'll slow down. If you come down off a cliff and roll when you don't have to, you'll slow down. But if you don't roll when you should, you'll take time to recover. If you turn too much, you'll slow down. If you don't time your vaults right, or know when you can vault, you won't gain speed. Conversely, if you jump, rather than slide, and the obstacle is too high, you'll have to climb over. If you don't jump into walls head on, then it'll take a second to adjust and climb over. I can also remember saying that this seems like it'd be more like a PC game. Having played it now, I don't know how well that'd work. I think some of the platforming manoeuvres would be trickier to pull off with a keyboard & mouse. And they're already tricky enough.

I finished the story mode. Not too difficult for the mostpart. A few slightly challenging sections, where it took a while to figure out the way through (and one where I had a total 15-minute brain fart trying to climb up when the answer was down). As I've mentioned before, it's a quick re-load, and you generally start very close to where you died. So I didn't find it too frustrating. I really liked the play mechanics, so I'm sure that helped. I like the main theme music: the creatively-titled . The art style overall is very nice. The 2D animated cinematics remind me of a smoother Fear Effect. Despite the grief of having to be online, and sign in with an EA account to access it, the time trials and speed runs seem like they could add a lot of replayability for certain people. I had a lot of fun with the game. I don't know that I can whole-heartedly recommend buying it, unless you're a time trial junkie. But a rental would certainly be worthwhile. If you really, really get aggravated by trial and error, even with slight loading, then yeah, maybe stay away. If it were a 10-second wait every time, then I would have gone mental. (The only exception: It was about 15-20 seconds to re-start a speed run if you screw up, so that might drive you batty.) Edit: Forgot to mention... I found there was 2 or 3 really great "Holy shit!" moments too.