JsARCLIGHT

The life of a "merc" as people call them is neither glorious or profitable. "Mercs" tend to be ex-military or police who have low morality, no many marketable skills (outside of killing people) and usually have a nice sized death-wish. Most true mercinaries are third worlders, born into a life of daily survival from street gangs, militias and drug dealers... so making money for killing people is just a bonus for their "normal life" risks. As illustrated in this terrible situation most "guns for hire" never live long enough to cash their paychecks, hence why the pay is so high. What person in their right mind would walk into a warzone and do something that usually goes against most military rules of engagement knowing the same will be thrown back at them (the ops that mercs usually run have no laws of war and if caught or killed you can usually plan on getting "roasted" as Agent so eloquently stated)? Then again there are some people out there, the Shin Kazamas, Sgt. Barnes and Spike Spiegels of the real world who once they have the stink of gunpowder and blood in their bones they can never escape it until it kills them.

I'd rather see a 1/48 cannon fodder first. ... after that I'd rather see a TV Max 1A and a Kakizaki TV and DYRL. ... after that I'd prefer to see some more rare "never been mades" like an angel birds unit.

Toys are just things in the end and things come and go in your life. Obsessing over items is a surefire way to be miserable your entire life. I say sell it. There are only two things I own that I would not sell or give away for anything in the world and they are not worth anything to anyone but me, my father's helmet from Vietnam and my cat (which technically is not a possession in the truest sense of the word but you can still "give pets away"). If you need a small amount of money talk to family or friends and see if someone will spot you if you don't want to sell your toys. Getting in with the Credit Card people is a surefire road to paying double for that money you "borrowed" that some people never get out of. And if you need this money for something important I'm sure someone will help you out.

Macross toys are Hotel California: check out any time you like... but you can never leave... Case in point: I saw Robotech on TV back in the '80s when it came out in america... I was a teen at the time and buying kid's toys would have been social suicide so I passed on them then. In college, when having nicknacky toys in your loft was considered "kitch" I bought all I could afford on a cheap college boy salary. I stopped when they all burned up in a fire. Years passed and I got back into it all when Yamato started building the new toys a few years back. Even if the new offerings don't float your boat someday there will be something that drags you back in, kicking and screaming.

(pokes head into thread) I'm not going to get involved in the argument going on here I'm just going to state my personal feelings on M0 and get back out. I myself do not like Macross Zero as it lacks that certain "something" that drew me in to the original SDF: Macross a long time ago. I think it mostly has to do with there being a 20 year gap between my first initial "wow" at the transforming fighters and the storyline and today... everything since the original TV series and DYRL to me is just a rehash, a facelift or a shallow imitation of the show's once greatness. Seriously how many times can you redesign a transforming fighter that usually just looks like the one before it with slight changes with the same cookie cutter storylines and cookie cutter shallow anime characters before you just throw your hands up and say "that's it, I'm going back to steel". Macross Zero is developing the story waaaaaay too slow for the pace of the OAV IMHO, they focus too much on quick scenes of splash and dash to keep the audience interested (so basically you are buying that DVD they bring out every, what, 6 months to see a few seconds of mecha combat followed by 29 minutes of nonsensical story that is not moving anywhere fast and very little character development). My guess is this show is going to do what a lot of OAVs do which is wrap the entire story up in the last episode, which makes parts 1-4 basically fluff. I personally think Macross Zero is Kawamori's weakest story to date. I dislike Macross 7 but you have to admit that at least it has characer development and a long spanning story (albiet M7 has the same problem M0 has: the story does not get going until half the thing is over with). I personally am holding out for a new Macross TV series rather than some all filler and no substance 5 part OAV. (runs out of thread before M0 lovers kill him)

I currently live in Saint Louis, MO smack in the middle of the U.S. of A... so I guess currently I am a Saint Louisan, or I have been for the last four.. no five years. Before that I worked in San Antonio, TX and was called a Yankee for two years... I went over to Europe and kicked around for a bit before being employed then so at that time I was a ugly american tourist for two years... I went to college in Chicago so I was a Chitown Rat for four years before that... I was born and went to school through 12 in a small town outside Las Vegas, Nevadea for the whole start of my life... ... and my family tree goes back into Scotland with the clans. So I'm an American Scottish one time Texan transplant Eurotrash CAI grad who had a nice tan for the first part of his life.

I did some painting on my old low vis and found that I could not find an off the shelf paint color that matched the shade of the low vis plastic... mainly due to the subtle hue and specular properties that plastic had. I got close by mixing some paints of various shades of grey but when applied it did not match the properies of the plastic and it sort of clashed to a degree. I'd say if you are doing a total paint up of that part then don't worry about the exact shade, just get it close as you can as it is mainly hidden by the head anyway. Either that or hit it with some sort of a dark wash like the "weathering" on the toy to hide the shade difference a bit. Then again I can't paint models to save my life so listening to me may get you in more trouble than it is worth.

I've said it before but I would gladly donate a few bucks to the site now and then. But also I have been on sites that take donations before and the only way to make it "work" would be to make it blind donations with no recognition or press given to donors... otherwise a troublemaker could come in and donate a hundred bucks and then bitch that he "was a paying member" when he got censored or banned for bad behavior.

Holy cats I knew those things had some power on them but 500,000,000 candlepower will burn through your eyeballs into the back of your skull!

Photo flash bombs were old school tech used, as you think, to illuminate things at night to take aerial recon photos. The armed forces abandonded them a while back, not because of the new tech of night vision and such but because supposedly the darned things had a super high "dud" rate when used.

I finally got that bastard door gunner... no thanks to skill, aiming or actual "being good at the game" but due to old fashioned run up the ladder, point the gun at the chopper (no aiming) and hold down the trigger until the guy falls out the door. In other words: dumb luck. I ran that same path twenty some odd times before but this last time all it took was one stray bullet from an unaimed burst that killed him... a freaking lucky shot. The rest of the doorknobs on the deck were chicken feed after that. Just goes to show that actually trying to aim and make accurate shots in the game fails next to standard "spray and pray" logic. Makes me feel stupid for approaching the game the way I am... you know, trying to save ammo, be all stealthy and move from cover, aim and fire for effect like commandos do in the real world. I need to quit playing MGS: Twin Snakes.

Yup I'm still going round and round with that damn blackhawk. I have tried shooting the door gunner more times than I think I should admit to... last night I even had the bastard square in my sights and still did not manage to kill him... or even HIT him for that matter (please read my about pissy post about the game's fooked up aiming to understand my frustration). Everyone I have talked with basically tells me the same thing: kill the door gunner. It's a lot easier said than done on the harder game settings and that damn wiggly aiming reticle is pissing me off! I have max health, max armor, max ammo and max pissed off factor on my side when my save point kicks in at the ladder to the flight deck... that darn chopper has the fact it can kill me dead in one solid burst and a horde of goons on the deck on it's side. I'm basically replaying the level now trying to hit that darn door gunner... or should I say I'm trying to find a spot on the deck that is not blanketed with gunfire that I can breathe for a second and line up a shot on that door gunner... I'm not so much mad at the game as I am at the shitty CA your character is walking into.

Hey another Raedon user! I also have the 9800 pro and 2 gig of ram in my (used to be) new home box, so it was not memory holding me back but something else that I have yet to figure out... Is anyone else having trouble with the top of the carrier/helepad fight? I played that part about twenty times last night and keep getting murdered by the chopper. Is the chopper beatable with normal weapons? I swear I emptied five or six magazines from the FNP90 and M4 into that thing to no effect, didn't even kill the door gunner.

Kind of another minor gripe I feel I have to add: While playing the game today I noticed that "bullet hit location" is very, very off in this game. Outside of using one of the scoped weapons it is almost impossible to line up a headshot or center of mass shot on a target. Even when your stupid crosshair is right there dead bang center mass on a target you can still miss by a mile. I'm not talking about the annoying "drunken sway" that your player seems to have when aiming weapons, I'm talking about the randomness of the bullet hits. I can live with the dancing aiming reticle as that (sort of) tries to approximate real life aiming variables but when they couple that with yet another random location hit generator for the acutal shot it makes accurate aim with anything but the sniper weapons a chore. Case in point: approaching the carrier, there are a few guards stationed on it's deck. I sat a good distance away with my M4 on single shot in prone position with the (really poorly done) "aim" feature on and meticulously lined up my shots... only to have a great percentage of them (>75%) MISS! Either your player is the worst shot on the planet or he really, really needs to break out a multitool and adjust all his weapon sights.

I'm having too much fun flashbanging the twerps in the carrier. Fsssssss.... BOMF.... Ahh! My eyes! The only thing I don't like about this game was the same thing that pissed me off to high heaven about Halo on the PC: the vehicles. At slow speeds they seem like they are stuck in cement and at fast speeds they boarder on the "slipping on the ice" feeling. I must admit that after you grease that first base and get your hands on a Hummer the game gets a bit more fun... but it mainly is fun to just sit there far away in the Hummer and lob rockets at things and then finish them off with the 50. I've found using the vehicles as sort of "mobile bunkers" works sort of well... until the thing takes like four bullets and explodes on you . Anyway... what was everyone's take on the "intro" movie. I liked it, very jangly and "trendy". ... and I'm guessing those spooky nightmare things are going to be coming after me later in the game, no?

All my drivers are up to date... here is the funny thing though: all I did was switch the renderer from normal to "paradise" and bam the thing runs smooth as milk now... and it evel looks better than it did before! I have no idea what was bottlenecking it so I am keeping an eye on that patch release date.

The game is beautiful and the features it has hidden in it are pretty nice... I just wish I could figure out where the banana is in this thing's tailpipe on my system... Why won't you play at 30+ FPS like the demo did? What is your major malfunciton?!?

I got my copy today at work and played it at lunch on my work computer... funny thing is it was putt putt on my work computer at the recommended settings at that was a P4 3.2 HT with a very very nice graphics card. I just got home a bit ago and installed it at home and same thing... putt putt. The demo was never this pokey on my box and it ran pretty good but the whole game seems to have this... sort... of... lag... to... it... that... makes... it... hard... to... play. I've even tried setting the settings down, changing the resolution and other things but it still putts along like an elephant on a moped. I can't figure out what is slowing it down so much for the life of me. My system even specs out on the autodetector as "Very High" spec and it auto defaults to almost max on everything... so why is the game chugging? Add to that the freaking long load up and exit times and it makes me feel like I'm playing locomotive in that it takes forever to start up, moves like a slug and then takes forever to stop. It's kind of really pissing me off as the demo ran just fine. Oh and if anyone wants it the Gamestop freebie was the freaking pre-order demo disc (oh what a promo there guys) that I don't need. Free to whoever wants it, NIB unopened just pay shipping.

The most disapointing toys I have ever bought: The "new" GI Joe 12" collector's figures that came out in the early '90s. God almightly those things were suck in a box. The fabric used in the clothes was terrible, the dolls themselves were all but posable (perminantly in that dopey "which way to the beach" pose) with hands that could barely hold a pencil let alone their accessories... ugh the accessories! They were all fugly deformed guns and lopsided helmets and other rubberized fakie gadgets and the like. Thank the stars that Hasbro went the way of BBI / Dragon / Ultimate Soldier and starting making decent 12" soldier dolls. Anything with the word "McFarlane" on the package. Outside of a handful of decent toys most of the offerings from Mcfarlane back in "the day" were poorly assembled splatter painted statues. Yeah they looked ok in the package but take them out and in a matter of days the arms break off, the weapons which are made of cheap rubber-like material start to droop like melting snowmen and the accessories (like capes and such) are perminantly molded to their "in the package" shape that they don't look good out of the package. I have not owned a CrapFarlane toy in years to know if they fixed those issues or not, but every one I ever bought let me down soooo bad.

Anyone else notice that a few of their guns are mirrored? The ejector on the M16 is on the wrong side along with everything else, it is "mirrored". Did anyone else also notice the rust on the M16 while we are at it? M16's are made of aluminum, which doesn't rust... why are there rust pocks all over it? Edit to add: heh heh heh, my copy of Far Cry shipped today... looks like I'll be able to get angry at another PC game this week! Cross fingers and hope it is better than this game... there's no place like home!... there's no place like home!... there's no place like home!

Well considering the game is nothing like the actual war something trivial like rain is not an issue. I might be the only one who thinks the makers of this game made a bad choice of Vietnam as the subject matter for this game. Heck, even most of the "missions" they picked to base the game off of were not one or two day engagements but month and year long campaigns that never ever saw anything akin to a "stand up fight". But I digress, my bashing this thing would only upset people I think so I will just say this and be gone: Like new opened copy of BF:VN for sale or trade, never been fired only dropped once.

If you look closely at Kakizaki the glass of his helmet is blowing out not in. If he was "shot in the head" like some people have hypothesized the glass would have blown in along with his face (which is still visible through the shattering glass)... of course that would also require a very small projectile or laser strike to make such a wound on such a small moving target from so far away, no sniper in the world could have pulled that off. Kakizaki is actually dying from the main thing that kills most pilots/drivers of armored vehicles in combat: bits of his own jet as shrapnel flying through him. Add to that the concussive shockwave of the initial munitions hit and there is a good chance that alone blew out his helmet glass. Poor Kakizaki... if he had only been watching the road, listening to the constant annoying lock on tone his plane was buzzing at him and actually paying attention rather than trying to insult Hikaru. Let that be a lesson folks, save the smart-ass for the barracks and keep your shiite wired tight in the field or your parents will be buring you in a lunch box.

The original Dawn of the Dead is already out on special edition DVD... they have it at best buy for like $11.99. I saw a ton of copies there last night.

I just got back from the theater, had to go see it while my fiancee was away... she wanted nothing to do with it, I don't blame her. First off, the movie is not what I thought it was going to be. Aside from having a shopping mall and the original concepts of Romero's zombies this movie is nothing like it's grandfather namesake. That can be seen one of two ways: the way I saw it was that this is not a remake but sort of an alternate story with the same name... and some people are seeing it as a normal hollyweird "remake" which it most certainly is not. Here is my character assassination of the new movie: The characters fill the classic Romero zombie movie stereotypes quite well and I can't honestly say I was blown away by the story, dialogue or outcome of the movie. The zombies are a marked departure from the Romero norm, they are more akin to 28 Days Later meets Return of the Living Dead zombies in that they run, jump, slam-tackle and move like pro athletes rather than the shambling, stumbling clumsy undead of the original Romero trilogy. I can't say I like the caffinated zombies as it seems quite unnatural for something that is dead and decaying to be pulling off a 50 meter sprint... the old pokey zombies of yore IMHO are the way I'd imagine a walking corpse to be. Steering clear of spoilers or other plot points I will say that the movie has some gore, but nothing on the level of the original and not much outside things we have seen before in other movies. A very important positive note is that this movie does follow the three important factors of a Romero zombie movie: A) the movie has a strong black male lead, B) the movie at it's core is about the downfall of humanity and not about walking dead and C) there is a climactic zombie frenzy to cap it all off. To sum up my opinion, this is not your father's oldsmobile or the original Dawn of the Dead... this is instead some bizzare alternate universe "revisioning" of the original. If you go in like I did expecting to see some hackneyed remake you will be pleasantly suprised that it is not that at all... but if you loved the "feel" of the Romero trilogy this movie has a different pacing and vibe to it that somewhat clashes with the originals. I liked it enough to see it again when it comes out on DVD (crossing fingers for some sort of an unrated director's cut) and I'd say if you are on the fence to just go see it once and make up your own mind.

My guess (not meaning to step on our fine friend Chowser) is that they are original "vintage" rifles. (puts on grandpa hat) Back in the day, the US government contracted tons of people to make M16s and later M16A1s for the war effort in Vietnam. When the war was over the army was totally stocked with A1's at every corner of their command... most of these guns had seen action, a fair number got demilled after being damaged and an even greater number just plain got mothballed. After Vietnam, the armed forces noticed several things about the A1 they did not like and thus began a program to improve the design (like they did with the original M16) and phase out the old model again. Annother big reason for this move were that the different branches of the armed forces were using different guns... they were all "M16, rifle, infantry" weapons but the different branches had different models. The Air Force (the first branch to field the M16) and the Marines still had the version without a forward assist in some places whereas the Army had the FA model. What then happened was an inside testing and development period from the late '70s into the '80s to revamp and uniform the M16 rifle. What came of this program was the M16A2 main battle rifle in the early '80s. It took years for the A2 to finally replace the A1 in most commands and the military was left with a buttload of old A1 weapons, a good number still new in the plastic. So what does the American military do with old/obsolite weapons? Sell them. From the mid eighties the military was selling these A1 rifles by the case to allies, law enforcement and just about anyone who ponied up the cash. Lots of the A1 rifles made their way into the hands of private citizens and even more made their way into the hands of local law enforcement. It was finally things like the 1997 Hollywood Hills shootout in LA that prompted almost all local law enforcement agencies to purchase a number of those surplus A1 rifles like the LAPD did and issue them to ERT teams and shift supervisors in case another crazed loon came out of the woodwork with assault weapons. It was shortly after this that the law enforcement family learned of the downside of the A1 rifle: super penetration of the bullets. You pull the trigger on an A1 and there is a good chance that bullet is going to go through the suspect, through the wall and hit someone else. So to reduce that risk a lot of departments removed the full auto guts in their guns and replaced them with semiauto to cut down on the rapid fire danger of the guns. (takes off grandpa hat)