JsARCLIGHT

While not being a "true" animated female Aki Ross did make the cover of Maxim's Hot 100 issue back before everyone woke up and realized how awful FF:TSW was. ... so I guess technically she was the unremembered pioneer while Marge will be lauded as the dandy.

I must have seen some epps from the second season then because yeegads was it terrible... and I mean terrible terrible. It made today's fine television shows like cleopatra 20-whatever and beastmaster look shakespearean by contrast. The few episodes I saw looked like they were shot in alleys with C level actors and friends of the director with standard late '80s video toaster SFX.

Well, let's put it this way: the new movie cannot be any worse than the War of the Worlds TV series that came out in the late '80s early '90s... I caught a few episodes of that back in the day and let's just say there is a reason it has never aired since.

Time for the old fool to chime in on this game! I personally loved it. I got it looooong ago when it first came out and played it till my eyes bled... well, more precisely I replayed it several times as it has to be one of the shortest games on the PC I have ever played. But the candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast so they say. I played multiplayer at work with the game and found it to be meh so so, very common and much like all the other shoot-em-up multiplayer games. It added very little and repeated most of it's themes from games that have come before. As others have said if you liked MoH then CoD multiplayer is very very similair just with boosted graphics. As for the single player game (what the game is supposed to be, this game IMHO is not a multiplayer game at heart) it is one of the most harrowing and frentic FPS games I have ever played. Not so much twich fighting like some games but just the feel of the game... the embiance... sells it way better than any FPS I have played. Sure MoH is WWII, sure it has the same guns and more missions... but it does not match the sheer terror you start feeling in your gut when you hear those Tiger tanks rolling on the ville... or the sweat that starts to form on your forehead as you race through Normandy in a car in what has to be the best rail shooter level I have ever seen. To put it bluntly CoD is one big scripted interactive FPS "movie"... most of what you do is pre-scripted in that every level, everything you do in the game, has really only one outcome and one solution. You just have to get to that point in one piece... your squad need not get there with you. The game has very little to no actual "randomness" to it... every encounter, every fight and every bad guy to a great degree is programmed to do one general thing at a certain time. It makes the game feel so real and interactive the first time through but the second and third time you are almost playing the game like: take two steps, turn right, shoot three guys that come out of the door, stop, wait, shoot more guys that come from the door, go in door, go up stairs, turn left, shoot two guys... etc. etc. My $0.02: buy the game cheap if you can get it, experience the single player game one time through... oh and be a man and put the difficulty on high, the game is just no fun when you take shot after shot to the head and keep walking... then when you tire of it sell it.

How long have I been here? You got me. More than a year and less than the mods. I'm bad with time... last week it was 1985 for me... yesterday was 2001... this afternoon was Christmas... Time flies when you are having fun... either that or those pesky aliens keep kidnapping me.

They broke the molds??? It's over! It's allllll over! Ahh! Ahhhhh! AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! (runs away, leaps out window) splat.

Perhaps you expected much more from the toy like others did... perhaps you got a bad one (QC issues)... only you know for sure. People have differing levels of expectations and enthusiasm for different toys. For instance: I had huge expectations of the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime and when I got one I was very dissapointed... other people are thrilled like a puppy with two peters with that toy but I am not. Does that mean I got a bad toy? Maybee and maybee not, it is all in your own personal impressions of the thing. I myself am not a huge fan of the Q-Rau and I bought this mainly to keep my collection "complete"... I had no expectations of what it was going to be, I was not thinking "what do I get for my $120" like a few people seem to be hung up on... thus when I got it in the mail today at work and opened it up I was thrilled. It was neat, it posed pretty well, the detail on most of it is top notch and certain things that bother everyone else (like milia and the lack of metal) don't bother me at all. Different strokes for different folks. If you are unhappy with your toy just do like I do and sell the hunk... recoup some of the money spent on it and chalk it up to "I didn't like it so the dollar loss in reselling it was my 'rental' fee".

Got mine today as well and have no idea what people have been griping about, this toy is boss! Admittedly I can see a few spots others pointed out that could use some improvement like more detail on the feet and inside the cockpit... but that is what they made paint and stickers for and I plan to paint up some parts of this girl to add some more punch to it.

I'm not too sure what to think of this new remake... after all the original DotD was released unrated and contained (at that time) unheard of gore and digusting images. Given today's CG and special effects, I would expect no less than a ton of exploding heads, entrails ripped from torsos, limbs pulled off and pools and pools of blood... ... but guess what? Ten bucks says we don't get that. The new film went through the ratings system and I know the MPAA will not allow most of the images that this movie needs to be hammered home. Add to this all the changes to the original story that I keep hearing have been made and it sounds like just another hollywood rape of a classic movie. I plan to go see it friday with my fiancee (if she is up for a gory movie, which she might not be) and I think I will either love it or hate it... being such a fan of the original I feel there is no middle ground on this one for me.

Where is Agent One with his little anime guy with the sword chopping up anime schoolgirls .gif when you really, really need it?

Seeing as my copy is technically my fiancee's game I have not had the time to play it as much as I would like but from what I can remember (keep in mind the last time I played the original MGS was in '98 when the game came out) the new Twin Snakes is 100% the same as the original with minor tweaks for the new play mechanics, such as lockers being added here and there. As far as I can tell the level designs, item layouts and troop concentrations are almost exactly the same as well... oh and from what I can tell the story is the same too, with minor alterations for the new fancy graphics and new vocals. I would say if you have played the orignal recently then you might not like this game as much... but if you are like me and it has been 6 years since you played it then the game will be a very fresh experience. The only downside to playing it is the constant feelings of deja vu I keep getting, it's like being psychic and playing a new game and saying "more ammo is innnn.... HERE!" I myself would have rather seen them take the route Capcom took with the Gamecube Resident Evil remake and totally remix the game and add new things... but meh this one is just fine as it is.

You have to admit that a few people on the bridge and that guy in the elintseeker speak flawless english though!

I ordered this for my fiancee and she got it today in the mail (got it from Best Buy online, had a free memory card with purchase deal going on). She likes it a lot... I'm basically running around the first part of the beginning being an ass . I had this game on the PS1 waaaaay back when and I can honestly say they have really changed the play mechanics a lot, some of the tricks I remember pulling are not working anymore... either I've gotten dumber or the troops are smarter.

Track down the FX boot DVD known as the DYRL Perfect Edition, that should cure that speach impediment caused by the Clash of the Bionoids edit.

My old PC used to have tons of issues with games... but it was just that: old. I was kidding myself that I could play games like Vietcong and Tron 2.0 on my old P3 700 system with a crappy 32 meg graphics card. Crashes everywhere, lag, framerates that would make flash cards look like smooth action... Since I upgraded my new PC handles everything I throw at it with gusto. Outside of reloading Max Payne 1 and needing to DL a patch I have not had a single issue running any PC game I have bought lately... then again this has come at a steep price. I dumped a few bills (that is thousands to you non spreckenzie my slang) into this system. I think I could launch ICBMs with it and it has that nice government price tag to proove it. People said I could have bought a much cheaper system and gotten basically the same thing but meh, what do I know? I just wanted the home computer version of WOPR... sans dumbass voice that is. Anyway, add to this the fact that a good number of the new PC "mega hit" games are being streamlined for the exsisting market's hardware. Almost every game I see has the nVidia sticker of approval on it or a "runs like a cheeta with a ATI" sticker. Let's face it, unless you have some old soviet sub computer running an off-brand five year old graphics card you should not be having any problems running PC games... unless you have your new uber-system wired all weird... I think the big point people have against PC gaming, other than the rare "no run" situations is the price tag. A Gamecube is a franklin ($100), a PS2 or X-Box is a Ben-and-a-half ($150) but a top of the line gaming PC can run you 2 to 3 bills ($2K-$3K) easy. Now that the home consoles are offering things like internet, online gaming, hard drives and such the line between a PC and a console is blurring. Unless you need a PC for working at home or school all most people do with them is burn music, look at boobie pictures on the internet and play games... the second the consoles start burning cd's we will have a revolution on our hands.

Will Smith in the movie = I will hate it All he can do is play one character, the smart ass urbanite punk. Every role he has been in (except for Six Degrees of Separation, which he totally bricked) he plays a wise-ass trash talking jerk who somehow saves the day... Seen it, taped it, erased it.

Funny, I saw it the other way around. The new Star Wars sucks, the old Star Wars rocks and it changed the world as we know it... trust me I was 8 when the first movie came out and it was like having your eyes opened for the first time. It was a mega-megahit that transcended time and space... while the original Star Trek got cancelled. Star Wars made it possible for them to even ressurect Star Trek as a movie as the studios now knew that a science fiction movie could mop up at the box office. Gundam is the Star Wars of Japan. When it came out people did not catch on right away but when they did it was a genre altering thing. Gundam turned the anime industry into a robo-fest, made a multibillion dollar company out of Bandai and has sold about as many toys as Star Wars. My vote for the Star Trek of Japan would be as others have said: Space Cruizer Yamato.

I've owned 'em all... PS2, Gamecube and X-Box. Systems are only as good as the games they sport so it would most likely benefit you to do some looking and see if the games you want to play trend toward one system or another. I discovered that a lot of the neat games that were "unique" to a certain console... cough cough X-Box cough cough... wound up getting ported to the PC like KoToR and Halo. PS2 seems to get everything for it and Gamecube gets the shaft most of the time eccept for those rare GC only games like the new Resident Evils and Twin Snakes that almost beg for you to buy it... then again the GC is a franklin whereas the other two are a ben-and-a-half so you can always scrimp to get a GC if the winds move you. I'd say buy a PS2 first, then buy a GC and finally upgrade your computer and play the X-Box to PC port of Halo 2 and all their other "only on X-Box" games a year or so after they originally come out on the console.

F91 has nice mechanical designs and technically neat animation... but the plot, characters and pacing of the movie make you want to just fast forward between the shooty bits. F91 has to have the funniest anime death of all time in it: poor civilian running from the Crossbone Vanguard takes a MS-sized spent shell casing to the head... instant death... and laughs!

Gundam is the "Star Wars" of Japan, much like the energizer bunny it keeps going and going and going and going. I'd compare Macross to Battlestar Galactica in that they both gained most of their fans in the 1980s, sort of petered out and then got a rebirth, have had a few toy lines made that were not all that uber popular but still sell for high dollars on the aftermarket and sport a rabid fanbase of diehards. You also need to factor in the "5 minute rule" of anime in Japan: once the show has been out for 5 minutes and everyone has seen it they want nothing more to do with it and they move on to the next thing... unless it is Gundam.

So THAT is what he's been doing between box packings... huh huh... huh huh... OK, everyone buy an extra toy from Kev in the next nine months so he can cover that hospital co-pay!

I went on Gamestop just now and if you buy the game from them now you get free 2 day shipping, no sales tax and some kind of additional disk all for $39.99. I ordered mine... I need to get a handle on these impulse buys.

I played the demo level recently and I must say it was interesting... enough so that I might buy the full game later on this month when it comes out. Having beat VC: Fist Alpha a week or more ago and there being that lovely 4 month wait until they push back the release date of HL2 again I need something to fill my off hours. On another note I bought my fiancee (her being laid up) a nintendo game cube to help her use her hands to speed her recovery... I have her hooked on Resident Evil Zero and I just ordered her Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes. Pretty soon I'll have her on the computer playing these games... then will come the day that she kills me in a game several times.

They should be pissed because the industry wants them to be pissed. This is nothing more than a cattle-car push to make the audience correct the problem the industry does not want to deal with. Oops I just let my personal views on this slip out!

Not meaning to poke the coals here but what Agent One is saying is 100% correct, one point he is not saying precisely is that all the demographic work is usually done waaaaay up the development curve when the toy is in pre-concept stages. The way it works is like this: execs meet about making money. One exec says "let's make a new toy, how about a puppy?". The execs then decide to do a sales and market projection study on this idea before taking it any further because making a toy is a risky business proposition. This task is handed to a sub-contractor who does a market research study based on polls and other such data. They return to the execs in a new meeting weeks or months later and give them their findings. The "findings" always point to certain trends like "males between 21 and 31 will not buy a puppy toy", "people are willing to pay between $10 and $20 for a puppy toy" and "indicator numbers show a trend toward kitty toys rather than puppy toys". All this data is thrown around the table until the execs hear what they want to hear: someone somewhere is willing to buy a product from them and they are willing to pay a certain ammount of money and here is the data supporting this. At that point the "idea" moves from being a board room fancy to a development and then into a marketed product. They then use all that fancy data they got in the pre-idea stage to market the toy to the choice demos. Business is not as cold, glide bomb accurate and calculating in their demos as Agent One is making it out to be later on down the line but in the process of taking something from a "what if" to a "when will it be ready to go to market" the data and findings that Agent One is using are most likey the ones Yamato arrived at at some point along the line. They do not necessarily reflect the true intent and audience of the toy but they do reflect the basis on which the toy was developed.