JsARCLIGHT

I finally beat Bioshock for the first time last night... without spoiling anything for those still playing the game the ending was, well, kind of a letdown. I enjoyed the story and for some reason it just sort of became quite derivative after the ultimate "confrontation" with Ryan and ceased being interesting and fresh and wandered into the realm of "seen it before". For some reason I was expecting, well, more. This game was so well put together that to get "that" as an ending, while expected, was pretty short and... well... lame. I'm going to replay it on hard and this time through I'm going to be the evil sonovabitch rather than goody two shoes like I was this time. I also know that I missed a few things my first time through (missed a weapon upgrade machine and a few tape recordings) so this second time will be a more thorough trip through the game. Now that I know "what to expect" I can plan a little better. I also hope that the hard setting is actually hard... playing through on normal was a complete cake walk. I never once ran out of ammo, eve or medkits... in fact I usually found myself maxed out and had to pass up several ammo and health pickups along the way. I suppose if you played this game like a mouth breather and just ran headlong into every gun turret and stood still and let every splicer have his way with you then you'd start running low on supplies and heath. Before it came out I was reading about this game online and everyone was talking it up as being so difficult with limited resources and "hard decisions to make" but I found it on normal to be far too easy. Plus, as I've said before in this thread, this game was far too generous with the achievement points. I played through the game once, only once, and have over half the 1,000 total points already. These are the most points I've ever earned from one single game. I don't consider myself an "achievement points whore" like a lot of folks I've see around... I generally just "play" the games without concern for the points. But this game just showers you with them for doing regular in-game activities, most of which you have to do just to progress in the game.

And from what I can tell several sources still say the tuner is either Freeview or European Digital Video Broadcasting system (DVB-T) exclusive, something many places that pick up this continuing story still omit... meaning it's still not a traditional OTA antenna that you can use to pick up "normal" TV, it sounds like it's still limited to only certain "broadcasting networks"... and as already stated it's only being announced formally in Europe and Australia/New Zealand. I still think this whole thing feels like that Sony PSP P-TV gimmick in the Japanese market.

The main character would pretty much have to be Duke... mostly because most of today's hack action movie writers and directors don't know how to handle a silent character just as Sunbow didn't know how to handle him in the cartoon. It's hard to cast an actor for a role in which they will never talk (except for perhaps doing a fan moment and having Snake Eyes say the single word he has ever said, ten points to those who know that single word) and as well as it being a "hooded" role in which they'd be under a full body costume the whole time. I don't know of many actors that could pull it off... outside of perhaps Ray Park, but he's a tad short for a Snake Eyes... and a tad one dimensional for a leading character. Hollywood would either wind up making Snake Eyes talk with his mask removed for 50% of the movie or wind up just making him a secondary character like Sunbow did.

Then why is TrueHD touted as the best of the best of the best in audio circles? Every person I know who runs a 6.1 or 7.1 home theater setup is always lauding TrueHD above optical PCM. A friend of mine has one of the new Onkyo TX-SR674 receivers at his house running TrueHD through his PS3 and his system sounds so much better than mine... and we are both running the same speakers and nearly identical power levels and settings. The only difference is I'm running optical PCM and he's running TrueHD via HDMI.

Like the added features or not the HD DVD release of 300 has stuck in the craw of many a Blu Ray fan. On the two High Def forums I haunt this issue is pretty much one of the biggest sour grapes BD complaints out there, next to the terrible first release of The Fifth Element. If anyone so much as in passing mentions the HD DVD of 300 they are set upon by BD people so fast it makes your head spin. Personally I don't really like the movie all that much and have not bought it on either format. I just find it funny how out of all the shared BD / HD DVD releases on the market that are all pretty much piece for piece clones of each other, the HD DVD people seem to think the release of 300 is some kind of "telling sign" that the HD DVD format is superior... and then on the other hand you hear all sorts of conspiracy theories and "yeah, buts" from the BD fans. Just the notion that they are re-releasing the movie with that one added feature put on it is kind of embarrassing if you ask me. I mean, the discs are near identical. The only difference is that one added feature on the HD DVD and a 5.1 PCM track on the Blu Ray. Other than that they both run the same codec, have the same Dolby TrueHD audio (which is vastly superior to PCM anyway) and for all intents and purposes look exactly the same... but oooooooooh nooooooo they have to re-release it otherwise HD DVD will have that "leg up".

With a good surround system you can hear them walking, mumbling to themselves, and you can pinpoint close to where they are pretty easy. The things that are hard to pinpoint are the Big Daddies, because their whale-like bellowing echoes around the levels. As it gets louder you know they are closer, but you don't know which direction they are coming from until you hear the clomp clomp of their big metal feet. Also a pain in the ass are your hacked allied helicopter robots... they just make so much darn noise that you can't hear much of anything else except for their buzzing, sputtering and clunking. As for plasmid use I mostly use telekinesis to catch grenades, rockets and proximity bombs and throw them back at people. My other new favorite plasmid is the "Turn Big Daddy" one. The second I got that I started using it in Neptune's Bounty. I got it so I had a "Rosie" Big Daddy following me around the whole level and I had him dispatch most of the small fry for me and I even had him duke it out with another Big Daddy while I hid out of the way. I'm playing on Normal to start and I've really only died about three or four times, every time when I bit off waaaay more than I could chew, usually tussling with a Big Daddy. I'm not sure what the game developers were talking about when they were saying stuff like "ammo will be scarce"... it's all over the place. Since I mostly use the pistol as my default weapon I wound up having full Thompson and shotgun ammo and I had to switch over and use those for a while just because there seemed to be so much extra ammo for them laying around. I also think this game is too generous with it's achievements... every night I play I get like four or five new achievements. My gamerscore has gone up almost 200 points in two days from just this game.

I'd have to pick the rebels... I'm not a big fan of a powerful centralized government. Then you have the whole enslaving, correllians only, facist vibe they have going on. I'd rather fight for freedom than just be another faceless cog in the machine.

I have not been using the plasmids that much. Telekenisis yes, it's about the only one I've found to be useful to my play style. Outside of using the electricity one to shock multiple targets in water or shock a gun turret or robot so I can run up and hack them or using the fire one to get into the blocked areas I've mostly been relying on my firearms to get me by. My tactics are to go slow and careful, usually using the pistol as my primary weapon. I go slow so I can listen for sounds of the baddies... on my stereo system this game is really good at letting you pinpoint the locations of baddies before you even see them if you have keen ears. It makes planning my attacks a lot easier. I usually have one good headshot on a target before it even knows I'm there. I also generally hack everything I come across no matter what it is to get the health bonus from the hacker add on thing. That actually saved my ass in the Big Daddy fight as he walked right in front of one of the gun turrets I hacked and it lit him up, he turned to beat on it and that gave me a nice open spot to spray him with my Thompson right in his back. Playing as slow and deliberate as I do I finally got to and beat the first "boss" and the first Big Daddy last night and I made it to Neptune's Bounty before stopping for the night. And is it just me or is this game a little fast and loose with the achievements? I've barely made it to stage three (or at least I think it's stage three) and I've already chalked up like ten achievements.

Personally I have to wonder who every in their right mind thought Barry Bostwick, bearded of all things, made for a decent action star. It's like they were trying to clone Chuck Norris but got a bunch of musical theater DNA mixed into their petri dish.

I picked up Bioshock on my way home last night and was only able to play it for a little bit last night. The real game is a lot harder than the demo seemed to be. I made it into the medical area before giving up for the night.

From what I've seen they both use the same codec and have the exact same visual and audio presentation. The difference is that the HD DVD version had the support to enable the "picture in picture" feature to allow the bonus content to show the blue screen "actual footage" of the movie beside the finished movie. That is the only real difference between the BD and HD DVD releases of 300. Blu Ray has since stated it's BD-J spec can and will achieve that same feature and a re-release of 300 is in the works that will match the HD DVD release feature for feature. In other words all you BD fans who ran out and bought 300 on Blu Ray the day it came out just got boned. Unless they offer a disc exchange program it's kind of a slap in the face... unless you don't care about that one, single extra feature item... which I think most people could take or leave.

More like his "money" said "You WILL agree to this or bye bye next paycheck"... to which Bay said "thank you sir may I have another".

And the more this war heats up, the deeper those discounts and bonus offers will go. Plus when you have two formats fighting it promotes further development of those formats. Just since this "war" started both formats have had upgrades in their capabilities and increases in their quality ceilings. Plus with the massive storage capacity of both formats there is even more room to keep increasing those specs for years to come. Another way to look at this "format war" is to look at it through the eyes of a video game person. This "format war" is nothing more than Playstation versus Xbox... Nintendo versus Sega... Atari versus Intellivision. The problem is that the vast majority of movie consumers are not "used to" this kind of media war. They are used to just buying one box and shoving one type of movie into it. In a sense they want freedom FROM choice rather than freedom OF choice (sing Devo song here), unlike the armies of video game nerds who are used to this sort of thing. When you buy into one expensive "console", or in this case HD media player, you are also buying into their "exclusives". Sure there are a lot of games, or in this case movies, that cross platforms but if you want to play Halo you have to buy an Xbox. If you want to play Mario you have to buy a Wii. If you want to watch Pixar movies in HD you have to buy Blu Ray. If you want to see Universal movies in HD you need to buy an HD DVD player. It does not surprise me in the least that this latest "format war" has been piggybacked onto the latest console war.

I could have sworn it WAS being ported. I thought I saw a while back a cover of a UK PS3 magazine that had Dead Rising mentioned by name on the cover. If I remember the cover had Half Life 2 on it.

To my knowledge, or at least to my memory, that third option was grayed out on my system. With an optical cable attached my Onkyo receiver it read the first option (Dolby Stereo) as an analog source and the second (Dolby Digital) as a digital source. I also heard from a guy in my office who knows more about Xboxes than I do that those options go out the window when playing back a DVD... according to him the Xbox 360's audio system will be instantly overridden by whatever output the DVD is using up to it's max of DD5.1. He has told me that even if you have your system set to DD5.1 if you put in a DVD that is set to DA2.1 it will play back in analog two channel.

Actually the mandated shift to HD will "end" the fence sitting. SD is supposed to be on it's way out and HD is supposed to be on it's way in. If the path actually flows the way "they" (the industry) have planned it, SD will be completely gone like black and white TV's in the coming decade. I hear folks talk all the time that by 2020 everyone will have HD, that nothing but HD will be sold and that folks who "refuse" to upgrade will simply be left behind like my mother with her VHS deck... lord knows I have to listen to her complain about how she can't rent movies anymore because no one rents VHS. HD will be the only media soon. At the point when HD supplants SD, and only then, will we see the next true generational advance arrive. Digital downloads, holographic disc, etc. etc. etc. are all just the delivery media... the next big push in picture quality, which will be the next true advancement, is decades away. For my prediction the next "format" will be digital downloads. Once that hits, it will pretty much doom everything else. And at that point we'll see the same "problem" we have now with digital music... there will be virtual monopolies with singular huge corporations as the once source everyone downloads movies from like Itunes. Then we'll all really be screwed as the sellers will have complete control over what we have access to, when we can access it and how much it costs. I for one fear the day that I pay money for "nothing" but data with no real solid tangible thing in my hands. Speaking as someone who got cooked by Napster not once but twice, corporate controlled downloaded media is the devil.

I actually watch Krull to see Liam Neeson get killed. The rest of that movie is near unintelligible... a mish-mash of story arcs that go nowhere, plot devices that wander around aimlessly and a final confrontation that's a complete letdown. What did I need that Glave for again? Sure it had a lot of good ideas that I think could have made for a really good movie but it got bogged down in cliche and the downright poor '80s special effects the movie had. Krull IMHO was cool as a concept but really poor as an actual movie... kind of like Conan the Destroyer, I bet it looked really, really kick ass on paper.

Even mediocre businessmen and generals can tell you, 18 months can turn the tide in any war. Microsoft (who we all assume is the money behind the new tactical push in HD DVD) has very deep pockets and they could bribe their way into market dominance in the near future. We all know that Universal is staying loyal due to financial benefits they receive to stay loyal. You know Sony has the same tactics and you know they are giving large incentives to their partners to stay on their bus. In a sense this is one of the few openly visible capitalist market wars in which it seems the companies only care about which companies are on their side and the consumer, who by all accounts is what should really matter, is almost a secondary concern. It's interesting to watch the "generals" line up their brigades for retail combat, to see the "assaults" in the press via press releases and the posting of specs, release dates and rumors... then as the "war" spills over into the civilian population, people "take up sides", staunch supporters and haters lash out at each other in the secondary trenches of the online opinion world. And through this maelstrom all anybody wants is to be entertained... and just like any war if you have the money you can rise above it all and come out ahead.

Doh I got my cables confused with the system settings. I was thinking of the audio control pannel setting, was it set to Digital or Analog?

Well, I for one really don't want to wait another couple of years before this "tiff" works itself out to see high quality HD media on my expensive plasma TV. For folks like me these "two formats" are not all that expensive to get into and now that I own both I find they both have quite nice features and strengths. I'm sort of happy there is a format war going on... wars are good for the "economy" and despite what people say and bitch about they are good for the consumer. Competition breeds invention and when there is a media fight like this usually the consumer benefits in the long run. Prices on both sides are dropping all over the board, lots of movies are coming out or waiting in the wings and special offers abound. One thing a lot of people are not really saying is that this next gen media situation is a non-issue. HD media is a rich man's sport... your average joe is not going to run out and spend two grand on a plasma TV, another two grand on a high end receiver and speakers, another $500 on a HD media player and nearly double the price of a DVD movie for the actual HD movie discs. Most people I know are satisfied with DVD and their average SD tube television or their just above average 720p LCD TV. Out of ten people I'd venture a guess that less than one of them is "entrenched" in this next gen media war... and that half a person is most likely like me and owns BOTH format players. Buy in now or wait, the only thing you have to lose is money... but if you are getting high quality entertainment for that money then what's the problem?

What position was the audio switch on the multi cable set to? If it was set to Digital and you were using the RCA cables then it might have legacied itself back to Dolby 2.1 output, or even mono.

I don't really see why directors would be up in arms over this... Blu Ray and HD DVD barely hold 10% of the market with the rest still overwhelmingly dominated by standard DVD. It will be some time before either HD media comes close to eclipsing DVD as the dominant media format. For directors to bitch about "people not seeing their movie" due to the HD media format chosen by their "bosses" is kind of pointless... it's like them complaining that people won't see their movie because it isn't released on VHS anymore, or Laserdisc. The vast majority of movie buyers out there will buy the regular DVD when it comes out... the next gen media versions will hardly count for much sales overall. Hell, I'd bet money that just as much revenue if not more was LOST due to piracy than they make from HD media sales. Like it or not the big production companies ARE the power in Hollywood. Their decisions stand as they write the checks. No Transformers 2 for Michael Bay? O RLY? Paramount will simply say "NEXT!" and the next guy who wants a multi million dollar payday will step up and make the movie. It's a business... and this move by Paramount/Dreamworks is a business move. They got a nice big payday to make this move, no businessman would "limit his options" without good financial reason.

Is the console itself outputting 5 channel audio? The only reason I ask is after getting my PS3 and having to juggle my audio connections around to eliminate a group loop feedback issue from the PS3 I noticed that the PS3's system settings controlled what kind of audio output was being made by the system. You could adjust it all the way back to Dolby 2.1 if you wanted. It's been a very long time since I dug into my Xbox'es menu system but I'm almost positive the Xbox has something similar to this. Make sure it's set to something other than "mono". If you are using the simple RCA right/left plugs and not an optical cable set the output to Analog and (if I remember right) set it to Dolby Pro Logic II, which should get you your 5.1 output. If you have an optical cable running then it should put out everything up to Dolby Digital 5.1 (which to my knowledge is the ceiling for the Xbox... it's audio output options are kind of weak).

Yeah the shovelware is rife on both formats, really only a handful of titles shine for both BD and HD DVD. It's gotten to the point that I won't buy a HD media movie until I read a review of it on HDD.com first... there is just too much crap out there to "take a chance" on something that costs as much as a video game. Also, Universal Studios are really the only people who have released those "dual format" HD DVDs, and only on "select" ones. They have actually been backpedaling on that feature lately and have been re-releasing several of their library on HD DVD only discs and discontinuing the dual format versions. It's not all that cost-effective for people to pay $35+ for one movie that comes in both formats. I myself own Hot Fuzz as a dual format disc and I only really flipped the disc to see what the SD cut of the movie was like... since then it has had zero play time. I would have felt much better about the purchase if it was HD DVD only with $10 less of a price tag. Edit: It also appears the defection of Paramount/Dreamworks has caused quite the stir in the next gen media war. It seems the Blu Ray camp is rushing to drop press releases all over the place, it's hard to keep up. First Fox now Disney, stating they will have Sleeping Beauty, Finding Nemo and two other "tent peg" titles out by early '08. Looks like this war is staring to go into defcon 1... it may just go nuclear by Christmas.

Well, the demo's job was to hook you into buying the game... and it worked for me. There are so many demos that I download on XBox that just seem so underwhelming. It's quite common for me to download a demo, play it for five minutes or so, say "wow this game sucks", exit out of it and delete it. The games that I've thought really shine as demos I've bought every one.