JsARCLIGHT

Battlecry = Steppenwolf? Foghat? More like Air Supply.

The Searchers is the only John Wayne movie I will actually watch... the rest of his stuff is crap. I just don't like John Wayne... mostly because of his later works before he died, his "off camera" personality and just the general feel I get when I see the man. Millions adore him... I think he is highly overrated.

It is not wanted with me... it is an intrusion in my eyes. They could have done something as simple as they did with KotOR or Men of Valor and simply put a "check for upgrades" button in the game menu. Why does it have to be it's own manager? Why can't just the program have it built in? They are setting us all up for big brother Steam to monitor our games and keep us "safe" from those nasty pirates. It is overkill and unneccessary... I hate how now every time I start my computer Steam comes on and whines at me about my internet connection not being on. I do not trust Steam and I want it off my box. I just want to play a stupid game... I don't need some corporation telling me how to play it and watching me when I do.

If you have inroads to the budget numbers that would help add another number to the 2D pile's final tally.

While I never had the "pleasure" of dealing with the Lenslok thing it does not bother me as much as this Steam thing. The thing that urks me at my core is not the wait times... I understand that the servers are flooded and it is taking a long time to authenticate the games... it is the whole "big brother" Orwellian notion that my games must have this manager program running in order to play them. A program that you have to "log into", that is most likely tracking you in some way. I'm not a person who likes to "register" his games just because I don't like being part of some company's info gathering. Don't get me wrong, I purchase all my games and am glad to do so... game makers deserve to get money for their efforts... but when they just get to this point it makes me want to just start pirating games so I don't have to put up with this crap. This is also not the first time I have had to go through something like this... being the owner of a small tech business I have had to play footsie with companies to license our software tools we use at work. Back and forth with Alias or Discreet trying to get your darn license keys to work is a pain in the ass... and all of it is not in place to help you the consumer use their product it is in place to prevent Danny Dorkhole from stealing their stuff. Honest Consumers paying for the theft, not the criminal... the only way people seem to think "prevention" works. I am just worried that this is the first step in a new direction and soon everything will be like this.

In the case of the "import" movies most of the budget numbers given in my study were not the "true" budgets of the pictures... most of the time they are rediculously low because they either were the cost of importing, redubbing and releasing someone else's efforts or they were not given (or not accurately found in my info gathering). I actually wanted to take most of those "import" films out of the equasion alltogether (like the IMAX films) because they were not actual domestic product but just rehash... but by the time I noted that the math had all been done. When I made my comment about the "non calculatable" reffering to a massive loss of cash in budgetary concerns I was speaking to th domestic products... like the Disney movie "Brother Bear" and Warner's "Looney Toons Back in Action". Certain people I spoke with when tracking down the budget numbers for those movies made comments that both were a massive loss... like "Home on the Range"... but Disney was shy about releasing the actual budget hoping word would not get out of their loss that might damage the potential of "Home on the Range" which later was found to also be a galactic loss. As for "Looney Toons" most people felt the movie was poorly marketed and advertised leading to lackluster ticket sales... I did come across the ad budget for Looney Toons and from what it was calculated to be Warner did not have much hope in it from the start. From what I have heard (numbers are not "real" and thus were not used) Brother Bear had a budget as large if not bigger than Home and thus would have suffered almost the same great loss ratio... as for Looney Toons I have yet to get any info on it's true budget, but even if it were a super low cost production it still lost tremendous cash at the box office.

I hate Steam. It autoloads itself... you cannot play the games without it being loaded... sometimes you cannot even play anything without it being connected to the internet... It's a bunch of big brother bullcrap that is well beyond unneccessary. Just another example of the law abiding having to pay for the crimes of the game stealers by making our legitimate game purchase and play experience a giant hassle just to prevent some douche bag from stealing the game. I myself was not in a massive "hurry" to play these games either but come on! It should not take three hours of hassle filled hunt and peck, mysterious big brother downloading and trial and error attempting to get the thing to launch to install a game... that is just plain stupid. After playing another round of HL2 this morning before work I can add these extra things to my feelings on it: - the graphics are the game. So far the game is playing like any other standard FPS, no new genre breaking features or functions. - the sound effects and vocals repeat way too much. Case in point: when you kill the metro cops you get the exact same "radio squelch" noise every time. When shooting tons of them in a row it gets monotonous. - the load times are excessive and really take you out of the gameplay experience. I even have what I would call a top of the line PC with a lot of memory and it still takes a long time to launch and load between levels. ... and on another note, anyone know how to adjust the brightness of your aiming reticle? That thing just dissapears on me all the time and I end up having to squint to see it to aim.

To me they are the three best western movies ever made. Screw the Duke, he is a fat balding lowland gorilla compared to Leone's leading men. The desperados and lawmen of the old west were not the shining stars, black hats and white hats that the westerns of the 50's and '60s portrayed... they were dirty rotten scoundrels. ... and while not a Leone picture what are the group's thoughts on High Plains Drifter? Technically he had no name in that movie either... and was he the avenging spirit of the sherriff or just a lone badass? Same goes for Pale Rider... they just called him "Preacher" in that one. Poor Clint did not have a name a lot of movies.

Let me answer that for you: AN F'ING LONG TIME!!!!! I FINALLY got HL2 to run offline... apparantly if you scream, yell and threaten it so many times the game will finally run offline. Grand total: I began installing the game at 7:15... sometime around 10PM I finally got to play the f'ing thing, HL1 and Counter Suck are still not working... something about me having to be online to play them. F That. I'm on dialup and I'm not launching a darn browser and tying up my phone line just to play a game. Oh and HL1:Source is nothing. I feel very, very ripped off for buying the collector's edition. Between this and MoH: PacAss I will never buy another collector's edition anything ever again. Lucky for Valve this game is pretty nice otherwise I'd be on a roof across from their offices with a sniper rifle right about now. WORD TO THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO GET THIS GAME: Buy it in a few months when everyone is not trying to authenticate their came at one time. This little system of theirs is ass... the galactic genius that thought this thing up should be lynched. This is a freaking COMPUTER GAME people not national security and not trying to get a pilot's license... you should not need all these hoops, wait times, and... well... bullsh#t... to play a damn game. But on the brighter side of the cesspool... my thoughts on the game (the whole fifteen minutes I was able to play it out of a three hour period I had allocated to play the game tonight): Graphics, sound, play control and general appearance are everything you want and more. The only downside I have seen so far is that the load times every now and then really take you out of the game. Aside from the spanish inquisition needed just to play the damn game it is a nice game. Oh and don't buy the collector's edition unless you really want that "Lookit me! I'm a DORK!" T-Shirt... by the way... anyone want a shirt?

In the end everything we present on all sides of this is opinion and not fact. The only facts that can apply to something being "good or not" when it comes to movies are theatrical ticket sales and home video sales compared to budget. That is the only hard number fact you can throw at something like this and it will be a long time before we have that data for Toy Story 3, if we get it at all. As of late Disney has gone to great lengths to hide their budgets from everyone but their shareholders... as many (myself included) speculate that is because they are taking galactic losses on some of their releases. If you take my numbers into hard consideration the only conclusion you can draw (just from those numbers) is that without Pixar's aid Disney was on a steady decline of larger and larger losses on it's releases. Unless something new pops up to replace Pixar's grand money funnel that they have had for these past few years Disney's production side of the business will tank completely... then they will raise ticket prices at Disney Land even higher as then that will be one of their last bastions of profit.

If I had not just dumped $80 down these a-holes (and don't possess an X-Box anymore) I would say F them too. This has gone from rediculous to just plain stupid. I started installing this piece of crap around 7:15 my time... it is now F'ing 8:30 and I still can't play any of the games because they are "authenticating". These f***tards just got a nasty email from me... it's not like I was too busy playing their game to write one.

OK this has to be the most annoying install I have ever had to sit through... and it is not even done yet. Steam is not "me friendly" and they are making me mad. Why did they have to do all this authentication, registration, install and so on and so forth crap? Is this all really neccessary? I'm trying to play a game not buy an Uzi here, guys. Really, really uncalled for IMHO and a real turn-off for us olde tyme non-everything-online people.

For someone like me a flight sim is all about air to air combat... ground targets are boring. Especially if those ground targets are stationary or just plain not visible. The war in Vietnam was a ground war, the US held air superiority for the entire conflict... yet they still had attrocious loss rates thanks to North Vietnam having the most sophisticated air intercept system of the day. To be blunt the US was basically throwing planes into the chopper when sending missions into North Vietnam. Hundreds were lost to Triple A and SAMs. So to be true to form in the game heavily defended targets in Hanoi and the like should almost be suicidal runs for fighter bombers and left for the B-52's to hit. As for the gun issue early in the war most US fighter craft actually did not have decent onboard cannon or training for them if they did have the cannon... or any at all. The US military put all it's faith in air to air missles (which worked at best 25% of the time) and many US flyers early on "lost kills" because their missles failed and they had no guns (I have numerous reports and studies on this). Only later in the war did many planes get cannons back. For almost the whole first part of the war in air to air engagements the US Air Force suffered almost a 1 to 1 tag for bag ratio against the Soviet and NVA pilots in air to air dogfights. The Navy and Marine boys did a lot better at like 2.75 to 1. Not until later in the war and the introduction of new training systems designed to train US pilots to fight against soviet planes and tactics did the kill ratios climb.

So HL1:Source is pretty lackluster, huh? How does it compare to say.... the difference between HL1 oldschool and then HL1 with the Blue Shift "Hi Res" upgrade pack? Is there any noticeable difference in the game at all? New weapons? New baddies? New NPC and critter models? I just got my big heaping box in the mail today and despite the totally empty feeling you get when you open it and all it is is one disc, a teeny tiny book and a crappy "I'm a dork" T-Shirt I really am looking forward to firing this up tonight... but if HL1:Source is not that neat I might just skip it and play HL2 first instead of "reliving the glory days" first.

The chart's numbers are only reflective of final US Box Office Theater Receipts (grand total on the last day of theatrical release, not inclusive of "dollar shows" or other second run establishment income) and do not reflect such hard to calculate (or just plain hard to get from the actual property holders) numbers as rental incomes, actual adjusted video sales (VHS and DVD) or other revenue streams (such as mechandising). Also take into account that some movies do much better in Internation release than domestic, thus making more money that adds to the total. Also also remember that the budgetary numbers do not include the ancillary expenses like advertising (which for some releases can rival or even outspend the actual production budget). This little chart was an in-house informal study I comissioned at my company just to show people why the misconception of "CG is better for business" is spreading like wildfire. I myself was suprised by some of the numbers. (all data shown on the chart is as accurate as could be found, sources can be named for specific numbers if people want to question them. When no accurate numbers could be found, or no data was released by the parent companies... perhaps to hide something like a massive loss... "not calculatable" was shown and in those cases those titles were removed from the equasion when determining the averages).

In OpFor you really were not the "Bad Guy" but more or less a different player in the same story. That was one thing that you had to like about HL was that no one was really "good" or "bad"... all the players in the game had their own goals and means of achieving them, just like the real world. The characters were not just the typical stereotypes even though they pretty much were supposed to be just that.

And my point was that Disney is really going to have to dig deep on this one. They are at a crossroads with the loss of Pixar... they actually have to carry themselves again based on those rarely found attributes of creativity and talent. Rehashing all their properties on direct to video releases may keep the bill collectors away for a while but it will not keep the company alive for long. It's put up or shut up time for the mouse and from what I keep seeing they are not ready for this fight right now... but only time will tell. All Dynasties fall and all kings die, but a few keep coming back to suprise us.

From what I have personally heard, no... but that is why I bought the collector's edition. So I could replay the first again (with the source engine no less) so I could re-immerse myself in the game world. Speaking of that, does anyone here have that HL1: Source? If so, how is it? I know it is just HL1 rehash but how well does the source engine "bring the game up"?

But in the clawing fight for your entertainment dollar the company making the product has to realize that they have to make something you want, not something you just automatically buy. Disney got by for a long time just on name. Parents would automatically go to the Disney movies and buy the Disney brand just because "it was Disney". Now the mouse finds itself having to actually compete for that slice of the pie and it is getting it's clock cleaned. Yes all things in this world are about money, but to just keep riding the same dead pony instead of giving people their "money's worth" will kill Disney eventually. Pixar deserves the hordes of cash they think they are entitled to as in my mind they "earned" my money and everyone else's... Disney did not.

And I liked Iron Giant... the point is that when you look at the box office profit numbers movies that should not be as popular or even popular at all sell high and good movies (like Iron Giant) that deserve more praise tanked. The trend that Disney saw was that the CGI movies were beating their traditional movies in spades... they did not bother to look at anything else or ask people why they did not go to their movies.

Old hat but just in case anyone wants it. (Also I was incorrect with my numbers earlier... the average CGI movie profit is waaaaaay higher than I remembered... also keep in mind this study is old and does not include the recent crop of films).

If you are going to list Small Soldiers with all the other 100% CG movies then you have to list all the myriad of other "CG Characters in a real film movie" movies also like Kangaroo Jack, Men in Black, Star Wars, etc. etc. etc. Edit: one point that a few people sometimes miss is that movie studios only see one color: GREEN. It is a proven fact that all the 100% CGI animated movies except one have all turned a very nice profit (FF:SW tanked like no tomorrow though). It is that flawed sales graph that has people like Disney making the claim they do that "people just want CG movies" because if you compare all the CGI cartoon movies against all the traditionally animated cartoon movies released in the last seven years the average CGI movie makes a clear profit of well over $50 million each (even figuring in the dismal $113 million loss of FF) and traditional animated movies LOSE $5 million! (I actually have a nice graph and doccumented numbers somewhere that show this that I can post if people don't believe me). It's all in the numbers and sadly Disney sees financial numbers and not the smiling faces of viewers. Once again, they just don't get it.

Well it looks like they are off to a good start. If you ask me that is sort of one of the things that makes using the Vietnam Conflict sort of "boring" for a flight sim... 90% of the air war was CAS, not much "fun" in a game if you ask me. Actual dogfights between planes were few and far between and the numbers show almost a draw in most cases thanks to lackluster US pilot training and no onboard guns on most of the planes for the first few years. So I guess if you actually want to know what it was like running the gauntlet of AAA and SAM sites up the country into North Vietnam then this game might deliver.

I'm just curious being a Nam buff... how accurate is this game to the war? Is it mainly fantasy as games like Men of Valor are or does it stick pretty accurately to the way the air war actually went down?... heh... went down.... pun intended on the Thunderchief, AKA the "thud".

Disney is making Toy Story 3 without Pixar in not really all that shocking. After all, Disney has been whoring out all their other past greatness movies with wretched direct to video releases done in very crappy sub-par quality for the last few years... what is stopping them from continuing the trend?