JsARCLIGHT

Did anyone else just think of that Calvin and Hobbes strip when he blows up his school with the fighter?

I have heard those and a few others that made me chuckle... but this game has yet to make me outright laugh my ass off, requiring the game to be paused because I cannot stop laughing. Really only Vice City has done that so far... such memories as Tommy running from that SWAT truck I just blew up with an RPG and you hear him blurt out "I'm Innocent!" Or to hear Maurice Chavez lay the smack down on that shiester guy on the radio "Eh? LIFT THIS Hairspray!" SMACK! I'm just not laughing at this game all the time like I was the last two...

No no no not that stupid "chase the train on the dirtbike" mission that one was simple because all I had to do was hit that jump and jump onto the train and have him shoot the guys. I'm talking about the "Reuniting the Families" mission where the last part of it you are hanging out the roof of the car shooting at the cops as you try to make a getaway. The freeaim crosshair is just so frustrating... I can't hit crap with it.

I'm pretty much at the point of shelving this game and waiting for the PC version. I just can't pass that rail shooter mission. I played it three times in a row last night and still could not pass that last section.

My problem with this rail shooter part of the mission is that I am trying to aim for the cars, tires, guys hanging out the windows shooting at me, etc etc etc but the darn crosshair is all over the place and to me it feels like trying to aim while drunk, dizzy, sliding around on the top of a erraticly moving car roof and trying to line up a shot looking over your shoulder using mirrors. I'm just not that good using these darn teenly little sticks on the PS2 controllers for manual aiming... my crosshair dances all over the place, across the cars, back the other way, up, down... I can pretty much fire a burst across the cars then I have to come back at them from the other direction. Then this is the real pisser: that second bike cop that jumps on the front hood. I see him coming, I line up my crosshairs as best I can and let him have it with one long burst into him and his bike... but he just does not die. He comes alongside the car, jumps over and on to the hood... but then it takes like a year to rotate my crosshair around front to aim at him and he starts punching me which causes the crosshair to dance all over erraticly and I just... can't... line... a... shot... up. This level pisses me off soooooooo much. Just like Vice City and the first rail shooter mission in San Andreas, it is nearly impossible for me to aim using these sticks when the crosshair is bouncing everywhere thanks to the motion of the vehicle you are in... combine that with the uber sllllloooooooooowwww tracking of the crosshair it is painfully hard to line up precise shots and most of the pick-off type shots I achieve are pure luck as my line of fire dances across the target. If they were trying to simulate how hard it is to shoot a weapon hanging out the top of a speeding car as it zigs and zags all over the place they hit the nail on the head a bit too well.

Hidden somewhere between all the cutscenes MGS2 was a great game... I just wish Substance would have cut out most of them so you could play the game more fluidly rather than play for five minutes and have to watch a fifteen minute long movie. Lilelaleloo!

The problem is not with the game it is with my inability to take out those cop cars... I'm sure I could cheat my way into the next world but that is not "me". I'd rather have the satisfaction of kicking the game's ass on my own merits than having to buckle down and "cheat" to pass. I just need to keep playing that mission until I get good enough to finish it with my car in one piece... the problem is it is just so frustrating as the mission is so long (the longest one in the game for me to date) and it pains me to have to replay everything up to that shooter spot every time. I've overcome my issues with the autoaim and now my issues are with the freeaim... I know a lot of the cheats are out there for this game (and most of the people I have talked to who are further along than me are cheating to beat the band) but when you use them they also "mark" your game and prevent you from getting 100%.

I have yet to get a rocket launcher or anything bigger than the AK47. The problem with the mission is the (spoiler alert if you have not gotten here yet) the second half of the mission which is a very, very long rail shooter sequence with you manning a rifle hanging out the back of your car shooting the cops who are persuing you. My problem is the cops just eat me alive every time and my car blows up at the exact same spot every time, no matter how "good" I think I'm doing.

I wouldn't know anything about that... seeing as I'm STILL stuck on that last Sweet mission... Razzafrazin game...

No he's not crazy. It's a phantom government! A funky phantom government!

It might have been from the old X-Wing / TIE Fighter / X vs. T game sets... I remember they released an addon for I believe the original X-Wing PC game that added the B-Wing fighter and a bunch of missions. Could be those shots were from that game as I remember that game did have incidental animations of the B-Wing taking off, landing and such that occured between mission levels.

I would hope advances in motion picture prop technology in the last 15 years would make the new Daleks a bit more... ahem... "mobile". Not that there is anything wrong with the "man on a tricycle inside a plywood frame" concept mind you.

You know, when arguments break down to the base levels of "well f**k you too then" it pretty much puts off everyone from the opinions of those on both sides of an issue. I think the personal attacks need to get 86'ed in benefit of more info to support the opinions from both camps. It is my personal opinon that when your opponent slips into the "well f**k you too" line of rhetoric it means he is feeling the heat from your line of debate and has slipped into despirate childlike retorts rather than a collected argument... cussing and name calling is a sign of mental "wheel slippage" to me so don't give the other guy the satisfaction and debate like men rather than getting psyched out and reverting to name calling. Stand your ground, assert your opinions (with facts if necessary) and match the other side topic for topic and people will respect your views and perhaps come over the fence to see things your way... but drop into the base levels of cussout tactics and you loose a good deal of people's interest. Well, except for those kind of people that love looking at traffic accidents.

Remember to punch those cards all the way... if I hear about "hanging chads" and "pregnant chads" again I'm going to go atomic. And vote your mind, vote your true feelings. Don't let others influence you or tell you who to vote for. Voting is between you and the booth... love the booth, caress the booth... become the booth... unless it is one of those rickety fold out suitcase ones then don't get too carried away as those things collapse like a US Homes home in a rainstorm.

There is a car that looks similair to a early '90s Mustang... it's called "Buffalo". It looks like the same overall feel and wheelbase as those boxy fox bodies but it has this weird slab front (no grille) and four round headlights. I swiped one a while back and kept it in my garage but it got blowed up real good on a mission. They are nice cars, a bit squirrely but nice. I have only seen them in white if that means anything... As for the NSX looking car that is apparently the new Inferius and I've only seen a handful of them. Both the Inferius and the Buffalo seem to only pop up in the downtown business district on my game and even then only if you are driving a fast car or a motorcycle.

Just a correction the poem is The Firebombing by James Dickey. But Mr March is right that it is WW2 and recounts some of Dickey's own feelings of power when on bombing runs against the Japanese. Someone could have rewritten it in a Vietnam flavor but I have not seen it as such. Edit: March caught it just as I posted.

And now I know... and knowing is half the battle! (the other half being finding someone to give the dorky shirt that comes in my HL2 Collector's edition box)

OK, obvious stupid ass old man question here: just what the H is this steam thing? Is it some kind of online buy then download sort of thing? If it is then it's out of my range as I have a dialup at home and will just buy the boxed collector's edition as I was planning...

Nope, the aiming still frustrates me... and I'd need hours and hours and hours of practice to get good enough at it as I am at the PC version of the games... time I can't dedicate to a game sadly.

The Free aim is impossible for me to use... trying to aim with that right stick and at the same time dodge with the left stick is out of my ability. Lining up a shot on a stationary target like those switches in the "stealing from uncle sam" mission is hard enough. As I said before (like JawJaw and others) I am used to mouseaim on the PC and my PS2 experience is very limited... when this game comes to the PC I'll be back in my element and then I'll be plinking headshots on the run.

When the game came out here in STL lots of places had special sales on it ($39.99 and $44.99 rather than $49.99) but the sale price only applied to the non DVD standard version for some reason. I myself was not interested in that game but I clearly remember seeing the small print in a few ads (Circuit City and Comp USA come to mind) stating only the non-DVD edition was on sale (plus the only one pictured in the ad) and I remember some of the people in my office griping about how only the standard release was on sale. That is what I was referring to for the most part. Come to think of it, I was in Comp USA on Saturday getting a HDMI cable for my TV and I browsed their games section and the Sims2 DVD editions were falling off the shelves but the standard release was almost sold out. Seems to me that Sims2 is the only double media release game I have seen in stores other than Unreal Tournament so this practice is not exactly "widespread" yet.

It depends on the title and what you get for the extra money that will get me to buy a "special edition" release. My big gripe is where this all started: DVD's. Sometimes a special edition release is nice and has lots of good stuff with it but other times they just slap the words "Special!" and "Collector's!" on it just to make more money. Crap like shirts, booklets and the like do not interest me but things like HL2 coming with CS: Source and HL1: Source made me want it... mainly because I like getting three games in one box on DVD Roms. Also I've noticed that some special edition releases of games (like Sims2) are basically just them shipping the game on DVD rom... what? excuse me? I pay a little more for the same thing on fewer discs? When it comes down to it, Special Editions would not be booming if people were not buying them. But on the flip side companies need to realize that a crappy T-shirt and a four page booklet do not a "special edition" make. Truly special special editions are few and far between these days.

Just as others have said the only real way to make tons of cash in the game is just to kill people... simple as that. I found that two ways to make potloads of money fast are: killing drug dealers and fighting turf wars. Drug dealers are easy to spot once you know who to look for... look for a white guy in a grey hoody, a black guy wearing all black with a gold chain and a hispanic guy with a black and while checkered shirt. When you approach them they stand perfectly still and when you get close they proposition you to buy drugs (you can even answer yes or no)... at that point just shoot them in the head and they not only drop a pistol but about ten cash pickups worth between $200 and $1000. As for the Turf Wars thing it can be a blessing or a curse... if the turf you are fighting for is not laid out very well then it is easy to get surrounded, have the autoaim dork out on you and you end up getting mown down in the crossfire. My friend's tactic of running away and getting all the targets in one nice pile makes it soooo much easier to shoot them and the autoaim does not freak out when you have a nice steady stream of people walking into your kill zone. On average if you are good enough you can mop up a Turf War all by yourself without any help from your tagalong gang guys (allthough it is best to have five or so of them with you so the two computer controlled teams shoot it out and don't focus on you alone) you can make piles of money and recover tons and tons of weapons and armor. Plus once you own like 80% of the map (as I do now) your money pickup outside your house in Ganton generates about $5000 every few days.

At a Halloween party I was just at another guy I know who is also playing GTA:SA gave me a tactic to try out later tonight. He said that when you are "surrounded" on more than three sides by things that the autoaim can lock on to (people, cars, etc) he said the auto aim will for some reason always wig out and start selecting strange things like innocent ducking people and car tires... his advice was just to run. To book it until you come to a spot where all the things you want to shoot are within a "hostile cone of shoot me" as he called it. Then the autoaim should track only the targets aiming or shooting at you. I have not tried this yet but he claims that it works like a charm... so later tonight I'll give it a whirl.

That is the problem, My SMG, Pistol and AK47 skills are maxed out at Hitman... pressing L2 and R2 will only cycle the targets left and right (L2 for cycle left and R2 for cycle right) and the buttons will not "loop" (meaning you can't keep hitting L2 because when it reaches the furthest left target it stops), which means if autoaim selects the target furthest to the left (which it almost always does) you can only cycle the targets by pushing R2 as L2 does nothing in a situation like that. I myself find it impossible to hold down R1 and at the same time push R2 to cycle targets while having to push Circle to shoot... my hands just can't hold the controller and do all that at once... so I end up just pressing and releasing R1 when I need to target someone. Without a doubt the autoaim is the lamest, worst aiming system I've ever used... and a big reason why when this game comes out on the PC I will go from lame to unbeatable at it just like Vice City. I cannot for the life of me play Vice City worth anything on the PS2 but with my mouseaim on the PC (and with cleaner graphics and sound to boot) I'll dominate. As for game percentage I'm at about 13%... due to my inability to pass certain missions because the autoaim screws me over all the time I'm basically stuck and just running around dominating gang territories... which once again is hard running because eventaully that damn autoaim will mess up and get me killed again.