JsARCLIGHT

It's not that we're "sheltered" and it's not that we "don't approve" it's that hearing the F bomb dropped like rain and everyone being called Bitch this and N that you just start to want to cover your ears and yell "enough already!". People talk in different ways all over the world, just because I speak one way and another person speaks another does not make either one right or wrong. All Agent One and I were saying is that we are having a hard time following what is going on in the game. If they did not give helpful mission instructions I'd be lost on most of the missions as I'm not sure what people are talking about. I've spoken with other people about this game and almost all of them agree that Vice City was targeted at "me" (the teen in the '80s white male who likes slick talking punks like Tommy Vercetti and shows like Miami Vice) and San Andreas is targeted NOT at me. I'm fine with that... it's just that the incessant cussing is driving me up a wall and I can only imagine what a parent who stumbles upon their kid playing this game will say. Back to the topic of the game: IT HAS PISSED ME OFF. This game is now officially unplayable thanks to the stupid autoaim. I have been killed umpteen times in the last few missions just because Carl will just not aim straight... or he will lock on to a car tire or some other stupid thing other than the gang member shooting me with an Uzi not five feet away. As much as I try I am stuck and cannot get past a few select missions because of the autoaim. I try and try and try but when you are throwing down your controller in anger screaming "NO NO NO NO NO YOU PIECE OF CRAP! AIM AT HIM!" that is the time to stop playing. Anyone else fed up already?

If that dropship is actually going to be 1/48 scale then that thing is going to be freaking huge. I have the old Halcyon model kit built up in the "open" configuration with the ramp down (and with the tiny resin APC on the ramp) and that thing alone is quite large... and it is 1/72 scale. It's well over a foot long and longer than a foot wide with the weapon pods out. It's a big mother... I'm planning to get this one when it comes out... finally I'll be able to button up the dropship and roll around the little APC without worrying I'll break them.

It must be kismit because I was channel hopping last night trying to get to bed and I saw that same thing, Doctor Who the 1996 movie on Starz Mystery. It also answered some of my questions in that Spielburg had nothing to do with it as his name was nowhere on the credits, it appeared to be a 100% British made piece even though 99% of the cast was American and it took place in America and yes Sylvester McCoy was replaced by McGann. Another interesting tidbit that I totally forgot was that they brought back and then killed off (for the umpteeth time) the Master.

Does this man look like he can practice medicine?... or at least kick some Cyberman ass? At bare minimum shove K-9 down a set of stairs? Well it's Christopher Eccleston and according to the BBC he is the new Doctor. I have not seen if BBC America is going to pick up the show or not... it would be kickass if they did as I have BBC America on my cable box.

I am by far not the one to ask about Dr. Who officialness or not I just remember what I saw in the mid nineties Fox movie and yes Sylvester McCoy (who I must admit beside the statue that is Tom Baker) was my favorite doctor mainly because in Chicago at the time they mainly showed the "newest" epps which were him and (I think her name was) Ace. From what I remember of that movie McCoy died early on and was replaced by the McGann guy who from the best of my memory was a total Fruit. I have a vivid memory of him riding a motorcycle with the current female companion laughing like a psycho gerbil... the whole movie was just... wrong... to me. It did not have a single "vibe" of the original show, it was totally "americanized". I always wondered what the deal was with that movie in the first place as Chicago PBS removed Dr. Who from their lineup with no excuse in like 95 or so (which from what I hear caused a stir on my old campus as a group of people had a fan club based on the show) then all of a sudden this crappy movie showed up on Fox in like 96. I thought it meant that Fox had a new series and someone bought all the american rights to Dr. Who so they could air it on Fox and not compete with the original show... any truth to that? And is Dr. Who showing in any shape or form anywhere? on cable perhaps? I just remember how mind-numbingly slow and soothing the show was... I remember watching it in a state of near coma and loving every minute of it. Then again that was college and I was drunk a lot.

It's not so much "that it fits" as much as I miss the witty banter and comic gold of the Vice City dialogues... the dialogue of this new game is just downright insulting most of the time to me. I am mostly chalking it up to a difference of place... what I mean is I'm your typical white guy. Much like Agent ONE I just have not been in the parts of the country where people talk like the people in this game... thus it is very "foreign" and strange to me and I have a hard time following the dialogue as well. I can clearly follow what they are saying I just sometimes don't know what they are talking about... too much urban vernacular in spots. Edit: But if GTA was a bunch of prim king's english speaking lord fartleroys like me it would just be dorky.

I bought it sight unseen out of an ad in one of those old Toy papers back in 98 or 99. I had only seen pics of the prototypes of the toy in Toyfare before that and had never seen it in stores... anywhere. So when I saw a guy offering some of them for sale I bought all he had in a set: The APC, The Dropship and the Nostromo. All of them are ugly and downright crappy looking but because the things are just so rare and hard to come by I have kept them all in a box in my toy stash since I got them. Lesson learned: Never buy things sight unseen, even if they are uber rare toys.

I myself am a bit put off by the constant unrelenting cussing... I mean, I know I myself have been known to have a bit of a boonie rap when you rile me up but sheesh... every other word from some of the in game characters is a swear word. Makes me miss Tommy Vercetti... he was downright clean spoken compared to the new cast.

I'm headed to a Halloween party tonight but here are some nice pics I found online of the Galoob Action Fleet Toy. Mine is also MIB unopened (as it cost me a ton and I'm scared to open it because I fear I cannot find another one if I break it) so pics of mine would be lame at best. ... as you can no doubt tell from the pics the toy is fugly... It's proportions and scale are all messed up as well as it's colors and details. To put it bluntly, it is the "Fisher Price" Drop Ship. If you are going to build a lego version I would recommend getting ahold of either the Halcyon model kit's instructions or that Aliens RPG book as those have very, very detailed and accurate line art of the drop ship.

Yeah there was an Action fleet Dropship as well as a micro machines dropship, both made by galoob... the downside is they were uber rare. The only one I have ever seen in person was the one I own and I had to pay a crazy price for it from a guy in a toy magazine back in about '99 or so. Outside of those and that one that a Japanese toy company is working on making I have not seen any other Dropship toys... besides the model kits.

I have your Christmas present right here, AgenOne! These flashcards have taken my street from janky to dope without costing me my grip!

I must admit to watching the good Doctor on weeknights in Chicago in college and liking it... I do have one question though for the people who know who... what was the deal with that one-off American movie they made and aired on Fox in the mid Nineties? You know, the one that supposedly had Spielburg attached to it somehow (like as the producer or something)? If I'm not mistaken they killed off the last British Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and replaced him with some new dolt (Paul McGann) in that movie... does that mean the new series will pick up from where that one left off or will the Britsh just ignore the lame ham-fisted American attempt to bring back the show and start anew?

Has anyone found a way to keep your "sex appeal" level? Every time I seem to boost it it just goes back down... sometimes it even goes all the way down to zero after being about half full... ... and for the record my guy is affectionately called by me "LL Cool Hammer". He is shirtless, wearing bright jogging pants with same color shoes (they where green but have since changed color) with a like color bucket hat and a gold chain. My guy is buff to the max (maximum muscle and about half full stamina) and of course is covered with gang tats (hence the no shirt rule). Under his bucket hat he has a MC Hammer slope haircut but you can't see it. All that got my sex appeal up to almost half but then after a while it went back down to zero... Has anyone found a clothing store that sells something other than street trash or gang clothes yet? I want LL Cool Hammer to sport a slick suit rather than his current rags. Edit: Does anyone else also wonder how the transition from PS2 to PC port of this title will fair? There seems to be a bit too much button mashing in San Andreas and I wonder how they will translate that to the PC... what with the whole "hold down the keyboard key for rapid repeat" thing.

It's very short, look for the clip on TV of the guy in the black beret and fatigues giving an interview with a reporter, that's "Rodger".

But that is the real problem with the story played out in the "Romero System" of zombie movies... there is nowhere to run to. Sure you can barracade yourself in some secure location but how long can you really live until you get found and overrun by either the living dead or a band of living people determined to kill you and take your nice safe nook? Even if you made it to an island and somehow there were no zombies there and somehow you found a stable supply of water and food you would still just be hiding from the eventual... some may say the inevitable...

Mine did not. At the local Beast Buy I got mine at the only ones that had the bonus disc were the Fullscreen editions. I asked a blueshirt if they had any of the WS discs with the bonus discs and he did not know... so I asked the desk manager and he did not know... so I asked another blueshirt on the floor if he knew who would know and he did not know... ... so I just bought the WS disc without the bonus disc and left Beast Buy the same way I leave every time: angry. Edit: ... and talk about one really crappy DVD release. The darn thing did not even come with a liner card, just some stupid ad insert for Child's Play. Dumb. Seems the makers of this DVD thought people would rather have a cardboard slipcover that is the same thing as the DVD box rather than a booklet or an index card. I guess they only printed one for the regular release and that was it.

Actually the point of the original movie was a biting social commentary about how we are all mindless zombies in one form or another... it was not about how the fittest survive because "Flyboy" and "Flygirl" were defineately not the fittest, and besides the "fittest" got killed anyway in the orignal. This new movie has no "point" like the original... it was an exercize in how many gruesome deaths they could cram into a movie with no explanations. You can tell this was this director's first real movie as it has several rookie movie mistakes in it as well as several writing crutches. While I was not expecting an arthouse flower or a oscar darling with this movie I was at least expecting the focus and "honesty" that the original had. Introducing so many characters for the sole purpose of killing them off is weak. Heck, you never even know 75% of the characters names because they perhaps say them once in the whole movie and then never again... they just show up, have one or two lines at best, then get killed. If anything the movie suffered from too many characters too fast... the original had four characters for almost all of the movie and allowed for a lot of character development and background because you were not bothered with a cast of 20 getting in the way. You do not need Lord of the Rings character backgrounds but you at least need to establish your characters in order for the audience to "feel something" when they die... otherwise you might as well just put black masks on them and call them person A and B. Like I said and like you said, this movie was not about story, plot or even the characters it was about how many deaths they could show in the running time with as little explanation as possible and that truly dissapoints me when the original was such a subtle masterpiece. Romero-esque zombie movies are not about killing zombies, they are about the downfall and despiration of man.

Bought the DVD last night and watched it... One word: MEH The Unrated DVD adds nothing to the movie other than a few extra seconds of gore that the MPAA did not like (but are not all that gory in all truth) and a few extra and extended scenes of character development which still don't help define the shallow and cookie cutter characters in the movie any more than they did originally. I really liked this movie in the theater but upon seeing it again I find I like it less. I'm guessing a third viewing will make me like it even less. Whoever said this movie is a "use once and destroy" title is 100% right. There is nothing to pick up on or notice a second time around that you don't get the first time. The only benefit of the DVD is the extras that expand on the story, like the "Andy's last days" segment... mainly because it gave you a bit more reason to actually care for the character of Andy rather than him being just another storyless cardboard character in the movie that the audience does not really care if they live or die.

OK, just a question from one who is not a baseball fan to those who are... who did not see this coming? I mean, the Sox come back from 3 games down and beat what many consider to be one of the best teams in the game (the hated Spankies) while the Cardinals struggle to beat a wildcard team. If you ask me the Cards making it into the World Series was inconsequential as the Sox picked up so much steam from killing America's (hated) Team that no matter who they played they would have brutalized them.

A new rapper named Young Maylay is the voice of CJ. Other notable Hollywood voice tallent I noticed in the manual last night include James Woods, Peter Fonda, Samuel L Jackson (already mentioned by me above), Chris Penn (also already mentioned)... the game is also chock full of rappers and other urban/hip hop artists doing cameos and main character voices along with music industry classics. Has anyone else seen the GTA character "cameos" yet? Such memorable scum as Kent Paul, Salvatore Leone, Ken Rosenburg and others from past games are all listed in the credits which means they are hiding in there somewhere... Also has anyone else had the chance to try out the "two player rampage" feature yet? I only have one controller or my wife and I would be double trouble all over the place... we've found four "team up" icons so far.

I myself would rather see them make up a brand new fourth storyline with unique units and characters with only minor ties to the previous parts... you know, follow in the "established tradition" of Robotech. Their attempts to tie everything together will just get weird if you ask me. I'd rather see a new saga with new good guys, new enemies and new mecha. But that takes effort.

Actually the San Andreas music selection is very... not typical. They have two rap stations (one "classic" and one "modern"... no insult but who ever heard of a "classic rap" station? Then again who ever heard of a dance music station either...), a Techno/Dance station, a Classic Rock station, a Gen X Alternative station, a Country station, a Reggae station, an Urban station (think Modern Soul meets Urban Contemporary), a Hip Hop/Funkadelic station and a few more. Much like Vice City they cover the musical fads of the early '90s but not the more "mainstream, everyday" music.

I'm starting to wonder if my enthusiasm for the game is not blinding me to more issues... I did not experice one choppy section or low frame rate last night playing. Where are people getting the choppiness at so I know where to look for it at? ... and is anyone else running the game through component cables (or in widescreen for that matter)? I'm wondering if some of the claims of "muddiness" I hear around the web could just be the hookup meathods as my screen is very clear. Edit: and on the topic of graphics I HATE the new "speed blur". Especially on that first bike chase mission... I could not focus on the road or my target because that darn blur makes you feel like you have cadaracts.

... or you could just buy a PC like I did. Edit: I should also say the only reason I own a PS2 is because my wife wanted it. Yeah, yeah I know "excuses excuses"... but it really was her that wanted it. I myself prefer PC gaming with all its perks to craptastic console gaming. But let's keep this thread on topic and not derail it into another pointless internet console vs. PC Halo vs. the rest of the world mire.

While I think that San Andreas could definately have had much better graphics, there comes a point when you have to draw the line to keep the gameplay intact. I fell that SA's graphics do their best to keep the game playable without constant load screens and disc swapping. Think just how huge the game world is... now imagine how slow gameplay would be if the graphics were boosted into space. You could drive about five seconds before the PS2 would have to pause to load... I'd think you could get away with better graphics on a greater platform like the PC but on the PS2 they had to strike a balance between looks and feels. As for the control issue I started playing GTA on the PC with Vice City and going from mouseaim to teeny control sticks and a pissy autoaim feature made me feel like someone lopped off my left arm and put me back in the game. I think when San Andreas comes out for the PC not only will it "control better" but they will do like they did with Vice City and boost the resolution so the game should look better too.