Wrestlevania

Ouch... I knew it was a good idea to post this on Thumbs before racing off to the checkout, so thanks for the notice. Fingers crossed that Twighlight Princess' development schedule hasn't set a precedent for all future Zelda titles!

Those little Full article links I post in every (appropriate) quote should be adequate "explanatory context" methinks.

MovieTyme finally processed my order the end of last week [grrr] so I'm hoping Portrait of Ruin will arrive at some point early next week. I've since been given a £30 Amazon UK voucher for Christmas too, so I'm pondering whether or not to buy 42 All-Time Classics now, or just pre-order Phantom Hourglass instead. That's not to say there aren't plenty of other great DS games available in the UK right now, but my short list (and reasoning) would work out as follows: 42 All-Time Classics - simple, unique, brilliantly portable and very highly rated Contact - looks great, but Zelda will be greater Electroplankton - unique enough, but no long-term appeal Metroid Prime Hunters - I finally grew tired of FPS games after I completed the original Call of Duty Phantom Hourglass - unlikely to be anything short of mind-blowing Tetris DS - ...it's just Tetris! Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble - bit pants, but loved the original (and this one's dirt cheap now, so may get it anyway) Yoshi's Island 2 - Mario platformers and I typically don't play together well I'm aware I could pre-order games other than Contact or Phantom Hourglass, but I'm not excited by Elite Beat Agents and Rocket Slime doesn't seem that revolutionary. Yes, I agree it may seem like I'm splitting hairs over this, but I only buy two or three games a year so I want to make sure each one's a justifiable classic. Thoughts, please, Thumbs!

I've watched the first two episodes of the first series and absolutely loved them. Having trouble finding the time to watch any more right now, though - or BSG S3, or Darkplace (loved the 1st ep. of that, too) - which is really annoying. Ban Christmas!

Not to kick Sony whilst they're down, but Gamasutra's swinging its size 9's anyway: All hail the unwashed masses!

Anyone watched The Mii Lebowski yet?

You know what? That's exactly what I thought. It's the art style of those characters -- John Goodman's Mii seems very Cartman-esque when he's talking.

Yup. And I typically hate "traditional" sports games (FIFA, Madden). I do seem to recall the earlier NBA games on MegaDrive also being quite fun though, but not quite up to the standard of NHL '94. Ooh, which reminds me: Road Rash 2 was The Shit on SEGA's 16-bit machine, even in the heavily squashed two-player split screen mode. I still play it now when I want a decent retro kick, and it's still great.

Anyone seen Pan's Labyrinth yet? It looks good* and sounds good, but I'm always interested to know what others think. * Who the fuck still thinks bloody awful trailer voice-overs are still necessary nowadays?

+1 for Streets of Rage II, probably my most favourite game of all time. Gunstar Heroes being a close second.

Don't. It's inbred and pretty horrible, all told. It's the same working in pubs -- everyone pregressively swaps bodily fluids, then you start on the customers.

It's relevant to what's offered by the system being played. Urban Dead, as I've mentioned already, does not have a complex in-game social system. So no, the changes you mentioned have relatively little effect in the main on how play continues and people feel about playing the game. Nexus War on the otherhand is fundamentally a social-based system, from the ground up. You can fly solo but that's not how it's been designed to be played. Factions can be created and controlled by any user in the game. Once created, factions have four different ranks within them. These ranks are differentiated by the amount of control over the faction players of each rank have. Typically, you have very few generals and lots of foot soldiers. I've noticed that when players are promoted there is never any comeback from other players within the same faction. However, when people are demoted the sky's the limit on just how far the demotees will go with their protestations; finding and killing the person in-game who demoted them, turning on faction mates, stealing or wasting as much equipment, weapons, armour and ammo in the faction stronghold as possible. The list is almost endless. Nexus War is well designed because it allows for - and even encourages - people to play the game however they wish. The game also allows for politics without limit; you can actively assign other factions as allies, friends, neutral, enemies or arch-enemies. Espionage and deception are easily carried out also as you are free to leave a faction at any time and then join another (assuming they either have an "open door" policy or else you've managed to get an invitation -- usually just a case of registering on the faction's forum and simply asking for one). Once in the new faction, people will ingrain themselves within the group, feeding information via meta-gaming (forums, IM, IRC, etc.) to their previous faction. It's been done many times already; spies coordinate a raid on the new faction from within and then "turn coat" once their true faction mates have smashed their way inside. And perhaps it goes without saying, but this causes massive ripples in the gamespace. Similarly, allying with a faction to assist in attacking another means the political landscape of the game constantly shifts -- it's possibly the hardest thing to keep up with, and simply impossible if you don't actively meta-game in some way. This is why I said the community aspect helps move you through "The Dip"; it makes the game feel alive and challenging, without seeming wholly artificial or NPC-driven. You should come along and play.

I've not played an online MMO-like game yet that didn't suffer from "The Dip". It's the point when, once you've graduated from being an absolute beginner to being comfortable with the system(s), location(s), equipment, etc., you realise you have a very long grind ahead of you before maxing-out your skills. (I'm generalising, but most players continue role-playing so that they can become powerful and do whatever they please in a tangible world.) That's an inherent problem with role-playing in my experience, which the community/team-work aspect makes up for. I don't think I would have stuck with tabletop AD&D as long as I did if it weren't for the players, and I know for certain I wouldn't have stuck with either Urban Dead nor Nexus War if it weren't for the people I play alongside; and sometimes against. Having a variety of good opponents is equally important.

Well, for me it's about community--most specifically, team-mates. I noticed you avoided the KoL community which I certainly wouldn't blame you for. I despised the main (unofficial) forums which sprang up around Urban Dead because it was choked by a core group of griefers, who mobbed the boards 24/7. However, this did in fact lead to a very good thing happening; the RRF - one of the best-known zombie groups in the game - split off and created their own forums. Each of the RRF's core strike teams were then given their own private area of the forums so they could organise themselves in private, away from the griefing. Because of this, our strike team is now possibly the longest serving of any group in the entire game; we also celebrated out 2,000th kill a few weeks back, which shocked many players when we made the announcement in the main game's forums. In Nexus War it's the same, but the interface is far superior in terms of teamplay, which has lead many players to create multiple characters and join a different faction with each. I created a NW version of our UD group not so long ago and several of our most dedicated members are now playing in both games successfully. I think the variety and contrast between Urban Dead's very basic, visceral gameplay and Nexus War's complex and rewarding role-playing is what keeps me interested in both. But overall it's my squadmates; the group has been together over a year now and I joined - purely by chance - right at the start. We've seen and done everything there is to do in UD but it's the people that keep the game alive. Even after so long it's often still a scream to play, because of who I play alongside. And any Idle Thumbs member is more than welcome to join us in either game that takes your fancy; PM me if you'd like to.

When I've worked on software in the past, one of our (the developers) tasks was to go through the entire program cutting and pasting every sentence into an Excel spreadsheet. This was then fired off to some localisation company in the arse-end of nowhere for translation. No idea how effective it ultimately was because we didn't quality audit the translation results with native speakers. And I get the distinct impression this is generally how it's done -- certainly in the UK software industry at any rate...

MovieTyme sez Portrait of Ruin is out today and so I have wired them some of my filthy currency! I have a suspicion it's going to be a very good holiday this year...

Celebrated my 1st in-game birthday last week and I still play whenever I can. Heard of The GMT Breakfast Club perchance, Marek? I've also been playing Nexus War since helping with the alpha testing way back when. It's grown into quite a fantastic - not to mention thoroughly addictive - MMORPG now and I really like it, especially with all the great faction stuff (such as honour and karma). For those interested in anything MMO, I suggest you read the game's introduction on the Nexus War wiki double-quick, then have a browse around to learn about the excellent character classes. KoL I played for a time, but it didn't hold my interest much longer than a couple of months.

White Black

My bad -- the world stands on its axis once more... You've missed the point I think. I know plenty of people who use a range of those "pointless" features on a daily basis, and for Zune to not include those - for no obvious reason - won't mean these people suddenly ditch their iPods and take up Microsoft's hardware instead.

The New York Times has an excellent write-up regarding Zune and whilst I wasn't expecting great things from it, the list of 'flaws' is quite eye-opening. Brown definitely isn't the new white, so to speak. Engadget also has a (somewhat bitchy) retelling of their experiences when trying to install the Zune software, which is also worth reading I think if you're considering shelling out for this thing. Personally, I'd go for something a lot simpler and hassle free myself -- that SanDisk player looks good for instance. You can also get a 2GB 65k screen MP4 player direct from Hong Kong, via eBay, for less than a new (screenless) 1GB iPod Shuffle too -- you get a digital FM receiver built-in as well, something no iPod or Zune can do out of the box. "The world is your lobster," when it comes to personal audio gadgets. Buy anything but Zune IMHO (or that rubbish Sony Bean).

"More is more" - everyone knows that! And they said TTT was dead...

Surely if you're buying a PS3 for the backwards compatability you'd simply be better off buying a PS2 now (secondhand, naturally) and waiting for a) PS3 supplies to drastically increase, and Sony to work out the remaining bugs with the glitching legacy titles. Let's not loose perspective though; 97.5% is a fuck of a lot of games. But does anyone have a link to a list of the games which glitch though? (Couldn't see anything obvious on the BBC's site.)

Calgary Zombie Walk 2006 [thank you, Flickr-types] - that's some impressive home-made gore I must say. I worked late on Halloween so didn't do anything either, boring me. I did beep my motorbike horn at a few passing ghosts and ghoulies on my ride home though. Two particularly grim-looking ones were holding hands, helping each other along the pavement, which was quite cute (ironically).

Torchwood is shite. It's knowingly 100% dependent on long-cliched material, shameless in the way it uses it and, whilst it's pitched at an "adult" audience, it's childishly written and therefore quite offensive/patronising to watch. In my opinion it should've met the same fate Rose's equally-crap-sounding spin off series: axed before it went anywhere near a studio. To my mind New Dr. Who has already reached its peak with the episode where Rose "died". So in this respect I agree with Dan's standpoint on mainstream British sci-fi. However, BBC4 (for all 6 of us who occaissionally watch it) are about to launch a Brit Sci-Fi season, which has at least the potential to deliver something more solid. Cross your fingers by all means--just don't hold your breath.

Certainly an enjoyable enough trailer, but can't help feeling it's going to be basically the first film's plot with the second film's emotional entanglements sprinkled in. With more black Lycra, naturally. I'm very keen to see Raimi do justice to Venom though; he's/it's easily my favourite Marvel character.