The point of flavor dialogue is to let you better roleplay, even if your choice of words don't have a significant impact.

Really? If that's so, then I guess I have no idea what roleplaying means. That sounds more like "moviewatching" to me, except that I have to click to get the punchline.

The AoE spells take a long time to cast and you have plenty of time to disperse your party or interrupt the enemy mage.

Wait. Are we talking about Baldur's Gate here, or Dragon Age? If the former, I'd agree, with the notation that you never found yourself in such a position to begin with. If the latter, then no. I can think of one encounter (where the guys were even labelled 'shady bandit' or some such just to rub my nose in the fact that I was going to be helpless, since I couldn't make a pre-emptive strike - yet another "feature" in DA:O that irked me to no end - until the cutscene played through. There was a mage on a hilltop that I deliberately positioned my archers for.. but again; pointless. My entire party was corraled into the middle of the road, and by the time I had made my last impotent response to the inane dialogue tree, the fireball was already en route. Even when I KNEW what was coming, I couldn't scatter my guys fast enough, since the fireball has a pretty wide spread and knocks everyone flat on their asses automatic. This happened at least 8 times, before I finally lucked out and the mage decided to open with a defensive spell or something less dramatic, after which I was able to take him down with my archers. This seriously sounds like good game design to you? Because it sounds like a big fat load of dogshit to me.

Such as? If you're talking about the basic fighter/rogue/mage ideal party formation, that also applies to Baldur's Gate. Ever try playing it without any mages or rogues? Good luck.

Actually, not even. I'm talking about dialogue scenes, where they someone addresses someone specific in your party, only...they're not there...because you didn't know you had to bring them for this particular scene..and then you get a weird blank screen for several seconds (where I assume the party member you were supposed to have says or does something relevant).

Meh - whatever. I'm glad you found this game enjoyable, but I didn't. I don't like having to check the box every 17 seconds, looking for the name Infinity Ward's RR on it. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

4) Pointless dialogue trees: I don't see how they were pointless at all. Would you prefer to have no dialog choices?

If the end result is exactly the same no matter what I choose, then yes, I would! Otherwise, what is the point? There were several instances of this in Dragon Age.

As for the rest, I would argue that they are typical of most console games as well. The only Bioware game I can compare this to is Baldur's Gate, and that didn't force your whole party to congregate for a fireball that's about as obvious to happen as an acetylene torch in a meth lab. And I would respectfully disagree that the 4-party limit is better, especially when there's a pool to choose from and NOT having the wrong one will break a cutscene/encounter.

Yeah, I didn't get the appeal of this one either. Felt extremely consoley to me. The obnoxious invisible boundaries, the stagnant feeling maps, the 4-party limit (including your dog!), pointless dialogue trees, and the constant feeling of futility of positioning your guys in good strategic position only to see them get clumped dangerously together for the sake of a cutscene.

I liked a few things, like the architectural design of the buildings, the voice-acting was very good, the fleshing out of the gameworld's history, and even the combat tactics part was surprisingly not bad, but gads - It'd have been nice if Bioware spent more time on smoothing out the gameplay and less farting around with the cartoonish character "relationships".

Nothing on the CNN home page about it, though there's a story about fans remembering John Lennon (who died Dec. 8th).

I thought those two words were going to lead to something very different..

One weapon I'd like to see make some sort of comeback is the Wraithstaff from Hexen (not an id game, but it did use the Doom engine). You'd fire it, and out would come about a half-dozen ghosts that would tear ass toward anything they could see and keep on going until they either ran out of energy or time (can't remember which). It was like a shotgun that fired guided missiles with Vulcan cannons on them.

Clearing out a room was never again so much fun.

That's nice and all, Mr. Kotick, but I'm still not gonna buy it. Maybe when it comes down to about 20 bucks or so... or more likely, I'll get it the same way I got my last two CoD titles: bundled with a new video card.

Now, back to Borderlands..

We probably could have made one of those work here in Vegas - we had a 24-hour record store when I moved here 20 years ago, but nowadays? Fry's has sucked away a large portion of their business, and the last time I was in a Best Buy, it was Saturday, and I counted more employees than customers.

Double Indemnity
Sunset Boulevard
Terminator
Employee of the Month

Ferrari
Lamborghini
Porsche
Yugo

Robert Altman!? Thought he was dead.. Hope this means a Brewster McCloud adaptation is on the way

If blacks can call each other nigger, I can certainly call my fellow caucasians whitey if I'm so inclined. Dig it, honkey!

LARRY DAVID: Are you my caucasian?? ARE YOU MY CAUCASIAN?!?
KRAZY EYES-KILLA: Man, I am yo' caucasian!

Has kind of a Redneck Rampage vibe to it.. Me likey.

"Imagine Greater". I'm still laughing at that.

I'm looking forward to this. The first Godfather game was IMO quite underrated, and it sounds like they are expanding on the best part, which was the whole Don aspect - plotting hits, taking over other family territories, etc.

I don't recall Cameron approving T3. Where did you hear/read that?

http://www.countingdown.com/movies/1557/news?item_id=3128284

BBC One had the chance to talk to James Cameron (the man who wrote and directed the first two Terminator films) and had this to say about Terminator 3:

"In one word : Great. There was a small part of me that hoped it wasn't good - but another part of me hoped it succeeded. And it did. And I'm so glad it did. Jonathon's made a great movie. Arnold's in great form. I really like what he's done with it."

I should add, that while looking for that, I also found this:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/need-to-know-terminator-salvation.html

McG met with "Terminator" creator James Cameron, who wasn't involved in the third movie and reportedly wasn't happy with how it turned out. Cameron didn't contribute to the script of "Salvation," but he did recommend Australian actor Sam Worthington for the part of Marcus.

Maybe I've missed something, but everything I see says "Not Yet Rated". And all I've heard is that it might be rated PG-13. Even if that were the case, I don't see why that has to be such a deal-breaker. If the trailer is any indication, it looks like a fairly hard-nosed PG-13, and ratings are pretty mallable over time. Jaws was PG, and it had no shortage of brutal, bloody shark attacks, including a little kid getting eaten alive. The Andromeda Strain had dead babies, female nudity, and a guy getting a hole burned into his face, and that was rated G. At any rate, if Watchmen does well, then I'm wagering that'll tip the scales pretty hard for Terminator to go R.

I've also not seen anything that says James Cameron hated the script. Only that he's given neither his support nor his disapproval. One movie he did give his blessing to was Terminator 3. Oops.

As for McG, he's directed the Charlies Angels films, which were dumb and campy, just like the dumb, campy TV show they're remade from. Not sure what anyone was really expecting there.. BTW, those were Drew Barrymore's pet projects. He was just the director. His only other movie is We Are Marshall. Doesn't seem like enough data to make much of an opinion about his input.

The only real red flag I've heard about this movie is that it's gone through a number of rewrites. Other than that, I don't see a reason to dismiss it outright.

I really want to see an open-world western.

Wasn't Gun such a game? Never played it(keep meaning to pick it up), but I remember hearing it was a sandbox game.

Whew. Thank Goodness. And here I was, worried that someone from Microsoft was going to tell us how Windows 7 was total crap for games and not to ditch XP anytime soon...

How many purely non-derivative (<--this is the key part) innovations by Microsoft can you name?

BSoD and Microsoft Bob!

Has he made any good or even halfway decent movies?

I tried to watch "In the Name of the King", since I'd heard it was his best effort to date, and I generally like Statham's movies. I fell asleep about 1/3 of the way in, and never felt like finishing. Seemed more garden-variety boring than just outright laughably bad.