Agreed, Mega Man 3 is the best, and I reminded myself of that last night. Played through 1 and 2, just beat the last robot in 3, and boy did I see the difference between 2 and 3. Classic in every sense.

BTW the collection rules, I'm playing through them in order as we speak.

What game is this?

Very true Blue. I think Tony has a strong moral center, he's just trapped in a situation where he can't act upon his revelations. Which is where Melfi has both failed and succeeded. I think the best line in the Sopranos finale was when Tony said to her, "All my decisions have been wrong." That to me was a powerful statement when you look at what's happened over the last 5 seasons (more specifically the last 3).

The way Al talks to his cronies, his behavior towards Bullock, the Chinaman, and Sol, everything he does shows us what direction his moral compass is pointing. He's a lot like Tony, where you basically know what his character is but you never know when he'll just flip and be someone you never expected. Al is just as unpredictable.

And like Gandolfini, McShane gives us more in one stare than most actors (excluding most HBO cast members) can in an entire 10 minute scene. When he peered down at Trixie in that last shot I was just like "Damn I don't want this show to end".

Ian McShane will definitely be winning the Emmy next year for Al. He's an old, old school Tony Soprano, except he gets away with a lot more and doesn't need to be as cautious. Awesome show, I'm not even a fan of westerns or "period" shows, but here I am totally amazed by how good Carnivale and Deadwood were. And Six Feet Under continues to entertain.

HBO knows what the networks don't, and that's why I love them.

I don't have as much of a problem with that quote as I do the line below it:

Mary Spio, 31, who served in the U.S. Air Force during the first Gulf War, thinks video games can create a bloodlust. "What we saw in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was the tip of the iceberg — it was a glimpse of a generation of war gamers coming of age," says Spio, now the pop culture editor for One2One Magazine.

WTF is he talking about? Those people were fucking idiots for what they did, I don't think gaming had anything to do with their actions. There are always going to be people on this planet with no morals or dignity, gaming rarely (if ever) sways people from one end of the spectrum to the other.
This comment was edited on Jun 11, 16:28.

"However there is alot of clipping that takes place and looks like crap."

I honestly don't care about the subject as much as some, but seriously, it's a game about SUPER HEROES. If there's one game that needs capes it's a game about freakin' super heroes.

As for the GW demo I've been pretty impressed so far (about an hour of playtime). Agreed that there need to be more mobs, and navigating can sometimes be a pain in the ass (lots of awkward ledges and corners that you get bounced off of). But overall pretty cool stuff. I see the gameplay as somewhere between a full RPG and Diablo, so I expect good things from the full version. Could be very addictive:P

"I'm a firm believer that if your unfinished stills look like crap you shouldn't release them."

I agree with you there, it wasn't a great decision. But knowing how the last two games turned out I have faith that the third will look just as good, if not better. I guess that's where the Splinter Cell 3 Defense League comes from. There were a lot of cool little visual tricks they pulled off in Pandora Tomorrow, and to start bashing SC3 due to a few screenshots is very premature and shortsighted. At least see what they show off at the E3.

"Horrible. Playing that looks painful. Worse than DX:IW, another plastic game, only DX:IX had lip synching worse than Half-Lifes."

Wow spew that venom! I'm sure it'll play worse than the first two, I mean why wouldn't they completely change the gameplay style and graphics of a proven franchise. But you'd probably know better than anyone here, what with you seeing THREE SCREENSHOTS.

And Pandora Tomorrow was done by Ubi Soft Shanghai, the first was done by Montreal. They're most likely leapfrogging development, so Montreal has had quite some time to make a suitable sequel.

Edit - just to preempt any counter bitching Deus Ex wasn't a proven franchise, and didn't have a quality follow-up to the original when Invisible War came out. That game was FUBAR in ways that the Splinter Cell franchise just isn't.
This comment was edited on May 10, 12:34.

About Guild Wars - from what I've read even if you don't buy an expansion a friend can still invite you to an expansion mission/land and you can still play together. Their streaming tech allows for this without you actually having the CD. So it's not too much of an incentive to buy an expansion if you know your friend is going to.

And how come every game is now labeled vaporware just because it hasn't come out yet? PC games get delayed and cancelled a LOT, yes, but just because we have high-profile no-shows like DNF and Team Fortress 2 it doesn't mean that every game ever announced doesn't really exist. I can't imagine how a game like GW is labeled vaporware considering there are plenty of people currently testing the Alpha (check message boards) and I just downloaded the E3 demo for next week.

So cynical you people.

"What, they've got little Tommy who thinks he's 1337 doing their press releases now? Using the word "own" is bad enough, but they just had to put it all in caps."

Most all official press releases have capitalized headlines, this is not unique to EA. The use of "own" is pretty bad though:)

On a side note does anyone know how Far Cry has sold? I know it's only been 2 weeks, but just wanted to see if any prelim numbers are known.

Battlefield 1942 - online WWII FPS, like printing money

Dungeon Keeper - a quality fantasy Diablo clone, not a tough sell

Black and White - weak game with mega hype behind it, this is a bad example of a top selling game with an original idea

Savage - this game isn't a #1 seller, I also unfortunately don't think it's done all that well

The point is that very few good, original games do well. Most are rehashes or sequels. But agreed that Ghost Master didn't get much press other than the poorly advertised demo.

If you preorder at an online retailer you don't need to put any money down. And there's no penalty for cancelling your order if you so desire. Which is why this ploy doesn't seem to be so great for high-profile titles that already have legions of fans lined up.

And they must have a ton of faith in their ability to ship the game within the next 6 months. If the game was a long ways out I'm sure they'd want to keep the game's features hidden. And hey, the more people talking about your game the better.

"I am talking about "surviving" it as in escaping the creature, healing back up, heading out into the galaxy, and even helping out Han... "

This might spark the debate I see every now and then, but I'll say it anyway. You must mean the events that occured in the post-movie novels. I don't consider those novels "official". Interesting stories based on the SW characters? Yes. Official? No. As to if Lucas signed off on those novels (I don't really know if he did), I lost faith in his vision of the franchise when a) he allowed that author to kill off Chewie and b) he created Episode I.

In all honesty I don't care enough to debate the fate of Boba, but to me the movies are all that matter so in my eyes he died.