Posts by Izuno

Quote from GrayFox

If there is one truth to the long run success of a console, it is the content.

Content is king.

Ok I got that problem last night.

I closed steam, then restarted using the shortcut with the -beta sdk added in the shortcut command line, just like DudeTor said and it worked fine for me.

Make sure to check for that, then let us know if it works.

this guy is trying to sell at the uber inflated price in hopes that some rich idiot will be stupid enough to buy his way into the annals of ebay/internet idiocy...eg...get famous. the seller's only real goal is to make the uber cash.

honestly, there are a lot of rich idiots out there, but do you want to be a rich idiot who gets famous (or more famous) for buying a 360 for that much money? please.

wow...if that kid is really 9...or not that it matters what age he is...but...

His behavior is indiciative that he has much deeper issues. Further, I would venture to guess his parents have some issues given this is how his kid ended up this way by age 9.

When they say "Game experience may change online" they weren't kidding.

my cousin did a lot of work on the DVD production of Pirates 2 and he says the footage looks awesome so far...much more exciting than Pirates 1...plus Pirates 2 features much more ass kicking by Keira Knightley except she's in skimpier clothes.

whoa...can't wait to see that one. hope it hold up to the awesomeness of the trailer

Quote from Fletch

KONG IS BADWhy people aren't picking up on that faster is beyond me. It's split into two sections: the first person shooter, and the Kong part. The FPS is decent at best. Nothing is too hard, and most enemies can be beaten by relying on buggy design issues with the enemies interracting with the environment. It's about as much fun as Turok 2. Not bad. But not good. It's jsut meh.

The Kong section is a fucking joke. It's a point and click adventure. You move kong to a certain location, hit the action button, and he does a really shiny animation to get to the next section. Does it look amazing? Yes. It looks really bad ass to be swinging and jumping around, but it's just holding down forward until you can't move anymore, and then clicking a button. a 5 year old could beat it. The only challenge is the dinos, which can each be beaten by a specific combination of moves. Figure out the combination and you always beat taht thing.

I give the game a 9 on graphics, and a 3 on gameplay. It's mundane and apparently only consists of about 4 or 5 hours of play to beat. Seems like 360 games are too expensive to plop down that money on 5 hours of play.

I haven't played Kong yet....now I'm thinking, why bother?

Quote from DaanO

If that's a reason to ban a commercial it's hypocrite, silly and pathetic.

I don't agree with a ban, if it was banned, but still, you gotta expect some people to get their underwear in a bunch. personally, i think it was edgey and appropriate and harmless compared to violent movie commercials and such.

nice photos.

comment:

listening to some Dead Can Dance on my iPod at work while i do my daily rummaging through mapcore and these pictures hit the spot.

command:

take more photos!

Quote from DelaZ

http://www.google.com/talk/

huggles!

Quote from Fletch

I'm waiting for the Google OS. Or for Apple to port OS XI.

Why is that everything I use from Google or Apple I love?

Sure, I run XP/Win2000 on my desktop/laptop, but i LOOOVEEE my iPod and my gf has this kick ass iMac running OSX (or XI or whatever) and it pwns me.

Like with Google, every product I use I love: gmail, maps.google.com...

when is Google's instant messenger service come out? or has it already?

Google Uber Alles!

Well I just did Vegas over Thanksgiving (fri-sun)....so not sure what my plans are yet.

My girlfriend and I are planning on going to Tahoe, and maybe Vegas again (she didn't get to go last week) but it's all kind of up in the air. Maybe spending the holidays around so-cal since both our families live here and we have all these christmas and chanakah parties.

Since I don't have a 360 at home yet, I'd like to get one simply so I can continue my "market research" while spending some time sitting on my butt, and especially since we got this new 42" Panasonic flatscreen HD LCD television

ok...here's the deal...(about the waterballoon fight ad)

the waterballoon fight ad was ad geared towards mainstream gamers, causual gamers and non gamers. The point: "it's fun to play". If you join in the fun and get into a big waterballoon fight, you'll have a great time even if you wouldn't expect to. So how about jumping into the X360 community and have fun...

something like that. It's pure brand/emotional appeal...not an ad for the hardcore gamer (though it's obvious it could have a strong impact on a hardcore gamer, too).

I agree the waterballoon ad is pretty good.

as for the "Bang" ad... I can see why that was banned. Sure, it really was harmless, but it does have people pretending to shoot and kill each other, even if all in fun and play. They brand positioning for X360 is the same as the waterballoon ad, but it is a little less effective just because it has a bit of an edge given the mock "killing".

"Boom heahshot!"

Quote from Steppenwolf

Break it down now.. Real Time Strategy, now eliminate the first two words.

You have lot to learn young grasshopper.

Dont call me young or grasshopper. I play Civilization since version 1 on Amiga. Real time strategy and round based strategy have ever been two different subgenres with a different fanbase.

The person who seems to have gaps in the knowledge is you.

"Let's fight!"

"Them's fightin' words!"

Well...given Midway was to be the publisher of Rise and Fall, that might have a lot to do with it. Midway reported net income way below expectations the last quarter, and in general the public word out there was that they were having deeper financial issues, even though they have strong backing from Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone.

It is quite possible that Midway pulled the publishing deal on the project...and maybe that led to the studio collapse... maybe also some key people left the studio? That's how these things often happen. Until we hear from someone on the inside, we won't really know.

Too bad.

Obviously there is a technology adoption curve that this would have to follow, but consider this...

If all PC games could be shipped on DVD instead of CD-Roms, think how much cost would be saved in packaging, shipping and disc media? On a per unit basis, maybe that adds up to a dollar, maybe a few dollars? Plus, imagine being able to put 9 gigs of data on one disk? You could have all your localized content on one disk and maybe have one version for all territories (or many major territories) thereby reducing the manufacturing and operations costs components of video game distribution (for PC games at least) and that could end up saving precious profits that hopefully will go back into making better games and maybe even trickle down to the studios. (we can dream, can't we?)

Now imagine a terabyte or whatever one one disk, basically unlimited capacity for a game developer to put on whatever they want. Imagine not having to uncompress data when reading from the disk? Faster loadtimes? Better streaming on console? More detailed large environments instead of stark/bland large environments of current games?

Better still....imagine a couple years from now when we all have such HVD drives on our PCs...you can go out and buy a custom bundle of games (like old school games or maybe a bunch of new games) all on one disk...

Or imagine having a disk the size of a PSP disk or a Gamecube disk or smaller that can hould 30 gigs (or 100 gigs?) That could enable better/more content on "small" platforms like PSP devices or super small DVD playback devices for riding on an airplane or whatever. (of course, a video iPod is a pretty good solution to that problem too)

Okay, I digress...

That is very cool. Not exactly a surprise that this kind of technological breakthrough is in the wings.

But adoption of course will require a market breakthrough like with any other new technology around cost of hardware, cost of media (the disks themselves) etc...

I could go on and on right now, but I have to grab some lunch first...

my advice on gambling:

1) have a limit of how much you are willing to lose. if you hit that, get up and walk away. Don't tell yourself "i just need to gamble a little more and i'll win it all back." That is how you do serious damage.

2) Don't gamble with money you cannot afford to lose.

3) If you are up, and then you start feeling like it is all going to shit, get up and walk away.

4) In poker (mainly Texas Hold'em) you will often get dealt to 2 shitty hole cards. You will fold, and then on the flop you will see 3 cards that would have made you a great hand. Don't worry about those situations. Example:

Saturday night at Bally's i was sitting one seat left of the Big Blind so I wasn't in the pot already. I got dealt a Queen-Duece of clubs. I folded it. Flop comes K-J-9 all of clubs. Turn comes 10 of clubs. So that would have left me with a King High straight flush of clubs, a completely unbeatable hand. And what happened? two other players were betting it up like crazy, reraising each other to the max each round of betting. By the end there was well over $100 in the pot (in a 2-4 limit table, mind you). I'm sitting there thinking "good job...you folded the nuts." At end one guy had the 8 of clubs and antoher guy had the Ace. Think how sweet it would have been to have kept calling all their raises and at the end having him show the Ace, the other guy the 8, and then watching the guy with the Ace thinking he was about to rake a huge pit and THEN i show the Queen? But no, I folded it. Shit happens. But I went on and kept playing and didn't let it get to me.

Later that round I had an 8-3 offsuit...and I ended up bluffing out a guy on the river who made 2 pair. It was a big pot and I even showed my bluff and it was a fun moment at the table.

5) Never play with your emotions. Only play with your wits and your intuition. Your emotions will impair your ability to make the best decisions, especially in Poker.

cute. Pitbulls mix well with a lot of other breeds.

made it back...

So I went with my cousin, his girlfriend and my cousin's friend from college. Shitty part was my girlfriend (of a month) already had family plans in Tahoe so no vegas debauchery for me...other than the casinos.

Stayed at the Flamingo...which is cheap but much crappier than I expected. The bathroom was tiny and they didn't give us enough towels.

But I digress. Basically all I did was play poker. No, didn't really win or lose much. My purpose was to deepen my poker skills at low limit before moving up to a bigger level of limit poker. So I played only the $2-$4 and $3-$6 tables at The Aladdin, Flamingo and Ballys.

Aladdin is cool because if you hit 4-of-a-kind or a Straight-Flush you get a jackpot bonus. The bonus starts at $50, and if no one gets a particular hand that day the bonus ticks up each day until it peaks at $599. Given how much people play, the 4ofakind hands get hit a lot...the straightflushes not as much. Friday afternoon at Aladdin the guy in the seat next to me hits a Royal Straight Flush. FUCKING CRAZY! He won a nice $599 bonus. I played ok that session...not great, but okay.

After more drinking we went to Margaritaville in The Flamingo for dinner. Think about it: it is an entire restaurant geared around a Jimmy Buffet song. It was cheap for Vegas, but the food was shitty. After my cousin and his gf decided to head back to the room for "a nap" I decided to play more cards...so went to Flamingo's poker room. Didn't really win or lose much there and it was really boring...so later just ended up in crashing.

Next day I played all my poker at Bally's which was much more interesting. First session during the day was another blah session. Was up and down...lots of people (except me) seemed to be hitting 4 of a kind hands. Bally's doesn't pay big hand jackpots, so wasn't that thrilling but still it was very educational. Left that session and got ghetto Thai food at Ocha's right across from Stratosphere. From there we walked to Sahara's to play Blackjack at the $3 dollar tables. Although the wind was blowing really hard outside and we were freezing walking that 1/3 mile, it was worth it. In about $30 minutes I doubled the money I sat down with at the table before we decided to bail.

Finally I ended up back at Bally's for my final poker session. And let me tell you this time I started playing at a new level. I started pulling off bluffs and reading people much much better than before. Sure, I still made a few mistakes so I didn't win much money, but that's all part of the process of learning to play poker. You have to go through a lot of down or mediocre sessions before you really start getting good at it. Anyway, overall I feel like I made good progress through the "paying your poker dues" stage.

Otherwise I ended up not drinking nearly as much as I had expected to, which is honestly a good thing because I still had fun.

Anyway, nothing else too exciting to report...now it's just back to work on Monday after a long holiday weekend....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.........