satan665

[QUOTE=Generic NPC #3]How about not watching it at all and reading decent papers and getting news on the internet or the radio? There's alternatives for everyone and some of them even happen to be on TV. I don't think the complainers are in the majority whatsoever and even if they are, complaining and doing absolutely nothing to rectify it just is another amazing example of how freaking lazy our country is to begin with. It doesn't take any more time to pop onto a couple of newsfeed websites and read some articles than it does to sit on the couch and watch the local news.[/QUOTE] Its not like if you don't like the news you can really change it. Going to another source isn't going to help CNN get any better, they will still suck as much as if you were watching it. Also, not everyone has the internet or even cable for that matter so some people are really stuck with broadcast news. Thankfully some of it is still pretty good. I don't think that its fair to say that most people are lazy and should be expected to necessarily change the news status-quo. Most people have to worry about money and family as their main priorities and don't have as much free time to explore this stuff as us slacker 20-somethings.

I pretty much agree with every comment on here, I just wanted to see if I could get a feel as to how many people liked them or hated them. I don't like them, but never wanted to make it seem like they should be banned (though I guess it reads otherwise).

Hopefully this is alright to do, but do the visitors of the anime subsection really want people to keep making hundreds of "favorites" threads? Personally I find them annoying, but I leave it to you. Please answer the poll. Should we continue to make Best anime character etc. based threads? Yes or no

[QUOTE=Generic NPC #3]Yeah, basically. Emo is short for "emocore" which in turn is short for "emotional hardcore". Emocore was a take-off of hardcore with more "emotional" lyrics. What that means exactly, I have no idea. I guess as soon as you sing about life and love problems you're a new genre? lol [/QUOTE] I think they broke out of the Hardcore mold of mostly singing songs about friends that stabbed you in the back (which is what every hardcore song seems to be about). With my old high school friends I think they got tired of listening to hardcore bands that all started to sound the same and started to listen to emocore, which to me seems like a label that exists solely to differentiate from alternative/indie rock. But yeah, The post right above mine is a pretty definitive answer about the genre/label.

[QUOTE=Fall]I think Metallica should be included in a "requirement" collection. ReLoad Really shows what Metallica are capable of. Metallica ("The Black Album") A showcase of Metallica, at their peak. On the same level as ReLoad, really shows what they're capable of. I don't think I'd be the same person if I had never heard of Metallica, and especially these albums. There are some songs on both these albums that I can really relate to. [b]My Friend Of Misery[/b], [b]The Unforgiven[/b], [b]Nothing Else Matters [/b]and [b]Enter Sandman[/b] on Metallica ("The Black Album"), and [b]The Memory Remains [/b](best song ever created in the histroy of everything) and [b]The Unforgiven II[/b] on ReLoad, are songs that play a serious role in who I am. These songs are played atleast twice a day, in my everyday life. [b]The Memory Remains[/b], atleast 4 times. I couldn't stand not hearing Metallica for a whole day, I'd go mentally insane. :smoke:[/QUOTE] I respect that these are your favorite Metallica albums, but I think most people would agree that Reload wouldn't be the album to look to when summing up Metallica. I'd say Master of Puppets was the pinnacle of Metallica's greatness. That or it went downhill from there.

[QUOTE=Generic NPC #3] I'm not sure what the reason is for this, but I know a lot of it revolves around how stupid, fat and lazy most people in America are. We'd rather hear about how Martha Stewart was called "M. Diddy" (stupidest nickname in existance) about 40 million times than what's actually going on with our own laws, politicians and general hometown related things.[/QUOTE] We may be overwhelmingly fat, but really even us Americans don't care much for that celebrity gossip crap and kidnapping news. People have been complaining for years that the news is sensationalistic, negative and too entertainment-based but nobody is changing their broadcasts anyway. Most people don't want to watch all this garbage, its just all you're stuck with. If someone actually put a smart and comprehensive global news show on the air and gave it any sort of decent publicity, people would watch it. Its just all thats on, what choice do you have? Watch depressing trash about the next attractive white family to be hurt or abducted; or celebrity marriage updates. I'd lean towards the celeb stuff myself even.

[QUOTE=James][color=#332e1d][font=franklin gothic medium]I guarantee you, next generation games will be more expensive regardless of medium. Whether or not the games arrive on DVDs or Blu-ray is largely irrelevant when it comes to cost. I also think that the source there is somewhat dubious. Xbox 360 games are already marked as $5 to $10USD more than current Xbox software. The general price will rise across the board. I'm interested to see if Revolution's games are more expenisve, though.[/font][/color][/QUOTE] Its funny, because games on the whole have been getting cheaper lately. A lot of games like ESPN sports and Katamari have been coming out at $20 which is like a godsend. I wonder if we're heading to an era where games cost more or less depending on the game's budget? Final Fantasy 13 might cost $65 while some low rent RPG might be $40. I'm not happy at all about paying more than $50 for games, I'd rather they just made milder technological jumps and kept things at reasonable prices. I'm still more than happy with the graphics and performance of the PS2 games coming out. I have a bad feeling about PS3, I'm excited about it, but it might just be its own downfall if all this price stuff gets out of hand like we're talking about.

Its definitely a weird comparison between the two machines. Its a little bit like comparing the NES to Playstation (PS1). The PSP is a technological leap ahead and by most standards a superior machine. Game Boy has a lot of appeal based on people havin gplayed it and its games for a long time. Hardcore Pokemon fans are probably in love with GBA, and some could wonder why you would spend so much on a PSP. The funny thing is though, PSP will probably be able to seemless play all GBA games pretty soon as the emulators keep getting better and better. My GBA is already collecting dust, but pretty soon it might be as relevant as my PSone. So I'd say if you can muster up the cash, PSP is far better and the only thing GBA has going for it is history and price. As per UMD's I actually think its cool to have. A lot of stores are selling them pretty high, which makes them pretty worthless, but Target and other places have had sales, and I didn't mind plunking down $15 so I could have some movies to watch on plane trips. The battery is good for 2+ movies without a recharge, and I've gotten very used to recharging things since I got my MP3 player.

I'm about as excited as I can be for how far away it is. There has been a bit more about the game released though. 1. Snake is the main character, but from the concept art it looks like Raiden and Meryl are going to be in the game as well. Hopefully as playable characters. Naomi might be in the game in some fashion too. 2. We are probably going to find out a lot more about Big Boss after MGS3, his remains or possibly his living withered body are in the concept art as well. In MGS1 the govt. refused to give up the remains to liquid snake, so that situation might come up again with Ocelot [spoiler]with Liquid taking over his brain through the hand or whatever crazy thing was going on there[/spoiler] 3. The game is themed nowhere to hide. Maybe that means exteme hiding places, or just a whole new system of gameplay? I just bought MGS: Twin Snakes and played through it, and picked up MGS2: Substance to play through and check out the extras. I also can't wait for MGS3: subsistence with online play and releases of the original two Metal Gear games.

The Yellowcard song was awful, they sapped the life out of a classic song and made it sound completely boring. I changed the channel when that and Mariah Carey were on. I actually stopped watching before the Foo Fighters came on, but they are a great live band. Grohl is usually chewing gum at mach speed while playing and singing. He's proven himself yet again as multitalented! For some reason Mean Girls won a ton of awards. I think that the 12-16 yr old girl vote was pretty well represented. Any and all Napolean Dynamite moments were what made ti worth watching though.

I agree (Siren) that they are normally good games that are tagged with the mario license, and you bring up a good point about popular franchises that don't always continue to sell well. There really are a lot of examples like Tomb Raider which apparently hasn't been very good since the first one and are flopping. For me, personally its just getting a little bit old to have Mario in every sports game and strewn across every genre. I'm waiting for the first mario FPS game Mario: Cap Dat Koopa. I guess the strategy is working so far, but it helps to make Gamecube etc. not as viable as the only console you own. I guess they could make as many games as they wanted with Mario in them if they just had a few more options from third party developers. I think we should pitch more Mario related games on this post too :) Luigi's surgical ward Goomba's keep flooding into the hospital and only Luigi can pick up the slack. Skull fractures from getting squished by Mario, Lava burns, bites from those pesky pipe plants....

Its not that its necessarily a bad thing, but Nintendo really does overuse the Mario characters. Its a great marketing tactic, but I'm not a big fan of it. I rented Mario tennis and it was fun, but not as good as virtua tennis. They have a good tennis game buried beneath cheesy characters. I bet if it weren't mario-based it wouldn't have sold as well. Anyway, they'll keep plugging mario in to sell games and I'll continue to not buy them. As far as the big systems go, i think Nintendo might just be the smartest. While Sony is now pushing the limits of technology, they are hurting themselves by having such expensive systems. The PSP is an amazing peice of gaming machine, but its got mad sticker shock. Of course DS is going to outsell it, its much cheaper. DS also happens to look better than anything before it, which isn't unimpressive. PSP will do better if it manages to put out a bunch of must have games. PS3 is going to be interesting. I'm looking forward to it more than any of the others, but I'm scared by the potential price. And if they release it too much cheaper than it costs, they'll never make any money. I can't imagine not owning it, but also can't imagine paying $400+

Hmmm, maybe there are girls trapped in R Kelly's closet because if they leave he will pee on them?

[QUOTE=Bloodseeker]But over the course of 5 years, that's not very many. And when you consider that most people don't enjoy every genre, you can take a few off of that list. But you're missing the point. My point is that is that once you play those, you start to feel like you're playing the same game over and over again with little tweaks here and there, and I don't know about you, but I stop buying when it gets like that. Its the reason why the only genre that I've bought more than 3 games in with this last generation are RPGs.[/QUOTE] Thats true in my case for sure. I haven't really even gotten half way through GTA san Andreas because I was just getting sick of the series. Or more on target, After playing through DevilMay Cry 3 I didn't really have much fun playing God of War when I got the demo.

There has been a fair amount of talk about how the new systems are going to make the games more expensive to create. I guess the more advanced the system gets, the greater the burden on developers financially. This could very well mean that we will see less and less smaller companies (smaller games). Hopefully its not going to happen that way, but its something to keep an eye out for. As for the big three, I think that Sony will stay its ground as the best selling console. A lot of really popular games release first on playstation and some are also exclusive. The games are going to drive the sales pretty much without worrying about which system is a little faster of cooler looking. In that way I'm not sure if Nintendo will gain ground or lose it. Nintendo has a lot of great lisences, but not nearly as many as playstation if all things remain the same. Resident Evil jumping over to Gamecube didn't really seem to help much either (I'm glad it did though, RE4 was worth it). I hope the revolution does well, but I'm not sure it will. I doubt that its new innovative control scheme will have a huge impact unless they can come up with some more solid game lisences. Maybe Xbox will be the next dreamcast? Naw, I think Xbox will still be around but this time it won't be able to hold better graphics/processors over Playstation head.

I've actually been to Harajuku and its a pretty cool place. Its basically an outdoor mall with tons of shops (mostly clothes) and teens decked out to try and impress people. A lot of extreme American punk/goth style stuff mixed in with expensive fancy rich people clothes. The younger, teen part is cool but the upscale part is just high fashion crap. I think that Gwen thinks she's so very cool and stylish, but is basically just exploiting that Japanese subculture. The six or so girls she has in all of her videos are under contract so that they can't speak english and are basically dolls. Its like some retarded form of slavery where you just throw money around and get people to do what you want. Stefani is an idiot (have you ever heard her talk in an interview?) who has the brain of a 14 year old. Its weird if people here start having "Harajuku style" which is just an extreme copy of American style in the first place.

Its probably a perfect rental game. I bet it looks really nice on the Xbox too. If you give it a shot, you can advance pretty quickly by racing in tournaments and against the racers with names. That way you can win some of the free cars and get to try out the motorcycles and other car types. After you beat specific people you can do the tuner, luxury, musclecar races and unlock the special abilities which are a lot of fun to fool around with.

The Zack story was always interesting and frustrating because everything was always hints. It took some time in the game to sort that out, good thing I play through the game 5 times or so. The thing that drove me nuts was the guy with the #2 on his arm in Midgar. You find him injured in a tube-like house in the city, and it really seems like you should be able to do something, but who knows what that might be? Unfinished game stuff is just evil.

I've been playing a lot of racing games on the PS2 lately and happened to rent MC3 after the guy at the store went off about how great it is. Its every bit as great as he said too. The midnight club series is are good racing games, set in the street racing world which means you race on city streets with traffic and police as well as the opponents. I personally own MC2 and liked it quite a bit, but the new game blows it away by quite a lot. The first biggest thing is that now its all real lisenced cars that you buy and drive, and that you can customize them quite a bit. It has a simpler version of the Gran Turismo style performance upgrades, but it really shines when you customize your wheels with new body kits, dubs, chrome, stickers, license plates, lights, neon in the undercarriage and a whole bunch of other stuff. You can change the color that the nitrous burns out of your tailpipe. Some of the other cars I raced against had hydraulics and were bumping up and down at the starting line. Basically the game has an exceptional sense of style. The driving itself is intense. It has a great sense of speed because you are passing other cars and pedestrians etc. rather than just racing alongside other cars. Its a balance of simulation and arcade style driving, so its pretty easy to pick up and play, and not be frustrated with repeating courses over and over again. There are a lot of different races, in the beginning there are circuits based on the type of car you have (import, luxury, truck, bike). They throw in some special moves too, so that you can Aggro with a truck, which basically means you can plow over other cars. You can also slow down time (focus) and a few other neat tricks later in the game. It pretty much seemlessly incorporates videogame elements to a serious racing game. The best thing is, I'm not really even a big racing game fan. I would recommend this to just about anyone. As a thread, we can just talk about he game and compare it to other racing games, particularly on the PS2.

I would be happy if they remade FF7, but not really too disappointed if they didn't. They already have or are making so many spinoffs, some better than others. They probably just had FF7 on the brain and decided it would be cool to revamp the opening scene to tease people. I'm pretty sure that years ago they were going to "remake" FF7 and possibly the other PSone titles but scrapped it when they lost a ton of money on The crappy spirits movie.

It really will be a bad idea if these new consoles cost more than $300. They keep adding more and more peripheral stuff that shouldn't be the focus unless a lot of games use them. Maybe if each system costs $400+ then they figure you will not be able to afford the Xbox or Nintendo after that :) Anyway, PS3 looks pretty cool and I hope that weird looking controllers mean comfortable controllers. Overall its not going to matter what it looks like though and its really going to be about games. I think if the PS3 can come out with one or two really big launch titles like GTA or Devil May Cry it will be the smartest strategy for selling a lot of systems. I'd bet that sales of Gamecube jumped when Zelda came out just for people who wanted to play it (thats what I did). The PS2 launch titles were pretty dull, and I think SSX and Onimusha were the biggest names (from what I can remember). If they can pull off some heavy hitters the thing will sell like mad.

Their latest CD (Hate crew death..) was a little disappointing. If you listen to that album and decide its a little boring I can understand it, because its not nearly as good as Follow the Reaper or the album before that (name escapes me). I'm hoping their yet to be released album goes back to the feel of their older stuff. I'm not really big into the metal scene (especially not the scandinavian metal scene) but Bodom really stands out to me. I wouldn't worry so much about the lyrics, lyrics for heavy metal bands almost always are cheesy. Thats what makes them fun, to not take them too seriously.

I watched about 5 minutes of the MTV special, but I can't sit through that kind of program where they just fill up space and tease you into watching the whole program and only show off the system in the end. Reading about 360 on gamespot took only 5 minutes and was a much better option. It sounds cool, I like the detachable hard drive idea. The numbers don't mean much to me though. I don't really like the way it looks standing up. I liked Sony's idea of trying to make something that would fit in next to a CD player/VCR or whatever in an entertainment system (even though PS2 is kinda ugly). Anyway, unless something drastically changes I'll go ahead with my plan of Buying a PS3 which should have the best games, and maybe later a Nintendo so I can play Zelda and the other cool Nintendo only games. I suspect that Nintendo's console might be the coolest of them all though, they've been getting more creative lately with stuff like the DS.

The Simpsons quickly went from my favorite show ever to complete garbage that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. A whole current season has about as many funny moments in it as the Astronaught episode of classic Simpsons. Writers change, so its not too unexpected, but it is sad. They go for cheap laughs by having characters act bizzare and just do random stuff. They even broke a golden rule of Simpsons and had continuity between episodes! Since they signed on for four more seasons, it won't be long before there will be more bad simpsons episodes than good ones.

I'm going to have to go with the obvious choice and say Final Fantasy XII. It seems to be the biggest diversion from the regular turn based Final Fantasy style they hav ever done, hopefully done well. I think I would have enjoyed FFXI a lot more if it had a bigger single player experience, so it might make sense that XII going for a simulated online world feeling could work well. The story and graphics are always top-notch, so as long as they don't **** up the gameplay too much it should be a good one. Square-Enix seemed to have combined forcesin order tohone their delaying skills though, so who knowswhen it will actually come out.