Agreed. Happy to see it praised so highly - if I remember correctly, reception at festivals was a bit mixed. Triplets of Bellville didn t just look gorgeous, it was funny as hell and pretty damn heartbreaking at times. Here s hoping this shows somewhere nearby.

Ron Gilbert has mentioned that Monkey Island was heavily inspired by the book On Stranger Tides as well as the Disney ride, so there is that.

Tim fucking Powers! indeed. Glad to see him getting so much love, it's thoroughly deserved. Lovecraft, if you haven't already, get Last Call - it's the one that Unknown Armies most explicitly, umm, references.

The changeling is excellent, and possibly the only movie that actually scared me as an adult/teen.

Like it or not, crap games almost always outsell games the critics drool over - there's a reason there is so much shovelware and crap tv-licensed games. And that's even before you go into casual games; don't know how true it is, but I recently read that based on active player numbers, about 1.5% of the world's…

If nothing else, Rennaissance Italy's got the Borgias, who probably were the most decadent, ruthless bunch of (non-fictional) motherfuckers ever to share blood ties.
Other than that, the games are pretty great, and getting better. It's pretty easy to recommend, especially if you jump in directly into AC2 (which should…

@ Quirk - sorry, that didn't come out right. I was speaking from a character development point of view. Ezio is a much better, and more likeable, character than Altair; But his character arc goes from impulsive, rogueish noble to impulsive, rogueish assassin with oh so many responsabilities. What little development…

I was belaboring the same points further up, but yeah. Thought the first one was flawed, but pretty great when it came out. The sequels make it look much worse than it actually is.
My wife is interested in these games from watching me play them, and I'm wondering whether to have her try the first game or to start with…

I really don't see how they can fixthe free-running without a complete overhaul of the pupeteer system. For me, the problem boils down to not having any control over the camera - I can't reach the thumbstick if I'm holding down multiple face buttons and the right trigger! Is it any better on the PS3 or the PC?
For…

Bad as metal gear? Come on, you're being silly. The metaplot and mythology for the AC games are fairly ridiculous and drawn-out, but they're also interesting; the moment-to-moment storytelling is pretty good, and the integration with real-world history is excellent.
Hell, they even have character development and…

Road War 2000 for the win!

Gaming fail
Where are my Zombie Tycoon games? My Zombie dating sims? (no, King's Bounty doesn't count.) My zombie pet tamagotchis? I want zombie Madden, dammit!
Wait, no, I don't. Nevermind.

I'd reserve judgement until it matures - there's definitely room for growth on the Kinect. I'm pretty much not the target audience for it, but at least it's trying to do something interesting, as opposed to the Wii-aping Move.
Some Japanese devs are making Kinect DLC games, that should be interesting. And Child of…

Getting tons of glitches and bugs. Even after installing the game, the action tends to really slow down at points, the dog and the breadcrumb trail go missing, and other assorted stuff. There are also tons of design decisions I find really annoying, and I was seriously unimpressed with the first couple of hours of the…

Best electrician ever.
IIRC, he pulls out a saber out of his toolbox, and has "electrician & adventurer" on his card.
I loved that movie; I'd be a little scared to watch it again now, only to find it's shit.

Ah, it's a fair cop.
I could probably make a case for Psychonauts being one of the best written games I've ever played, which is mostly what I remember it for, but yeah, it had plenty of issues in other areas holding it back.

It's not, not really. Just gets you into more of a survival mentality, which can only be a good thing for inmersion. Exploration becomes a bit more tense.
It's a bit too lenient, in the sense that you can spend days without food, water and sleep in the middle of the desert without any ill effects, but I'd rather it…

It does feel kind of similar, with the difference that this one's a complete joy to play (not a knock on the PA games). The gameplay's a bit too thin, but everything around it is pitch-perfect; best endorsement I can give it comes from my 3 year-old, who keeps bringing me a controller so he can watch me play it….

Grim Fandango. Psychonauts a very close second, however.

I think most of the bugs are on the PC version. I'll get that for the mods when the price goes way down. So far on the 360 I've had one freeze and got stuck in the geography once (but that was kind of my fault, I don't think I was supposed to get there) - which, for an Obsidian game built on the FO3 engine, is much…