Saris

You call him Tim Jr., you can call him T. J. That's what I voted for.

Case closed.

There's an actual option (can't remember what it is; smooth frame rate, or something?) that actually says it can cause input lag if you hover your mouse over it (I think; it says it somewhere when you select it). I know I sound unsure, but there's definitely an option that does that, so look for it. Otherwise, I don't know.

Well, I'm not a parent, but I went through all the bad stages of gaming. Like others here, I've played violent video games all my life, and during my entire childhood it was pretty much my only hobby. I went to school, I came home, I'd play until I went to sleep and repeat. Now, I don't even have a game to play and still haven't for over half a year because it's rare that a game can catch my attention anymore. So, in my opinion, I'm a pretty healthy gamer because I still follow gaming news and play the odd game and participate in this community, and there's a few points I'd agree with here. The important thing you can do is have your son pick up a time-consuming hobby: drawing, writing, music, a sport, etc. I can attribute the very reason I left gaming because I spend all my time doing those things (I learned them all). Don't let him play trash games like GTA, or Kane&Lynch there's nothing good about them. I believe video games can influence the way a child thinks depending on how the parent raises them. I'm no psychologist (well, I am in psych in university) but I'd bet that basic discipline for anything carries over with the child for playing games. They know right from wrong from what you teach them, and to put the games behind them when more important matters like chores, school and family are at hand. That also means limiting their play time, which sucks, because I certainly know what it's like to be grounded when you want to play. So again, the important thing is to make them not want to play for long hours. So in my belief, your simple concern about your son's gaming tells me that you're already caring enough to prevent your child from taking games too far. But simply limiting his time won't prevent him from becoming addicted. And that can be just as serious, and from my own experience, would think that it'd be harder to break too. But there's a thousand things out there to do with your time and I'm sure if you're that worried about it, you'll find something he'd like.

It bugs me when my family insists on using at least 3 locks on every door. If somebody wants in bad enough to get through a lock, there are more than enough windows and a glass patio door.

Our snow is already melting up here, it sucks. :/

<--- Quit customer service after being hit by a bag of Chex Mix which I then ate. I once had someone hand me a very small, paper bible-thing, pamphlet or whatever for a church and start preaching to me in a McDonald's drive-thru during the lunch rush when we were lined around the store with cars. She started taking so long, I did something with the paper bible (that I'd better not mention here) that caused her to throw her food at me and speed away after screeching that I was the devil. You have to take command of the situation, regardless of the individual. It makes things faster and makes your employers think you're a harder worker than others. I guarantee - when I worked in a Taco Bell drive-thru NO ONE knows how to order, and yet I was amazing at it because I pushed people to order faster and order accurately. It's sad to say, but usually in every business, you know what you're doing and the customer doesn't. Especially tech support. It really does work. I like being among the ranks of angry, bitter chefs now, though. They yell at the waiters, then the waiters try and yell at us, but we just stare them down cause they're always smaller than us.

Good ol' Doom and Norguard

At least some one in that picture is getting work done . . .

Arrrrrggghhhh, close this thread before Clueless finds it! (I actually didn't know he was still alive) I never encountered that PS2 failure rate. We bought a new one after it stopped reading discs after five years. My dad's lasted about the same, but his died cause his house is filthy. The thing had layers of caked on dust that wouldn't come off. And the rootkit for DRM was pretty bad, but I argue once again that it wasn't the first and most definitely not the last to try and invade your privacy in order to protect their own pockets. But you still have a good point there - Anyone who's tried it once should burn. And yes, they've removed backwards compatibility from the 40gig model, but it should continue to be produced in the 80gig model. I think it sucks. I like BC. I've played more Ps2 games on my Ps3 than Ps3 games. As for the price of the 360 add-ons, I laughed at those when they first came out. I couldn't help but think "look at Microsoft trying to play catch-up now that's it paying the price for being a year early" (if you can all remember, it's why xbox1 fans originally laughed at ps2 owners). Not that it really matters now, but if I'd bought a launch console, I'd be pretty upset about 360 elite and the HD add-on and what not. Of course, with Ps3 now half the price of it's launch price already, I feel pretty cheated, considering all I've played so far is Genji (which sucked) and MotorStorm (which was okay). But all I could think off when stuff like GameFaqs surveys said the main reason people didn't have PS3 was because of the price, I thought 360 + Hd-DVD add-on = Ps3 price. In the end, with DMC4 out on Feb. 5th, it's time to sell all our Wiis and get 360s and PS3s.

I'd put open worlds higher up on my list. Playing Valkyrie Profile 2 drove me nuts trying to dodge stupid monsters (I hated fighting in that game) while looking at the jaw-dropping backgrounds. I like CG worlds for some reason. If they look cool/pretty, I like to stop and admire them for awhile, and it sucks when I can't get a good view of something that a developer clearly spent a long time on. Devil May Cry is another good perpetrator of this. A well placed double jump, and suddenly you're looking at a huge panoramic view of an immense gothic looking tower looming over a whole cityscape, it's awesome. I wasn't on dial-up for long. My dad got cable really early in its stages. My first major online game was Quake 2 because I didn't play alot of pc back then anyway. I played for so long with the keyboard. Then I was like, "hey, I can aim with the mouse!" then I quit quake 2 after realizing what a fool I was and how horribly I'd embarrassed myself.

That last bit is one thing I dislike, but that's true for everything. Why pay .50c extra for Heinz ketchup when you get President's Choice? I'm a firm believer that every company knows how high they can jack their prices that people are willing to pay for, and every company will. It's the whole point. As for everything else, Microsoft does the same thing, though in my opinion, I feel it's worse. Microsoft does have good customer support, which is good since a lot of their products require some kind of technician to operate them. I've taken on partition damaging viruses, registry errors and to some extent, three programming languages yet it took me almost two hours just to set up my brother's wireless mouse and keyboard made by MS for MS Windows. I knew when both formats came out that they were the same, so the ONLY reason I cared about BR winning was because I already had my ps3. Though when the XBox was first launched, it was the first console I thought "Why is this even here? It's just another Playstation?" I felt the PS1 was alot different from Nintendo, and anything before that, I was too young to even care about anything outside of Nintendo consoles. We always bought Nintendo cause it was our 'party/group' console, and playstation was our single player console. When Xbox1 came out, no one in my family even paid attention to it: We had what we needed already. Again, it's just typical consumerism. So, in the end, those are just points. This whole post basically asks: "Isn't that what every company does/tries to do?"

Sony's done and said a lot of dumb stuff lately, but the only thing I don't get when people go beyond the PS3 and say they hate Sony. The only thing I didn't like about them is that they headed the DRM front. At least their products work, unlike EA, and at least they aren't scammers like Microsoft (Vista, IE, trusted computing). It's the honest truth when I say that every single person I know personally, that bought an XBox 360, got the red ring of death. At least 4/5 of them could get it replaced, but that's still pretty pathetic. My PS3 has worked flawlessly. The only thing that bugs me is every now and then, the controller loses the connection and refuses to reconnect unless I plug in the USB (its not the battery) or restart the console. It's not that much of a pain, but it sucks if I'm sitting in my recliner, with both dogs on my lap, a coke by my side and covered in a blanket - the way I usually play. Everyone in my family says the wii is better (no one here likes XBox, we've borrowed one from a friend for like 6 months, but we've never bought one or any of their games) but so far, I find it's library of games to be very boring. Mario Kart and Smash Bros. will definitely change that, but FFXIII and MGS4 and DMC4 (Feb. 5th!!!) will also change the PS3. So, for my 2 cents overall, the ps3 was a bumpy start, no different from the 360. A year later, it's just as solid a console as the 360 a year after its release. Only the Wii is stomping on the competition (due to it's undeserved hype). Seriously, replacing those batteries are ridiculously annoying - especially if you're trying to maintain four of them, connecting them is annoying, the sensors are off unless you're right in front of them and more times than not, my friends have screamed OWNED at my face in Mario Party because it didn't do what I told it to. And for those who own Mario Party - I could own you so bad at Shake it Up.

That's still under debate. SPAM!!!1

In our current stage of endless FPS bombardment, I wonder if Nukem can survive on the original concept, or if he can survive changing the formula a bit if he can't. As much as it's great and all to say "DUKE NUKEM IS DA Fo' SHIZZLE AND AINT NOT NOTHIN ELSE TO IT!!!11111" I doubt I'll play this game if it doesn't get some kind of decent storyline, while maintaining the senseless over-the-top mayhem and one-liners. It wasn't ten years of Duke disappearing, it's been ten years of this game TRYING to come out, and so I don't really have faith in the developers to make the game that people are expecting. It'll no doubt be fun, but in my case, I'll be surprised if it wows me enough to pay full price for it. All in all, as great as Duke is, I'm expecting this to be another decent game that's lost by the 50 million other games just like it that are out right now.

I'm having trouble playing super mario galaxy as is. It's so . . . flowery. And normally I'm not bothered by games that aren't all buff men, excessive violence and crudeness like everything seems to be imitating these days, but I literally have a limit with this game where I have to put it down after awhile because I'm tired of listening to Mario's almost erotic exclamations of joy (especially after beating a stage). Zelda was pretty good, but also didn't have that enthrallment factor that keeps me sitting in front of the screen for hours. I actually don't understand the hype about the Wii or the DS. I only want to play Elite Beat Angels, every other game I've seen released for it doesn't look good to me. The Wii's controller is a hassle to me 'cause I like to sit like a slug when I play games. I also have the shakes really bad, so motion sensing really sucks for me. It takes me forever to aim with the wiimote. The Wii is definitely good and deserves to be in the lead right now, but the fact that it always manages to get on the news and is heavily hyped is undeserving. It's really not THAT great. You can get into a Halo 3 match or MotorStorm race just as much if you let it. Actually, playing MotorStorm online in first person or close-up camera with motion sensing controls is a rush (You'll definitely lose though.)

You know, there's another console for that price that's a million times better

I typed in Call of Duty 4 maps and I got... with 88% relevancy ... The Invasion of Canada in 1775 Ah yes... the good old days. When Canada almost seemed like a good thing to own... Shaftiel QFT Too bad you wouldn't have been able to anyway, considering . . . well, we won't get into that. I found when actually LEARNING things on Wikipedia, then taking that knowledge out has always proven correct. Though, I have noticed things disappear from stories I know well about, usually, like you say, by stupid people employed by companies trying to protect their image over controversial issues. I use Wikipedia primarily for three things, though, which it never fails me: 1. Spoiling stories of games I don't want to play, 2. Scientific research 3. Dictionary After reading a news item, for example though, on Wikipedia, I usually always go out and do my own research before even coming up with an opinion. I find its fairly accurate on everything else.

It's sad because the stereotype is true. The only 2 guys on my floor who play WoW are FAT... I'm talking like XXXL fat. Same here. When the majority of my group of friends were playing, some of us were thin, but those REALLY hooked and still playing it today are all fat. Although, I'm fat, and I couldn't get one character past lvl 30 without getting bored and quitting the entire game. I guess I was too lazy, even for WoW.

It gives you time to sample the better systems and rethink your gaming choices!

[GoCI] Saris Didn't need any other.

3 to 5 hours? What? Maybe on easy... Best COD single player yet IMO Never have I cheered, yelled or ducked (physically) while playing a COD game... Too bad you're missing half the experience by playing it on the 360. I jest! don't ban me!

The only snowfall I've seen so far has melted as soon as it hit the ground. I can't wait until we actually get some blizzards going on, though. It's a 45 minute walk to work.

Been busy, and its still very hard and frustrating to get a group going at my level, which is the only decent way to level and get good drops anymore. They're increasing the available charactersw for non-subscribers to 24. That's awesome. I'm going to make every class.

Being a writer myself probably gives me a bias towards the issue, but the script of movies and tv shows is the most important part of the process. Even if directors didn't butcher scripts sometimes, if the script was horrible in the first place, the show would still suck. Seriously, the way people should judge movies that are worth seeing is by first noting the writer(s) behind it and then who directed it. Actors mean jack all and yet they get the millions for a few days of work and their name all over the project. Though I don't really haver a stand on the issue because I'm sure the situation is pretty crappy but I can't care for someone else's fight for more cash. If they were fighting for more recognition, I still wouldn't care, because I don't think it would change.