As someone who has never really played Starcraft, would it be worth grabbing the Starcraft Battlechest just to experience the singleplayer story? I have no interest whatsoever of playing online.

I might enjoy it more really depending on whether they change the direction a bit. I can only take so much of Jon due to his super partisanship these days... Colbert works much better for me.

You do realize he's only pretending to be a Republican, right? I don't find Jon that partisan. He often tears Democrats a new one.

Patapon is still showing up as $9.99 for me. Has the sale not started?

So, so much value for PS Plus!

This is from the Penny Arcade report article. I thought it was quite funny

To be fair, the Eurogamer review does state that the game itself is superb. They haven't hidden that at all. You just need to look at more than the final review score.
BTW, the answer to their question at the end of the review is 305. As in you need to race 305 times in order to purchase that first upgrade for your car engine. Of course, that is assuming that you win 305 times in a row. How long is a race, 3 minutes maybe? So you would have to play for 15 hours just to afford an engine upgrade. That's unacceptable.

So EA is talking about including microtransactions into all of their games now. I'm not a fan of course but when it comes to extra content DLC I don't mind it too much. However it looks like we're going to get nickel and dimed in the next generation. Here's Eurogamer's review of Real Racing 3 from EA (score 3/10)

Eurogamer Real Racing 3 review

Come the end of the race you're handed with a repair bill that must be seen to if you want your car back at optimal performance. So you drive as clean a race as possible, right? Fat chance - Real Racing 3 boasts grids full of mindless Maldonados who think nothing of running you into walls or parking inexplicably on apexes. In any other game a 20-car field would be something to celebrate - here it feels like another way to skim your wallet, each driver acting like they're on a commission for those costly repairs.

You're not even safe if you've driven a clean race, as each and every car is susceptible to everyday wear and tear that must be seen to in a service station. And it's here that the game's time-limitation mechanic is most rigorously enforced. If you need an oil change, or are after a new set of boots for your car, expect to be kept waiting for 30 minutes - unless, of course, you want to part with some in-game gold or a little of your own cash.

And you're not even safe if you've paid for your car and ploughed money into the game. Car packs are available for £13.99, allowing you access to a handful of cars and a selection of associated races, but they're still subject to the grim mechanics found elsewhere. I've spent a handful of hours grinding in Real Racing 3 and poured £20 of cash into its bleak economy, and all I'm left with is four cars in a repair shop and just enough spare change for a Ford Focus and a couple of minor upgrades.

There's a good game somewhere within Real Racing 3 - and there are plenty of free-to-play games that prove this model can work successfully while respecting the player. Firemonkeys, and perhaps more pertinently EA, have got that balance horribly, horribly wrong, to an extent where the business model becomes the game - with gut-wrenching results.

Let's finish with a little maths. You notice the car you've just bought in a £13.99 pack is suspiciously slow in races, so you want to acquire the first of three engine upgrades that costs 44,000 credits. If you get 3500 credits for winning a race after getting tail-ended just once by another car, get handed a 2855 credit repair bill for the damage and then have to pay another 500 credits to get the oil changed - a job that takes 20 minutes to do, unless you want to hand over a little more cash - what's the final number?

IGN gave it a 9/10. Now I remember why I don't visit that site anymore.

I will have no issues replacing a console in my home.  There are several issues with adding yet another one:  The wife, the cables, available HDMI slots, the power outlets, the power consumption, the controllers, and the wife.  Yes, she gets listed twice.

I get the wife-that can be a major problem. But everything else, with the exception of maybe available HDMI slots? Come on. If extra cables are stopping you from playing your previous gen games then you obviously don't want to play them very badly. Just don't buy a PS4 for the first year and continue playing your PS3 games until you're done and then move on. The PS4 will have a decent library by then.

Eughh. All of the people with the exception of the victims look like they were scraped from the bottom of the humanity barrel too.

No idea why we're even talking about BC. Sony tried to give us a hardware solution last time around and it almost killed them. If everyone was so keen on BC then they should have gone out and bought the $600 console. It's not coming in hardware form so let's just get over it. Buy the console or don't buy the console - there's no sense in whinging about it.

No support for CDs?


Finding it hard to justify paying $60+ on any PS3 game these days knowing it won't be compatible come next generation. As soon as MS announce the Nextbox being BC, I think I'll start investing more money in my 360 that's been collecting dust for months.

CD's? Come on. Sony has given lots of reasons to criticize. Pick something decent. And the new MS console is going to be backwards compatible? Since when? I haven't heard about that yet.  You're talking like it's practically official. Got some insider information?

I think graphics-wise the current generation consoles look pretty darned good. On the other hand it would be nice for a horse power boost so that they move as well as they look. I don't think next gen will look more photo realistic that what we have right now but I think it will play smoother, load faster and allow more open world stuff.

Plus is more than worth it. If I was a very casual gamer, I would only have Plus and never purchase physical games. Eventually the good games come to Plus for free or near free anyways.

This is me right there. At a couple of free games a month, I don't even by PS3 games anymore. I actually have a backlog of free games to play!

Well technically for the 360 it will be around 8 years, possibly even 9 before the new console comes out. I think that's a perfectly fair value for a $400 purchase. My PC costs a hell of a lot more for that and lasts much shorter.

Doesn't the Android tablet that he bought and dislikes also have Jelly Bean?

EDIT: Not sure why "Android tablet" takes you to Amazon...I didn't do that.

Lee's troubles seem to stem completely from the apps themselves. Apps have nothing to do with Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean is the OS. Compared to the the older OS's Jelly Bean is butter smooth and wonderful. However he is using a tablet and Android is decidedly behind when it comes to tablet apps.  On phones the gulf is not nearly so great. That's why I think if he tried a new phone rather than a new tablet he would be a lot more impressed with the Android OS.
I'm loving Google Now. Whenever I go to take a train I no longer have to check the train schedule. Google Now knows when I'm getting close to the train station and automatically gives me a card with the information about what trains I need to take in order to get to work.  Before I would have had to bring up my train schedule app and input all the information by myself.

The first turnoff is the gigantor size of the Android phones I borrow.  I honestly don't know how people can bear to have devices that big jammed into their pockets.  That's admittedly the fault of the device design, not Android itself, (and I know there are smaller Android phones out there) but it does contribute to my negative impression of Android.

Odd that all these device makers keep producing large phones when clearly no one wants them. I wonder who is buying them?
The iphone5 was bigger than previous iterations and I feel pretty confident that the  next iphone will be wider. Wave of the future my friend. Small phones were great when all we did was talk and text but a phone is essentially a TV/computer now.
Lee, 4 years ago was practically the birth of Android so it's understandable that you have a bad impression. It's improved a lot since then. However you went from an old experience to a new tablet and that was probably the wrong way to go about it as the android tablets still have not caught up to iOS. However if you had checked out a new Android Jelly Bean phone I think you would be much more impressed.

Woo I love this time period just before the new consoles start coming out! It's a shame that we only get to see this once every 7 years or so now.

I live in Japan. Please, please, please don't release a region locked console.

Maybe I am so old now that I am no longer in Sony's target demographic, but after yesterday's press reveal, I have no motivation to get a PS4. Hell, what little info they did reveal made it LESS appealing to me:

1. Tepid, at best, statement about backward compatibility (not a deal breaker but would have been nice)
2. Current PSN purchases and saved games will not be able to carry over to the PS4
3. No pricing info, no SKU info, not even a mock up model for display
4. This is the big one for me. This whole social network integration is a MASSIVE turnoff for me. The last thing I want is to broadcast my gaming habits all over the online world, spamming Facebook and Twitter with posts every time I do something.

Oh well...*sigh*

1.Yes, we all knew that was coming. It didn't need to be confirmed.
2. This is the same as point number one. No backwards compatibility is no backwards compatibility. It doesn't matter whether it's on a bluray or digital.
3. Does it really matter what it looks like? It's going to be a box. It's going to be black.
4... Don't put in your Facebook details?

Still no offset sticks? Are you SERIOUS!?

3 consoles later and Sony's sticks don't bother me a bit. Unfortunate that not everyone thinks so.

I think Ceekay is just being contrary. He's a spender, he'll buy all of them anyways.

Someone mentioned (and it makes sense now) that the two inputs might be for a proprietary headphone input. I remember Sony had something similar for their headphones that had the remote control. Regular jack for the sounds and the other thing to allow different kinds of control inputs.
Like this:

I don't even know my wife's number either. Sometimes I get confused when telling someone my number (writing it down is easy).

Anybody know what's on the bottom of the controller? It looks like a earphone jack and...something else? I don't know if the 360 already does this but earphone jack would be super cool. I wouldn't need to use the super long cord earphones that I have to plug into the TV.

consider me pissed right off with the Trigger angles being exactly the same as the DS3

You'd better go take a look at your PS3 controller again because those triggers look nothing like the old controller's. They may not be as good as the 360 (if you're into that sort of thing on your controller) but they look pretty good. Overall I gotta say that pic that you posted looks HOT. Those handles look comfortable as hell. I'm loving the texturing on the back of the handles. It hopefully won't feel as slippery as the PS3 controller.

So we have Sony to thank for saving the next generation of videogames?

Plays used games.
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/sony-ps4-can-play-used-games/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fjoystiq+%28Joystiq%29&utm_content=Google+International

I hope MS bans used games just so I can see what the outcome would be. People refusing to buy an xbox? Developers refusing to code for Playstation?

Hmm I want to buy but the first Season is still $50 and I don't want to pay that. It would be silly to just buy the second season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=itMdLTd1l4E#
I saw this on You Tube and man, now I know why dash-cams are required over there. Russians are quite literally the worst drivers ever. It's like watching the first person view of a Grand Theft Auto game!

Never had that happen either. I guess I'll have to test it.

Are there so many brainless people out there? They ought to just take their spending money and go to a casino. At least they'd have a chance to do something worthwhile with it.

I got it and got all the mods installed to make it look nice and purty. Sounds like I did it just in time too because all of the SS2 fansites are crashing under all the hits.  People have been waiting for this game forever.

I think they still look pretty decent although there is a graphics mod out there that makes the models more hi res

I actually just bought all of the Legacy of Kain games off of GOG yesterday (except for the crap one) because they were on sale for 2.99 each.

I mean, if you look at gaming today, the consoles of this generation pretty much defined the graphics of this era, including PC graphics. So many games were optimized for a certain type and power of graphics that, in a way, we also had a PC gaming renaissance because the graphics tech was so stable. And now, it's looking that it'll be even more stable.

This, so much this. I love the fact that my 3 year old laptop (probably older if you start from the time it was released not when I bought it) still plays all the latest releases just fine. If this continues for the next generation I will be very happy. I figure I'll probably buy a new laptop 2 years after the new consoles are released and be good for another 5 years at least.

A question for those who have held off buying an iPad Mini of course. I'm sure those who have already dived in will no doubt do so again. I have a sinking feeling that I will and while I wouldn't call myself an Android fanboy I am an Apple hater. I used to have a 3GS but I chafed under the iOS ecosystem's strict control. I switched to a Galaxy Note and haven't looked back and I don't think I ever will.
The iPhone in my mind has almost nothing that Android can't to just as well in my opinion. It does lack in the games department but I don't really play games on my phone so that doesn't concern me. However when it comes to tablets I do feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick when it comes to ecosystems (especially games!). I'm also really liking the iPad Mini's aspect ratio. I don't mind 16:10 when it comes to the big tablets but on the Nexus 7 that I tried it really felt overly narrow and like I was holding a really big phone. And of course there's the games (mainly boardgames that never get ported over) that I'd really love to play on a tablet. Also living in Japan I find that I'm forced to use the Japanese Android market which means sometimes I can't get apps onto my device (like no Flickr app). With iOS it's tied to your credit card which means even if I buy the tablet in Japan my Canadian iOS account allows me to get the same apps that everyone else is getting. We'll see what the future holds. If the Mini Retina comes out for the same price as it is now (or lower hopefully!) then I can see myself picking it up. If it comes with a price boost (and still only 16GB) then I can see myself sitting out yet another generation. I really hope that Android and Nexus do well enough to keep the pressure on Apple to try to stay competitive. It really looks like the iPad is going to be the best option for myself in the future and I hate myself for even thinking that!

Fortunately this story has a happy ending- the book is back up on Amazon and GW is officially a "Trademark Bully".
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/trademark-bully-thwarted-spots-space-marine-back-online

I've heard comments that the book is actually pretty good too! It reads a bit like a script from a movie than an actual novel.

I only watched the first 10 minutes but it looks pretty damned good. I thought the Double Fine project was more of a sure thing than this game but right now it looks like the other way around. Good for them.

Nice Leo. You seem to be quite a wildlife photographer

I suggested in another thread that we should start one of these up and thought what the heck, why not do it myself? It's always interesting to see what photos people are taking. So if you got a cool pic, and be it DSLR, phone or point and shoot then post it here. Want to talk about great lenses then post it here! I'm going to commit the unforgivable sin of starting a pic thread and then not actually posting any pics bit it's 11:40 and I'm in bed darnit! So someone get the ball rolling.