Thanks, having gone back to Saints Row for a few weeks a while ago, that was what was confusing me. 

I'm not that clear on the process for saving a vehicle.  I know that if I park a car I like in the parking spot in front of a safehouse before saving and exiting the game, it's there when I restart the game later on.  However, is that car there from now on?  or do i have to park the car and save at the safehouse if i want to keep that vehicle?

Sixth Sense was as good as a pop culture phenom could be.  It had all the substance of The Blair Witch Project, you ask me.  Unbreakable, now THAT was a damn good film.  Of course, I'm speaking purely as a geek who grew up on comic books and who views Unbreakable as a great attempt at a realistic Superhero movie.

Signs, meh.

The Village, meh.

Bitch in the Pool, wtf???  Were you drinking Ripple all night when you wrote that script, M?

I'll probably see The Happening on either PPV or netflix it, but I certainly won't make the effort to catch it a theater.

[Spoiler]

Faced my first absolute killer mission, "Snow Storm" I think it's called, anyway, takes placed in an abandoned hospital.  Ran through several times before I had to break down and look in my strategy guide since I didn't have a clue on how to beat it. Did beat it after that.

that mission was singled out in one review as being the toughest and most irritating.

Completed Snow Storm on the first try without breaking a sweat. I'm not even sure what's supposed to be difficult about it. Three Leaf Clover, on the other hand, took a couple of tries. That was a damn mess.

Spoiler for Hiden:

for me it was the 2,305 police cars that came out of nowhere to block me from even leaving the scene if i managed to get out of the building with at least a sliver of my health bar left.  i finally read a spoiler on it and they noted that a speedboat was strategically placed outside the main doorway of the old hospital so I made like Sonny on Miami Vice and just hopped over the breaker wall, landed in the boat, and then sped away with minimal confrontation.  easy as pie.    

hey, how are you guys getting people like jacob and brucie to join you on missions?  i've got a pretty high "like" and "respect" rating with both.  do i need to just call them while on a mission?

I had to laugh while "on a date" with Michelle.  For the first 3 or 4 get togethers, Niko wore the same ratty clothes and she complimented him each time on looking nice.  Finally, I unlocked an area that had a store that sold suits so I blew about 1000 bucks on a snazzy new outfit.  I showed up at her place for a date, she gets in the car, and immediately goes down the list of each new item of clothing I've just spent my hard earned cash on and just starts ridiculing me. 

I love crackdown.  one of the best games on the 360 yet.  Just Cause felt Just Wrong to me.  the main character moved like an ice skater all over the island and the combat was just too simplistic.  Saint's Row, despite its lackluster MP, was a decent "hold me over until another GTA" game.

Now, GTAIV is a great, great game...however, I still can't help but wonder how my agent would've handled some of the missions if this was crackdown.  plus, i'd love to scale some of those dang buildings.

Go Hawkman!

lol

Maybe a Dr. Strange? Ooo, an Alpha Flight movie... that'd rake in the profits.

3 words:

Paste Pot Pete

domestic box office for iron man as of today:  $104,250,000.  foreign box office:  $96.7 million.    

there will most definitely be an iron man 2.

loved it, by the way.  saw it saturday afternoon with an audience that had just as much fun with it as i.  they were laughing and cheering the whole time.  truly a great cinema experience.

i'd also like to go on record as saying that my secret shame is still adam sandler.  i laughed...yes laughed...at the zohan trailer.  it's like kryptonite to me, i swear to god.

[Spoiler]

Had my first REALLY frustrating mission last night.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Chasing a crime boss' daughter's boyfriend on a motorcycle that apparently is constructed out of balsa wood as every time I fire my damn gun from it in order to try and stop him from getting away, I spin around as if I'm caught in a tornado.

finally just laid down the controller and turned off the 360.  i want to enjoy this game so i'm not going to play it when i'm angry, i've decided.

frack, thats the same type of mission that killed San Andreas for me.  Maybe I'll just go play with my tassels now.

Just chase him and eventually you'll get to a park where you can kill him and a few of his buddies on foot.

heh, guess what?  you don't need to ride a bike for that mission.  I chased him down in a car.

This is how I beat it, though accidentally.  I play in first person mode when driving, but it doesn't work well for me on a bike and so I crashed.  I flew a great distance and another car was closer than the bike.  Go in it and finished up the mission.

Tried a couple times, but I never could knock him off the bike.  Ended up just following him to the park (where he meets up with his buddies), running 3 of them over in the big-ass Hummer I jacked, and whacking the rest in a big 'ol shootout. 

I'm pretty sure you aren't meant to kill him on the bike. I can aim fairly well while in a vehicle and was nailing him in the head almost the entire time.

Spoiler for Hiden:

you can kill him while he's on his bike.  there's quite a few of us who've done so to get past that mission sucessfully.

There is exactly ONE required race mission the entire game storyline wise, and it was pretty easy.

for YOU maybe.  I got old hands with old man reflexes.  i had to retry that thing like 9 times!

As I said....this is the best gave I've played in well over a decade.  Just like a great movie -- you can FIND faults when you go looking.   I haven't found any that has made this anything other than one of the best games in history.

you can find faults with things you love.  It helps to move the franchise along in cases like this.  people contribute their likes and dislikes, rockstar (usually) takes notice and improves upon the next in the series using these critiques.  just because some of us note something we don't especially like in the game doesn't mean we hate the game.  perfection is unattainable, last time i checked...

...although with hair like mine, it's a damn close race.   

Spent hours last night doing the Most Wanted missions.  So awesome. 

I've done a few of the police missions (both MOst Wanted and Crimes), and I'm not getting paid.  Is that right?

Seems like it.  I've completed all of the Most Wanted missions that initially open up and didn't receive any kind of reward that I can tell.  Which was slightly disappointing but, to tell the truth, I had so much fun doing them I didn't mind too much. 

are the most wanted missions opened up when you steal a cop car?

[Spoiler]

Had my first REALLY frustrating mission last night.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Chasing a crime boss' daughter's boyfriend on a motorcycle that apparently is constructed out of balsa wood as every time I fire my damn gun from it in order to try and stop him from getting away, I spin around as if I'm caught in a tornado.

finally just laid down the controller and turned off the 360.  i want to enjoy this game so i'm not going to play it when i'm angry, i've decided.

frack, thats the same type of mission that killed San Andreas for me.  Maybe I'll just go play with my tassels now.

Just chase him and eventually you'll get to a park where you can kill him and a few of his buddies on foot.

heh, guess what?  you don't need to ride a bike for that mission.  I chased him down in a car.

This is how I beat it, though accidentally.  I play in first person mode when driving, but it doesn't work well for me on a bike and so I crashed.  I flew a great distance and another car was closer than the bike.  Go in it and finished up the mission.

Spoiler for Hiden:

returning to a spoiler format:  I just took the earlier advice and loaded up on smg ammo.  took him down pretty quickly after that.  i reached another annoyingly difficult mission with the race that brucie makes you partake in for his final mission.  THAT one almost had me tossing my controller through the tv.  however, i eventually beat it by sheer luck...and by knocking the guy ahead of me into a ravine when i had the chance.  however, it did highlight an earlier complaint from someone around here.  it seems like the missions are less freeform than in previous gta games.  for example:  i tried to block off some of the race participants in the aforementioned mission by going around the starting point and place a few cars in their way to slow their start.  however, when the mission actually started, those cars were gone.  in the previous gta games, i think they would have let me get away with something like that.  i particularly remember doing it repeatedly in vice city when faced with a frustratingly hard mission.

great...i was going to send out an email to the usual chicago gaming crew asking if anyone else wanted to see this with me tomorrow...but you couldn't wait, could you, mr. impatient?

was this woman driving the SUV?

Hittin' a 12:05 matinee tomorrow afternoon with a couple of friends.  Probably should get my tickets on the way home tonight to avoid any trouble, though.  i'm glad to hear from the lot of ya that this one's a good one!

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of THESE GUNS!

I'll say I'm tired of the four decades of whiny vampires (see "Barnabas Collins"), but other than that I agree with hepcat.  Nasty vampires who aren't cool or make me want to join them. HURRAH

ooh, good call.  i'd forgotten about ol' barnabas.

Aye Aye Aye...Shitty Shitty Bang Bang

I am pretty sure these are not the actual lyrics....

   i know, i'm just mangling them for fun. 

eek, corrected.  sorry about that.  yep, hepcat1...or just "Da Sex Bomb" if you're cruising match.com.

gamertag:  hepcat1 (naturally)

availability:  weekday evenings and weekend...i.e.:  i need a life.

Aye Aye Aye...Shitty Shitty Bang Bang

...I swear to god, that's the most addictive hook in a song in freakin' years.  I honestly can't get it out of my head.  But I still love the Vladivostok station.  catchy stuff.  and very appropriate when cruising the Russian 'hood.

It's better than the song that CeeKay makes me play..."The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round"....

Dude, that's my 2 year old daughter's favorite song. 

Now, every time I sing it to her, I'm going to imagine CK getting in the mood.  Thanks for ruining it for me...  

now add the tassels that ceekay wears on each nipple and then imagine having the ability to make them go opposite directions at the same time and you know the private hell i live in...

anyone else get a little creeped out to be driving around, listening to Liberty Rock Radio, and suddenly hearing the song from 'Silence of the Lambs' that's playing while Buffalo Bill dances around naked?  it's called 'Goodbye Horses' by Q Lazzarus...not a bad song, but caught me a little off guard considering that i associate it with such an odd movie scene...

Hey, that's the same song hepcat plays when he's trying to get me in the moo..................I mean, I think I've heard that song before.   

Look, Aveda is having a sale!

It's better than the song that CeeKay makes me play..."The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round"....

thanks wonderpug  i'll stock up before tackling that mission again tonight.

[Spoiler]

Had my first REALLY frustrating mission last night.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Chasing a crime boss' daughter's boyfriend on a motorcycle that apparently is constructed out of balsa wood as every time I fire my damn gun from it in order to try and stop him from getting away, I spin around as if I'm caught in a tornado.

finally just laid down the controller and turned off the 360.  i want to enjoy this game so i'm not going to play it when i'm angry, i've decided.

I think I enjoyed 30 Days of Night mostly due to having 2 decades of the vampire as emo Robert Smith wannabe shoved down my throat.  It was nice to break out of the Anne Rice mold and see them portrayed as essentially sharks on land.

It's been well more than 2 decades.  Dracula was written in 1897. 

i don't recall ol' drac pining away for his mortality, lamenting his need for blood or any of the other goth/emo crap that got stacked onto the mythos in recent years.  the drac in bram's novel slept in dirt, loved killin' and would never have hung out with tom cruise.   

plus, the myth of the vampire wasn't started by bram.  there are plenty of variations on the monster in different cultures...and few of them are witty, urbane men about town who love designer clothes and posing on top of gargoyle fixtures 25 stories up at night.

Like Xander said, " I don't like vampires. I'm going to take a stand and say they're not good."

i always loved that throwaway line from Otto the Bus Driver on The Simpsons, "Hey man, you got any books written from the vampire's point of view?!"

Also, I was very disappointed to see an actor of Danny Huston's caliber reduced to slumming as the lead bad guy with zero dialogue.

don't watch the proposition then.  he's got minimal dialog in that one, too.  but man does he steal the movie when he does talk.  absolutely loved that film.

i will try that Zit,but i have only heard the song while in the club,not on the radio,hopefully it will still work...i have used Zit before,because i wanted to know who sang that 'cry' song.....i cant remember now though,LOL

Godley and Creme ?

...god, i'm such an old guy.  i remember the 80's like it was yesterday   

I spend WAY too much time listening to the europop station, myself. 

Caught myself singing the chorus (as I hear it in the game) "aye aye aye, shitty shitty bang bang" this morning.

This song has been stuck in my head since Tuesday night.  I wish I knew which song it is and who sings it.

Edit: Well, that was easy...Glukoza - "Schweine"

if you dial up Zits it'll tell you what song you are playing.  I forget the number, but it's in the manual in one of the adds.

hmmm...appears you can even buy the mp3 using Zit.  I may have to buy that one so i can annoy my neighbors with repeated listenings.

heh, if you had issues with a kid getting whacked then don't go see Aliens vs Predator: Requiem 

actually, as a general rule of thumb, don't go see Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Back on topic:  I think I enjoyed 30 Days of Night mostly due to having 2 decades of the vampire as emo Robert Smith wannabe shoved down my throat.  It was nice to break out of the Anne Rice mold and see them portrayed as essentially sharks on land.

While not a great horror movie, i thought it was a half decent one.  I enjoyed it and don't regret the matinee price i paid to see it.

then watching as he vaguely spoke of his difficult past both helped me to empathize with the character, which helps a great deal when trying to immerse one's self into such a role.

Anyone else playing the game like me where when you start out you only walk places (in other words never car jack) or ever kill a person except for the mission?  I almost feel like he wouldn't just start stirring shit in the city, but instead will fall deeper and deeper into the crime life, slowly but surely.  I just feel that's the way he'd do it and so play the character that way.

so in other words, you're playing this game as if you were a Quaker gangster?

Thanks, hepcat.
I may just get it at $21 and count my loses. Or just wait till it drops again....

If your local target has it, wait at least a few more days.  They drop the prices on that stuff pretty frequently.

You may not borrow my home movies.

Solo sex scenes do not count either

I set that up this morning and it took until now for someone to go there.  Sheesh.  You people are slow.

In my defense, I've spent the better part of the morning FILMING THE GREATEST GODDAMN SEX SCENE EVER COMMITTED TO FILM AND STARRING ME, ROSE MCGOWAN, NATALIE PORTMAN, AND MS. Elisha Cuthbert!

...and, for some unknown reason, a mostly drunk Terri Hatcher who refuses to keep her top on even though I've promised her scale for doing so.

alas ed, my "go to Target" outside Northbrook was out of stock on the expansion.  A clerk said they might get some from a nearby store as part of some inventory shuffling they do every few weeks, so i'll check back.

What about Caligula?  I've never seen it but I've certainly heard about it.   

The wife and I loved the Rome series on HBO but I'm not sure if Rome and Caligula are even comprable given what I know about the latter.

I've walked out of two films in my lifetime for reasons other than family or job emergencies.  One was Caligula and the other was Andy Warhol's Bad.  The former because I couldn't bear to see Peter O'Toole (who I worship as an acting god) sandwiched in between scenes of a man fisting a horse and two guys giving each other oral gratification in a cubby hole; the latter because it was quite simply one of the most vile pieces of film I've ever had the misfortune of viewing....Uwe Boll aside.

I spend WAY too much time listening to the europop station, myself. 

Caught myself singing the chorus (as I hear it in the game) "aye aye aye, shitty shitty bang bang" this morning.

A friend told me that some movie from a few years ago had a really hot sex scene.  I think it was called "Brokeback Mountain" or something.  I wonder what actresses he was talking about... 

[Spoiler]

Last night's episode was fantastic. The show just gets better as the series gets more defined.

Spoiler for Hiden:

"although sadly, it seems they're kicking them to the curb now."

Nope. Seems they're still running with that direction

cool!   i watched the latest episode after writing my previous post so I was quite happy to be proven wrong.

Ok, played a bit more and I do have a few complaints.

1. The camera system needs some work. When walking, it is too floaty and doesn't follow the player like it should, 100% of the time. As such, I got REALLY nausious when going after the guy in Vlad the not so terrible, in the construction yard.

2. When fighting or bowling, the button presses don't seem to always responsive. In particular, the bowling, can someone give me the lowdown on exactly HOW you do this?

3. The manual is a joke.

4. The game definitely is a bit on the dark side, and I did have to amp the brightness control from within the game to the max setting.

5. The text is a bit hard to read and the setting on the cell phone to change it, doesn't seem to be changeable.

Other than those things, the game is off the charts good.

I agree the manual is utterly worthless.  I'm assuming it is so because they're trying to get people to buy the strategy guide, which annoys me even more.

As for setting the large text on the phone, I finally got it to work not by clicking A after selecting large text but by selecting B as if I was backing out of the menu.  If I chose A it wouldn't save the setting.  Seems back asswards, if you ask me.   

My biggies for this year are:

Fable 2
Fallout 3
Mercenaries 2
Star Wars: Force Unleashed