Semjaza

I wanted to love this game. I really did. For quite a long time I thought it would be interesting if Zelda or Peach got their own titles and for one of them that day finally came. I thought the whole emotional outburst idea was intriguing, even if you have to wonder why they only thought of it for a game featuring a female character... But beyond that I just kind of found myself bored. The powers were fun to play around with and they were well utilized most of the time, but I don't know. It wasn't challenging and the level layouts were just kind of uninteresting. Even the little bonus stuff you find along the way was stuck right in your path most of the time, killing off most of the need for further exploration. It's certainly not bad, but I can say I'm glad I rented it on Gamefly instead of spending the full $35.

As a musician, any one who really pays attention knows that Rob Zombie is all about the schlock. I doubt anyone listens to him expecting "genius" level material. They expect random, horror-comedy-influenced songs that are fast and fun to listen to. That's all Hellbilly Deluxe was really about. White Zombie too, to a lesser extent. You can get that much just by looking at their album covers. House of 1,000 Corpses seems to be mostly universely reviled. I enjoyed it for the same reason I was into his music when I was younger: it's fun. I'm not going to contest that that film is extremely derivitive, because it is... but I still enjoyed it on some level. Enough to pay the current $7 new price for the DVD now. The Devil's Rejects, on the other hand, was absolutely excellent in my opinion. You definitely have to be into that type of movie, but it was a great 70s style psycho horror thriller and a fun character study. In particular, it's an amazing example of how important music can be to any movie. I cannot think of another film that used existing songs in such an effective, perfect way, quite honestly. My only real complain is that I don't think his wife can act. In terms of intelligence, Rob is more up there than perhaps his music lets on. He's definitely an excessively intelligent guy. There seems to be this idea among many that having a character or well defined image in rock music means you're either a complete moron or totally insincere. I don't think that describes Zombie at all, let alone Marilyn Manson.

[B]Dagger: [/B]I don't know her well at all, but I feel she's done a great job with what's available at this board. Her constant updates to theOtaku.com are also commendable. [B]DeadSeraphim:[/B] I talk to Alan a lot, to put it bluntly. We get along very well and he's proved an invaluable help with some of my website projects. Great guy and I wish him the best. [B]Mitch:[/B] While I don't really read poetry or anything, I always enjoy talking to Mitch. I've known him for quite a long time now... our first conversation involved guessing what band wrote which lyrics, which was entertaining. [B]Godel:[/B] I always enjoy her posts on here and I've since talked to her on MSN. Incredibly intelligent and fun to rant about things with. [B]Shy:[/B] He's been doing a really good job with his area of the forums, but in general, he's just some one that I am glad I met through this thing. [B]Satan665:[/B] He is cool. I'm being lazy. [B]Heaven's Cloud:[/B] He is also cool. I'm being lazy again. [B]Shinmaru:[/B] We almost never talk directly, but he's also a third cool person. [B]Goddess:[/B] I sometimes annoy Annie, but I still like her and think she's another cool person here. [B]People Who Feel Some Need to Insult and Be Negative In a Thread About the [I]Nifty[/I] Things On OB, While Simultaneoulsly Not Realizing That a Lot of the Board Probably Does Not Like Them Back Because of That Very Reason and Forgetting That If They Hate This Place So Much They Can Easily Stop Visiting It Because It's Just a Simple Website on the Internet That Is Not Meant to Be Used to Make Up for Whatever They Get All Their Unhappiness From in Their Every Day Life While They Continue to Add to What Has Become "The Cliche of Hating OB":[/B] Self-explanatory.

[QUOTE=Retribution][size=1]The fact that I don't know what a hostel is doesn't mean I can't be critical towards it. The word "hostle" was rather insignificant to the movie as a whole. [spoiler]It was a bunch of mental people torturing victims in a room.[/spoiler] The movie is trash -- it's a pointless torture-fest.[/size][/QUOTE] You hadn't seen it at the point of my post, from all you had said. You had pretty much decided what to think about it at that point. My response was largely to your preconceptions... whether or not you dislike it now is fine by me lol. I suppose in the end you wound up getting what you expected, but I'm not sure why anyone would expect much more than a slasher/torture fest going into it... which is pretty much the opposite of most majorly released horror films nowadays I suppose and can understandably throw people off in advertising and whatnot. Edit: As a sidenote, I wonder what Tarrantino's reason for producing it was.

Even if Tarrantino did direct this, how would it be a "perversion" of his great directing? Give me a break lol. You're talking about a director who made a film where dozens of people get body parts chopped off. In addition, I have to wonder how much you may know about this film to compare it to "Saw", if you don't even know what a hostel is (which is basically described in EVERY preview/review of this title in varying ways)... Saw essentially was a poor man's version of Seven. Get some good reasons :p Horror movies can be just as well composed as anything else and Tarrantino is smart enough to know that. In any case, as mentioned, Eli Roth is directing this and Tarrantino is just a producer of some sort... like with those kung-fu movies years back. Eli Roth also did Cabin Fever, which was made with only a 1.5 million dollar budget and subsequently became the most profitable horror title of that year. When I saw it, most of the theater seemed turned off by the fact that it had a sense of humor, but I personally feel that's integral to an entertaining horror film... If that movie didn't have a sense of comedy to it, I think portions of it would have been overly brutal. As it stands, it wiped the floor with horror movies that year that cost 10 to 20 times as much to make. As such, I'm really looking forward to this. As far as I'm concerned, Eli Roth is in a very strong position to become the next great horror director up there with Romero or Raimi.

[quote name='Arcadia][size=1]9. [i]Volcano[/i'], Damien Rice[/size][/quote] At first I was like "Someone else here listens to Volcano?"... but then I realized that was a song title and not an artist. I didn't realize that's what this thread was by just the title, but now that I know, here we go: 1. Deftones - [U]White Pony[/U] - "Elite" 2. Hot Snakes - [U]Automatic Midnight[/U] - "Our Work Fills the Pews" 3. Dr. Dog - [U]Toothbrush[/U] - "Swamp Livin'" 4. David Bowie - [U]Reality[/U] - "Try Some, Buy Some" 5. Iron & Wine - [U]Our Endless Numbered Days[/U] - "Cinder and Smoke" 6. Simon & Garfunkel - [U]Columbia Studio Recordings 1964-1970[/U] - "America" 7. Ween - [U]The Pod[/U] - "Awesome Sound" 8. The Raveonettes - [U]Chain Gang of Love[/U] - "Dirty Eyes (Sex Don't Sell)" 9. Sonic Youth - [u]Happiness Is a Warm Gun[/u] - "Burning Farm" 10. Wellwater Conspiracy - [u]Brotherhood of Electric Operational Directives[/u] - "Right of Left Field" Not a bad list in my opinion.

A Lupin the 3rd game was released in the US for PS2 in 2004... I know there are other ones on random systems in Japan, but I'm not familiar with any of them.

I like Weird Al, but he's never been a major favorite of mine. I think his best work was a long time ago, but I wouldn't say anything he's put out has been bad. For randomness, I'd rather listen to something like Ween. Weird Al's altered covers and such are fun to listen to, but I can't really bring myself to listen to them for long periods of time.

[QUOTE=ShatteredPelvis]Well, what's wrong with pornography in the first place? So what if Playboy arouses sexual feelings? Playboy has quality images, it's no shady business. It's tastefully and artfully done. There's a big spectrum of pornography, and the dark'n dirty side isn't comparable to the more quality side.[/QUOTE] I don't remember saying there was anything wrong with it to begin with, although I think there's a strong difference between "tasteful" and "artistic". The posts directly above me were claiming that Playboy's work isn't "pornography" and is simply "nudes", which isn't really true... so I said something against it. In general, I was just stating that 1.) Playboy, for example, falls into pornography by default, but 2.) most people see that word and automatically associate it with distasteful, shoddy things and 3.) by extention, anything utilizing nudes has been demonized by such people. I'm not trying to give the idea that I do the latter or agree with it at all, because I don't.

I wouldn't say the entire thread is like that polarized, but whatever. Again, I think it's important to state that nudity in and of itself isn't pornographic. The statue of David isn't meant to incite sexual arousal by any means and neither is a good majority of nude work of that type. It's a study of form, among other things. However, when you're stepping into something like Playboy, regardless of whether or not it's showing straight out sexual acts, the point of 99% of their pictorials is to stimulate sexual arousal in their readers (there are some that I've seen that I'd consider more in the realm of art, but I'd feel they're not too common for the publication). That qualifies as pornography by its simple definition. I can't really tell who is referring to whom in this thread anymore because people are generalizing to the point of "all" people are saying this or that... which really isn't true of what's been stated in each and every post.

The hope with that is that there will eventually be enough 360's out there that they'd be making the money off games and liscensing fees. They did a similar thing with the original Xbox and Sony has done the same with the PS2, PSP and likely the PS3. It's kind of become a common practice... eventually, when manufacturing costs drop, they plan to make a slight profit off the hardware as well. So, considering, I don't think that in and of itself is a major deterant.

There's been rumors of a "X-Boy" since MS pretty much put out the original Xbox. Nothing has come out of it and none of the rumors have really even been that reliable or solid. Considering the DS has decimated the PSP in recent weeks (the DS sold nearly 800,000 units in one week in Japan alone), I would think MS wouldn't even want to try right now.

Nude pictures in something like Playboy are pornography. Their goal is to stimulate sexual arousal, regardless of how "artsy" they may be (and I'd say even in their case, compared to something more smutty like Penthouse, 98% of it is not artistic at all). They're part of the definition and within that definition they do not have to include actual sexual acts or "hardcore" behavior. Whether or not people want to demonize the word to the point that the very idea of a nude figure is considered "wrong" is a whole other story. I think that's the main problem for most people and it tends to extend into things it perhaps shouldn't extend to... the previously mentioned art aspects, for example. There's a lot of interesting photography out there that involves fetishism and other such things that's actually highly respected.

The team was supposedly working on an RPG for GameCube... it was assumed to be related to Golden Sun, but I don't think it was ever explicitly stated anywhere by anyone official. Nothing came of it. Whether this means the project was disbanded or moved to Revolution or DS, I have no idea.

[quote name='Citrus][SIZE=1']Spam. xD[/SIZE][/quote] Yeah. Except not at all. People at this board need to learn the difference between a short comment that says all it needs to be said and actual, real spam. In any case, I think it's all that has to be said here. Since every one else just skipped over my comment, I guess I'll spend more time fluffing it up for no reason, as it expected here. The show hasn't been in production for like [I]five years[/I]. This "controversy" started almost right after it came out in the mid-late 90s and pretty much fell off the public radar not long afterwards. It's not a "controversy" at this point and I wonder what there is to say in 2006. This popping up sure as hell makes me feel like I'm back in 1998 when it was even a remote issue. If people are still latching on to this, they must be caught in a time warp... there's new things to complain about and find non-existant hidden messages in.

Is this suddenly 1998?

I've been tempted to buy Yanya Caballista: City Skater in the past. I knew it got below average reviews, but sometimes I find myself enjoying games despite scores they get. Considering how incredibly cheap it goes for when I see it, I wouldn't really consider it a "bad buy". I guess it depends on how much you spent on it. I don't really buy enough games anymore to be disappointed. I only buy stuff that really, really grabs me and that's only coming out to maybe a dozen games a year... most of which I do not pay full price for. I'm thinking of joining Gamefly or something to rent the others I'd like to try but won't bother buying. $15 a month isn't bad when Blockbuster wants something like $6.99 or $7.99 for a damn game rental.

I LOVE Guitar Hero. It's my favorite game of 2005 by far. I was not disappointed with the tracklisting in the least. There were a handful I wasn't very familiar with, but stuff like Cream, Boston, Bowie, Black Sabbath... it just belongs in this game. Some of the indie stuff was quite good, although I only recognized a handful. Playing through all the difficulties and using your cash to pay for unlockables really extends the game far more than any other music title I can think of. All games have to end at some point. The other stuff from that company, Harmonix, is good too. Frequency and Amplitude were great games in my opinion, although I liked the songlist in the former better. I'm also a big fan of Gitaroo Man. I think its system is more interesting than Guitar Hero's, which is definitely helped immensely by the whole guitar controller gimmick. If you take that away, it really isn't anywhere as fun or impressive. The Parapa and Lammy titles are fun too, although I've not played them in a long time. Space Channel 5 on DC was simplistic, but fun. I also have Samba de Amigo and the maracas controller, which is a blast. Donkey Konga was alright in concept, but ultimately far too easy and short. I've never played Taiko. About the only music games I don't care for are of the dance variety.

Well, Sesame Street really isn't comparable aside from muppet usage... lol. In any case, I bought the season set the week it came out, which was at least a few months ago now. I watched all of the episodes in a matter of days and really enjoyed it. I didn't recognize all of the guests, but I did know most of them. The DVDs have a nice trivia extra feature that tells you stuff about all of them while you watch the episode, which helped with some of the more obscure stars on the show. I was actually pretty excited that Disney was rereleasing a bunch of muppet films this past November... but I've not gotten around to buying any of them yet. I think they included The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppet Movie, Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. They didn't release Muppets Take Manhattan for whatever reason. Unfortunately, they put fullscreen and widescreen on the same DVD and I guess the transfer is not all that special because of it. I'm rather hesitant to buy any of them now.

[quote name='Sting']?_? I know you explained it but is that really a game?[/quote] It's based upon the horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft. The "Cthulhu Mythos" is a whole line of things based on some of his short stories. It's worth looking into... it's been getting good reviews. IGN recently gave it their "Best Game No One Played" award for 2005.

I'd recommend Call of Cthulhu for Xbox. It's $30 this week at Best Buy. It's a really great horror/thriller first person game that's set in the early 1900s.

This sort of thing has happened before. It's not really groundbreaking, but I don't know what term it should be associated with. It's worth noting that a good portion of what appears in that article seems to be total speculation on the magazine's part as to how things would work. They talk about fishing, sword play, etc.

It doesn't really matter what the teacher teaches as far as that stuff goes. That would matter more for grad school than normal college in most situations. I'd suggest sending them in around the same time because they both involve an attempt to get accepted into that school. It'd not make much sense for the letters to come months later.

Desbreko: Keep it on your computer. I already brought your site to the new server a couple days ago and will be pointing the URL to it shortly. I can't keep moving stuff over... I'm going to need you to contact me with information you want to log on to the FTP anyway.

I don't plan on deleting them... but I'm at the mercy of when my hosting ends. I'm not sure if that's on my billing date (the 23rd) or the end of the month.