Re: General Anime Thread - See updated first post. (1 year ago)

I recon go for the dub. I don't usually say that, but considering all the regional accents (particularly the sort of boston, italian-american we have all come to expect from the Capone era of gangsters), it actually adds a bit more depth to the performances and the voice actors are decent enough to carry it.

Re: Gaming Bargains V2 (1 year ago)

Anyone know how this works? Are Big dub decent at delivery times? Otherwise, anyone know if it's possible to pick up these games at a similar price in-store elsewhere?

Re: Rate The Song Above You (1 year ago)

Baby, I hate songs like this.... 3/10. Much more respect for the MF Doom Cian put up (His Danger Mouse colab is bliss).

But if we're looking at songs about being a girl, I'd rather listen to Beck:

Re: Terraria (1 year ago)

I mean, I'd be happy to do it; I've set up a Hamachi network already, but I probably won't be able to 24/7 it, just use the 'host & play' function. I'm not sure how to set up a ded server, so if anyone can school my stupid ass, I'd create one.

Also, sorry for my late response Windburn & Co, I haven't been PALGNing much lately. PM me if you're still interested and want a swifter reply...

Re: Terraria (2 years ago)

Anyone keen to get a palgn server going? I can create a large world and run the whole thing over Hamachi if necessary.

Re: Mortal Kombat Legacy (2 years ago)

My thoughts exactly. However, that 12 minute video was still better than Mortal Kombat 2.

I'm holding out for some sweet Scorpion vs. Sub Zero action in future episodes...

Re: Post your Pix (2 years ago)

First one, then the other.

Re: One Questions (2 years ago)

I find this website pretty good for subtitles...

Re: How has PALGN affected your life? (2 years ago)

1. When did you join PALGN and why did you join?

2007, mainly due to my friends having no interest in games, short of weekend bouts of Halo, Modern Warfare, Smash Bros or Mario Kart. In other words, they are very casual gamers. I found it nice to have an outlet to express my inner geek.

2. What were your initial gaming interests when you joined PALGN, and have they changed at all since? If so, how?

When I first joined, I wasn't playing many games, mostly PC, partly because of a decreased interest in gaming. After being here a while, I bought a Wii, loved it, neglected it, dusted it off, sold it and bought a 360. Since then, I rekindled my love for console games and neglected the PC completely, short of strategy games. Having a Wii emulator and a 360 controller PC wireless receiver, Ive had my fix of Wii games too.

3. Do you feel like you've contributed anything to the community, and if so, name a few things you think are worth mentioning (e.g. Popular threads, site suggestions, competitions, staff involvement)

I contribute nothing, other than being a royal pain in the arse to some of the posters here. When I get on forums, I tend to be cantankerous and argumentative, mostly because I use it as a form of procrastination to avoid doing assignments. Other than that, in my earlier days here, my only real contribution was probably being the biggest thread/grammar nazi. I probably would have been a horrible mod, so I settled for being an average back-seat mod.


4. Has PALGN increased your knowledge of the gaming industry in general?

By great strides. Before coming here, I knew next to nothing about the releases of games and only had a vague idea about the difference between the biggest developers and the sorts of games being released. PALGN has basically been my only source of gaming news and I guess through that, I've learnt a lot about how the industry works.

5. Has PALGN given you any inspirations towards your career path?

Not one bit.

6. Have you made any friendships since joining PALGN that you feel you could only have made through a site like this; one that brings people of similar interests together?

Yes and no. I'm not very vocal about who I like and who I don't, but if I've plussed you, it probably means I think you are a funny guy. If I've argued with you, you probably hate me by default. I think of that hatred as a mark of respect, at least.

7. Have you met anyone from PALGN, and if so, do you still meet up with [any of] them often?

No, I haven't met anyone here. There are a few people who I think would be cool to hang out with, but being that I live in Perth, I'll have to remain tucked away behind an avatar.

8. Overall, do you think PALGN has made any major influences on your life?

Sort of. I mean, owning a console and buying games has been a significant money and time sink, so there's that...

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

Before you well and truly get your panties into a bunch, maybe you should take a step back and stop making implications and assumptions. I never said it gives you 'the license to do stupid ****' I merely stated that:
a) It is more understandable to be irresponsible when you are under the influence. If you call your mate a ****-head while drunk, he's going to be much more forgiving than if you did it sober.
b) People use it as social lubricant because of this. Perhaps it's because they know that they have a better chance to get away with something they were going to do anyway if they have that excuse, or perhaps it's something they wanted to do, but were held back by inhibitions while sober.

I never said that either. But c'mon, are you going to sit there straight faced and tell me you are a perfectly reasonable person while drunk and have never woken up the next day regretting doing something you'd only have done if you were drunk? Hell, the entire sitcom trope of 'what did I do last night?' is built around this very fact. Don't disagree for the sake of it, Sin.

What the fuck does that mean? You are more prone to doing stupid shit when your judgement has been impaired by a mind altering substance. This isn't rocket science, buddy, it's just the nature of alcohol. Will you start beating on your girlfriend, just because you've had a few drinks? Probably not, but would you consider driving home after having a few when if you were sober, you'd never, ever think you'd be the person to drink drive? I think everyone can relate to that sort of lapse in judgement due to drinking...

Where did I say that? Now you're just putting words in my mouth. Fuck me mate, I think you called the witchhunt a little early...

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

It reeks of denial. They quit drinking, but because it still tempts them, they have to bull-**** a reason to give themselves positive reinforcement and a false sense of superiority. Just like the fox, they call the grapes they cannot reach 'sour'.

That sort of attitude annoys me, as they take a personal decision and turn it into a public judgement call all in the name of nourishing their own ego. If people drank to make up for their social deficiencies only, why do people drink alone?

When you're an adult, this behaviour becomes less and less acceptable, unless you are in fact, drunk. Also, the head on your shoulders becomes less and less likely to listen to that voice, unless you are in fact, drunk.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

Nobody said you couldn't, they were more talking about the type of fun you have while drunk. I.e. more.

Everybody spent their first 18 years or so being teatotallers, so it's not really a unique perspective. You actually have to had tried drinking before you can comment on it, and to a lesser extent, life when you are deprived of it. You don't know what it's like, so you can't compare drunk good times to sober good times yet. You can't offer a well formed opinion without that experience.

Nobody ever said you need alcohol to have a good time, in fact, everyone has said the opposite. That's not to say you won't have a comparatively better time when you're drunk. You don't need friends to have fun, but you have a hell of a lot more fun when you're with them. Same with alcohol I guess: It's the friend that goads and cheers you into doing stupid shit and then tortures you the next day for it.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

If you have never been drunk, what are you basing your comparison on? Seriously, if you haven't experienced both sides, you aren't really qualified to comment.

What he means by 'you're missing out on some good memories' is that when you get drunk with your friends, you tend to do crazy/out of the ordinary things. Things that are fun, spontaneous, exciting, dangerous and often very stupid, but ultimately some of best memories you'll look back on. Some of the dumbest, but funniest things that have happened to me wouldn't have happened at all if my friends and I weren't drinking - Good or not, they were certainly memorable...

I lose my memories when drinking fairly easily. Once I go past a certain point of drunkness, I won't be able to remember much at all (past that point, I can remember everything up to that point just fine). It'll all be snippets of scenes or conversations, everything half remembered, half heard. I can drink a lot too, so I think it's just a personal effect it has on me, not me being cadbury.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

I'll usually drink anything that isn't too sweet (hell, I'll probably still drink it), but I very much love a pint of ice cold beer. The only things routinely on tap that don't cost an arm and a leg are Kilkenny or Carlton Draught. I don't usually drink wine other than over dinner, as it gives me a horrible hangover, and scotch is usually something I drink with friends/family when at home, talking into the wee hours of the night. I guess what I drink is very much context sensitive, but there's nothing I really hate.

If you ever get a chance to get your hands on the original french stuff with wormwood extract, do it. It's friggen golden when lit over a spoon with a sugar cube into a thumb of ice water. Gives you a nice buzz.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

I think it's mostly because people see non-drinkers in a drinking setting as making a judgement call about everyone else who is drinking - They feel judged, like the only non comic lover at a comic convention, they feel like you are judging their pass time by not participating. It has become a part of life, culturally, that one cements their friendships through drinking, perhaps due in no small part from the honesty that comes out of being drunk. This is not something that will be easy to change, but most good people won't shun you for abstaining unless you throw a moral hissy fit when asked why. Only an asshole would ostracise you for it.

Perhaps, but there is a huge difference, especially chemically on what different drugs do to the brain, compared to mere 'natural highs' (or sugar-highs). The amount of positive chemicals like dopamine, 'happiness chemicals' that trigger positive feelings in the user can't be matched through nature. I bet you a million dollars you'd never achieve the same amount of 'happy feelings' you get from one ecstasy pill than you can get from all the sugar in the world.

Compare sugar to alcohol in relation to highness and you're comparing wearing pocket lint to a full sheepskin coat in a snowstorm. It's not even comparable.

You secretly yearn to be a clown? Probably that you have a healthy sense of humour...

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

See, I can get behind that sort of thinking Ramblerun: You tried it, you're not fond of it, and you keep that as a personal opinion. Sorry if I was a tad aggressive, but it's sort of a reflex after encountering so many self-righteous anti-drinkers...

That said, the person you are when you are drinking is the just you, sans the social inhibitions. When you drink, you don't 'change' per se, you just care less about how you come across. People who are violent drunks usually have deep-seated anger issues that they suppress when they are sober, perhaps unconsciously.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

Usually, it's because they have formulated an opinion that is entirely divorced from the alcohol itself. From experience, the straight egers have either swallowed a bunch of propaganda or they've had a traumatic experience related to alcohol. Either way, their opinions are based on people who don't drink in moderation - Their opinions are based on substance abuse, not sensible substance use.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

Because it provides additional benefits besides taste?

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

It's not a fantastic argument when you simply level your opponent with those sorts of ad hominem attacks, but I think it is pretty naive (read: childish/uneducated) To think that all alcohol tastes bad. Why? Because most, if not all people thought that before they got used to it. Part of growing up is learning about acquired tastes and realising that, although the particular thing may taste bad to you at the moment, it doesn't objectively taste bad. People (read: pretty much everyone) like it because it taste's good, so you saying it tastes bad just makes you look unaware of the complexity of flavours it contains.

'I don't like it' is miles and miles away from 'it tastes bad'. One is subjective, the other is objective.

And how is that invalid? You can shit on anything if you use it incorrectly. Games? 'They're stupid, because if you play them for 18 hours straight, your eyes start to bleed' Books? 'They're stupid because if you do it while driving or walking, you crash into things'. Using something properly is a big part of getting the most out of it, and by forming a judgement on something you aren't even using properly, you are robbing it of a lot of it's benefits due to your own misuse. People who skull half a bottle of jacks and then complain that alcohol makes you sick are pretty stupid, no? If you slowly sipped it over a period of time, you wouldn't feel that way - The negative effects come more from the way it's used, not the substance itself.

Because once you do, it can offer a supreme amount of joy. Being dependent on anything is not a good situation, and neither is it an excuse not to do something. You can get addicted to anything, not just drinking, so that would be like saying 'I'd never visit a casino because I could get addicted'; True, but you could also have a lot of fun and not get addicted.


Alcohol is a useful tool: nobody is saying it doesn't have its drawbacks, but by denying yourself of it completely, you are missing out on another interesting experience in life, or rather, an interesting way to experience life. Your loss, but don't pretend it's because of the alcohol and not because of you.

Re: Funny Links (2 years ago)

'Now we can swap outfits!'.

Re: Alcohol; the Cause of and Solution to all of Life's Problems (2 years ago)

Well, yes. Most adults have both the funds and the palette to drink alcoholic beverages on occasion. The statement may not apply to you personally, but the point mrcool made still stands as roughly true given the tastes and income of the general population.

Like coffee, alcoholic drinks are an acquired taste. You may not like them if you don't drink things like that very often, or have an acute sense of taste (much like kids, who happen to hate anything with too strong a flavour other than 'sweet!'), but that doesn't objectively change the fact that the majority of the population enjoy these drinks for the taste and effect. It's pretty much universal, dude. There's a reason fine wines are such a sought after commodity around the world, and it isn't 'cos they get ya' blotto.

Hell, I used to hate wine and beer for similar reasons you stated, and when I drank, it was things like 'midori and lemonade' or '..... and coke'. Eventually, I developed a taste for alcohol and now I am a keen enjoyer of all sorts of beers and wines. Hell, I didn't like capsicum, cucumber or tomatoes until I was around 17 and I realised being fussy was embarrassingly childish, and so I forced myself to try them more often. Now, I love them.

Does water or juice get you drunk? You can't compare 2 litres of OJ to a fine bottle of cab/sav, it's just not the same. The cost of Alcohol in this country is mostly tax anyway because the stuff is so good, too many people overindulge. It is expensive, but not prohibitively so. Soft drinks are the saving's brand chocolate to alcohol's lindt.

You don't like the taste, so of course you're perfectly happy without it. I'm not sure how that affects the general usefulness of the substance or the accuracy of mrcool's statement.

Re: What really ticks you off? (2 years ago)

That just means she's doing something right.

You should probably get that checked out asap. Your reactions don't sound normal at all and you could end up going into anaphylactic shock from eating/drinking something new. Find out if it's allergy related or something else entirely, as that sounds troubling.

Although you can have plenty of fun without alcohol (or other drugs for that matter), I feel sorry for anyone who can't partake in those deviously enjoyable little substances that cross our paths here and there. It's a quality of life issue for me; Although I could live without them just fine, I could equally live without sunsets or rainbows just fine - But the world would be a little less colourful as a result.

Re: Interesting/amazing news (2 years ago)

I just went back and watched the clip. Afterwards, I was all like:
.

Re: What are you watching? (TV Discussion) (2 years ago)

The interrogation scenes were perfect. 'Who taught you to hit, your husband?'. Classic. I think it just topped piggly...

Re: Channel 10 bans nuclear themed Simpsons episodes (2 years ago)

Give it a couple of months and they will have forgotten all about it...

Re: Funny Links (2 years ago)

I especially enjoyed this version.

Re: FABLE 3 (2 years ago)

To be honest, it's probably easier for me to count the games that don't have obvious bugs, than it is to count the ones that do. Random corruption of my character file in borderlands, the aforementioned Farcry II, falling through the level and being unable to move in red dead, quest items disappearing in dragon age, major slowdowns during halo: reach, and of course fable's horrid breadcrumb trail. That's just from the games I've played recently that I can remember. I think Mass Effect 2 was the only game I've played recently that didn't have a single bug, or at least, I didn't encounter any.

I see these imperfections as pretty unacceptable. It's hard to find a movie equivalent, as it would be different for each example. In farcry's case? The movie would stop 15 minutes before the ending and you wouldn't be able to see the rest. Some of the others, would simply be like the director accidentally going into blair-witch mode with the camera at inappropriate times, and plot important characters disappearing from the film halfway through.

The difference is: Fable is not meant to be B grade, it was developed, pachaged and sold as an A grade release. B-grade films are made to be trashy, they are, in this analogy, 'intentionally buggy for the audience's enjoyment'. The equivalent of B-grade films would be intentionally b-grade games, something most likely made by an indie dev. I'm not holding the small studios to the large studio standard here, i'm trying to say that A-grade games need to be A-grade in bug quality, and right now, people seem content with giving a lot of bugs a free pass.

Yeah, and think about the costs of having to re-shoot an effects heavy action scene, because of a fuck up - They are often 'one take' scenes, because it's simply too costly to have to set it up again. I mean, if you wanna just use worst case scenarios to make your point, I can do that too, but the fact is both movies and gaming have both easy and hard solutions to 'bugs'. That's just the price you pay for working in that medium. Fixing a glitch can be a five minute fix too, don't forget that. NPC getting stuck in the corner of a specific room? Put a table there, problem solved.
Yeah, it's pretty damn shameless. Clearly they have the time and effort to fix things (like bugs), but they'd rather spend their time cutting things out and repackaging them back to you with an additional cost.

Re: FABLE 3 (2 years ago)

You dismantled your whole argument in the very last line. Equivalence is key. The bugs in games today are nowhere near as minor as the movie examples you've mentioned, and so it's not really comparable. Of course nothing is free from imperfections, but there's a standard in film that is nowhere near the same as the standard for games.

As you said, the Fable 3 ones are glaringly obvious. We don't tolerate 'bugs' in movies that are that obvious, so why should games be released with such obvious flaws?

I mean, I'm not saying the fact that your character's cape moves through his body a bit completely ruins the game for me, which would be the equivalent of a roman with a wristwatch, but rather, there are massive, sometimes [i]gamebreaking[i] bugs that are present in games when they ship out. Things like farcry II's gamebreaking 'cannot continue past this mission' are fucking unacceptable. That's the equivalent of the roman in gladiator wearing a fucking jetpacking velociraptor and killing maximus.

Re: FABLE 3 (2 years ago)

It was rushed for a pre-Christmas release?

Most of the shitty bugs in any game come from the fact that devs are forced to ship out an unfinished product to meet a deadline. I guarantee you, any problem you have with the game, they knew about pre-release, but didn't have time to fix.

But until game bugs are treated as game breaking - that is, universally slammed by critics for being an undue annoyance (hopefully giving any game with obvious bugs in it an instant lowest score as an unfinished product), nothing will be done. Everyone these days has accepted a certain level of bugginess as standard; We expect imperfections in the finished product, while we don't tolerate it in other mediums. If you accidentally saw a mic boom or a bit of the 'curtain' slip away during a movie or tv show, it would be s***canned as unfinished and unprofessional, so why do we accept these unnecessary imperfections in games? I'd hazard a guess and say it has to do with the history of game development, but I'm sure film went through a similar period, with each generation becoming better and better at hiding the 'stage' from the audience and keeping up the fourth wall...

TL;DR: Bugs are in games because we take it with a smile and keep paying for them. Games are for profit, and the margin on hard work is low, while cheap thrills make for full coffers.

Re: Fallout: New Vegas (2 years ago)

The gaps between play-throughs were so large, I had probably formatted my computer by the time the next play-through swung around...

I probably could have just downloaded a save file made at the end of the vault, but eh...