Well Crysis came out November 2007, so you're actually about 2 and a 1/4 years behind game releases.

I do however agree with what you're saying. It works great for console games too, especially if you can manage to stay an entire generation behind the current gen. Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 all have graphics good enough for me and nearly all of the games for each of those systems can be had for less than $10 with shipping on amazon.com. It's basically the same way with the PC games too, except like you said, the games have been patched by then so they'll actually run properly and the hardware is cheaper too. It doesn't make much sense to spend $300 on a top notch graphics card today when you can get it a year from now for ~$100.

I do know that when a game gets the Adult Only rating, it's effectively been banned because none of the major retailers will carry an AO rated game. I'm not too sure, but I think that the big 3 consoles won't even license a game for their system if it gets rated AO. So I would imagine they have a similar policy about games not being rated.

I guess it depends on where you live. I did live in Austin and there were tons of reviews for everything. I move to San Antonio and most places only have 2 to 4 reviews. So the chance of 1 or 2 business owner reviews that has a greater influence than when there's 40 reviews of the place. I mainly use it just to find a certain kind of business. If I want a place that mainly sells hamburgers and don't want generic fast food, I just search for hamburgers on yelp. You do have to read the reviews though cause some people do give some low scores for stupid stuff. "Waiter called me Jake when my name is Jack!! I'm never going there again!!" (2 stars)

I still don't understand this argument of "vastly superior performance" with the hard to set up vs the easy to set up distros. I've been using ubuntu for a whole 2 days now. Not very long I know, but what's so much better with those other distros? Firefox opens and is useable in seconds. Openoffice opens and is useable in seconds. My computer seems a little slow from power on till the point I get to select ubuntu from the bootlist, but after that the os is up and useable within 30-45 seconds.

Ubuntu's pretty nice so far. The install was the easiest I've ever experienced. I've played around with linux distros over the years but have never kept any on my system for more than a week. Usually something doesn't work, I spend a few days trying to fix it. Then I say screw it and go back to xp where everything was already working. I mean really, Ubuntu is kicking XP's ass right now. I tested my printer. Just plugged it in and it recognized not just a generic printer, but the specific printers manufacturer and model. With XP it just recognizes a USB connection, then after 5 minutes gives up and show the little "unknown hardware" icon in the device manager. I've got a little bluetooth usb stick. With XP, it doesn't recognize it properly and I have to install all this crap off of the cd that came with it. With Ubuntu, it just recognizes it and gives me bluetooth capabilities within seconds.

The only issue I'm having with it right now is that it doesn't seem to see my SATA HD at all. I also haven't tested out my webcams yet but I hardly use them anyway. Also there seems to be no trace of my wireless card, but I had that disabled in XP since I never used it anyway.

First distro I tried was Debian. This was back around 2003. I'm sure things have changed now, but back then with the installer, it asked too many questions. It would ask you where your mouse was and then it seemed to give you a list of 20 options. Same with the keyboard, sound card, video card, and network card. I could read the list and feel confident with my selections for some of the options but not for all of them. If I remember right, after it turned on and booted up it just left you at the command prompt. I had to ask in an irc room why all the screenshots show a desktop and why all I saw was just a black screen with "login:". Someone told me I had to type startx after logging in and that seemed to work. No network connection, no sound, and the highest resolution I could go to was 640x480.

Next one I tried was Mandrake. I think this was version 8 or 9. Still around 2003-2004. Anyways that one installed more like ubuntu did today. It did let you chose which packages / programs to install. After installing it, everything worked except for the sound. I couldn't get the sound issue figured out after about a week so that was it for Mandrake.

I'm not too sure why everyone says windows XP is a resource hog compared to linux. It looks like I'm using 325mb out of 2gigs of ram on ubuntu right now. On XP that might be 500-600mb of ram used, but performance wise you can't tell the difference. Plus the ram usage builds linearly. I mean, I'd imagine if I was using 700mb of ram on ubuntu that I'd be using 900-1000mb of ram on XP. CPU wise, both operating systems seem to leave 99% of the cpu at idle power. I understand that if you only have running what you want running, that the computer has less to process and can get its task done quicker and more efficiently. But there is a line where you just can't tell or measure the difference anymore.

Maybe you meant reliability and not having the OS crash on you? For the 6 hours a day I'm on my computer it usually never crashed with XP. Now of course most of those linux people talk about having their computers running for weeks to months at a time without a restart. That's great for a server type setup, but that's just an enormous waste of energy for the home desktop user.

The only thing they charged real money for before in BF Heroes was just the costumes. I don't know how many people would spend real money to dress up their virtual character, but I can tell you that I was not one of them. There really must not have been that many people that wanted to pay for clothing for their character.

The pricing for the weapons and bandages and such were so cheap. It took 15 to 20 minutes of playing to be able to buy the upgraded weapon for your character that was good for 7 days and a package of band-aids. It looks like the prices have shot up 10x. So now you'd have to play 150 to 200 minutes to be able to buy that upgraded weapon. That's a level of time where it feels like you've actually earned something. Why do so many people complain on the internet?

Anyways the game kind of sucks and so I don't care much what is happening with it now.

Ahh, you forgot to remember that the UK gets screwed over with game pricing. All they do now is just change the dollar sign to a pound sign. So that means here in the states we should probably see it for $50. The problem I see is that you gotta buy a $60 game and the $50 natal add-on, and that really comes out to something closer to a $110 impulse buy.

I was going to ask where your from, but from looking at your profile I guess it's NYC. Wow, I can't believe they got rules and regulations regarding newspaper disposal.

Geeze that Sheevaplug thing looks awesome. I was reading the wiki and noticed that fit-pc thing too. I'm definitely gonna get myself one of those for Christmas. I could use something in the background to run emule 24/7, and for other times when I just surf the internet for a few hours. Right now my system pulls 200watts with the monitor and speakers on. With both off it's still using 140w. The sheevaplug probably wouldn't pay for itself for me in electricity savings though, just with fun activities.

I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've thought the same thing before too, not just with games but with other things too. Really with anything that comes out in a limited edition amount.

Even more interesting would be if they offered a special secret gift or something to all who paid above average price. It would slowly make that average price rise, and a special secret gift could be nothing more than just a post card / thank you note in the mail.

Well, I was 12 when I discovered Warcraft 2. I did the same thing, but it was for a few reasons. I've never played any RTS games before, and I thought it was neat as hell telling other people what to do and watch them do it. I thought it was cool how there would be a forest, and then I'd tell the idiot peasants to cut it down, and then the forest would be gone! Also I wanted to get the highest score possible to see how high the ranks on the little score summary screen you see after each stage.

After that game I never did the resource hoarding thing again. Though most of the times in RTS games I have trouble actually spending all my money. I'll end up beating a campaign stage with half of my earned money still sitting unspent.

Making babies is natural but killing people is not, so that's what I never understood about the ratings system here. If anything, for any violent tv show, movie, or game, they should get a worse rating if the violence is unrealistic. If you see someone get shot, and then they're up and running 5 seconds later, like Arnold in commando, that should be an instant X rating. I've never been shot before, but I can imagine it friggin hurts.

I had the same exact conversation with my parents too. Later I found out from my little brother that there was one kid in his school that got paid $50 for each C they got, $100 for each B, and something like $150 for each A they got, every 6 weeks grading period. This was when he was in highschool which was from 2005 till a few weeks ago when he graduated.

Jeeze, this highschool puts you in 8 classes, and that kid was getting $50 for each C. You gotta be a freaking idiot to get under a C in any highschool course, especially in the normal ones and not the AP type classes. I can't believe his parents were giving him at least $400 every 6 weeks.

Now my parents never gave me any kind of allowance. It was ok though because of two reasons. I don't think I was spoiled, but I more or less got whatever I wanted. I mean, within reason. I really felt like I never asked for something unless it was something I wanted really, really bad. Now another reason I got no allowance, I never had any chores. I was under the impression that to get an allowance you had to do chores. I remember even asking my parents to give me chores once so I could get an allowance, but they told me there wasn't really anything for me to do. Dad was always scared I'd cut my foot off or something if I cut the yard, mom was scared I'd mess up the clothes if I washed them, and with vacuuming and washing the dishes, I guess my mom just liked having something to do. She was just a house mom so her whole day mostly consisted of watching tv.

Anyways, when I have kids I'm not sure how I'm gonna encourage them with school. I really want to tell them that your grades really don't matter until highschool, and even then they only matter if you plan on going into a 4-year university. If they go to community college first like me, then the highschool grades definitely wont matter for getting in, but they might matter for getting scholarships.

Hehe, bunny hopping was around before counterstrike. I remember doing it in Quake 2.

Also in Doom, they had that strafe walk thing. You strafe and walk forward, and you could angle it to the direction you want to walk, but you would go twice as fast.

Well I always played Mario with friends. With Mario64 you couldn't do this, and I found it kind of sucky because of that.

Mario Bros 3 was excellent, Super Mario World on snes was excellent, Mario 64 was something different. It showed 3d games could work and be fun, but I'd of preferred to see the same 2d scroller built with 3d graphics at the time.