I actually have an official Microsoft branded WinME coaster. It's a bit shiny, but it's big enough to take even the largest beer tankard.

Just make sure your walls aren't grey, you'll be fine.

GIMME!

Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme. URL? The controls infuriate me.

Doesn't stop them trying! I wonder if they'll call it "magical" too?

Then lets build a ship that can last that long and fucking go!

Jesus Christ...

"Maybe he's just like all of the professional politicians (AKA massive liars)"

Yep, that's pretty much it. How many of his promises did he keep again? Something about a military base, and the Defense Authorization Bill...?

Inability to spell?

French Connection United Kingdom.

Sure, it might be a lame ploy to sell t-shirts, but it's a valid acronym.

Hold on a second there, Sonny Jim. May I bring to your attention the oft-maligned/forgotten Elder Scrolls: Redguard, which had a simple but effective parry, thrust, lunge system.

Seriously, I never got all the hating on Redguard. Sure, it's pretty different to the others, but if I wanted samey I'd play triple-A FPS games.

Not saying that they're exempt, just that Bohemia likely don't care. And there are a *lot* more FPS gamers than might be readily apparent. It only takes a game to be mentioned to remind someone of it, and once the name's in your head, you're likely to recognise it on a shop shelf, etc, etc, etc. It might sound daft, but that's marketing for you.

I've said it before, and I'll say it as many times as it takes for idiots to understand it: fun things do not stop being fun because you get older, and the definition of "fun" is personal. Anyone who subscribes to the notion that they may no longer do something because they have passed some magical imaginary number boundary has voluntarily made themselves more boring.

Let the nerd have his fun. That goes for his wife, too. Hell, in the current housing market, something unique like that would probably make selling easier!

Cue an internet whip-round to buy out his wife's half of the property.

You're so right. Aspiring to better is pointless. We shouldn't be working to improve the species. Hell, the neatest things we've got are digital watches. Maybe coming down from the trees was a bad idea.

For you.

Who, Bohemia? They're probably overjoyed at the publicity. As great and maddeningly lethal as their Arma (originally Operation Flashpoint) games are, they're not particularly mainstream as FPS games go.

You know guys, I'm not sure Jubs was being entirely serious...

I don't know what the manual is, but the Karma Sutra might be considered an advanced supplement.

The first one becomes V'Ger, because they can't read the "oya" on the nameplate.

I always thought OpFor was too easy, and the ending was naff, but it was a fun ride.

@Annihilator

In fairness, Source/HL2 also got many engine patches, including HDR, and continues to. There was also Lost Coast, and the fact that Source could run on surprisingly crap machines.

That, and Far Cry just wasn't as involving. I played it, and I really liked it at first, then halfway through I got inexplicably bored (probably around the time the cliché scientist released his cliché experiments). Crytek games are like Serious Sam games to me - I can't get involved with a tech demo.

HL2 got praised for more than the engine and how good the graphics were or weren't, and rightly so. I'd rather play Deus Ex 1 with graphics that look like arse than Halo 4 with spandangly effects, any day of the week.

"You want to block piracy? Cool, I'll support that, if in return you (a) put in place a licensing mechanism where if I buy a film / album etc I have FULL rights to copy that as many times I want onto and convert that between any format I want and to play on any device I own so long as it's for reasonable personal / family / friends use."

One word: Ultraviolet. OK, doesn't apply to music, but it may answer some of your gripes.

Good bloody point! It looks soooo good, too.

The first example of full body modelling I ever saw was one of the Tribes games. Was it Tribes 2, or even Tribes 1? Wouldn't be surprised if it was the 1st one - that game was way ahead of its time.

1) You're being an unnecessary level of dick.

2) No such thing as hell.

3) This is a story on El Reg about an action figure. Calm down.

Scalpers != individuals looking to get a new iPhone...

Though I do love your attempt to protect the illustrious name of fanbois everywhere. It's adorable. "It couldn't possibly be one of the churchgoers doing this! I'll bet those scalpers were Android users!"

Just gotta know the shortcuts, baby. ;-) What, you think the staff are gonna walk alllll the way round? Sod that. If you keep an eye out, hidden in the maddening floor plan are shortcut doors and alleys. At our store most people would take upwards of 45 minutes walking the route on a Sunday, but I could get across it in about a minute.

Tried all of the tricks, I'm afraid. The problem even varies in magnitude between plays. Sometimes Overkill is playable with the odd recalibration, and sometimes the drift is so fast that between me calibrating and shooting the "back to game" button, there's already a 7cm drift.

It's infuriating that the Wii version is more playable, given it's on that Nintendo piece of shit, doesn't support Motion+ (none of the light gun games do) and has framerate issues up the arse. It's more infuriating that I paid for a second copy of game I alreay own, and it doesn't work properly. Same goes for Dead Space: Extraction.

Zero Punctuation? This guy:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

He's actually pretty damned funny.

What it means is that one egg was thrown by one guy who came back an hour later, and this is reported as "mad crowd of unemployed anti-capitalist scumbags pelt shop with missiles".

It does seem to depend on the game. In Razing Storm, Dead Space: Extraction and House of the Dead: Overkill, I've calibrated the gun properly, held the gun steady, and watched the reticle drift off by 20, 30cm, easy. Really isn't acceptable, especially if you're fighting for rankings.

The GunCon3 has no such problems, but that only works for the Razing Storm collection.

Darkwind

Back on the PS2 I used to play a VR beat-em-up called Darkwind, using the Gametrak. The game was as ludicrous as all fighting games are, and had an obsession with jiggle physics that put even DOA to shame, but man you could work up a sweat on that game (not like that, you filthy sods). The gave showed a calorie readout every time you broke someone's face.

Would be interesting to see it done again, though in my experience the accuracy on the Wii and Kinect is a bit suspect, and the Move has serious, game-breaking drift issues in a lot of games - infuriatingly enough, all the rail shooters except Child of Eden.

Hell yes! And straight onto my list would be Bastion and Hard Reset. I never quite "got" Painkiller, pretty and violent as it was, but I loved Hard Reset. Bastion was just very very cool.