Monty Airline

@ForeverAndEver That's my guess, Starhawk.

I'd love to see at least SOME live/on-demand matches w/o the annual streaming subscription. XBL's implementation of ESPN3, you do at least get NBA and MLB games playing on ESPN. With this, it's nothing I can't get on my iPhone ESPN app.

And, yes, I love my PS3 and the PSN. I just don't think this adds any value unless you already shell out for the annual NHL subscription.

Vanquish seems like one of the first major titles to marry Japanese studios with Western game design sensibility, as several Japanese producers and designers over the past few years have said is the clearest route out of the stale mud in which many former standout Japanese studios have become mired.

@jsx92 Please don't call me level-minded. That sort of thing can get around a ruin a guy's rep.

I'm not him! But maybe I should see if he wants to hire a press agent.

@The Cole Train He has a life. About 27 or 28. He keeps a blog about his Gamerscore efforts. He works out, has a cute, and I'm sure quite tolerant GF -- calls her "Possum" on the blog; she REALLY is tolerant. Also does a podcast. I've been reading his blog because the whole thing is kind of interesting. Some days he does a "day in the life" blog post and details the gaming and other things he does.

Seems like a nice, sincere guy -- not a cheater or booster. 1milliongamerscore.com if anyone wants to follow him. Can't recall his twitter account name but it's on the blog.

Thing is, like I wrote, he apparently won't indulge in bona fide cheating. But he does things like leave Scene It! running overnight, presumably to wake up to achievements tied to things like the amount of time the game is played. It's not cheating per se, but he really didn't put in the gameplay time to earn those achievements, anyway.

It seems far more like a personal pursuit than a showoff deal, so if he wants to leave a game running to pick up achievements he does. He runs his own ethical compass, but he definitely has one. I know that sounds odd, that it's not showing off, but I think it's true. Everyone is obsessed with asking him when he works, makes a living. I assume he has a private income of some kind. Or Possum pays the bills. Whatever, it's their business.

The intrinsic value, besides sociological interest, of doing this over say reading the great works of literature or learning several languages or playing concert piano -- and what it will ultimately get him in the end is questionable. But this is his thing and he's dedicated to it, and it's interesting to watch him plod away at it with a patience I can't imagine having.

@spin cycle Sorry, I was thinking of PLII, probably because that's what I was using to play Enslaved. My receiver when I used the LD on a regular basis was plain old PL, so four channels. But oh what a good engineer could do with those four channels. It's all perceptive. I'm sure a great deal of it was PL was the first thing that made any kind of home theater experience generally affordable, and wow it knocked your socks off. Still there are some right garbage Dolby D productions on DVD out there.

@ZigmaTheEliminator Epic did some research around the time of Gears 2's release and discovered that only something like 15% had played Gears 1 on an HDTV and had no specific plans to upgrade their gaming TV to HD during Gears 2's prime popularity window. And those were M-rated games -- at least ostensibly a mostly adult audience, people with the at least the latitude if not the budget to buy their own higher end entertainment gear. So of course Epic's developers realized they were doing a lot of stuff in making those games that some of their most avid fans would probably never see.

@spin cycle I'll concede it's a splitting-hairs argument. "Gold standard" is an overstatement on my part. It's not like human ears would hear the difference. But there are at least slight technical advantages to letting the (high quality) BD player pump the channels ready to go. Like not having to worry about upgrading/changing HDMI receivers and wondering what the new one will do to the audio that will affect the sound field in your listening environment.

For top-end quality AND convenience, HDMI, hands down. I'm not so worried about it I even bother to own lossless multichannel gear. In my old townhouse the listening space just doesn't warrant it. I'd have to remodel for proper lossless home theater.

Oh, I should definitely say, it's a really great game, ignoring the technical issues. Not too short on normal difficulty but I finished it in two sessions over two consecutive days, which is unusual for me.

I'd say anyone paid full price for it but doesn't have LPCM multichannel audio on tap may as well go ahead and play it. I just used the two-channel DSP on my receiver to give the audio some oomph. I'm sure I'll be able to tell the difference with Dolby D production working properly, but I don't think w/ a good receiver and nice DSP simulation most people will particularly notice, like most people don't notice watching movies at home. In fact, one of my best friends of long-standing, total movie freak like I am, connoisseur of both the technical and creative aspects of cinema, she'd slap me for even having this conversation. ;-)

Important clarification: Talented audio producers given time can produce better results as perceived by human ears with compressed Dolby D or DTS, COMPARED WITH LESS CAPABLE PRODUCERS AND TECHNICIANS IN A RUSH. Important distinction: in theory if not practice, lossless productions have the highest quality potential.

@InkSix Nah, you're in good company. Like I mentioned above, uncompressed LPCM does not by any means guarantee a good digital multichannel production. Talented audio producers given time can produce better results as perceived by human ears with compressed Dolby D or DTS. If uncompressed digital audio were that important, that massive a difference in sound quality, Apple would still be a niche computer company with a tiny little share of the PC market. Uncompressed digital audio is still in the realm of the hobbyist and will probably remain so.

Also, HDMI is not the gold standard for multichannel LPCM. It's just the most common for consumer-grade receivers these days. Actually Blu-ray decks with individual ANALOG multichannel outputs are the gold standard for lossless audio. (Optical digital doesn't have the bandwidth to carry multichannel LPCM audio programs. Works fine with common compression schemes, though.)

@mywhitenoise Bingo. Receivers that support multichannel LPCM are pricey and not the average gamers' digital audio rig. Even high-enders are not going to cut lose a great relatively new receiver when Dolby D and DTS are standard. Plus lots of the original HDMI receivers were pass-through only. No matter how many HDMI ports they had they were nothing more in the HDMI department than convenient switches. And a good Dolby D or DTS production will be indistinguishable from LPCM for most people on most systems. I have laser discs with great ProLogic 5.1 productions that sound better than some of today's mediocre Dolby D productions. It's not all tech. a lot of art in audio production.