Weefz

Well, the booze at the wake wasn't bad at all. It's a bit harder to find an excuse to write about a night at the pub than it is a mock funeral. Think about it. What's more interesting? The above, or the following:

"We went to a pub where the PR company bought us lots of beers and then we watched our mates playing Guitar Hero 2 very badly. It was fun, go buy it."

Oops. Forgot that HTML links are stripped out here.
For higher-res pics and a quote from Mark Rein saying that the statues are legit:

http://www.theaveragegamer.com/2007/01/13/marcus-fenix-in-da-house/

Yep, they were prizes in a HMV.co.uk competition. I posted higher quality pics of Statue Marcus on my own site.

According the original competition page, "HMV.co.uk have teamed up with our friends at Microsoft to give away 50 Gears of War Statuettes"

Dude, you know that 21-year-olds are also adults, right? Even cute blonde female ones.

Christopher, you're absolutely right that graphics aren't everything. Criticising a game for its chosen colour scheme is stupid.

But select sign, wait for zoom animation, wait for text, press button to go back to game... that kind of thing is seriously annoying and there's just no need for it with today's hardware. It's about on par with DVD animated menus and their continuous 7-second audio loop.

I think it was a bad simile for things that make you feel sick.

Merits of game DVDs aside (I like them too)...

Downloadable demos are lovely (and generate less waste) but damn, have you seen the 360's Burnout Legends demo? Just under 600MB and for that you get ONE track! The rest of it is a long, boring, terribly-voiced-over trailer. Urgh. If I wanted a trailer I would have downloaded a trailer, not a demo - there's no excuse for bundling them like that. Not everyone has great broadband.

The demo level is damn good fun though :) Hi-def Burnout is great!

Yep, I've spent more than one SIA flight playing the same early chapter of Zelda coz I'd forgotten I'd played it last time I was flying. I seriously thought all Zelda games were the same for a couple of hours until I caught on. (Oh, wait... They kinda are!)

Considering people will steal cutlery and those crappy airline headphones that give you a headache, I doubt handhelds will be dished out any time soon.