BigWoopMagazine

It depends.  Some games you can tell they're just there for the sake of being there, scattered randomly all over the place (Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, Tomb Raider Underworld) and are a total pain in the ass to find with no reward or a crap reward.  That bullshit sucks.  Other games the items actually do something for you, or are cleverly hidden in a fashion that makes them fun to find (uncharted 1 and 2, Trine, Bioshock, LBP).  I especially enjoyed in LBP and Trine where the environment provided a puzzle for many of them, where you could tell that something was there, if you figure out what to do.  Thats nice because its not so much about the hunt, but solving the puzzle.  I enjoyed a lot in bioshock getting the back story, it wasn't necessary to get, but if you did it was well scripted and offered a glimpse into Rapture's histroy, leading up to the current events in the game.  Many were obvious, and a few required thinking to get, a good mix.  Wolfenstein made an attempt at the exact same thing, but ruined it in a number of ways, first with lame uninteresting scripting, and then having to hold a button for an extended time just to open the thing (WTF for?!).  I eventually just stopped bothering.  Infamous was another one where it was fun to find most of them, thanks to the sonar feature, and having to figure out how to get to some of them.  Everyone should agree that the last 20 or so sucked royal ass unless you had a method from the start, and even then the last 1 or 2 gave everyone a migraine.  Its a tough balance, and it seems every game has them, so its really a matter of picking which ones you care to do.

danny-boii said:

WHO DOESN'T!! haha

gay people?

okay… so a few tips of advice, I did a lot of research when I bought my new tv a while back.

First, if you want a cheap tv, plasma is the way to go right now, most places are ending manufacturing these and are trying to unload them…  They get really good contrast ratios, which gives you great colors, but theres a few issues.  They burn in real easy, so never let it sit on a still screen for more than a half hour to an hour (you can fix this by switching to a “snowy” channel for a couple minutes at the end of a session, causing all the pixels to alternate rapidly between white and black).  They are susceptable to glare, so lighting can effect how well you see the screen.  They are a little heavier than the LCD and LED models.  Thats about it. 

Don't bother with 1080p unless your screen is going to be 60″ or larger.  You will not be able to tell the difference in resolution on a smaller screen, unless you're literally two inches away from it.  Its a waste of money, especially when right now a majority of games only run at 720p or 720i. 

The single factor that will effect your image the most is the contrast ratio.  The contrast ratio is a measurement of the brightest whitest white that can show on the screen vs the darkest blackest black that can show on the screen.  There are two ways of measuring it, or two types: dynamic and static.  Static (this is the important one) is when the ratio is found on the screen by measuring the white vs black at the same time.  Dynamic (the one most manufacturers list) the two measurements are made at different times.  This means that they can fiddle with the settings to get the tv to show really white whites, and then adjust them again to get the blackest black.  This gets them really big numbers that seem really cool (if you see 1million:1, its dynamic).  If you can find a tv with a static contrast ratio of 5000:1 or higher, you're doing pretty good. 

The last thing you really need to think about is your refresh rate.  This effects things more than you would, because different input signals run at different fps.  As long as the refresh rate is a multiple of the fps, you get a smooth clean running image.  120hz is currently the lowest one that will do that.  Most plasmas get really good refresh rates of 600hz (mine does at least).  LCDs can do 120 easy, but you'll pay a lot more for 240 or more.  Really I would just make sure to get at least 120 and not worry more than that.  I heard a rumor a while back that if you have a higher refresh rate, your tv may be 3D ready, but I'm not sure theres any truth to that.

Hope that helps, took me a bit to type that, but it took me a couple months to come up with all that information reliably!  Beware of salesmen, they'll always try to get you to pay for what you don't need.  Beware of professional calibrations, they do improve your image quality but I don't believe for a second that they're worth $300.  You can buy a blu-ray calibration disc and do it yourself on your ps3 for about $30, its not as good but it does what you need.  Good luck.

Update:  I googled it quick, since its been a year since I've looked at tvs.  It appears to be near impossible to find plasmas under 42″, so they're out of the price range.  Here's a tv the shows the difference between contrast ratio:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Proscan+-+32%22+Class+/+720p+/+60Hz+/+LCD+HDTV/9329336.p?id=1218086176589&skuId=9329336

If you look in the overview you can see that it lists both that static and dynamic (neither are very good here, but LCD's kinda suck for that).  Most of the time your lucky if they tell you the static, usually only the dynamic will be listed, and often times they won't even list that (bullshit! that should be standard!).  As another example, my current tv has 10,000:1 static, but 1million:1 dynamic.  So if they show dynamic ratio, its a blown up number.

@knoxie – when theres no dedicated servers, having lag or lack of lag has virtually nothing to do with your connection unless you actually have a shitty connection.  It has to do with that one person's connection – the host – has to handle communicating with every player.  This causes loads of lag.  I experience it too, but not all the time – its really goddamned annoying.  I play games with dedicated servers, I have no such problem.  Also, the host migration fails at least 50% of the time (no adequate host available is bullshit, I'm an adequate host at 5mbps). 

@the original question – yes I have it, but I don't really feel like playing it.  None of my real friends own it (they all bought WaW for some god awful reason).  Was considering selling it and my other CoD games to get BFBC2.  Balanced vehicles and destructive environments and buildings actually bring something fresh to the playing field.  But… not sure I can get any of my friends to pick that game up either, so I might just flat out sell them.  Bioshock 2 is coming tonight, that should hold me down for shooters for a while.

EDIT:  @KoG – agreed, on that they failed on all of those things.  I'm confused on how its possible to deny that.

First – see topic “trophy whores”.  Large discussion about exactly this in there.

Second – see people who have a family.  Most people don't care to set up alternate sign on names for their PS3 – its uneccessary.  So… you have a little kid who plays on your account, and those games may be Hannah Montana (since thats the go to game for a lame platinum), or Up, or other such games.  Nothing wrong with that.

Third – Actual trophy whores, or whatever you would like to call them.  I can't hold anything against them, even if they do brag about their trophy rank.  Why?  Well… your bragging about a TROPHY RANK.  What the hell do I care?  On top of that, they're wasting their time playing a game just for the achievements.  If you play a game for any reason other than fun, your wasting your own time, and thats you being a dumbass.  I can only laugh at that.

Fourth – While a leaderboard would be nice, I don't ever see a respect system coming.  Frankly, we're running pretty late on getting a leaderboard, and I'm wondering if that will ever show up.  Also, the supposed grievance system hasn't shown face yet, and thats just respect for players, not trophies, and that'd be based on actions and communication rather than an arbitrary list of game achievements, which makes a buttload more sense.

So – do I lose respect for someone on the internet because they have easy platinums? Hell no.  Not unless they're bragging about their so called “achievements”.  And in that case, I not only lose respect but put them in their place by explaining to them in simple words why they are a loser.  Outside of that situation I could care less.  However, do I lose respect for my real life friends based on their trophies?  Well, if I see Hannah Montana on my best friend's trophy list, knowing that hes single with no kids, yes, absolutely, and I will make fun of him and call him gay for that for years to come.  Muahahahahahaha….

ManicSurvivor said:

Ratchet525 said:

Theres been a thread bout this.

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ya? and? theres been threads about other topics and have been made several times too. its just something to talk about and no one posts in the old threads anymore, so, i figure hey, y not.

yea, and I was going to be that guy.  The point is, if theres already a thread, its stupid to be redundant.  You can go open it, read everybody else's responses that were left like a year ago, and add to it if you have anything to contribute.  The thread then gets bumped back to the top, and people see that and continue conversing if there's a point.  I know there's already a thread on this, and I searched it, and still couldn't find it… It seems like the search function kinda sucks actually.  No matter what I type in, I either get like 72 pages of threads, or nothing.  So… I'll let ya go on it.  Not that I could do anything but bitch about it anyway.  Here's the closest thing to it that I could find:

http://www.allps3trophies.com/forum/off-topic/the-game-that-made-you-the-gamer-you-are-today?value=first%2525game%25251&search=2

And to answer the question: Its hard to say, I think Dig Dug for PC, back when floppy discs were still floppy.  The first I can really remember clearly is Super Mario for NES though.

hit me up when you wanna play some MP… I'm sure the SP will be great, but am really really curious about whether the MP is gonna be something good and fun to play, or will just be chaos.  hmmm… maybe chaos can be fun?