The GHZ Forum

550W minimum? That seems like a lot. Are you sure you need all that? This was the best deal I could find. But this is slightly cheaper if you can go under by 50W. (Although the price difference is negligible; you could just skip a meal or two.) (The two most helpful rersources for me were the Ars Te...

I think I got a little carried away there! But my point is basically just that these findings are still controversial within the field, and for scientific reasons rather than political ones. What Wikipedia is reporting is accurate, but it's by no means the end of the story.

This is the sort of thing that psychologists investigate all the time. For what it's worth, in most studies women usually do better at reading emotions than men. This does not mean that women are innately more empathetic or that the effect is particularly powerful. For instance, the effect disappear...

It's not that Studio Ghibli ticked more political checkboxes than Pixar. They just explored a broader range of issues with a more diverse cast. I think that's more interesting to watch.

Actually, film is an area where I'm seriously uneducated even compared to the average layman, so there will be no lists from me. I'll take your word for it! But the inevitable comparison is to Studio Ghibli, which has a ton of strong female characters throughout its movies. Pixar seems a lot more cr...

People seemed surprised to learn that Brave has a female protagonist, and that the plot synopsis has vague messages of female empowerment, but if this was any other studio would it seriously be considered noteworthy? It just serves to highlight how strangely restrained Pixar's recent movies have bee...

I thought Nintendo Land sounded interesting. I like the idea of introducing lay people to Nintendo's more obscure games. I remember Smash Bros. Melee being something of a revelation back in the Gamecube era, and I almost didn't buy it because the fighting game genre usually fosters twitchy, barely p...

Left 4 Dead 2 is the best co-op experience I've played that's still commercially available. The first game approaches Portal levels of subconsciously training players (seriously, even the intro movie is a tutorial) but the sequel is better at everything else. Since you have a Wii you might as well t...

http://h11.abload.de/img/untitled-2nyjrc.gif It's that time of year again! Microsoft - Internet Explorer is coming to Xbox! This makes Microsoft's console the last one to get a web browser. You can even stream it to your tablet, in case you thought the one thing missing from your iPad was Internet ...

Any one of those games I would gladly pay $7 for. Bundled together, complete with soundtracks, makes it ridiculously attractive. The highlight for me is Bastion, but Psychonauts is probably the one with the broadest appeal. But who hasn't played Psychonauts by now? Unfortunately this is the first In...

I was in the lab yesterday and using a computer running Windows XP when I noticed that Google image search wasn't offering previews in IE 6. It looks like that feature is dependent on the browser you're using. For instance it also doesn't show up on Apple's iOS browser that's used on iPhones and iPa...

Google is notoriously awful at user interfaces. They've screwed up Youtube, the new Gmail (not GMail or GoogleMail as it has previously been known) web interface, and their core search engine. Chrome is only marginally better. My favourite part of the unified Google interface is the "More" tab, whic...

I beat Demon's Souls. I would have beat it a lot faster were it not for the final level, which took me about 4 days and maybe 10 hours. All in all, I thought the game was a little bit (dare I say it) too easy. In particular, the boss fights that involve hitting a weak point in order to briefly open ...

Who's the character with the red hair on the far right? Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I don't remember her.

We've all been there.

New Mario Wii was pretty good! Normally I complain about Mario games being too easy (like both Galaxies), but New Wii was a bona fide challenge.

Are they abandoning the multiplayer mode? That was a lot of fun, but I guess it makes sense to cut it out for the sake of streamlined level design.

Popcorn wrote:What the fuck are you talking about?

Well, if you have to choose a single console to launch a game on, at least they chose the one with a controller made for human hands.

At least the Xbox 360 seems to have the best controllers of this console generation. Although my flatmate has had 3 of the machines die on him since he first got one. The fact that the PlayStation controller is still a ripoff of the SNES controller (right down to the d-pad as the primary left-hand i...

Pixel art only bothers me in 3D. The big offenders that spring to mind are 3D Dot Game Heroes, Minecraft, and that one stage in Persona 4. 2D doesn't bother me so much. Maybe it's because I've seen games that look good with pixels in 2D, but never seen a game that's pulled it off in 3D. Anyway, from...

I think the solution is clear: don't live with the opposite sex.

Anyone else playing the TERA beta? As far as I can tell, it's trying to be World of Warcraft with an action-based combat system rather than WoW's current ability rotation system. That's definitely a point in it's favour, although it does mean you're very dependent on a lag-free connection to play. I...

I've said it before, but my local Japanese restaurant has homemade sesame flavour ice cream and it's the fucking bomb. It tastes like peanuts, except awesome. YO! Sushi sells sesame flavour ice cream too, but it sucks. It's watery, overpriced, and barely tastes of anything at all. I've wanted to try...

I am playing Demon's Souls. I don't have much to say that wasn't said 3 years ago. The combat is challenging and deep. The "fuck you" moments are very frustrating. The online mode is interesting but feels a little restrained, like the developers were worried that it would interfere too much with the...

What the hell is wrong with BioWare? I was never fully convinced they had much of a clue to begin with, but every game after Dragon Age: Origins has looked like a train wreck. Even their writing seems to have taken a turn for the worse. What possessed them to cut corners while making the ending of M...

I think expendability is built into the game's design, though. Any longer and they would have had to pad things out, or create artificial incentives to play more than once. Compare and contrast to Dear Esther, which expects you to complete it multiple times in order to catch maybe 30 seconds of uniq...