I had no idea the recent SWG changes were so wide reaching and stupid. If my two year old EVE character got wiped I would be both utterly crushed and totally livid.

Just how did SOE think this a good idea? Devastate your existing player base with changes that are guaranteed not to attract more than a handful of players? Brilliant. They already missed the opportunity to retain countless players who bought it largely on the promise of a Star Wars MMO alone - how could such an idea possibly fail? And now the crafters/social gamers to whom SWG was well suited (despite how such a concept was woefully mismatched to the license) have now left too. Is anyone still playing?

Beautiful, just beautiful. I can’t get enough of excellent game art, I’d love to have some of these as prints. Sadly, game art posters are rare and often simply extortionate to get shipped to the UK. (Great find by dodob)

Valve continue to upgrade their engine and bit-tech has the scoop on the latest. Depth of Field is great for cinematics and they’ve done a top job using it in the latest trailer for Day of Defeat, some very classy in-game cinematic work there.

It’s early days but the test video looks great, particularly since it’s running on the old Freespace 2 engine. Is it sad that I demand the Viper gun sounds be perfect?

They just keep hiding neat little features in their search engine. Before, I had to wade through the horrid Firefox-hating Odeon site. Now, I can view listings for my local Odeon and other nearby cinemas simply by typing movie: london (or even movie: hat whip adventure, it seems) into Google. Fabulous.

Some great choices here, their #1 pick is a personal favourite. Lost in Translation, Run Lola Run, City of God, Clerks, Usual Suspects… all great films also. See where some of your top flicks fit into their list, it seems a fair one to me given their criteria:

Our criteria for deciding the films were: firstly, the circumstances and spirit in which they were made, second, the quality of the result and, finally, its mark on the movie world.

Over at Next Gen. I’ve been gradually reading my way through my copy and I’ve yet to make my mind up about it. It’s seems to strike a nice balance between bringing non-gamers up to speed while not boring existing gamers with details they already know. It sometimes edges into hyperbole slightly, presumably to make it more exciting for non-gamers reading it, but like I said I’m not yet done with it and I’m enjoying it overall, some intereting insights. I’ll post some more concrete thoughts here once I’m done with it.

Now, it is admitedly stupid to move your Xbox 360 while it’s on, however accidents happen. It sounds like an angle grinder and the disc looks like it’s been attacked with one too (at the edges anyway).