In relation to the picture above; I listen to a lot of Podtoid while playing Viva Pinata.

Music in games can be very good. It can also be completely irrelevant to what's actually going on. The radio in GTA IV is excellent, but it's often completely inappropriate to the situation. Is Niko really going to be listening to a talk radio station as he's busting someone out of jail? (I'm not actually complaining about the radio, I know that it can be turned off). Has anyone found your own music to help you pass a particularly difficult level? Beastie Boys 'Sabotage' in combination with Gears of War is absolutely epic. What do you do most of the time with music in games? Do you leave it as is, mute it or replace it with your own?

**SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW**

I'm just going to say it outright, the ending was completely incomprehensible to me. Rewinding time with the princess was unbelievably awesome, but I still don't understand what it all meant. Was the castle and saving the princess all a fabrication of Tim's mind or did it exist as some kind of metaphor to something in his life? Why were there unreadable books in the epilogue level? Do they become readable once you collect the stars?

Apart from all these questions I was left with, I must say, Braid was an absolute visual and aural delight. From the haunting beauty of the title screen, the game never failed to impress me as I went from world to world. As a cello player myself, the music to me resounded perfectly with game play and atmosphere. If you've finished the game, tell me what you thought about it and the ending.

Picture unrelated, but awesome.


I haven't been blogging on this site for very long, but since I've started doing it more regularly, I've realized its a lot like some kind of big turn based game. We write blogs, post them and others comment. Our interactions through the posts cause different reactions, almost like causing a car crash in GTA IV. Reading other peoples blogs is like observing the outside world, we can choose to be lurkers and simply observe it or interact with it. I think this is the appeal of blogging for me, it's just like a videogame but with almost infinite interactions and outcomes. Why do you blog? Do you see it as a game?

I found Ninja Gaiden at GAME the other day for $12. Sensing a bargain, I picked it up, knowing that by buying the vanilla version of the game, and not the 'Black' version(which I think is banned in Australia), I was forfeiting any kind of easy difficulty option.


That was a mistake.


The difficulty of that game is FUCKING INSANE. After beating the first boss, I've simply put the game back on my shelf and left it there for about a week. I don't know if I can go back to it now. The controls and fighting mechanics are absolutely brilliant, but the difficulty is a huge turn off for me. This is my question for you D-toiders, is brutal difficulty something that motivates you to keep playing a game, or, like me does it just scare the hell out of you?

I don't own a not R4. I don't use it to store non-backups of games that I don't not illegally own (okay enough, whoever can decifer the pentuple negatives in that sentence wins an internet). Basically it comes down to this. I am a very poor 17 year old gamer. The only games I can afford generally are either used games or very old cheap games. It also doesn't help that Australians get absolutely raped by the ridiculous pricings here. This means that any hypothetical new game that I may download for my DS would have either been a used copy if I had bought it or not a copy at all.

This is what presents the ethical dilemma. Should I support the used games industry that leads to profits lost by the game developers or is that simply the equivalent to them as piracy? Either way, the game devs would not have seen a penny. What are the D-toid community's opinions on this matter?

Incredibly enough, in my 6 months or so of being a member of the Xbox Live Gold service I have never come across the douchebaggery so often attributed to a select few of its members. Today changed that. I now have a new outlook on the definition of a douche. Apparently due to this adolescent's e-penis being immeasurably small, he felt the need to insult the fact that my Halo 3 service record was not as good as his. I simply cannot come to understand the mentality of a person who plays a videogame to verbally assault and belittle others. Do they find joy in spoiling other people's experiences? Are they so insecure that seek out a medium which grants them complete anonymity so they are free to express their wankerish ways? This Penny Arcade comic expresses my thoughts right now perfectly:



Then again, this experience did give me some inspiration to actually get off my ass and write another blog. THANKYOU, ASSHOLE