Those are embargo reviews, only good reviews are allowed out first. However I am sure from a graphical perspective nothing else can touch it. We ll see how the actual gameplay reviews are once the real reviews are out.

i signed up for the free trial that came w/xbox and love it so much i decided to keep my sub (smart marketing ppl) i will have to check this out

Trying to help my buddy find a new game. He really enjoys huge games that take forever. His last three that he beat, and in order of best to worst:

Fallout 3
GTA4
MGS
Farcry

Recommendations?

Does he play PC games or is this only 360/PS3?

PS3 only.

Oblivion.

orange box is prob my fav ps3 game

Nice. I was kind of thinking that, but was hoping someone would suggest it. RPG's have a lame reputation, but it looks like this game is pretty solid.

Thanks for the input.

Orange Box sounds good too.

Folklore

Anybody here ever try the Roku machine that Netflix sells?

Pretty happy early adopter here. See this OOT thread for discussion.

Thanks for the heads-up, Astro.

I am being wussy with my game playing choices. I seem to be taking the easy way out instead of playing games I should be playing.

I am about 80% done with Secret of Mana, but got stuck and never even looked at a guide, just stopped playing.

Got semi-stuck in Zack and Wiki and quit playing, probably 60-70% done.

Got stuck in the 2nd or 3rd last level in MegaMan 9 against that big clay block guy, and never returned.

Still haven't put Okami in my machine.

My playing the last month has consisted of Guitar Hero WT about 10 songs a week, some Dr. Mario online matches, and beating Banjo-Kazooie (beaten it 10 times at least), Banjo-Tooie (actually proud of myself, 5th time I started a game with it, but first time I got every Jiggy since first playthrough), Goldeneye (beaten it 4 times at least), and am now playing through Mario 64 instead of playing a game I haven't beaten before. I of course have beaten Mario 64 3-5 times in the past, but seem to not want much of a challenge lately in my gaming life. Kinda boring if you ask me.

So I downloaded FF7, and I'm addicted again.

Thought I might be persuaded to get an X-box instead of a Roku, but it sounds less convincing the more I read. It looks like you have to sink a solid amount of money into the X-box to get it cool and quiet and good for multiplayer, so the advantages of getting a stripped down x-box instead of a roku have started to look smaller and smaller.

No idea what a Roku is, but the 360 is pretty much silent when it's not running games. And if the noise from the DVD drive while running games bothers you then you can install them to your HDD now.

Get a Roku if your primary interest is Netflix, IMO. It's tiny, low-power, has an awesomely simple remote, and seems to work better than any of the other Netflix streaming methods I've tried (PC, TiVo, 360). I usually choose my bedroom Roku over my living room TiVo Series3 just because it's simpler and more reliable.

I also wouldn't want to power up a game console and go through its UI every time I watched something, and I'd be annoyed about paying an additional subscription fee (Xbox Live Gold) to get Netflix access. If you'll do a decent amount of gaming on it that takes it out to an apples vs oranges comparison, though. Only you can make that call.

I just posted a link to an Endadget Netflix shootout between the Roku, TiVo, 360, and a couple Netflix-enabled Blu-Ray players in the OOT Netflix Watch Instantly thread.

Already try http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/n64/game/199288.html ?

If you've got a HDD, then you don't have a stripped down version anymore.

I was thinking, hmm, Roku is $99 but with tax and delivery comes out to $127 to where I live. Stripped down x-box is $199 at Amazon with free shipping. But to get an x-box to where I would like it to be, it would be much more than $199, so I realized I wasn't really getting an xbox for only 75 more. I would just be getting a ticket to spending a lot more money to get it to be the x-box I would want. So it's more like a $127 vs $300 or $400 deal than a $127 vs $200 deal.

Thanks Astro, and that link looks like a good read.

Yeah, I did. First place I looked. There was a guy in the forum there asking the same question.

I finally found a site dedicated to N64 manuals and got what I was after.

And it was.

you can get the middle priced xbox for $255 at dell and the year live membership for $30

so you could realistically get a good player for ~$300

$170 for the lower priced one so that would run a little over $200.

Tax and shipping for the middle one at dell needs another $50 for tax and shipping tho?

Has anyone here played the Fear 2 demo yet?