Tomm

It's just the core missions though? 23 hours solid is probably about right. Remember that it's a GTA game and there are hundreds of other things to do in it. Even when you do (just) the missions, you're probably only 40% of the way? I'm with Frika though - it seems a bit silly to rush it. Savour it

You are. You haven't even had it one week

This topic's a bit one-sided. Just to add some balance to all these amazing reviews - My back wheel is bent all over the shop. But I made it, maybe that's why... Actually, CRC have a pretty good reputation for building wheels these days. But they must have several people on the job so it must be pot luck whether you actually get a good one.

I hear what you're saying but why would you spend money on expensive "mega" pads when any old pad would do, if you're going to use tar? Good pads + grind = good brake for all conditions Any pads + tar = very grabby brake, no modulation, terrible in the wet, can stick on if you're not careful, requires constant reapplying of tar etc.

I don't see why having them is a problem?

I'm not sure about the install options but Photoshop 7.0 (or maybe CS, not sure on that one) is much 'lighter' and doesn't come with all that other stuff. N.B. If you've got an Intel Mac, PS 7.0 will be really slow. The gimp, in my experience, is also really slow and not as powerful as Photoshop.

Because he's supposedly advertising brake pads. Tar is dirty and if you're going use it, you can use whichever pads you like because it makes no difference. Obviously the megapads are shit need more work but videoing it and putting it in this topic which is supposed to promote the pads is just comedy

Oh, well same applies to the guy who made one out of wood... Is it any good?

Presumably was a terrible skateboard though? I was under the impression that skateboard decks had certain characteristics that made them good - like a nice amount of pop, springiness etc? Surely a perspex one (even if it didn't immediately break) would be rubbish?

Might as well stick it here: Where's the cheapest place to get XBL money? I need to buy geometry wars

Sucks to be you Nah, I'm waiting over a month for my copy (self imposed ban on buying GTA IV before my exams) so I'm totally jealous. Enjoy

And what exactly are you doing on here gloating instead of playing it?!

Nothing hogging the CPU at the moment (but it's fine and working properly). When it was misbehaving I couldn't even open activity monitor. I think it may have been due to low hard disk space - I only had 2Gb which I thought would be enough. I emptied the trash (all 16 Gb of it!) and it seems a lot better now. I'm surprised that having only 2Gb hard drive space would cause such a catastrophic slowdown, but there we go.

The £200 xbox 360 (it used to be called the xbox360 premium but is now just xbox 360) comes with a component cable. The HDMI cable is extra, so is the VGA one (for your PC monitor). Just plugged my iPod in and it will play music off the iPod, but not videos. Still, it's pretty cool to just plug the iPod in and then listen to any song I want in any game. It's quite slow to read the song names off the iPod though. If I was being picky, it would also be pretty cool if the iPod could charge off the USB even when the console is off (Then I could get rid of my mains adapter). Never mind, still definitely very cool.

Yeah you can. I've just tried an xvid file, works fine, not sure about others. It needed an update, but it was only 2.5mb, and then the file played fine. Gimme a minute and I'll try a HD rip of a film. Actually no I won't, my hard drive isn't big enough EDIT: Google tells me that it will do xvid and divx but not fancy things like mkv.

Yeah, I came on expecting to see a new site too. When should we expect it?

Right, my Mac (Powerbook) is being stupid. Recently (last couple of weeks or so) it's been getting really, REALLY, slow. When I boot it up, it's fine for about half an hour. Then I'll hear the hard drive and the fans spin up constantly (they're normally off 90% of the time) and everything will be super-unresponsive. No error messages, and everything still kinda works, just incredibly slowly. Normally when an app is being unresponsive, I can easily alt-tab or use Exposé or force quit, but now I can't do any of those things properly, which makes me think it's a problem with the OS itself rather than a particular program. The only thing that seems to fix it is a reboot, but then it's buggered again after another half an hour or so. It's doing it now and I don't have any 3rd party programs open - only Safari, Mail, System Prefs and Disk Utility. I'm not doing anything unusual, and I haven't installed anything weird recently or changed any settings. Anything I can do, short of a full re-install of leopard? I've repaired disk permissions and ran software update for what it's worth. Any ideas?

Yes.

He's not been banned. You should still be able to PM him (unless his inbox is full or he's turned off PMs), or email him.

You can cheat in two ways. Firstly, really "carve" into the turn before you take off, you can get 30 degrees or so of turn on the ground (I.e. now you only have to hop 150, not 180). Secondly, think about how you're landing - make sure your front wheel is turned in the correct direction to continue the spin when you're going backwards. If you spin anti-clockwise, turn the bars to the right (right hand towards you) slightly so when you're rolling backwards, it'll continue the spin (and vice versa for clockwise, obviously). This means that when you land, you hopefully won't stop so abruptly and you'll carry on rolling backwards. Don't forget to pedal backwards at this point. To do 'American' bunny hops is a bit trickier, I find, but if you do it right you can get loads more 'pop' - you'll spin more and get more height too. The key is to start as if you're doing a manual in a circle, then suck the back up and give it the full rotation.

That's a pretty good deal. Play.com are also doing one with an xbox360 (premium) + GTA IV for £199 if you have no preference on which console to get. http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/4-/53879...html?dpr=132836 They're due for sale on 2nd May (so basically a week behind the actual GTAIV lauch - and there's nothing about it being sold out. So I don't know how likely you are to get it on time, but it looks OK. There's not much difference between the 40Gb and 60Gb PS3s. Obviously the difference in hard drive space but that's pretty negligible. And apparently the 60Gb one has more USB ports and a card reader, which might be useful one day I suppose. The big difference is that the 40Gb one is newer and won't play PS2 games. I'm not sure if the 60Gb one ever did in the UK (?) but the 40Gb one definitely won't. EDIT: Play.com are sold out of GTA IV on the 360 and PS3, but it looks like you can still buy that £300 bundle.

Argh, I'm definitely leaving it a month before I get this (exams) but the wait is going to kill me. http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869485p4.html

He did the trumpet part for some of Radiohead's Amnesiac album, but loads of other stuff

They haven't even said they're planning a PC version though. I assume there will be one at some point, but maybe not for 6 months +.

They're for team riders only