"You do know that orientated isn't a word"
"In Canada it is, so F*** you!"

Man, was that ever funny. Dear Americans, don't forget that our English has some strong British tendencies

For me, as second language user, I'm a bit torn between the two ways of writing. Since I'm Canadian I try to make the effort of adding the u in Colour or Behaviour hehe.

Don't get me started on the argument about Cue vs. Queue. Troy Goodfellow and I are throwing down about it in email at the moment!

It's context sensitive, like an A button.

Swing away, Elysium, swing away.

A cue is a signal. A queue is a line.

Oh, great, another asinine argument over the nuances of the English language. Right on cue.

I found this week's podcast kinda short - you covered what you've been playing and emails but you left out the sexy topical midriff.

I bought that kung fu Boggle game on the advice of fellow Englishman and professional Garnett Lee wrangler, John Davidson. After a few goes I lost interest, as with pretty much all iPhone games I've played so far except for Edge. Seriously: if you have an iPhone bereft of Edge you should remedy this situation immediately.

I thought we only had arcane discussions of the English language when a Conference Call thread was dying. This one is just getting started!

Which one's the guy from Star Trek: TNG?

Hi boys,
I wonder if you all feel like we have now officially passed the first gen/new gen cycle of these consoles. As a Wii aficionado, Madworld and House of the Dead: Overkill make me feel that the middle gen product had arrived. Not in content (both very violent titles), but in presentation and skill. Are we in the middle cycle of the current consoles' game spans? I feel we just entered it, but maybe that happened at Christmas with Fable 2, Fallout 3, and Left 4 Dead? The Wii being the leader of the pack (by numbers) is how I am viewing this concept.
Where are we in the game cycle of the current consoles?
As a poor soul who is confined with his mother in law for ten days, she works on a little Sudoku book on the couch for an hour, I agree with Rabbit that this is better for her than playing Castle of Shikigami III (with me ), or watching Dr. Phil.
There are mentally challenging video games, but my Mother in law is not playing them, nor ever will, so it is better she is doing Sudoku on the couch.

I think we're in the middle at this point. When early games like Gears of War get sequels you're pretty much at the point where developers are comfortable with the hardware and we begin to see that paying off in actual releases. Resident Evil 5, for example, looks so damn good at times I don't even understand how the 360 runs it so smoothly.

That machine is almost 4 years old and it does better graphics than my 300$ video card bought last year.

I don't remember who said "don't play RE5 if you don't have a friend to play it with" but it's true. Sooo true.

Still hating War Plan Pacific, Julian? I know you recorded this show before our talk about it.

Anyway, don't listen to him. WPP is a very simple wargame, easier to understand than Birth of America and full of small crucial decisions. I think it was the best wargame of 2008.

On the justification of our hobby: You touched on something that I think we all feel. Though our hobby is, I think, just as healthy most other hobbies, we're still of a generation that has to endure the negative stereotypes associated with gaming. It's something like a cross between Comic-Book Guy and Otto. It's funny, because I've had conversations that feel an awful lot like that conversation toward the end of the podcast.

Gamers don't want to describe their hobby in a way that's reflexively defensive, but goddamn if it ain't second nature. At least, for me it is.

Fairway Golf is unbelievably good. Delicious, even. But it's no Peggle.

Peggle is fantastic because of the drama of each shot. And when you hit that final orange peg and the game explodes into ridiculous joy? That's the best.

No, because the way you state it now makes it very clear that this is just your opinion and I'm not sure we can truly argue about it like Internet nerds now.