AMDman

Man, haven't posted anything here in QUITE some time. I was one of the original beta users of the site. It's just sad seeing how it all crumbled. But even more sad than that is the long time bridge that seems to have been burned between Gerstmann and everyone else. Ex GB members and contributers Dan, Mary, Mike, Vinny, Alex, Brad, Abbey, and Backalar all regularly or semi regularly interact with one another, talk one another up, etc. They NEVER bring Jeff into conversation. Obviously there's no real proof or anything but it seems somewhat obvious that there was a massive falling out. I have a hypothesis on what happened but I won't get into that. I love Fire Escape because they're so ridiculous. And I like Nextlander so long as they keep Brad from droning on and on and cutting people off. Giantbomb has fallen to a distant third place, if you can even call it a podium finish. I will listen to a bombcast if I'm on the road and have literally nothing else to listen to. Sad but true...

@paul_tillich:

I'm honestly inclined to agree with you. I haven't watched the show yet. I will this evening. But one thing I've learned about these guys having followed them since 2003, is that they stick together. It does appear that the site is more or less getting gutted. And I think it started with Abby. Who rents out office space and does all kinds of stuff and then immediately willfully removes themselves from their main source of income? With these guys, Alex and Vinny in particular, there was so much conversation had by them on the beastcast with them expressing their curiosity and lack of info on when they were going to be told what was going on with their working situation in the future that it didn't seem at all like there was a plan to leave. They were literally like well we'll see where they put us. Bakalar getting shifted to the "gaming group" or whatever they call it adds another wrinkle. I hope these guys the best. Love em all. Will continue to follow them and hope they continue to do similar stuff in their future endeavors. But not gonna lie I got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach with regard to the future of giant bomb...

$60 version is back. Maybe it'll go up with the EU PSN update...

Another Update: $60 version is now showing "Not available for purchase" on PSN. Perhaps they're working on updating the listing to include the free PS+ version??

Update: The discounted $50 version for PS+ subscribers is now live, but still no free version

It looks like the store has updated. Vib-Ribbon is up and all the October Plus deals are visible but no PS+ Driveclub...

I think that if the story was told in a more conventional fashion, this game would be great. As is though, at least at the point that I'm at currently, 3hrs or so in, it just feels SO disjointed. It's literally like someone took a really good movie that was made in order and just edited it and mixed up the scenes. It's just a bunch of individual scenes with hard loads between each one.

The logos that you see on the EU version are printed on a clear plastic sleeve. The steelbook itself is the same, except for the spine which is blank on the EU version.

As I said, I enjoy being able to display my collection. It is my prerogative to feel that way just as hiding your collection is yours.

It's been a while since I imported one but I don't recall them being much more expensive. Maybe $10-20 more than a typical US game?

@slashdance said:

In my experience, steelbooks don't really stand the test of time. I got a few when they started doing them in the early/mid 2000's, a lot of them are now rusty. Halo 2 being the worst, it now looks like this:

I tend to avoid them like the plague now. Maybe they got better at making them, but you don't know that until 5 years later so no thanks.

Uh, geez where do you live? It's pretty humid here in New Orleans, but damn! I've never seen any of my steelbooks exhibit that behavior. I'll have to see if I can dig up my copy of that but I'm pretty sure it's fine. But actually, at least in the pic, the rust lends a bit of battle-worn-ness to the look of the case

This may seem very fickle of me, but I'm really disappointed with the way...whoever is responsible handled the US Special Edition exclusive to Gamestop. I'm a sucker for a good steelbook, or any sort of unique packaging really. All of my games and movies are on display in my living room and all of my friends are at varying degrees into this stuff, so I like it when companies do that sort of thing. Some European users managed to get ahold of the game early and posted videos of the packaging on the youtubes. I saw the steelbook, which had already been revealed, covered by a nice clear plastic sleeve which overlays the title. The spine of the steelbook is also plain black with a similar overlay treatment of the title from the sleeve. so I was excited. I thought we'd finally gotten a nice domestic release of a quantic dream special edition. When I picked up my copy from Gamestop today however, I was a bit shocked to see that while the steelbook was 98% correct(the spine has the title printed on it) the sleeve was changed for a cardboard version featuring the EXACT SAME art as the standard edition. Now I know some of you will say just get rid of the sleeve, but I like keeping all of my stuff complete. I have all my lego, transformers, and console boxes as well. I just don't understand why the US always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to packaging for these things. We don't even get the printed manual that the Euro versions feature. What is even the point of the steelbook if it's just going to look exactly like the standard version on my shelf? Now I know that the EU version runs a few Euros more than their standard edition. I would have gladly paid a few bucks more for parity. Maybe I'll just have to import everything from the UK from now on. I did that for Heavy Rain and the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They didn't even bother bringing those Special Editions over...

Is anyone else running this in chrome on a laptop? I'm running chrome on a 13" macbook air and have to run the broswer in fullscreen in order to see the whole site. In the usual window mode portions of the site are cut off and can't be scrolled over.