I hang all the GTA maps (the ones that come in the box) on my wall next to each other. It's cool. Some of them have a poster on the side, I love that.

Just learned about this game from that free show you can watch on the PSN, not Qore but the other one... looks neat, is it a game or an interactive movie? also there were some fighting elements... not many adventure games get fighting right..

I loved Indigo Prophecy, so was the wife, so we're planning on getting it.
Between MAG, AVP, and Heavy Rain, our PS3 is going to be tied up quite a bit for February.

For me, it's because when I do go out of my way to buy a game first hand/retail, it's because I want to collect it as well as play it. A crappy cover ruins the value of the whole product in terms of collecting. A product with a good cover get's prominent display within my collection, those with crap covers, just don't deserve the shelf space, I'd have a digital version in that case. Works well with PC games (when I can get them retail/import), but with console games, if I'm not impressed with it enough to want to collect, I tend not to purchase until I can find it second hand.
I guess if games were a lot cheaper, it wouldn't be such a huge thing, but when it has a hefty price tag, I think we deserve decent box art at the very least.

I liked the beginning and middle part of indigo prophecy but the end fell flat. Then again, the ran out of time making the game so the ending was rushed. It was a fun game though and I will look forward to this game.

Good! I thought it was only me that thought TVs over here were stupidly expensive - and that it's impossible to get bargains.
I was waiting for the new year sales to pick up a Wii and a few other electronics things, but of course no price cuts, no bundles, nothing decent. (though the wii is reasonably cheap here anyway).
If this was the UK, I could just jump on the web and find a bargain on a 6 month old design of a HDTV... but here it's impossible to find anything at a reasonable price.
The last 2nd-hand electronics store I found (hard-off) was selling 2 generation old ipods for MORE than current generation ones!!!
Do you know if a japanese HDTV would work in the uk? I'm guessing they use different standards.
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Oh, yeah, er... hard rain.
Well, I bought indigo prophecy in the steam sale, but i haven't installed it yet.

I doubt it would be able to handle signals for TV broadcasts and would probably require a step down converter to handle the UKs 240 volt system instead of the 110 volts used here. But I guess it would work well enough for consoles/DVDs. But to be honest, you'd be far better off getting a TV in the UK, it's bound to have more functions. The only thing it wouldn't have probably, is the ability to split the left and right audio tracks -- the feature used here for handling bilingual broadcasts and the like. But then, you wouldn't even need that feature for consoles/DVDs.
I'd be more interested in seeing if a UK TV could be imported over and gotten work.

i don't get MAG, rather it sounds silly... also before i bought a ps3 i thought console FPS players were hardcore, as i started allowing my system to run these abominations i noticed.... people suck at FPS! UT3 i was basically killing everyone and im never in the top 10 on the PC version... Ressistance again killing everyone on the console, it was a very odd happening...
its like skill and tactics dont matter its all jumping and strafing...
As for heavy Rain, the guy looks perpetually high in all the videos... but that doesn't matter i want to play this like crazy!

From what I hear, most European TVs are universal models capable of displaying both PAL and NTSC material. Most American TVs on the other hand are NTSC only. I don't know about Japanese TVs, but if they are NTSC only as well then you won't have much luck using them in the UK - video inputs from European game consoles and DVD players will be PAL formatted.
Another matter is line voltage; Japan uses 100 V vs. 230 V in the UK. Many appliances have universal power supplies, but not all.
A third point is the digital broadcasting standards: Europe and Japan use different standards. This is only an issue if you want to use the TV's internal decoder though, you'll be fine if you use an external decoder box (satellite/cable/terrestrial receiver).
Useful wikipedia articles: , [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC]NTSC, line voltage, digital television

Well here's the japanese cover. Dunno if its better or worse. It looks less generic but its also still crap
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/01/the-japanese-heavy-rain-box-art-stinks/

And Australia gets a white cover with the words Heavy Rain on it and nothing else.

Sadly I'm not surprised. Looking at the Japanese trailer they're trying their best to make this a relative of the Saw movies. They should just probably go ahead and stick the silly Saw puppet thing on the cover and change the name of the game to Saw 0.
I will certainly have to get hold of a UK version.

News on the demo and the DLC. Awesome both ways but I hope they make some DLC that has you playing the actress from the tech demo, that'd be extra awesome

You're from Japan? I just got here in Okinawa last month. Which part of Japan are you at?