JS> Ok, maybe i exaggerated how tough it was a bit. It just 
 JS> wasn't quite what i had expected, and perhaps i was a 
 JS> little bitter. :) But it did seem to me that you would 
 JS> die quite a bit. (the option to save whenever you want seems like a 
st)
  You don't die quite that often - you just have to be very alert to your 
surroundings, particularly in the one level of the Tomb Raider II demo.  
There are spiders everywhere, two T-Rexes, lots of crumbling floors and 
crushing walls, and that's not including the more mundane enemies.
 JS> Well, i dunno. If they're trying to get more girls 
 JS> involved by having a female lead, i don't think the 
 JS> ridiculous proportions on her are the way to go. It 
 JS> seems more than just a little blatant. And when you get 
 JS> a model to professionally play a character and she 
 JS> shows up everywhere, (U2 concerts?!?!) I would say 
 JS> that is really overexposed. I mean, come on. It is still just a game.
  The proportions may not be the ideal way to go, but they certainly don't 
hurt.  I hear most of the registered copies of TR2 in Japan are actually 
owned by women, not men.
  The key to Lara's appeal is that she's quite different compared to your 
usual game characters.  Consider her background: she comes from a wealthy 
family which was quite comfy, but decided to rebel and live life on the edge 
- even if it DID maintain her wealth.  She's a gung-ho person who doesn't 
accept "never" as an answer.
 JS> Yeah, I personally think it'll be worth getting the 
 JS> Dural (provided the price isn't totally outrageous, 
 JS> which it might be) just to see Messiah on it. Plus, 
 JS> Sega has always been able to get good 1st party 
 JS> software, plus, with the Dural being easier to program 
 JS> for, they should get considerably better 3rd party 
 JS> support. The only thing that bothers me is that Satan 
 JS> himself (Bill Gates) is behind all this.
  I wouldn't be surprised if the machine is $300-450 Canadian when it comes 
out.  Don't forget that it's supposed to be quite the hardware.  I hear it'll 
have 8 MB of general RAM, 8 MB video, 2 MB sound - that's probably $100-150 
right there.  Then there's the 12X CD drive which will support a special 1 GB 
format, and the 200 MHz RISC CPU.  For a console, that's really good.
  Hey, Bill Gates is just a smart (maybe too smart) businessman.  But they 
probably won't interfere too much, since once the machine's OS is finalized, 
they can't do any upgrades or anything.  Besides, it's just Windows CE with 
DirectX (which is decent nowadays!) and OpenGL.  No built-in IE4 or anything. 
 :-)
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