LadyCrimson

I suck at real-time backing up and strafing with tile-based 90degree angle movement turns in narrow 1tile hallways. Because of this, clusters of 4-5 enemies wipe the floor with me on Normal. Everything else is manageable, even fairly easy. But more than two and I just die. I've been able to win eventually after several reloads etc. but phew...I'm not even on lvl 4 yet. Maybe I'll try Easy. Or do what everyone seems to be doing - skipping areas and going back later. I hate doing that tho....

I have that stupid "Han Solo I'm Han Solo" song stuck in my head and find myself seriously considering getting an Xbox just for the Kinect dance thingie. The dancing/learning popular dances that way looks like fun. Someone slap me.

Never read those books, but the "trailer" is fascinating to try and recognize what films all the pieces came from.

Most of hubs main client office is down with a cold, including hubby. I think he said there's one healthy person left. No big fevers tho...think it's just cold, not major flu. Hubs staying home/working remotely so he can make sure to infect his wife.

No bandwidth limit here. I don't think I'd describe it as "fighting" "the man" either, altho it is a principle thing with me. If they want to have an online for singleplayer requirement, that's their business. I don't expect/have illusion that my not buying the game will make even a remote dent in their policies. If my internet goes down, I want to still be able to play the game, for example. I'd have been less peevish about it perhaps if their excuses for implementing it hadn't been so pathetic. At least be man enough to admit it's nothing more than DRM, ala Ubisoft etc, or turn it into an MMO to begin with. But it wasn't just that...the RealID thing annoyed me, the direction Activision/Blizzard has been going in has annoyed me...and the game videos I've seen/stuff I've read about D3 didn't make the game sound very awesome, either. Combo of all sorts of things.

Hahaha, haven't seen one of those in a while.

Still in the very start of Grimrock but so far I'd agree with Drowsy's assessments. If this type of game never appealed in the first place, this one probably won't change your mind. But it's fun so far. The movement speed feels a little too fast & jerky at first, when used to the way games are today, but it's something you get used to. Food bar is slow to go down and a piece of food fills it up pretty well, see no issue with that either, other than remembering to check now and then. Word of caution: if you generally like to run with vsync off (as I do), make sure to turn it on for this game. If you have it off it causes the GPU to run very hot almost instantly. Mine was reaching mid-90's. First time I've ever had a game do that to me to that extent w/vsync off. Skyrim would occasionally very slowly heat up if I just sat in a high fps place doing nothing for long minutes, but since I never sat around doing nothing very often it wasn't a big deal.

True to a point perhaps (rougher lifestyles), but some of that youngish ppl looking older also comes from the photography tech/style back then. They were not terribly flattering to skin tones and textures...not to mention the rather severe poses/expressions of most portraits, weird hair, and very easily damaged photo material from any handling. Even 10 years later the tech was better and ppl started looking a bit more like we might expect.

I know a couple people in the betas. One didn't like numerous things about it (skill UI for one) back in late Feb...and then fell silent. The other, more recently, described the experience as "does feel simpler than D2 but still fun." I'm still not buying, even if it's awesome. And I'm sure it'll still be considered awesome by most.

I wish I had a clue how much "faster" the new gen of i5's and i7's are vs my old one. Not that it matters that much since this rig still runs everything top notch. And we're at 680 GTX's now? Heh. Still lovin' my 590 and still hoping I won't have to upgrade anything else for a couple years at least.

Ohhhh, yes, yes....they have Darkstone now. I can run it on Win7 without all the weird things I had to do to make it work. Wonder if my old save games will work with this version. lol

That review definitely makes me want to play that game. The puzzle stuff will likely annoy me at a times, unless it's nothing more than Tombraider-level puzzles, but yeah...sounds great to me. I love the idea of lots of secrets and the reviewer mentioning they kept hunting every tile for them. Luv that stuff.

Hm. So it maybe never gets much beyond what they're doing now? That's a little disappointing. I mean, I don't need/want LotR end of the world massive army fight scenario or anything, but the way they're building it up and up as some kind of big mystery/threat, one expects/want a little bit of resolution. Vague threats that never materialize are/would be ... weak. ...decided to wiki the books, reading just the plot descriptions for "The Wall" and it looks like not much until the 3rd book, and then maybe more in the 6th and 7th books that aren't finished/published yet. :/

Ack, wall of text! Stopped reading after the first sentence. ...no, seriously, it's great to hear from you tarna. I love the jet pendant ritual, the idea behind it. Creative and touching. And man...that lobster dinner. Just looking at it gives me heartburn. What a ginormous feast, and gorgeously displayed too. She must have loved it. Mad skillz.

I'm not asking/advertising for backers, but I discovered this project on Kickstarter called Nekro, by Darkforge, "a group of industry vets hailing from studios such as Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft and more. We have many years of experience creating quality games for both ourselves and large AAA studios." Just sounded interesting to me, perhaps a thematic cross between Dungeon Keeper and....other games. Thoughts? Here's their announcement video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb4KFoizKss

Does it get "worse" in the other books? I don't remember the 1st first bouncing around so much it annoyed me overmuch. But it's been a long time. But at any rate, I think such writing methods work better in a book than series/movie. At least novels you get more exposition/inner thoughts. Not sure how they could have changed it to better, since it's not the kind of series you can probably make one chr. a main story telling pov focus or something. Anyway....question - I don't want major spoilers or anything, but how much longer until we know more about the other side of the Wall? Does that happen in the 2nd book or is it quite a bit further down the line? I'm sure they give it in dribs and drabs, but I mean where it starts to become a Kingdom wide concern or something...if it ever does.

Watched Red Sox game (lost in extra innings...), pestered spouse, ate meat, cleaned house, played old games, indulged my pet's catnip habit, ate more meat, watched some TV. Now time for bit more old games, then some zzzz's. Or maybe just the zzz's.

In terms of the way HBO is doing this series: 2nd season Plot arc I'm interested in/would like to know more of: the nightwatch/other side of the Wall. Plot arcs that I'm so far pretty neutral about: everything else. Don't care who becomes King, no reason to care yet. The constant switching from chr./story arc to another every 1-3 minutes is still distracting and since this time I'm not even familiar with the book, such brevity and bouncing around pretty much divorces me from caring about all the new chrs. they're introducing/establishing. So far at least. But the first half of the 2nd episode did have some nice scenes of political intrigue dialogue. Well written imo. Also liked the brief turn from the actor playing the pirate with the ship fleet and a couple other of the short introductions.

Watched an 11min gameplay vid of Botanicula. Yes, must get. Die of cuteness.. I really like the graphics/artwork on it as well.

I hate Fox-tv mlb blackouts etc. I wanna see the Red Sox, not the Giants. Oh well...WEEI audio on one PC, video game on the other. Plus, it's a nice day, may do some spring gardening. (edit) Yes, I'd like an update as well. I hope Tarna's doing ok.

Too much. Altho if it wasn't for the lyrics on the screen, I'd have no idea what they were singing, outside of the recognizable music.

I never wear high heels, but if I were to do so, I'd have to get me a pair of those. ...Han Solo dancing. Cute. And that song. The thing that makes it weird tho is he's dancing in front of that freezing chamber. Happy to be frozen, Han?

You pay more Social Security/Medicare, because you don't have an employer who matches your contribution (ie pays half or at least part of it). You are the employer and the employee so to speak and must pay in the full amount. You can use that "employer donated half" estimated amount as as a deduction I think, but it doesn't amount to some kind of big savings, at not least in our case. State taxes aren't much.

Sitting around, noticing it's April, and wondering how we're going to manage to pay our exorbitant self-employment taxes again this year. March-June has been quite the squeeze since we bought this little house, what with the economy being in the pits for so long. Oh wait, I'm supposed to be positive because we made an investment into our future. Which I'm sure will turn out to be grand in the long run. Assuming I live that long. ...time for some of those LOLcats.

Oooh, I just saw the vid for Botanicula. I'm not usually into point/click games like that but it's so cute. I may have to get it. Yes, I'm liking GoG more and more every year. I toss money their way every year and hope for their continued success.