LadyCrimson

Watched a sloppy-crazy yet entertaining to watch baseball game between the Red Sox & the SF Giants. Pedroia nearly breaking his foot wasn't good news tho. On the bright side, I like both teams so it almost doesn't matter who wins/loses. It's been a relatively quiet week...looking forward to a quiet weekend.

I found Alcatraz boring myself - not the history of the place but the tour/seeing it - but landmark/visiting wise, I'd still say go see it. The general 'go there & check it all out' places are going to be the usual well known areas/parks/attractions. I can't really think of anything super specific & easy to point out...I used to love the Exploratorium, w/all it's hands on sci/arts exhibits & such but I haven't actually been there in a long time so I can't say what it's like now. Ano Nuevo's seals/walking tours are always a feature, but it's not the best time to see them. Also...in case you aren't aware, if you don't like driving nutty ocean high cliffside roads, get off of Hi 1 around Half Moon Bay/92 to avoid Devil's Slide section. If you don't care about that, keep on going, it is a pretty section. I once would've said you must see the rock n roll laser shows at the Morrison Planetarium in GG Park, but I believe they shut those down from lack of interest (it's not cool enough anymore) a while back. ...such a shame. I think they're still shown in other areas here & there tho so maybe you've already seen one like it anyway.

"The Road." ...now there's a serious 'post-apocalypse' movie. Slowish, but appropriately so. Gloomy & desolate. No zombies or outlandish over-the-top horror beyond the horror, paranoia & desperation brought about by the situation itself. Viggo Mortensen and the child actor are both great. I am left to wonder, however, what the significance of the It's a minor thing, but why show it if it doesn't mean something? heh

That made me LOL... Assuming the action/combat is very fast paced with the typical hordes that tend to just charge right for you, complex or skads of spells/combos are often unused spells because they don't typically work well in those situations. I agree it'd be nice to have more interesting magic in the game, but well, we shall see. I'm happy with simple buffs/direct dmg/summon for action-rpg as long as the combos are engaging & fun to use against the given enemies.

The more posts of yours I read, the more I like you. ...I'm the same way. Myself, I don't really care about flashy or combat animations...although when they're there, I don't complain, since they are nice to look at. For me hack n slash is largely about treasure hunting. I like the hunt and thrill of having that awesome thingie finally drop.....all to become stronger so I can more effectively cover the floor with monster corpses. Or just to collect them. Course, it's also nice when there's a bit o' strategy involved at times, like being able to duck around corners and snipe at groups or draw them out one at a time or something, so it's not just about dashing in guns/fists blazing/quaffing potions. Probably why I liked starting Diablo1 Sorceror's so much. Had to do a lot of that initially cause he was so weak.

@Nathaniel Chapman -- I also like multiple options, so this sounds good to me!

I'll add Borderlands to that mix, which was even more Diablo-like than Kotor. 1st person hacknslash with guns, haha. It worked with 2-4 people quite well, although it WAS annoying at times not being able to see the other player except when they were right in front of you. They used dots on the mini-map to let you know where they were, but it isn't the same as actually being able to see them...you easily lost track. Edit: Also, Summoner was 3rd person (with a very wide view) with a campaign party+MP & it worked most of the time (there were some camera issues in some areas). That said, while other viewpoints can/do work, for this type of game I do definitely prefer the top-down type of view or at least a wide 3rd person view ala Kotor.

Book of Eli. I found it interesting, tho as often happens, it fell apart in the end somewhat. I also completely missed the chr. "twist" with all the tiny clues. Guess I was snoozin'. So watched it twice to think those over. I'm still debating whether I believe it. Which makes the movie memorable. And I liked Daybreakers overall, too. Good/fun concept.

There's also Big Sur (beach, camping), Monterey (beach, aquarium, shops, coastal walking stuff), Santa Cruz (small amusement park w/famous coaster, culture, beach) on the way up. Depends largely what you want to do. Outdoorsy, indoorsy, nature, people/shows, etc. I would suggest, since you have the time, to not take Hi 5 all the way up. It is one boring boring drive from LA (just realized...all assuming you meant tinseltown...if not, er...well, never mind all this then) If you don't mind the slow route, take the coastal road 1, at least parts of the way, and 101 otherwise.

Nope. Cameron has more sense than that.

Even as a straight-to-DVD...Why oh why. http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/05/07/titani...is-coming-soon/

I dunno about that, but I do often feel like I see city names I recognize, at least somewhere in credits, an awful lot. Lots of tech stuff around. The big one around here nowadays is EA. I believe Blizzard originated here, & the old Blizzard North was located not far away.

I've been playing Titan Quest/Immortal Throne again. Discovered that the stash contents in backed up saved games are apparently computer name/file folder structure dependent, or something, so all old chrs. item stash collections are empty & revert to the original tiny size (have to pay to expand it again)...bummer. Oh well. More fun to start from scratch again anyway.

We were one small road-bump from Morgan Hill, tho still officially in San Jose. I used to cruise down Monterey Rd to 101 & beyond a lot, both to visit some friends & just for crusin' sake. Can't recall, but I don't think I posted this pic here before. If I did, sorry for repeat. But it's a stitched together view of the Peninsula/Bay from atop Windy Hill park. It's nothing special/gorgeous, with all the saturated city haze/bluish color but kinda fun to look at maybe. The pink-roof buildings on the right are Stanford U. (1.1MB) http://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/med...l-panorama5.jpg

Agreed. The concept is new to me personally...willing to try it. I might end up liking it quite a bit.

So does this mean that my husband can 'swipe' any of my finds I put in the inventory to use/sell himself?...I can hear the "where did my item-of-awesome that I was saving go??" arguments now... Edit:I know it says class-specific items, but we have a tendency to want to play the same class....

I couldn't get DungeonSiege 1 working & Diablo2 ran but gave me error hiccups, but other than that, only games I've had trouble with are ones like Dungeon Keeper (not surprising)...but I also haven't tried to install that many 3-5 year old games on Win7. I won't try until I want to play them & haven't wanted to play much so...

I'd like to thank funcroc for posting all these links/info, since it means I don't have to spend time looking them up myself. ) Also...I think this is the first time I've felt a serious tingle of anticipation/hope/excitement over an upcoming title/project since the announcement of Diablo3. Thanks, Obsidian. I'm confused whether this means each player gets a 'very large' inventory or all players share a 'very large' inventory. A shared stash that all co-op players can access/share is (to me) a strange concept.

I live in what they call the "Peninsula" area of the Bay, on the W. side of the water, halfway between SF and SJ. It would take us 5-6 hours to reach Lake Tahoe/Sierras in good traffic. Pic: Black circle=area I currently live & area I grew up in) Red circle= area where I lived when I first started posting on this forum. Green circle=park/area where that photo was taken. What does that have to do w/where I live? Melting pot, y'know.

K...I'm a complete noob when it comes to such MP services but from what I've heard over the years Gamespy has never appealed to me. I'll look closer into both, thanks.

If you like XP, no reason to run out and get Win7 until something you really want to run actually demands it. Or you can keep the old pc to run older favorite XP programs and make the new one Win7. If you want to have loads of system RAM and don't have XP-64, then getting Win7-64 for new build might be worthwhile since you'd need a 64bit os anyway.

My thoughts too. Very unfair. C'est la vie. I wasn't close with him and I'm fully aware he could be very contentious at times (so can we all), but I respected him. Plus he kept things lively.

Ditto. I take it this means, then that retail players must use Gamespy & can't use other things, like this GameRanger? Expansion packs: Zombie Island is worth $10 imo, if you like the original game and want new area to kill monsters/zombies in. But if you do it last on a 2nd playrhough (where you're a pumped lvl 50 already) it won't be much challenge. So doing it before then is advisable. Secret Armory...I'd agree, I think it'd be difficult for MP. I also didn't like the emphasis on cars. In fact, whenever I could, I'd get out of the damn cars and kill on foot anyway. Also, this is the expansion that requires the patch that takes away the "easy" town red chests in regular BL areas that people would farm for gear (they turn to white chests). Moxie is combat arena+extra storage location & I think an extra skill point or two or something along those lines. I also hear it's insanely hard. I didn't buy it. None of the expansion packs have any fast travel station locations other than the one you arrive in. Meaning every time you restart the game to continue, you're put at the beginning again. It's a sore point, but in Zombie Island it's less of a factor since it's a lot smaller than Armory.

That right there is exactly my issue with most online 'co-op' multiplayer games. I do like playing with other people, but it's so difficult to find folks (randomly, on the internet) who are a good fit for me. If Dungeon Siege3 = my husband will play with me, it will become one of my favorite games. Which reminds me...will this have LAN, or will MP be online only?

"Legion" My husband thought it was better (that is, more entertaining) than Shutter Island. Myself...near the beginning I was thinking "all right this is going to be kinda like Demon Knight/Evil Dead or something, cool!"...but then it quickly dropped almost all Evil Dead/Demon Knight type humor & went for a super-serious atmosphere that kinda dragged it down....and even any unintentional humor was far & few between. That said...it's watchable. Had some promise, some good moments. Just not quite enough. Speaking of Shutter Island: Yea, the last scene was the most interesting for me, from a chr. motivation standpoint. It might not be the point of the movie, but it certainly made watching the movie more of a chore since they kept using all the movie tricks to make it seem/stay mysterious. I might've liked it as a character study better if they had left the mystery/suspense part out.