Raithe

So in the wake of the press over GameStop's actions.. they've apparently decided to just pull all physical copies of the pc version of thegame from their shelves.. and are refusing to sell it unless Square Enix provides copies that do not include the OnLive coupon...

And another fuzzy science thing.. California Crime Predicting Computers

Had some crappy dreams which didn't start me off in the best of moods this morning, then I found Amazon had done a bit of a balls up so I'm its quite likely I'm going to have to wait several more days for my copy of Deus Ex to arrive. The puppy keeps trying to eat the cat, and I'm trying to not let it get on my last nerve and vent my general air of irritation on him unfairly.

That's what I get for not checking alll the threads ..

I wouldn't pick it up from GameStop if I were you.. It looks like they might have a small bit of bad press cropping up.. GameStop removing Free Code from Deus Ex games..

From gamescom... The Saints Row The Third interview with the "Quality Assurance Team".. and said interviewer seems just a tad flustered..

The reasons for the energy use actually came up in one of the interviews. Apparently they did implement takedowns without any energy use, but the testers would go through entire levels just using takedowns and not bothering to "find" any of the alternate routes or actually put that much thinking into it. So in the attempt to balance it out and make sure folks would do more.. they decided game balance needed that energy use just to put a slight check in... Swings and roundabouts I guess...

.. and I keep hearing the argument between the Cthulhu cultists "It's a star!" "No! It's a tree!" "It's a star!!" "Tree!!" "If you try using a tree sign to summon the great evil one you'll be...." Edit: Okay.. maybe I've listened to a Shoggoth on the Roof a few times too many..

Poked a bit at work, tried sketching out some thoughts, and played a bit with the puppy. Having a short lunch of fresh from the oven breaded camembert and pondering on the urge to have a doodle with some Shadowrun stuff.

There's an interview with Mark Strong out on his voicing Captain Titus in Space Marines. Kind of interesting to see how he came into it and that he's playing a hero for once... Captain Titus Interview

Well happy days and celebrations and wotnot. Congratulations for making it another year closer to the grave...

Fast and Furious Five. Ludicrous physics. But some pretty cars, and prettier women. Fun driving, a few entertaining crashes and some gunshots. So..generally amusing.

Went from a fairly sunny day yesterday, to a rather grey and rainfilled one today.. Pretty much everyone appears to have had a bad night and have thus been cranky today. That and mom's pain levels are a bit higher then normal, especially in one of her arms, so there's been the fun of that. The dogs were being a bit full of energy, and its always fun to give them a run around in the rain to wear some of that energy out. But I still managed to poke a few work related momens through. Now my sister has managed to finish off ME on her new laptop, and she wants me to put ME2 on it for her. Deciding whether I should wait a bit and let her get into the game before adding the dlc missions for her... And that generally optimistic anticipation for the new Deus Ex has actually got me reading through some shadowrun books for that general vibe.

And Gamespot has a couple of cutscenes from the game up already.. Intro-Sequence Cutscene Six Months Later Cutscene

They're also saying the Radiant system should do wonders for making it "unique". Sort of if you get a quest sending you to a dungeon, but you've already visited dungeons a, b, c and d in the area, the system will identify dungeon E as the on you have to go to... Just to make sure you "explore" the world and don't have to backtrack. I don't know, after all the disapointment over Oblivion, this is definitely on my wait and see list rather then jump on straightaway.

Yup, Amazon.co.uk is listing the shipping date as 25-26th.

I have to admit, I liked the : That's what reviews are for.. entertaining little quotes and the occasional metaphor..

Yup, I pretty much told my boss I'm going to be incomunnicado this friday and weekend with Deus Ex.

Well the night ended yesterday with the cat managing to slip out of the house..so there was the fun of trying to catch a black persian at night. Then I had that morning start where I woke up early..and ended up slipping in and out of sleep, consciousness and half-daze for an hour or so before I could stir myself.

I know there's a serious amount of cynicism these days when games reviewers start lashing out the 90+ scores for new games.. but I think my optimism is balanced by the amount of people who played that leaked preview build some months back and how many of the hard-core DE fans pretty much wept in joy that it was a good game more like the original DE, rather then a bad follow-on like Invisible War.. That and the people who'd basically said they weren't that interested in buying the game who tried the leaked preview, and were all "right.. I played it..now I've pre-ordered it.." It's that kind of thing which gives you a little faith that it isn't going to be a complete crock of...

Actually kind of had a fairly peaceful day so far. A bit of a snooze in, some idle pc game time, some reading. Nothing that's really called for much hassle...

So it looks like there's very mixed feelings out there with EA's delivery of the news that they will actually stagger the number of SW:TOR copies they release. Apparently the numbers of pre-orders have suprised them, so rather then release "more" digital or physical copies right away, they plan to stagger it out to give them suitable time to see just how well the servers handle the numbers, and provide time to improve/expand capacity before they allow a next wave of game copies released..

Spend some time of the afternoon playing a little bit more Vampire Bloodlines... Having that optimistic anticipatory wait for my copy of DE:HR to arrive at the latter end of the week.

If you're going to do it.. you might as well do it properly... Floating Cities

Maybe it's because I did Classical Civilisation at college.. but the core of greek myths and literature.. pretty muchb seem to get repeated through stories of all sorts out of europe the past 2 millenia. That might just be the whole.. essential arcehtypes or some such. Or it might be that I'm a wee bit drunk at the moment.