Raithe

Hm, I really enjoyed the story part of Thief DP but I could never make up my mind on whether I thought the gameplay was much of an improvement or not...

They do seem rather happy throwing buzz words around .... But still, it could have possibilities... I shall rein in my judgement until I have more to base it on.

Found Fable the Lost Chapters for a couple of pounds.. Thought I'd give it a try. I was surprised when it turned out to be 4 cds.. I haven't had to change cd's during install in yonks.

Got around to finishing off Awakenings. It did feel a lot more.. tightly done plot then DA:O. And I'm kind of curious about how some of the other choices might have changed the endings..so there's possible replay there.

"Warhammer fantasy.. Warhammer 40k... Judge Dredd.. Rogue Trooper.. The UK bringing death, desolation and despair to sci-fi and fantasy for 40+ years.."

Hm, I've got to admit.. I seem to remember Marcus having more of a slab bridge line over his eyes rather than that smoothness..

And if you turn a corner and take a shotgun blast at a range of about 2'... you will die.

There is a slight element of oddity there.. certain groups are allowed to use those names within themselves and its okay.. but if you're not a member of that group it's offensive.. Kind of like "white pride" automatically jumps to racist behaviour, and "black pride" is viewed as socially more acceptable. Zealotry either side of the equation sucks. But it would be nice if there was a bit more balance in it all. Plus offensive speech is one of those groovy areas where it doesn't matter how you actually "meant" what you said. It's how someone else perceived it...

Well the full game might have a better "memory".. it could be one of the things they trimmed down for the demo so it wouldn't take up that much room...

The Stripper's Strike Back Heh, after putting up with harassment from a local church, club owner organises the "dancers" to protest outside the church... "You bring a placard.. we'll wear bikinis... You post our customers licence plates online.. and we'll shoot each other with super-soakers.. That's the Foxhole way..."

Heh, and the demo has 5 "hidden" playboys to find apparently. Are there some other collectibles to find in the 10 minutes you can spend wandering around the city?

Picked up C# 2010 for Dummies... Thought I'd go back to the dirt basics to refresh my mind... Say what you will about the "for Dummies" brand, but they do tend to include the really small background things you can totally forget about when you 'know' what you're doing...

It's only about 10-15 minutes of gameplay when you get down to it. And I like the warning "this is only intended as a demo, this level in the game will not be the same way".. Still, doesn't look too bad.

AvP2 with surround sound and played in a darkened room could really hit the creepy, nervous atmosphere...

Does it actually come down to whether you visit Heck first thing in Taipei or not? Isn't he supposed to react badly if you do missions before you talk to him? That might be the trigger that shifts whether he sells you out or not....

Imager's Intrigue - Modesitt's tie-off to the Imager trilogy. Fairly standard Modesitt work (one of his fantasy, not sci-fi), jumps the world ahead by five years.. gets the mind working a bit. There's a lot of nice depth to it, but you never quite feel the characters getting that emotional.

Sherlock (yes, its a bbc series, but each episode is 90 minutes long...) - Have to say, some mixed feelings on this one.. Holmes and Watson are very good, the whole shift to a modern day setting is handled nicely.. and they finally had the reveal of Moriarty. Just something seemed a bit.. off with this version of him. All previous episodes have had some foreshadowing of his presence, so there's been that nice build up to it. But for some reason, they have Moriarty (when playing himself as opposed to when in disguise) as some slightly manic.. almost as if they have a certain shade of the Joker in him. Which clashes with how I always imagined him.

But it did have a nice musical score to set the mood..

I was more thinking of them taking the moulin rouge route with it... I could just see Ewan McGregor as Herbert West... Jim Broadbent in the role of Armitage... and from outfield, Christopher Walken singing "If I were a Deep One.."

Hm I don't know, nothing really grated for me on the pc port... Hm, well the "tagging" was a little annoying, but that's about it. Being caught up in the sheer amount of .. silly exuberance of it.. and then having one of the missions suddenly break out one of those "damn, these guys are nasty/viscious" could be a little odd.. but actually seemed to fit in quite well.

Now I'm stuck pondering on just what it would be like if hollywood went musical and did A Shoggoth on the Roof... "Tentacles!!"

Survived along a bit with a grinding headache.. caught Inception.. waiting to hear news because my father got taken into hospital due to intense pains rotating around his stomach and kidneys. Apparently his appendix is inflamed, but they don't know if that's the cause or if it's simple kidney stones or other things.. They took him off in an ambulance with the words "it might be a few hours because he's not in life threatening situation" but we still haven't heard anything. Not even sure if we'll have to pick him up today, or whether he's going to spend a few days there... The slightly twisted black humourist inside me is doing the "if worst comes to the worst, does this mean I'll have to start collecting two "primary carers allowance" from the government...

On another slightly perception thing.. Forgetting the whole was the entire film a dream or not... The totem's as used weren't a definitive "reality/dream" identifier... they were meant to be warning items that someone else was creating the dream.. which had to mean if the totem didn't feel or act "right" then it meant that person wasn't in reality, and wasn't in their own dream. Arthur's "only I know the specific weight/balance of this loaded die, and no-one else handles it and would know how it feels." Also represented by the way Sato realises it's a dream within a dream because the carpet isn't a proper wool... (hm, an entire carpet used as a pseudo-totem.....) They never said that Cobb was using the spinning top as his own totem.. just that he liked playing with his ex-wifes totem and kept it with him..

Have to say, Saint's Row 2 did remind me of the outright fun/enjoyment you could have in a sandbox game after GTAIV kind of dragged it down...

Finished off some shelving.. then dealt with the joys of sorting out the dvd library now there's storage for it.. Worked on a little plumbing issue... repairing taps ..then found out the waste pipe to that sink has a slight crack..but it's an old lead pipe so thats a bit of a pain to deal with. Heh, and the house is old enough that the stop**** for the water is about 6 inches from some electricity junctions.... Downloaded and installed C# Express, have to sit down and try getting some refresh on how things work..