Raithe

Giving Space Empires V a whirl... Pretty much the standard, enjoyable space colonise, research, explore, and design ships..

"Mad dogs and Englishmen...." It's not unseasonably hot, but it's a touch uncomfortable...but then being right on the coast there's a mass of humidity kicking in as well. I like being able to breathe my air. Not having to drink it. Egyptian dry heat wasn't too bad. California was fun (hell, the sun goes behind some clouds, the natives would complain about the cold and rush for sweaters,while I'd be in a tshirt going "umm.. cold? where?") .. It's always kind of funky to see how growing up in specific climates can shift out your temperature tolerance....

As do I with yours. Well, to go with the quote from Armageddon : The Musical.. "What we really need is one of those neat, rotary machine guns like Blaine had in Predator..." Not that you can actually carry one by yourself.. but that's got to be good for zombie-chopping fun...

Sid Meier's Pirates off of Steam... Does provide a little of that "Avast Mateys!" atmosphere... "When I venture forth to seek my prey, I crush my foes in a royal way. The ladies yield and the ships go down, Or is it the other way around?"

"If you

Albatross- 18 Conrad Marburg- 12 (+1) - Any villain who can inspire such depths in gamers to kill.. has to be worth keeping on the list .. Henry Leland- 17 Hong Shi- 7 Konstantin Brayko- 17 (-1) - That jacket man. Just.. that jacket.. Mina Tang- 10 Omen Deng- 21 SIE- 21 Scarlet Lake- 24 Sis- 22 Steven Heck- 21

Because in nearly every film she's in, there is one scene where she isn't in anything?

Monolith was once a top notch FPS company. But since they got aquired by Warner Brothers they only shipped mediocre products. Like FEAR2 and Condemned 2. I tend to think of NOLF, NOLF2, and Tron when I think Monolith.. At least, they're the shiny dvd's that are firmly staying in my collection for years to come.. I still haven't gotten around to getting hold of Fear 2 yet..

To continue with my nostalgia kick.. a few hours on a lazy sunday afternoon with a little Tron 2.0... ahh, monolith productions, they always seemed to hit the spot..

Alan Parker- 4 Albatross- 16 Conrad Marburg- 11 Henry Leland- 12 Hong Shi- 12 Konstantin Brayko- 14 Mina Tang- 8 Omen Deng- 18 Ronald Sung- 7 SIE- 21 Scarlet Lake- 23 (+1) - Her mom was an intelligence agent outed by her own government, she turned into a freelance assassin.. What's not to like? Sis 23 (-1) - She just didn't have any decent lines.. Steven Heck- 20

I'm running it on PC, and I had texture popup issues happen once that was noticable...(during the entrance into the aircraft junkyard).. apart from that single instance... if it happened..it was so brief as to pass my attention... Apart from that.. I think I had a case of disapearing enemies on reload about..three times over the course of 4 playthroughs. Oh, and about half the time when I exited the game and closed it down.. I'd end up with the small popup in windows of "error in closing".. but since that didn't effect gameplay it was basically negligible... So..mostly bug free for me.. at least for anything that interfered with my game play and enjoyment of the game..

Hm, I'm not sure how well DLC would actually work well with the AP storyline.. I mean, there's so much put in the background to cause consequences in later missions and with other characters... Making DLC that would fit into that seems a bit more then the casual DLC "fit in anywhere" approach that Mass Effect and Dragonage can do... Plus the cost effectiveness of all the voice work for it.. That is, if it were extra missions rather then just simple "guns n gadgets".

Heh, I reinstalled Alpha Centuari a couple of months back because I was feeling nostalgic. I suddenly lost a weekend.

The Karate Kid.. Entertaining in it's way. On it's own it's a decent film of the type. Jackie Chan is more..hm, avuncular and outright comforting then Mr Miyagi ever was.. I think I missed the slightly snarky Miyagi attitude. That and that for a film titled "The Karate Kid" there is no Karate whatsoever, it's all Kung Fu. I mean, it makes sense storywise, but eh, they might as well have given it a different name for the reboot since they went with mainland China and Kung Fu.... But if you enjoy the whole.. training montage sequence and classic sports style film of untrained underdog set against bad attitude "elites".. you'll probably like it. Hm, and on the Leonard Nimoy thing.. I'd thought he'd just retired from doing anymore Star Trek, not a complete retire from everything...

It's kind of interesting to note all these post-E3 "reviews" seem to start off with the whole "after the letdown of IW, we weren't really expecting anything overly great now"... then promptly turn into gushing over the demo shown... Although it's nice to see the "that cool bit from the trailer? that was done in game and still looked awesome.." that gets mentioned by a few people.... So maybe the whole "cinematic trailer that has nothing to do with gameplay" isn't so significant with DE3...

Some ridiculously cheap slightly old game via Steam.. Ghost Master.. a nicely humerous "strategy" game where you control the ghosts and try to deal with those pesky humans..

"We will kill until no Harkonnen breathes Arrakeen air"... Smashing. The Sci-fi miniseries version they did some years back was rather good as well...

Frustrating can be a game that has you playing through 10-15 minutes of gameplay that you can do in your sleep, throws in a cinematic, then immediately has a section of gameplay that is difficult... And everytime you fail and need to reload you have to play through the same 10-15 minutes of easy and wait through the cinematic before you can get to the "challenging" bit you're having issues with.... When it happens a handful of times in a row.. it can turn an otherwise good game into a feeling of serious annoyance/frustration... especially when it turns out that the "challenging" gameplay turns out to be about 40 seconds of specific activity....but you didn't pick that out until the 5th attempt...

It was.

A brief poke at DE: Invisible War... Just to remind myself on the contrast to Deus Ex....

Ignored as much about the World Cup as possible... Given the silliness of various schools and businesses arranging to finish early so people could go watch the match...

We know it's going to involve mass conspiracy storylines.. there's going to be a couple of twists thrown in there somewhere.. Apart from that.. we're all still stuck in the "wait and see" seats. As for the game system.. apart from that short demo at E3 which you can't really see much of.. again..too little information to really justify love or horror about it. <shrugs>

Nearest upcoming.. Mafia 2... I'm curious as to how Max Payne 3 will turn out to be like... Now that I know the new Tron game is a pc platform as well that's got to be one to try... Then it swiftly goes to the games coming out on the crux of 2011.. I mean, I'm bound to try at least a month of Star Wars Old Republic just to satisfy my inner-star wars geek... and the hankering to see which side of the border Deus Ex Human Revolution falls on.. DE or IW.. (and so far the sepia gold/brown pallete seemed more for the screen shots of Detroit.. the Shanghai ones didn't seem to have the same tone..)

Heh, just caught the last half of "Twister" on tv. Entertaining in it's way. Although damn, it makes me feel old when I look at when it was made. - cow flies through the air on tornado winds - "Look out, cow!" - a minute later, cow flies in from a different direction - "Another cow!" "No.. I think it's still the same one.."

Hm, and all this Deus Ex talk is making me want to re-read my old Shadowrun books and doodle up some ideas...