Azure79

Berserk still manages to engage. Gatz gets a bigger sword and some demonic armor. A huge empire invades the lands, Griffith and pals return to the earth. Pretty good stuff, but not as great as when Gatz and Griffith were mercenaries. I thought that was the most enjoyable part of the series. Did anyone mention Slamdunk! and Vagabond? Both are manga by the same author, Takehiko Inoue . Slamdunk is a hilarious basketball manga with its dramatic moments. Its about an underdog highschool basketball team that is made up of some incredibly zany characters. One of my favorites of all time. Vagabond is the story of Miyamoto Musashi and is very good as well. It also tells the stories of the various swordsman Musashi fought during his lifetime and also depicts the changes within Musashi as he grows and matures. I've read Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It was during my highschool years in Korea where I read that and all 14 of Chinese Wuxia novelist Jin Yong's works. Thats one of the benefits of living in Korea. All the great works by Korean, Japanese and Chinese authors are readily accessible. There are some awesome Korean mangas that I wish I could share with guys, except I'm not sure they come out in English.

Damn...that must have hurt.

Awesome. I forgot about this one. (w00t)

My Netflix Queue is currently comprised of old Jackie Chan movies. Though I do feel an 80s B action movie crave coming on. Hmm...Action Jackson?

All this talk about wisdom teeth is scaring me. I'm 27. When do wisdom teeth start becoming a pain? Can it be avoided? :'(

A few years back I had a procedure done on my nose to remove some excess tissue located inside the nose canal. It was continuously causing blockage and getting infected so I finally had it removed. The morning of the operation they put me in a chair covered my face with some green medical cloth and got to work. The most painful part was the local anesthesia, which was basically the doctor sticking a needle up my nose and into the surrounding area. It hurt. A lot. Then came the unnerving part. I couldn't see what was going on but it felt like the doctor was taking a hammer and chisel and chipping away at something in my nose. *Slam* *Slam*. I immediately felt some wetness dripping down my nose which the operation staff quickly wiped off. However they couldn't stop the blood dripping into my mouth from the inside of my nose, so I was drinking my own blood so to speak during the operation. It wasn't a lot though. Then the hammering stopped, and I felt my head being pulled back and forth ever so slightly as the doctor proceeded to tear chucks of flesh out of my nose. Or that is what it felt like. I distinctly heard the sound of flesh being cut and teared away piece by piece. One piece unfortunately decided to catch a ride in the flow of blood flowing into my mouth and before I knew what was happening I had swallowed a piece of my own flesh. I sat there contemplating if that made me an official cannibal and the doctor finished the procedure by stuffing large pieces of gauze up my nose. I felt a little dizzy and woozy and slept for the rest of the day. The next day I went back to the office to have the gauze removed. I was surprised how much stuff was in there. The gauze, now covered in blood, mucus and certain other disgusting yet morbidly fascinating things I didn't know my body could produce, was pulled out. There must have been a good 4 or 5 inches of gauze out of each nostril. Let me tell you after months of suffering through infection and inflammation and only breathing through my mouth, that feeling of cool air flowing freely into my nose was euphoric. I thought I was good to go but the doctor wasn't done. He took some long tweezers and carefully inserted it into my nose. I felt the tweezers brush up against something. The tweezers then gripped this thing tightly and started to pull. It felt like the doctor was pulling out my brain. I could feel this large mass slowly making its way towards my open nostril. What came out was the booger from hell. It was about 2 inches long, slimey, a sickly green and smelled like rotting meat. I was fascinated and couldn't take my eyes off it. The doctor then pulled out a similar one from my other nostril. It was like a family of slugs had taken residence up in my nose. This continued for about a week. Everyday produced something new. The inside of my nose eventually healed up and one day I felt this ticklish sensation deep inside. I gently blew my nose into some tissues and this enormous green and brown scab came out. I proudly showed it to my mother who promptly screamed and threw it away. My nose has been clean and clear ever since.

Working for a Big 4 right now and you do need to keep pace with regulatory matters and technical accounting bulletins among other things. Plus they make you study. As you might suspect, it's not very fun. Here's hoping my plans work out and I'm doing something more to my interests by the end of this year. But back on topic, I've played Arcanum and Bloodlines and just gave up on ToEE after a few hours. I must say that Arcanum and Bloodlines were great fun to play. I didn't run into any significant bugs in Arcanum but I did get that bug in Bloodlines that prevents you from progressing, but that was remedied with a quick fix. Other than that, the game ran pretty well. So I don't think their games were too buggy from my experience. Maybe I lucked out. But just from reading the article, they didn't seem to have the capacity to maintain a team of people to churn out quality titles. It seems like they underestimated the pure man hours needed to create a quality game of their vision and when push came to shove, had no choice but to give the game over to the publishers. Plus, whats with having all that entertainment stuff? I understand the need for a creative outlet, especially for those in the business of creating games, but it seems like they just racked up a lot of needless expenses. No wait...thats the accountant in me talking. Back down boy! Back to the depths you! So in short, lots of passion and vision, but less business sense. I do miss them though. Any developers that set out to create CRPGS is good in my book. Its my favorite type of game now.

Are you replaying the older games? I get the itch to replay BG and PST every year or so. I did play PS:T recently enough after a three year hiatus. I loved it. I remember when I played through PS:T as a fighter the first time. I mean high strength and constitution, dexterity. Low Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma. It was like a totally different game when I played it the second time as with high Wis/Int/Cha.

Sounds really cool! Can't wait to play.

I'm playing Titan Quest, the Diablo-like game. Its pretty good and the greek mythological setting is refreshing after NWN2's fantasy setting. I loved playing Diablo 2 a few years back, and this game is providing me with similar enjoyment. Except there seems to be no town portal skill. Its tiresome walking back and forth from battle to town lugging loot. Hides from Sand's wrath for liking a Diablo-clone My girlfriend also bought me Oblivion for Christmas, so I guess thats next if my aging computer can handle it. I should probably get Knights of the Nine too then.

I wasn't insulted in the least, if any of that matters. I just laughed and said to myself, "Meta is probably right". Someone over at Hasbro marketing knows that there are grown men that will covet these things I hardly have any urge to buy most things because I'm cheap, but something about these damn toys...

Yes, the new Grimlock looks totally badass. He was always my favorite character. Probably due to my fascination with dinosaurs at that age too. I always wondered why the dinobots couldn't combine into a super huge Dinosaur. That would have been teh awesome!

But Rodimus is only 9.99! How can I resist!

While shopping for a gift for my three year old nephew this holiday season, I came across some Transformer figures of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream and Astrotrain. They immediately caught my eye due to the fact that they were the 20th anniversary edition and were similar in appearance to the old cartoons...exception for Megatron. He was a phaser or something. But his Robot mode was pretty similar. Well, I immediately had the urge to buy them and now I have them set up on my coffee table waging a battle that will decide the fate of Earth. I still can't get over how cool they are and I transform them from vehicle to robot form at least twice a day when I'm home while giggling madly to myself. Now, I've never had the urge to buy toys like this before but I couldn't help myself this time! I subsequently went into the Hasbro site and now I want to buy the 20th anniversary edition of Rodimus...you know, just to even the odds. And now I'm browsing Wikipedia in order to rekindle my memory of Transfomers...during working hours. I'm starting to scare myself. Is this the lure of geekdom/nerdom that I've buried within me? Or is just a temporary flash of nostalgia?

You guys are awesome for making this happen. I quietly await the release of this project with much anticipation.

That would make a great game.

I'm curious. Are all the worlds in D&D somehow connected? I've read some of the Dragonlance novels back when I was in middle school. I enjoyed them greatly, especially Tasslehoff and Fizban, the deranged fireball shooting wizard. When I played BG2 I was surprised to see the Solamnic Knights Quest in the Planar Sphere, which obviously referenced Krynn. Before that when I played Torment, I understood that Sigil was the gateway to many many planes of existence. There were the Material, Lower and Higher Planes I think? I remember the Material Plane encompassed such worlds as Krynn and the Forgotten Realms, which are really the only two I know of, and the Lower Planes were like the Hells where Tanarri and Baatezu were waging the Blood War, and the Higher Planes were the homes of the Celestial beings. So what about the Gods of the different worlds? Where do they exist? What planes do they exist on? Do they ever run into each other? I remember Takhisis existed in the Abyss...I think. Is that some part of the Lower Planes? Could she run into an evil God from another material Plane, like Cyric from the FR? Would they get along? Would they get it on? What about the OverGods...so to speak? I know there is AO, in the FR and there is Chaos in Krynn, Would they ever run into each other on some Plane?

Cool. I'll be keeping an eye on this one. I'm always up for a new cRPG. It seems like I'm depending more and more on European developers for my cRPG fix, since I'm planning to play Gothic 3 when the the game is debugged, looking forward to the Witcher and now I'm keeping my on this one. I just hope the translation is great.

Why not get both? But then again...I have neither.

I've played all the games up to Chaos Theory and I say they are worth playing. They are pretty cheap now too. Gameplay wise, its very sneaky as you utilize the shadows, enviroment and various gadgets to remain undetected and scope out enemy movements. Although sometimes I wondered why state-of-the art computer labs and such never had decent lighting for the people who worked there. Storywise, its typical save the world from terrorist threats. Nothing too jaw-dropping. Don't expect a Metal Gear like story...which some people might like. Just my two cents.

I'm at a loss for words.

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

A big bloody battle with a small number of elite soldiers battling against hordes of invaders against all reason and hope? Sounds like my kind of movie.

The games sounds great after reading the 1up preview. I especially like the exploration view and the combat view, which is a feature I've been waiting for after playing both the tradional isometric view games and first person or over the shoulder view games. Tandem attacks and animations and environmental usage with huge monsters...all sounds good to me. NPCs also taking a more rigid stance according to their alignment. Good. Have high hopes for this game.

I just patched, and now the game asks for the play disc to be inserted. I have the DVD edition, and it is currently in my DVD Drive. Everything worked fine before. Anyone else having this problem?