Straight Jacket Type Fun
4/29/2004
At first, I hated South Park. Buncha eight year olds cursing and everyone was thinking it was so edgy and cool to see cartoons cursing. Bah, anime had been doing that for years. But then, South Park really started getting satirical. What finally tipped the scale for me in how much I enjoyed it was South Park's movie and it's complete trampling of most modern mores and sensibilities. Then they introduced Timmy and Jimmy and all the social landmines that might be associated with introducing those who are handicapped. And they handled with it aplomb. Finally, last night, they introduced a phrase that I'm sure will give me a giggle for quite a while: "Dey tuk hiz yob!!"
And dammit, I now love the repeats of the West Wing!
A buddy from Wolfenstein days has started modding in Enemy Territory. Of course, he modded ET to act like Wolfenstein which is definitely good thing. Go to my server (65.247.172.55:27999) and download it. Truly awesome.
A Garfield game? WTF is this all about and why are they wasting perfectly good blank CDs on it? CDs that could be used to make, I dunno, AOL discs!
Green tea can apparently be used to help polish the magnetic heads on hard drives. Eco-friendly and tasty! Or is it a Chinese conspiracy to over run the hard drive polishing market! Conspiracy I tell ya!! Back to magnetic core hard drives the size of a refrigerator to store my data!
4/28/2004
Ok, so why does EB have games a day before Gamestop? I don't know and I hope Gamestop gets that figured out. Probably has an inventory control system that is slower or too many layers of mid-management. Regardless, Throne and Patriots: more of the same Rise of Nations, but that's not a bad thing? I goofed around with the Lakota nation since it didn't require building farms. Not as much an advantage as you might think though.
I was reading a gaming magazine that my boss brings up to work and apparently Doom 3 will have co-op!! But on the X-Box only? Dammit! Is this how we're rewarded for waiting patiently for Doom 3? Come on id and the rest of you guys, gimme co-op!
4/27/2004
Wow, all sorts of interesting news today. First, I had heard about KotOR 2 being developed. Well, it's confirmed. Commence ecstatic drooling and splooging.
Half-Life 2 to be out in late summer. So who was lying about the code leak being the problem? Ah, who cares anymore. Just get it out.
Finally, you like Enemy Territory and RtCW, right? Of course you do. Now, a clever fellow has made a mod for Enemy Territory that more closely mimics the weapons of RtCW. Very, very cool! Go to [ND80]RtCWMod to play it.
4/26/2004
Good day to you all. Empire Earth 2 has been announced. A good thing I suppose if you're into that whole masochist type game which just has too much "stuff" in it. I'm all for a nice RTS, but EE just went too far. For me, Age of Kings was just perfect and Rise of Nations pretty much is the upper limit for me. But games like EE and Cossacks are more like anthropology courses rather than games.
4/23/2004
Well, the DSL modem decided it didn't want to play yesterday. Fortunately, the withdrawal pains have subsided now. Phew, I was worried I'd have to go out and socialize. Thank you Internet!
And while I appreciate tAE over on Gracelessland paying my site some compliments I really can't accept them since (a) his site made me want to start my site (as did Levelord's and (b) nothing can really top his Serious Sam review. But, thanks tAE!
Aw, how cute. Infinium is back in the news and apparently they've covered another company's eyes in their vaporware slime since this company is stupid enough to give them money. PT Barnum has to be having a good laugh by now.
And say what you will about the whole War on Terror thing, it was sad to hear about NFL player who walked away from some lucrative money to serve and now died while overseas. What's pathetic is that on a message board I frequently go to, someone start hooting and hollering about being out of Iraq and how this guy's death was just another waste, etc etc.. umm.. newsflash professor, this guy was in Afghanistan, not Iraq. While I still scratch my head about Iraq, I'm completely for hunting Al Qaeda and Taliban to the ends of the Earth. But that's just me and I don't know much.
4/21/2004
I know that this site is read by few and enjoyed by even fewer. I sure hope I don't upset some of you who probably saw the sunlight at least one season ago but have spent the rest of your time in the basement dinging your character in EQ or the beta of City of Heroes. My point of contention today is what Tycho said in a recent thread over on Penny-Arcade regarding the announcement about Battlefield 2. He mentions a Commander mode, massive maps, and dynamic map size. The last two I'm cool with but the first one I'm not so sure about. I mean, first, how's this different from team chats in Wolfenstein and second when do you expect your teammates to do what they're told in an online game? I think their own cartoon from today sums up that point nicely.
Wooo.. Thanks to Anti Elvis having this up on his site regarding the head of Planet Half-Life and how he was leaving. Just in case he gets asked to remove that as well, here it is in text format. Right click and save.
4/20/2004
Finally, Call of Duty 1.4 patch. Here, here, here, and here. Yes, it has punkbuster so I'll finally be trying it again.
4/19/2004
Bioware bought by Microsoft? Bioware of course is the group that made the super fantastic wonderful awesomeness that is Knights of Old Republic. But Microsoft damn well better not start making Bioware games XBox only or it'll be smashing time.
You a Mac Voyeur? Sure we've all said they look great and their GUI is slick. But use one? Never!
4/15/2004
Tax on LANs?
A Kingpin sequel might be in the works? I hope Interplay is around long enough to make it.
Rise of Nations expansion out on the 27th of this month. The addition of government sounds interesting.
And boy do the fanboys come out when a new video card is announced. GeForce6 and Carmack seems to like it. I can't afford it though so sticking with the 9700.
This is interesting. A new shooter game engine. And it's less than 100kb?
4/14/2004
I'm not quite entirely happy with my Painkiller review but there it is now.
4/13/2004
Looks like Microsoft is taking the opportunity to just buy out all their pending lawsuits. Guess they're tired of it just as much as we are of reading about it.
Now just what the holy heck is going on here? Last week SpikeTV ran Ds9 episodes for eight hours a day for a full week non-stop. By the end, they were at the beginning of the third season which, along with the second season, is probably some of the best Trek, right along with Next Generation 3rd and 4th season. In fact, I'd say it's better. Yeah you Trekkies, bring it. Sisko > Picard.
Ahem.. Any rate, now SpikeTV is starting all over again but one a day of course. Why? They were just hitting the ground running and the third season was started. Why start over? Bah!!
Well, everyone have a good day. And for fun, go jump into the debating fray over Painkiller on Bluesnews.
4/11/2004
Register reporting that the so-called Windows Longhorn OS will be trimmed back with most of the interesting features removed, thus making Longhorn a sort of souped up XP. Business Week article goes into details about how the file system won't be more robust and the next version of Office won't be Longhorn only.
After playing Painkiller for the past day, this game, while not revolutionary, definitely adds some new wrinkles which make it a great deal of fun. Plus the graphics and sound are outstanding. The screenshot from below is from the Asylum level which so far has been my favorite. Interesting mood put in it and the baddies are fun to slice and dice.
4/10/2004
Well indeed Painkiller did hit the shelves earlier than expected. The tarot cards are fun and even on "normal" it's not a cake walk.
4/9/2004
Slashdot has an article regarding the new nForce3 for the Athlon 64. Built in firewall? Not bad let's see if it works.
Painkiller CD screwed up for some CD-Rom drives. Read carefully and make sure your CD isn't on the list.
4/7/2004
Anyone else noticing that game developers are now offering up multiple demos of the same game? Painkiller's doing it and so did Far Cry. Heck, this keeps up we'll be able to play the whole game without having to buy it. Hooray for Marxism?
Anytime I see a story a Ballmer, all I can think of is the Developers video.
Joogle? I'm sorry. That's not funny.
4/6/2004
Just something fun:
Everybody, and I mean everybody, needs to get online and buy a flat screen TV right the hell now if you still have curved tube. Holy cripes DVDs look amazing on this thing. Where the Matrix Revolutions final fight scene was nearly impossible to comprehend at the end (apparently some theaters think dimming the bulb extends it's life), the various shades of grey, black, green, and white are crystal clear on this thing. Amazing. I hated having to spend the money but it was money well spent.
There are lies, damn lies, then there's the BBC! How dare they suggest there's life on the 'Net outside of Google!
4/5/2004
What the hell did Avault do to their site? It's full of fluffer material like movie reviews and other garbage. I mean, no gaming site should be doing that? Oh.. wait.
Ah, just another reason not to use my PC for multimedia garbage. WinAmp is all sorts of fubared.
4/4/2004
In case you didn't know, the last Matrix movie is going to be on DVD Tuesday. Personally, I really enjoyed the entire series. I know a lot of people got pissed off about the second and third one. They wanted Neo to come in with both barrels blasting and destroy machines left and right and maybe even pimp slap the Architect around a bit. Instead, we see someone who made a choice and which in the end resulted in a rebirth for both the machines and the humans. But, I'm not a philosophy fellow. Instead, go to this site and read. I think it adequately explains things in terms of how the Warchowski brothers tried to tie in philosophy and multiple religions into the whole movie.
4/3/2004
I am a big proponent of Punkbuster. It's the steroids test of computer gaming. So while Major League Baseball won't be using it anytime soon, those little evil geniuses at Punkbuster have made it even better with an auto master update ban list. What's this do? Basically if someone cheats on one server their game key gets reported to the master list which updates it to other servers running Punkbuster. It makes me giddy. Actually, it's not by punkbuster themselves but another group called punkbusted.com.
Also, here's an IRC log from a chat with some of the Punkbuster guys.
<[PBSTAFF]Bjoern>
if you check the cheater forums for example, you'd see that most of the punks
are really upset about pb...
<[PBSTAFF]Bjoern> so it works just fine :)
4/2/2004
I swear if Rob Perlman's jaw gets any bigger it will hit his chest and he won't be able to open his mouth to eat. Regardless, I still plan to see Hellboy. Reading good things about it and not just on fanboy sites like Ain't It Cool. Plus there's that whole, "Kick the hell out of Nazis" thing going for it.
And yesterday some websites tried to be funny by making prank stories. Unfortunately, the story about Black and White 2 being cancelled was not true. G'dammit I need to rub the genie lantern harder cause that's one wish I have. Seriously, I'd rather see Yoko Ono make a new album and use the blank CDs for that than have B&W2 on the store shelves.
And now don't you wish you had bought some Sun Microsystems stock? Sun gets this out of the way and gets a good chunk of change while Microsoft, using a play they used with Apple back in 1997, get a litigation monkey off their back.
4/1/2004
Correction:In my article about building a new machine I mentioned that I thought my one of my memory sticks was FUBAR'ed. Well, guess what! It's not the memory, it's the damn motherboard. Two slots don't seem to work. Ack. So am I going to RMA this whole machine back? No, I think I'll just work around this whole thing and stick in one stick of 1GB and be done with it. It's a cheap way of doing it but I don't know what else to do right now short of ship the whole machine back. That's just not acceptable right now though. Is this the end of my buying with Newegg? I don't know. I might be done with buying parts online though. But where am I supposed to go? Frye's? Bleck.
