Bjorn

Holy shit, Goonies 2! I loved that game when I was a kid, never finished it though, got stuck somewhere in it.

Was able to download the newer firmware on another computer and just got it flashed. Pages I couldn't load 10 minutes ago are now loading. The release notes say it's just a minor security update and it is just one version number higher, but hopefully something was corrupted/broken and flashing it will take care of it.

So there is a new firmware! The auto-update on my router wasn't finding it, but a search on D-Link's site brought up a version almost a year newer than the one I have. Of course when I try to download it, it fails to load the page, because of problems the router is having. How hard is custom firmware to configure on a router? I'm pretty savvy, I mean I build and maintain all my own hardware. Have rooted and done custom OS installs on Android phones and whatnot. For some reason networking stuff always intimidates the hell out of me though. Nevermind, I've got a DIR-655, and it isn't compatible with any open source firmware as near as I can tell.

I voted for Sooooo Scary, because ghost. It won't win. Wizard will win. Wizard always win. Fuck Wizard.

SAM got some of what I was intending to convey. There are absolutely Mary Sue characters in games, but I don't think the big ones are necessarily that way. Shepard is a particularly interesting one. If you play the Renegade route in ME3, that is not a Mary Sue. Shepard is fucking deranged psychopath who is barely maintaining her composure in a universe that is falling apart around her ears. She's mean, short tempered and prone to cruel outbursts directed at her closest allies. This results in fractured, crumbling relationships where people only tolerate her because she is their best shot at winning. She still "wins" in the end, but it ain't pretty getting there. I think that kind of experience has some element in any of the big, branching RPGs that give you some control in shaping your characters personality and relationships. I guess that creates an interesting question. Are there Mary Sue routes in some RPGs? Can you create a Mary Sue character/experience? And is that a bad thing if there are a bunch of other options that are not that?

So my problems have continued unabated even after the hard reset. I did the minimal amount of setup to get it working again, in case one of the old changes I made was causing this. I'll take a look at the routers that were just suggested earlier on this page.

I get where you're going with that connection, but I think there is a pretty strong difference between the power fantasy most games indulge in and a proper Mary Sue. Game characters may be powerful, but they aren't necessarily annoyingly perfect.

No worries, when I bought it I was assuming I would have to buy Minerva's Den at some point. I just stuck it into the wishlist and will wait for it to go on sale one of these days, not in a particular rush to get to it.

Finished Radman: Legends tonight, did the whole thing in co-op. It was rad, as is to be expected. Castle Rock is one of my favorite things ever in a game. Although Gloo Gloo is having the annoying habit of just popping into my head randomly now. The Livid Dead levels were incredible. Kinda frustrating as we were going through them, but in hindsight, truly wonderful.

Ended up doing a hard reset back to factory conditions, so far everything seems great, but we'll see what it's like over the next day or two if the problem resurfaces or goes away. I was dumb and had a panic moment when nothing was working, before I remembered I had to release and renew my connection on my computer.

Interesting news, to make up for barfy news earlier. This interview with Lorne Lanning is pretty incredible. Honestly, as much as I love Oddworld, Lanning himself has sometimes given me a weird vibe over the years. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something a lot different than what you ever hear out of other game devs. I think that outsider perspective is really being showcased here, and all for the good. He's hinted at some of the bad business stuff that went on before, but this is as detailed as he's ever been talking about it.

I'd play that.

Levine revealed on Twitter last night that his core idea for the Vita Bioshock game was a turn based Final Fantasy Tactics type game set in pre-fall Rapture. Even as down as I am on the BI story, that sounds freaking terrific mechanically. Shame it was never meant to be.

This makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

I bounce off of an awful lot of anime, but the original FMA is the only one that I've watched start to finish (tend to watch a few episodes of stuff here and there without ever dedicating to a series). Weird. I need to get into Brotherhood at some point and check it out.

Giving video game swag for donating blood is probably the best (as in, doing actual good in the world) promotional vehicle I've ever seen for games.

Hmm, both missions are pre-order "exclusives" and one is a Gamestop only "exclusive". I'm sure that's exclusive in the modern context, in which words are temporarily defined by corporations as is deemed most beneficial to their short term sales goals.

I think I'm having some router issues. Off and on for awhile, I've just intermittently not been able to get some pages to load for brief periods of time (like a particular page won't load at all for 10 minutes, then everything will work). I haven't been able to see a rhyme or reason for why. It's not related to being a secure connection, as it happens on both secure and unsecure pages. It's not the site, because I can usually go over to my phone internet and connect fine. Sometimes the page will load in one browser, but not another. I just got around to plugging my internet directly into my main PC and bypassing the router after having the worst episode of this all morning. And the Internet is running flawlessly, haven't had a single issue since I did that. I'm terrible at networking stuff. Is there a setting in the router that needs adjusted? Or is this just a case of a piece of hardware failing? It's like the router is failing to resolve the address of the site, and then decides the site doesn't exist at all.

Yeah, the dev added one more set of levels. I've downloaded them, but haven't fired it up to try them out yet.

Such a good game. The writing and narration take a good platformer/puzzle game and make it sublime.

I watched Bernie last night, Richard Linklater's "true crime" examination of a mortician who murdered a widow he had befriended. Went looking for info to see how accurate the movie was, and found out that the case has gotten even weirder in the 2 years since the movie was released. There was a new appeal and new evidence was introduced because people became interested in the story after the film. His sentence ended up reduced to time served, and Bernie was released on bond pending an approval of the new sentence in May of this year. He's moved in with Linklater as he gets settled back into life as a free man. It's an interesting movie. I think the editing and structure could have been improved to make it more entertaining, but the movie is split between interviews with actual people from the town and "re-enactments" with Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Shirley McClain. I can see why Linklater wanted to include all the footage of the actual residents of town even if it drags at times. Some of those people are absolute treats, the kind of real characters I remember from growing up in a small town.

You're in for an absolute treat.

I'm not sure I gave that game a fair shake. I wasn't really in the mood for it when I played it, but my daughter got it for me for my birthday so I felt obligated to play it. I'd be curious to at least go back and start it up again to see what I think.

FWIW, I'd put Tegan ahead of me in the hierarchy.

The people we were with were in shock. Half of them missed the 2nd and 4th goals in the first half because they were so busy texting or updating Facebook.