ThunderPeel2001

Now the podcast has 51 episodes (different name, but it still counts), it looks like 52 will be a joint celebration: A year's worth of playing AND we'll be one better than the podcast

Oddly enough I just finished reading The Great Gatsby

Got to disagree, I really enjoyed how it filled in the cracks. I do wonder if it might be better to watch it sometime before the finale, though.

THIS IS IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!! Instead of creating a world with causality that would actually allow you to play however you pleased, he's turned the WHOLE GAMING WORLD ON ITS HEAD with GLOWING WEAPONS. It seems so obvious, but it took a genius like Molyneux to think of it. I know I'll be telling my grand kids about this moment... the moment I read about the second age of gaming. The game itself will most likely cause thousands of people's heads to explode with sheer excitement (I hope Molyneux has got a good lawyer!). Seriously folks. I do like Molyneux, and Fable, too, and I suspect that Fable III will actually be rather good, but this isn't evolving the game's strengths... also it sounds pretty silly.

Just as GTA Thumbs was about to overtake you! Damn you!!!

For anyone who is unaware (and imagine most of you will be), the Piccadilly/Trocadero (London) branch of HMV/Gamerbase has had a competition since 29th of Jan to win a £1500 ($2000) PC. You can read the details here. Basically you enter your email address and type a six digit code. Then you go home and at 12 midnight you get an email telling you if your code was too low or too high, out of the 1 million possibilities. Well, I found out about the competition on Sunday (7th Feb) and after many trips into London, typing lots of email addresses into the machine, I cracked it on Tuesday night. Today I entered in the correct code, and just this moment I received my reward... An email telling me that someone has already beaten me to it. The sods would have happily kept me guessing until the closing date. So, in the interest of this competition not wasting any more of anyone else's time, here is the code: I'm not too bitter, however, as it was on one of these little jaunts into London that I met Anthony Stewart Head! So I think I should actually be pretty thankful to the competition, despite the many hours I've spent guessing a code that had already been guessed. It was a nice consolation prize

I finally uploaded something new to my blog: Battlestar Galactica Viewing Order For, you know, any new viewer who wants to watch it all "perfectly" from the beginning.

Yeah, but compared to most games it was Shakespeare. But really it wasn't just the main thread, it was all the little stories too, and the atmosphere they built up in this beautiful Art Deco world. I remember feeling quite ill when I discovered the parents of the little girl that went missing, for instance.

There's a joke about someone's country in there somewhere. Maybe you could take your Xbox with you and show them the wonders of the modern age?

Did you forget something? :

Ditto.

Care to share what field that is? Sounds interesting! Yes, I know. I can barely believe it myself. Seriously, I feel like I dreamt the whole thing or something. I wish I had a photo to prove to myself it actually happened... I mean, it just can't have happened. Of all the years in my life (including the future) I happen to bump into him just after after finishing watching the series...? Not in ten years time when I have vague memories of the show, not 10 years ago when I only knew him from the coffee adverts... Right now, when Buffy is a massive thing in my life. When I'm presently re-building my life and Buffy has been an enormous welcome comfort. Just the weekend after I'd picked up "Season 8 Vol 1", and the day after I'd ordered "Buffy: The Origin". That doesn't happen! The star of your current favourite TV show doesn't just walk onto a nearly empty platform, and stop to have a quick chat with you. Except it did. Wow.

Maybe I can make it towards the end. I'm sure somebody will turn up, though!

Doh, I forgot!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (etc) I just met Anthony Stewart Head on the tube. Yes. That's right. Giles from Buffy. The show I've been going on about for ages... and have only just finished watching. I met him. On the tube. Right now. I may faint, please bear with me. No, I'm good. Wow. That was amazing, and what a jolly nice fellow he was! He thankfully found my idiotic, fan-induced bumbling rather amusing and kept laughing. What an incredibly nice guy! I can't believe I just met him. Wow. Ok, I think I really am going to faint now. Who needs someone dull like Brad Pitt? Give me a Buffy cast member any day of the week! That's definitely brightened up my week... one of the most exciting moments of my life!

Broken Sword FTW

There's a crap load of bad games out there, but certain ones made a lasting impression. The stuff I suffered through after the Amiga had long died were particularly memorable, perhaps because I was so desperate for something halfway competent. I loved adventure games, so I tried to get my hands on adventure games from small selection of titles that were still being released. Sixth Sense Investigations promised LucasArts style gameplay, but just the thought of the game literally makes me feel nauseous... it was so ugly, so badly written, so bad designed, so... horrible. If the only way to buy an Amiga game wasn't over the internet/mail order at that point, I might have spotted trouble when the box read "The base storyboard tells of a crazy young guy who has the ability to communicate with the spirit of a sarcastic man". The same astonishing attention to detail ran throughout the game, yet they had the nerve to charge me FULL PRICE that piece of shit. It was a horrible waste of meagre student funds. The only people left creating games for the Amiga in 1998 were the die-hards; the die-hard fans (see above) and the die-hard techies. From the latter camp came titles like Virtual Karting and Capital Punishment. It was a horrible time and place to be a games lover... Until, one day, my mother decided she needed a PC. So I helped her set it up, and picked up the LucasArts titles I'd not been able to play. Oh glorious moment! I never looked back and my Amiga was never powered up again. (Not that I dislike the Amiga, but man, it was time to move on!) Those titles (and others from the same era) have got to represent my worst games-playing experiences... I'm so glad I moved on to better things!

Thanks for the advice, Nach, I feel like I'm beginning to learn this stuff myself, but it's great to have it confirmed. Also, thanks for the tips, too. I've no idea what that Sandpit thing is, but I'll be checking it out

That's precisely the problem I'm having. You meet people, have enjoyable conversations, but don't see them again/regularly enough to actually start bonding... so it's all just acquaintances. It's especially hard when you work from home... in a big city. I guess I should join a club or something.

It's tricky when you're struggling to make new friends, though... Any advice on that?

3246m Pretty, but too random to be enjoyable, though.

That's a really interesting idea. I wonder if a small development team could approach a studio with it.

Wow! It's about time. It's still as ugly as shit, though Guess I should finally get around to finishing this. I was always amazed at the quality of the sound, especially for its time. I was part of System Shock 2 hires texture project for a brief time (but the guy that ran it was a gigantic douche, and everyone who was interested in helping -including professional texture artists- left), and I was always expecting someone to make a SS1 into a SS2 mod, but they never did. Not sure why I needed to share that, but I did

I hate this game!!!

I think we should use the title "Drunk in the shower... again" at some point