loonyboi

Everyone here needs to lighten up. I've been lurking for a while, just reading, not posting, and it seems like in the last couple of months this forum has gone from being amusing to downright depressing. Every thread is about how much <subject> sucks. It's depressing. Find something you like and try talking about that for a change. Otherwise it's just a giant, depressing bitchfest.

I never got around to watching GameLife. Now I don't regret that. Not that I ever did...it doesn't seem like I missed anything worthwhile, other than the aforementioned moderately attractive young woman.

Jeez, I haven't read the forums in a while (sorry, been busy) and I come back to read how much Yufster hates me. That's okay, I love you, Yufster. You and all other bitter, angry forum posterswho have no particular reason to be bitter or angry. Seriously, what's the argument here? Forums wind up as flame wars. This has happened since the beginning of time. Don't feed the trolls, etc. You don't like reviews. So don't read 'em. I like well written reviews. I read GameSpot's reviews of any game I'm interested in. I also read reviews at EDGE, IGN (mostly PC), GameSpy, etc. As 'rants goes, this one was pretty odd. It was a rant against ranting. Snuh?

Get a Mac and use Boot Camp with XP. I have both a Windows machine (for gaming and apps that don't run on Mac) and a Mac machine (an aging G4 tower, as well as an even older G3 iBook) and I love it. Using OSX is (for the most part) a frustration-free experience. Macs are better at everything except games. If you use Boot Camp that's not as much of an issue anymore. So just get a Mac.

There's a cry for help in there, I know it.

I don't mean to say they're shit games (even though that's exactly what I said). They're perfectly fine games. Just not my thing. Not even remotely. I don't hate the fact that my hand isn't held when I play the games, it's just that there's no reason NOT to hold my hand. Zelda games don't do a very good job of creating a real world, so I don't feel like I should explore. I'm not going to find anything, so why not just tell me where to go? In a game like Oblivion, I love just walking around because you never know what you're gonna find. In Zelda, I pretty much know there's nothing out there. I just end up wandering aimlessly instead of going somewhere useful. I did like Fusion because of its linearity, but also because it had more of a story than Metroid Prime. I know some people like the weird tone in that game, but I found it to be lifeless and utterly without storyline. I was just in this dead environment, playing a character who never interacted with anyone. It just bored me.

The whole Zelda franchise is a steaming pile of overrated shit. I played through the Wii one, and I enjoyed it to be sure, but now I'm playing Okami and it's just a better game in every conceivable way. The story's more interesting, the art's more interesting, the gameplay is more fun, it's less meandering and so on and so on. Ocarina of Time isn't any better or worse than any of the other ones i've played (and I've played most, if not all of them at some point). I've only finished two: the Wii one and Majora's Mask. With both I had to really force myself to make it all the way through them.

I already did! ...although admittedly, there have been a few more unofficial patches since the last time I tried. I'm not sure *why* I really liked the first Vampire game. I played it before they added a real save system...I just got around it by walking back to my last checkpoint whenever I wanted to save (enemies didn't respawn, so that wasn't a big deal to me). At the time, I thought it was atmospheric, and enjoyed the plot. But I don't know if I'd still feel that way.

Dorky headline writing is an art form. I think in my tenure at Blue's News, my favorite one was: There can be only Wan ...following the announcement of Star Wars: Obi-Wan. I had lots of those over the years. They're fun, dammit. One of the reasons I even have a blog is that I like writing dorky headlines. Some personal favorites from the blog: Things that make you go HOMM (Story about Heroes of Might and Magic) No you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment. (Story about Interplay) Atomic Supermonkeys Master Mind Control (Story about um...atomic supermonkeys).

I got it over the weekend. I'm with the other comments here that say it's too easy. It's also a bit short. But that's all beside the point. It's completely nuts and crazy fun. I'm having a Wii party in a couple of weeks, and I expect this to be a hit with my non-gamer friends.

I stopped playing Bloodlines not because of the bugs, but because it was all just so clunky. Combat, movement, just general interaction felt so off to me that I couldn't get into the game at all. I tried it twice, and both times I couldn't get more than an hour into it. Which is too bad. I loved the first Vampire: The Masquerade RPG from Nilihilistic.

I'd start my day with a giant cup of black sludge, followed by one or two other cups in the morning. Then throughout the day I'd drink other caffeinated drinks. I'd say on average I'd drink at least 32 ounces of caffeinated drinks in a day. When I was in college, there was one job I'd go to where I'd pick up two 16 oz. cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee on the way that I'd drink throughout the day. I'd get cold, but I didn't care.

I started drinking coffee when I was really young (like 10). For some reason my mother thought it would keep me calm. Obviously, it didn't work. I stopped drinking caffeine in '99, but before I did, I used to drink obscene amounts of very bad coffee all the time. Because I drank so much of it, I would get the cheapest instant crap I could get my hands on. My wife (then girlfriend) was over once and wanted some coffee, so I made her some using the method I always used...a giant soup spoon of crystals plus hot water. She had half a sip and spit it out in disgust. That was my good ol' black sludge. I almost miss it. Quitting caffeine was HARD. Like super freaky hard. Your body does NOT want to stop drinking caffeine. I was in absolute pain (seriously, PAIN!) for about three weeks. The headaches were murder, and my whole body ached. After I survived that, I decided to give up smoking (another vice...I used to smoke 2 1/2 packs a day) and by comparison, it was quite easy. I quit cold turkey and haven't had a smoke in over seven years. Every year on the anniversary I calculate how much I would have spent on cigarettes had I still been smoking. As of October, it was over $31,000. But considering how much coffee goes for now, I suspect if I did the math on at least 32 ounces of coffee a day it might be even more. Anyway, caffeine is an insidious thing. I'm much happier not to be a slave to it any more. When you give it up, you either become a morning person or hate life...thankfully, I became the former.

I'm still holding out for an HDMI cable for the 360, but we all know that's impossible. A Microsoft rep recently said otherwise, but I don't buy it. There's no reason why they would intentionally release a VGA-only cable unless they had to. I understand not wanting to support HDCP via HDMI, but why wouldn't they release a DVI cable? More people are going to have DVI ports than VGA these days, and you can always get a relatively affordable DVI-to-HDMI adapter. I already own a 360, so I don't want to buy another one, but if they announce an HDMI capable version I'm going to have to get it. The 360 is already my primary DVD player and I hate the fact that I can't use it to upscale DVDs to 1080i.

The 360 isn't ugly, but it ain't no Wii, either. The PS3 is an ugly, ugly bit of hardware. I don't care how shiny it is, that curve is just nasty looking. And the silver stripe on the 60 GB model actually makes it look worse, not better. But then, I think the first generation PS2 is the best looking console ever made. By far. The slimline is a cheap feeling POS by comparison.