Jaero

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Everything posted by Jaero

  1. Games giveaway

    Includes 8 items: Train Simulator 2013 , European Community Asset Pack , Great Western Main Line Add-On, Somerset & Dorset Railway Add-On, East Coast Main Line Add-On, Ruhr-Sieg Line Add-On, US Community Asset Pack , Cajon Pass Add-On No idea if any of those have anything to do with milk bottles.
  2. Games giveaway

    I know I'm a bit late to the party. I have a couple tradeable games via steam if anyone's interested (tradeable, but I'm intending to happily just give them away). Amnesia: The Dark Descent Railworks 3 Train Simulator + DLC (come on, you know you want this) Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2: Episode One The Orange Box ALSO, probably the only item of actual worth on the list: The Banner Saga multiplayer beta key
  3. By the hammer of Thor!

    Invoking the name of Mjollnir is the best way to describe my surprised and delighted return. It was over eight years ago that I found my way to Idle Thumbs (part of me misses all the red of that old site). A year or two later, life happened and somewhere along the line, I completely forgot that this place existed... and life went on. Meanwhile, I have 4 years of a podcast to catch up on and a few games to play. You lot have been busy! All of this, I suppose, is to say... hi! Again.
  4. By the hammer of Thor!

    Stay classy, gerbil.
  5. There are few gamers at Virginia Tech that don't play Counter-Strike, as of a few years ago anyhow (I lived in that town for a number of years) - not the least reason being that one of the creators of the game was a Tech student. Hasn't the military used it to train soldiers? I'd like to see good ol' Jack Offson use his same rationale to rail on the government for training killers responsible for tens of thousands of deaths overseas. But I digress.
  6. Welcome (back) to the forums!

    Somehow this is more anti-climactic than I anticipated.
  7. Age of Empires 3 demo

    Awesome. I can't even install it because my motherboard it "old". Yet Half-Life 2 runs beautifully on my machine. Imagine that.
  8. Karimi's Guide to Joining Idle Forums

    One thing you forgot, other than not to suck, is that the bandwagon of signatures that say "Currently Playing: XXX :tup:" must be jumped on if you want to fit in at all. You fail, sir. But goot post. +1 for you. Kingz thought I was from AdventureGamers because I'm such a dick. I still don't know if that's a good thing.
  9. Dig up your shit!

    I'm at my mother's house, getting the last of all my old stuff, and when digging through an old chest, I found some old games. You guys should do the same - it's amazing the shit you'll find. Return to Krondor Diablo Tomb Raider 1 & 2 Age of Empires (and Rise of Rome expansion) Star Wars Force Commander Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Jet Fighter III ...Beast Wars! Ewww.
  10. This Spartan Life

    http://www.thisspartanlife.com/ I've heard this compared to Red vs. Blue, though I think the similarities stop at "Halo 2" and "machinima". It's a talk show that's I find rather intelligent and funny - and the site has some very nice 8-bit tunes. I'm curious what the rest of you think of it? Also, I happen to think that if IdleThumbs were to do some machinima, it would fucking rule.
  11. This Spartan Life

    Did you stop after the Bob Stein interview, or did you watch the second interview also? The second may be a bit better - but the subject is more about the game space they're in, so it's not necessarily that the host isn't doing the same thing, but that it does directly relate to the conversation.
  12. This Spartan Life

    Never really noticed that. He was more role-playing than being a 'talk-show-host'. But at the same time, there are so few talk shows where the guests all say very thought-provoking, intelligent things. I do think though that if they were only running around talking, and not doing much in the game world, that it would start to beg the question "Why the hell are they even doing this as machinima?".
  13. Dig up your shit!

    I found some more games the other day. Day of the Tentacle (yeah yeah, I know what you're thinking, that I should never have let it out of my sight) Abuse Strife (fuckin' A!) Sven 004 XXL (any european who's played this, 5 points for you) Happy Throwback, Marek.
  14. The Swordmen Game(Prince of Persia3;o)

    The site looks more like a church. "Join the mission!"... I weep for the days before Ubisoft made the Prince into a 'warrior'. It makes me smolder with generic tmeh.
  15. On Gamespot, there has been posted yet another bland, unimpressive, piece of writing disguised as a preview for the recently-announced Battle for Middle-earth II. I reviewed the first game, and found that the Lead Designer had made an attempt to innovate in a number of very interesting ways. Few of them were what I would call "successful", and the problem of one innovation often impacted other parts of the gameplay. But all the same, there are few RTS games with a minimal user-interface - and I respect that they made the attempt; took a risk (which is very unlike EA). Unfortunately, that designer has left EA Games to work on a new project at Blizzard Entertainment. So as a result, we get this preview which tells us the equivalent of "more units, more explosions, more big stuff and this stuff and that stuff" - in other words, nothing new. Nothing interesting. Nothing worth my $50 to play the stupid game. Oh, I forgot, more violations of Tolkien-lore than ever before! On the plus side, you may not be restricted to pre-fabbed bases. But you are still required to be aggressive, to hold parts of the map with special resources (Mithril included!) and the like, in order to be successful. This was no fun in the first game, and it's clear we're getting more of the same, because the last creative person working on the LOTR franchise there has left. So they compensate by giving uninspired, repressed employees creative control of their license-driven game. And what do we get? This is rife with items that will make Tolkien fans wretch bile. GOBLINS DID NOT RIDE SPIDERS. SPIDERS EAT GOBLINS. GOBLINS RIDE WOLVES. It's all very bloody plain and simple. EA, you got the licenses to the books, but apparently you skipped the part of school where you learned how to read them? In the teaser at Gamespot, you will also see giant scorpions, also being used as mounts. I can not wait to get my hands on this game, and give it the review it deserves. Why? Because if you've been to the LOTRO Official forums in the last few months, you may have seen threads inquiring about the sticky licensing situation. There's no problem - Turbine has the rights to the books for the development of MMORPGs based on them. New Line had the rights to the books in order to make the movie trilogy, and though EA only had license to the movies, New Line has somehow extended them the rights to the book (which must have involved paying Tolkien Enterprises off for a lot of money, as they are apparently cut out of the creative process - which is why we're seeing giant-fucking-scorpions). So what we're actually getting is RTS, not Tolkien. We're getting The Lord of the Rings, adapted by people who think "Dungeons and Dragons" came first, and that Tolkien stole his ideas from it. The only other possibility is absolute stupidity, and I suppose I was formerly too optimistic to admit that it was such an epidemic. I can't wait to review this game. Why am I so pissed about this? Because this was their one chance to do it right. The first game had enough lore violations to go around, and that was partially due to it being licensed from the films, not the books. But instead they skim the books, look for every possible noun that could be used or transfigured into a unit in their game, and throw the important parts of the book away. How do I know it's actually this bad? Because Peter Jackson himself (who is hated by many Tolkien fans for changing the story/characters around) has cut off EA and gone to one of their competitors, Ubisoft, for his new movie, King Kong. Ubisoft doesn't regularly make a killing on mass-producing mediocre pieces of shit.
  16. Ahh yes vote for her

    Just curious, what the hell is with her underpants?
  17. BFME2 - Another reason to hate EA!

    I didn't abhor the first one, and I am only talking about the bones I had to pick with it (in relation to this sequel), not about the stuff I liked. Miffy, as a nerd, I considered going that route, but I do realize this isn't a LOTR forum, and you're not going to a Tolkien fanatic's house to say his idol is overrated. You're allowed to hate. Just don't hate more than Yufster hates some things. That would frighten me. It's not so much the "unfaithful" parts of the new game that annoy me, so much as it is what they've done with this new license they've gotten - because now EA has all the rights to make any game based on the movies and the books - save for MMORPGs, which Turbine has the rights to. What it means is that the fans will never, at least in like the next 10 years, get a video game that does the literature justice. It'll be exploitation after exploitation. And Lord of the Rings Online being a MMORPG, it would have a life of 5-10 years, probably, meaning for a long time there would be no alternative. Not to mention it leaves in the dust any fan without a good net connection or very decent PC. It's the long-term implications that make me flip my shit, not so much the game itself. I'm sure by the time more is actually revealed of it, I will like more about it than I do right now.
  18. BFME2 - Another reason to hate EA!

    Heh, it's not sarcasm. But I did put some thought into that, and that's why I said that they don't regularly mass-produce modiocre games. On the other hand, EA is all about the constancy and consistancy of their shit.
  19. BFME2 - Another reason to hate EA!

    I care only because Tolkien fans have been waiting for decades to get some playable form of something that remotely stands up to the literature behind 'em. The Lord of the Rings Online could be the last one in a long while now, that has that chance. EA/New Line now holds just about all the rights to everything else.
  20. Guy gamers with girlfriends

    As a guy who has a non-gamer girlfriend, a guy must learn to prioritize. We have a few rules. I may be playing a game, she may be entertained for a few minutes, but if she gets anxious (because she wants to hang out with me, not with my computer), the rule is that she must tell me what she's feeling. I can't read her mind. I can read the frown on her face - but communication is probably the most important part of any relationship, so we both make a point of saying how we feel, not assuming the other person knows, whether or not they really do. If she says 'come hang out with me', I will - not perhaps right away, as if I'm playing World of Warcraft, it's not really a wise thing to log out in the middle of a Gnoll encampment or something. She understands that it may not be right away - but if that's the case, I also take the time to thereafter be more involved with her even if I am playing - I try to start a conversation, so she's not just sitting there waiting for me, wondering if I really am headed back to the tavern in town to log out. With the exception of Psychonauts and The Neverhood, which she loves (mwahaha), she's not the least bit a gamer. Right up there with communication, is comprimise - if that's not something one or both of the folks involved in the relationship are capable of, one or both of ya ain't gonna be happy. That goes for World of Warcraft, or no World of Warcraft; it's universal. If he can't comprimise, LET ALONE communicate about the lack of attention he gives you, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. Some of them have gills, or little glowing antennae, but there's at least one, if not more, dying to give you the attention he isn't.
  21. Dig up your shit!

    I figured most/all of you would be better than me, not ones to store video games with old yearbooks you never wanted to look at again. Manny, the exact same thing happened with me and my Game Gear! I miss Sonic 2. I don't think I had any other games for the stinkin' thing, either. I figured that I had thrown the magical little "handheld" out the magical window, and it had magically landed in the magical parking lot, magically shattering into a thousand magical pieces. But then I remembered that I couldn't remember... hmm... seeing it after I'd moved - so maybe I threw it out the magical window while we were moving. Hmm.
  22. San Andreas (PC)

    Hmmm, I never did try getting gold at any of the schools - I just wanted to pass and get them over with - kinda like normal school, come to think of it. Didn't know you get an apache though at gold - that must be what goes in the second copter slot at the airstrip, ye? Wonder what you get when you get gold at the other schools (motorcycle, boating, and driving)... Also, I've never managed to get that 6th and last star - what the fuck do you have to do/kill to get full stars?
  23. Why isn't Psychonauts selling well?

    Though I'm sure there's no comparison in numbers, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time didn't sell spectacularly either. Some of the reviews said it may have started more of a renaissance if it had, rather than spawning some more woeful knock-offs like Warrior Within. This is the case with a lot of other games of such quality - what they all have in common is their quality. They're so far above the status quo because publishers, designers, and marketers have been bombarding gamers with titles that frankly insult their intelligence for so long. I dunno if that ilk is ready for a game that relaly stimulates their intellect. Granted, The Sands of Time didn't really do that either, but the example was to compare the overall quality. I'm sure there's more to it, but whenever I try to think hard on the subject, I get too depressed about this state of things that I give up and go play something mindless like San Andreas, go figure.