miffy495

Is this on iTunes or anything? If so, what do I find it as? I tried both "Telltale games" and "The Walking Dead" to no avail. I'd love to listen to this on my ipod, as I don't really have the patience to sit at my laptop for the duration of a full podcast.

:clap::clap: Well done.

Well, if I'd gone to Market Mall or Chinook Centre, I'm sure I could have gotten at least a couple of hits. I'm house-sitting right now, so the nearest place to shop is North Hill Mall, and if you're familiar with it, it's pretty terrible so not many people go there. The Streetpass hit I got at work told me that their Mii had met 22 others though, so all is not lost. I must have simply been walking through the wrong places.

My Steam account says I'm 8 hours in, and halfway through chapter 12 of 18. Your results may vary if you don't die a million times on the platforming sections as I tend to. I'd say 12-13 hours will probably be about the range of my final play time, maybe less as two of those final chapters are Gonarch and Nihilanth, so just boss fights.

Man, Shammack is revealed to be no fun. I kid, but also wish I could customize my ringtone on my current phone. My first phone had a little thing where you could ponderously arrange notes on a chart and have them played back as your ring. I spent way too long recreating the LeChuck theme from Monkey Island (from memory!), but it was totally worth it.

Man, that mostly just depresses me because Canada needs to have that referendum so damn bad. Included in the video is an explanation of why the Conservative party has been running our country for the past 5 years. Godspeed, England. please don't fuck this up, and maybe we'll follow your lead. It would be a way more exciting development for us Canucks to obsess over than that fucking wedding.

Well, with your warnings in mind specifically, I saved before firing it for the first time just to be sure. The first shot knocked me back into a wall and hurt me a bit, but only about 15 health points. After that, I didn't get hurt again. I will likely be playing Xen on Saturday afternoon or Sunday night, so if I'm going to be exploding with rage at it, I'll come here and vent then.

Got about halfway through "Forget About Freeman" tonight. Still amazed at how well this is all holding up. Always about to die, never dead. It's riding the line of difficulty perfectly. It's been kind of interesting to see other people's Steam ID's popping up every now and then saying that "X is playing Half Life" or "Y is playing Blue Shift." Looks like at least a few other people are going for the old Valve games. I'm a little worried that I'm so close to Xen now, as all I really remember about it is that it was really out of place. I can't remember specifics, and I'm worried it will ruin the experience. Still, I'll keep plugging away at it. It's still really good. Sno, I can now confirm that (at least for me) the Gauss cannon's secondary mode does NOT kill me in HL:Source, so maybe they did end up improving it?

Played through to halfway through "Apprehension" (Chapter 9 of 18) last night, the part where the ninjas start showing up. I'd forgotten how little sense that made, but whatever. I guess they needed better humans for you to fight and fuck it, 1998 video game story. That said, still greatly enjoying myself. The "Blast Pit" (blow up the giant plant monster) and section with that huge blue thing were exactly as terrifying as I remembered them, and I've felt the entire way through that I've been clinging to just enough health and energy to get me to the next system. I've gotta say, I'm super impressed with how well placed the health and energy pickups are. It feels almost survival-horror like the way I have this massive rush of relief every time I see a charging station. Really cool. Halfway through the game now, and no signs of slowing down. I also installed Opposing Force. I've only played it once and that was 10 years ago, so why the hell not? I'll keep on going through after Half Life is done, as long as it'll still run on my machine.

I have all the ArtStyle games that are on DSi, as well as those that I already had as BitGenerations games on GBA (I imported that whole series back in the day). For example, I have Orbient, but my copy is on GBA and called Orbital. Haven't tried Cubello though. I may have to check it out.

Oh shit, you got a picture of our back and forth acrobatics thing? Awesome!

Just had a co-op session with Patters where we went through the first 3 sets of rooms. Fucking excellent. So fun. Also, plenty of opportunities to act like dicks to each other. And, of course, general fucking around. Here's Patters running around forever: It was pretty great. Looking forward to more play tomorrow.

Sno, I'm playing Source because I've beaten Vanilla several times and had still never spent more than a couple of hours with this cool-sounding thing that came with my special edition of HL2 back in the day. Hadn't heard about all the problems before, but still want to go through it this way. If something horrible comes up, I'm sure I can "PC gaming" my way through it (read: console command my ass off). As for the story stuff that Orvidos brought up, I totally agree that Half Life at large has a horrible story. As I think was brought up on the podcast a long time ago, it's basically just Doom. What gets me about the series is the way that the world is constructed and presented. You always feel like you're in some kind of danger, like you're only a small part of what's going on, and that you're improvising every step of the way. A very large part of what's amazing about Valve's games is that even though there's really only one way to get through them, they always manage to construct everything in a way that makes you feel like you're discovering it and playing it by ear. This has been particularly apparent to me playing Half Life 1 and going through things like Office Complex. I see all these vents, doors, hallways, rooms, etc and just pick the one that feels right. Invariably, I've gone the right way. The game has never once slowed to a "Alright, now what?" crawl, but I've also never felt like I'm just being shepherded along. That's a great achievement for a linear game. As for the expansions, I've never played Blue Shift, but I did play through Opposing Force when I borrowed it from a friend in Junior High. I have them on Steam because apparently the CD key on my copy of Half Life 1 unlocked the complete pack when I entered it in back in the day. Worth a play then?

I got my first streetpass hit! At work, no less. One of the 6 people who came to a 1pm show of Barney's Version yesterday apparently had a 3DS in their pocket. That was a really fucking nice surprise. As for games, as soon as the 3DS shop hits in a few weeks, I should be alright until Star Fox and Zelda in June and July. As I recall, they announced that they'll be launching with either Super Mario Land or Link's Awakening, and having either one of those on my 3DS will significantly increase its awesome. Also, being able to bring over my DSiware purchases means all those ArtStyle games will be coming with me as well. For those that didn't have a DSi, you owe it to yourselves to pick up Pictobits and BoxLife as soon as you have access to the DSiware shop. EDIT: Also, there's this. Free Excitebike, yay!

Honestly? Meh. It's good, don't get me wrong. I don't know if I'd consider it essential though.

Wow, two fairly prominent thumbs in one day. Happy birthday, guys!

Portal 2. Fuck yes. That is all.

Just completed it. As Remo tweeted about the ending: What. Also, awesome as hell. Not living in the UK and having never seen any of Merchant's commercials, I thought he was perfect as Wheatley. Every single part of that game impressed me. I too got stuck at the same place as people have been talking about, , but aside from that I found the challenge level to be perfect. I struggled now and then, but always got it and felt like a goddamned genius. I laughed my ass off from time to time, and can't really think of a time when the dialogue didn't feel right. The one gripe I have with it was that I agree that there would have been a better way to handle it once Even just saying would have been enough. Oh well, minor complaint in a game that I can't really see being unseated as my Goty in 8 months time. Made tentative plans with Patters to check out the co-op on Tuesday afternoon, which I hope work out. I have internet for a week while I'm housesitting and want to get a bunch of time in that mode in while I can. Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday, and probably Friday afternoons I should be up for a game if anyone is interested, though I'm giving first dibs to Patters as I've already talked with him about it. I didn't bring my headset with me to the house I'm at though, so I'm either going to have to see how the onboard microphone on my laptop fares or do without voice chat. On a side note: Man, remember what it's like to have a new single player game from Valve? Fuck that felt good. The first hour or two of this game were just complete bliss for me as I took in that amazing feeling. I immediately re-installed every single installment in the Half Life series, and intend to replay them ASAP. Where the fuck is Episode 3?

Yet to get a streetpass tag, and I've had it in my pocket in sleep mode pretty much every second that I haven't been playing it since Thursday. Calgary doesn't really seem to have the density for that, I guess.

Congratulations, Rodi (and also to your brother and his wife)! I hope your niece lives closer to you than mine. Being the fourth child in a five-child family, I have 2 nieces and 4 nephews, but all of them live in Ontario and I see them once every couple of years. I have to imagine being an uncle is cooler if you actually get to spend time with the kids. I'm currently feeling incredibly cynical about Canadian politics. For those who may not be aware: One thing which I've always been happy about in Canadian politics (especially compared to our Southern neighbours) is the vote of no-confidence. I realize a bunch of you live in countries that also have this, but for the benefit of those who don't know it means that if our parliment can prove that it has lost confidence in a leader, a new election is called immediately to replace them. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it makes me proud that we have the ability to do it. It happened last month, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper was forced to call an election for May second. So far so good. The thing is, he's running again. Currently, he's even in the lead. That this seems fine to everyone is staggering to me. This guy has been leading a series of controversial minority governments for years now, but at least he stayed in power legitimately. Now, he's been effectively impeached by his country, told by a parliment of their (supposed) representatives that the nation has lost confidence in his ability to govern, and responds with "Nah, it's ok guys. I got this." The thing is, I would be ok with his party (The Conservative Party of Canada) being re-elected. I wouldn't be happy about it, considering myself much further left than that, but I wouldn't be offended either. That Harper specifically is running again is fucking outrageous to me. Call me old-fashioned, but once your country removes you as its leader, I don't think you should be able to go right back to running it as if nothing happened. If Harper is elected on May 2nd, it will be the saddest day for Canadian Democracy.

Announced, yes. Date, no. God I want that game.

I should go back to it. I totally ran out of steam about a third of the way through that game. I just wasn't feeling it for whatever reason. Everyone seems to love it so much though, I wonder what I was missing. Time to try again, after Portal 2 is done methinks.

Been playing with mine for about a day now. I gotta say, I'm completely smitten. The design of it feels so damn solid, but it's still plenty pocket-sized. Pilotwings looks amazing in 3D, and I'm having a ton of fun flying around and doing cool shit. That flying squirrel suit mission in the Silver bracket is bloody great. So much fun. I also picked up Rayman, which I have played the tutorial of, but that's it. Great game, but the 3D seems a bit weird. Butterflies and ashes and pollen and what-have-you flying in my face and obscuring my view of the jumps is a bit odd. Cool effect, but for gameplay reasons I may go down to 2D when I actually want to play. That said, I've never played Rayman 2 before, so I'm excited to go through it. Pro tip for those who, like me, have an old copy of Super Mario 64 DS sitting on their bookshelf: I noticed that when playing a DS game, d-pad inputs can be done with the analog stick if you want to. Though I played SM64DS with the touch screen back in the day, I remembered that there was a horrible option to play the game with the d-pad. I popped the cartridge into my 3DS to give it a try. Shit, it's so much better. As it's translating digital inputs to an analog stick, you still only have the one speed and need to hold Y to run, but compared to the options that the game gave you when played on an old DS, it's a world of difference. Seriously, I can't say how happy I am at this revelation. I got all 150 stars in that game, but I may be tempted to go back to it again now that the 3DS has made this almost 7 year old game so much more playable.

I got one and it's rad. I'll be adding everyone else at the nearest opportunity. My code is: 1934-0713-9134

Man, people sure are complaining a lot about a neat PR thing to encourage people to not only check out indie games, but actually play some of the shit that gets added to their Steam library during a sale-impulse-pack-o-things-buy. I propose that Valve has spoiled us and people can either enjoy this or ignore it. Complaining seems kinda stupid, when they've gone out of their way to do a cool thing. also, does anyone know the password for the bonus stuff in aaaaaAaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA?