miffy495

Man, looking at all of these, 2010 was a fucking great year. I played and loved so many games this year. I need to boot up my desktop (still in moving-in limbo) and check out my completed games list to make a top 5. There was an amazing amount of stuff, and I still haven't played Enslaved, Vanquish, New Vegas, AC: Brotherhood, or a bunch of others that seem like potential candidates either. Anyone who says that 2010 sucked lived under a damn rock. These past 12 months offered a lot of good.

Yup, I do. I haven't logged onto the website, just my profile on the Steam client. Do I need to log on with them?

Oh shit, they stealth released Grubbins on Ice? And me without internet at home... Glad it's not Christmas related now, actually, as I won't get to play it until January. Excited!

That'll do it for Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue. 14 hours of playtime to get every sidequest and achievement done. That game was rad. Essentially the same as the first, but the (MUCH) more varied environments, cooler items, and more interesting (and funny) quests made it a far more enjoyable experience for me. Oddly, given its simultaneous development, it feels like a way better game. I would recommend that anyone interested in Thongs of Virtue play the first game first though, so the full Deathspank experience will run you $30. For me, totally worth it. Now to see if I can finish Alpha Protocol before the year is out to add one last game to my huge "games completed 2010" txt file. I'll post the whole thing here when January hits, lets compare notes.

Doing the math, I should have 6. None of them have registered though. Do you need to fire up the game on that day to get the achievement to "count." All the ones that I have I got before the treasure hunt started, so I'm wondering if that's why they aren't registered.

I live in one of the most conservative places in Canada, possibly the most conservative English-speaking one (Quebec is REALLY catholic for the most part), and yet pretty much anywhere I go in the states people regard us as ridiculously liberal. Our federal conservatives have been pretty scary with some decisions, but they have a minority rule shared with two much more left-oriented parties so they can't do much. As I told you on Steam, I'm not in a position to offer any permanent accomodations, but if you end up in Calgary needing a fold-out couch for a while, don't hesitate to ask. My fridge is even vegetarian friendly, as my girlfriend won't eat any non-shellfish meat. Honestly I've taken to liking Calgary more than I'm supposed to I think. I think that people who always complain how stifling Calgary is to a young liberal person just aren't trying hard enough. There are a lot of us here, and finding like-minded folks isn't so hard. The most legitimate complaint I can see would be the weather, which is honestly ridiculous sometimes. It's 20 below 0 celcius right now, but it's supposed to be 3 above by tomorrow afternoon. If you get headaches from sudden pressure changes, steer clear. Chinooks will give you the worst damn migranes. Also, have a shit-load of warm clothes for when you're not in mid-chinook. My favourite places in Canada are probably Vancouver and Ottawa for the record, but your results obviously may vary. If you can afford it, do a tour of the place, at least a couple of provinces, and see what you think. We have the same queen as you, but she's mostly a punchline here.

indeed.

Also, stay very very far away from Pac Man CE DX.

My dad was a psychologist, so we named out first cat "Thorndike," as he did a ton of experiments on cats. That got shortened to "Thor" pretty quickly, so the second was named Odin. Names don't need to make a lot of sense. If it helps, I prefer "Aurelius" to any of the other names that have been suggested so far.

I've been playing IloMilo on 360 lately. Maybe give that a try? Slow-paced, warm, fuzzy visuals, and really tricky puzzles. Sorry to hear about your seizure, dude. That freaking sucks.

Yeah, we're obviously only using you as a decoy to keep toblix from realizing we're after him.

As I said before, my theater will be opening it on Christmas Eve (well, my boss bumped it up to the 23rd so I don't have to work until 11 on Christmas eve, but close enough) and I'm really excited for this film. What I didn't realize before was how contentious it was that we're opening this film. Apparently it's US distributor is Osscilloscope, and they don't operate in Canada. No Canadian distributor has picked it up yet, and most of them were waiting on the numbers from New York to make up their minds. My boss got impatient, went over their heads, and made a deal with Osscilloscope. This isn't the first time a theater has done this, but it's definitely got a lot of people keeping an eye on our little one-screen art house. It also means that not only do we have the city-wide exclusive, but the Canada-wide. If you want to see Rare Exports in Canada, you'll be coming to see me. That's kind of awesome. I do love my job.

Starcraft 2 is down now. Amazing how poorly balanced the final mission was compared to everything else. After having relatively little difficulty with every mission to that point (playing on Normal) I had to try the final mission three times in order to live through it. Even then, It was down to the wire, with the Artifact having about two hits worth of HP left when the timer ran out. This was mostly due to Brood Lords being FUCKING DICKS. I found myself wishing I had taken out the air units rather than the nydus worms, but the nydus worm mission was awesome, so oh well. Still, finished now, and I feel ready for whatever the next installment in the series is going to throw at me.

Still replaying the Assassin's Creed series, I just finished Bloodlines for PSP. I'm of mixed feelings about this game, especially after playing it a week after finishing a replay of AC1 on 360. Some of the design decisions in this game are arguably better. The game flows much more naturally, story-wise, and is much more varied. Unfortunately, the controls are clunky as all hell, the world is severely under-populated (a city should have more than just guards and 5 pedestrians per district), and everything just feels a bit too janky for its own good. If you took this game and gave it the polish that one of the larger console installments in the series received, it would likely be better than AC1 but not as good as AC2. As it is, it's great for a portable fix, and my affection for the series causes me to view it more favorably than I otherwise would, but it's just not a great game. Oh well. I have one mission left in the campaign of Starcraft 2 now, so that's next on the agenda. Gonna keep plowing my way through my game stack and see what sort of numbers I post at the end of the year. I've been keeping a log. Have you?

I haven't played it on PC, but it's a fantastic game on 360. I can only assume it made the transition without losing too much of it's charm, and possibly gaining better controls.

Yeah, my fuck you from earlier was delivered with a laugh. Every Christmas at Idle Thumbs is like a countdown to when someone will remind the rest of the forum how terrible that is.

Fuck you for reminding me that that exists. I'm pretty sure anyone who's joined since the podcast started will be very confused though.

Agree that the game is awesome. I'm pretty sure Seg has been nicknamed as such since pre-IT though. If I recall correctly, I've seen him in the credits from as early as Sam and Max S1.

Ahaha. Me too. Though it was a good idea when I was 12. 10 years later and I've only ridden it about 5 times.

I played it exactly the same way. Conviction was such a disappointment after that. What the hell, UbiSoft? How could you make such a perfect game and then turn it into THAT? EDIT: Also, I assume Raymond's MGS4 credit is due to there being an unlockable Altair costume for Snake. Probably a thanks or acknowledgement for that.

My error at the moment is of a different nature. Deathspank TOV came out today, and on trying to download it (having paid my $13.50 preorder over a week ago) I get the error "We're sorry, this game is no longer available for free." After this, it disappeared from my games library. Rebooting Steam did not help. The hell? EDIT: Hurray! A couple of hours later and I'm happily downloading my game. I no longer want to dismemeber Steam.

I'm hoping maybe she'll take a bit of that "hiding in plain sight" thing that she started with Assassin's Creed and actually make it work right this time. If I'm not mistaken, Conviction was that originally, but the final product was not at all. If Splinter Cell 6 is going to improve the series' standing at this point, it had better do something really different from its predecessors. Aside from AC, what has Raymond worked on? I just remember her coming out of seemingly nowhere when that game was in production. This means that all I really know about her is that she made a really cool concept but flawed game that had a lot of potential but needed to be a bit more focused.

Gotcha. Then yes, it is a cool job that I just kinda fell into. A buddy of mine's dad knew a theater owner when I was 16 and looking for a summer job. Ended up serving popcorn for the rest of high school and when I turned 18 they decided to make me a manager and give me the 9 months of projection training. I haven't talked to the guy who got me the concession job in about 3 years, but I'm doing pretty well for myself thanks to the throwaway summer job he got me. Hell, I haven't even worked for the original theater since early '08, but the people who were my superiors at that place are now my co-managers at the current place, and the reason I'm there at all. Making friends seems to matter a bunch.

I see. It also barely pays me enough to live, if that helps.

Hey, I was raised that way too. I'm just pointing out that most of my fellow citizens don't say it the right way.