Nachimir

Dan gets that on Facebook. Then, after he'd set his status to "Dan is wondering why Facebook directs so many gay dating ads at him" and it showed up in my newsfeed, it started happening to me too. Hmm.. viral mis-targeted ads, I guess.

I watched Planet Terror last night with a bunch of friends and a projector. It was awesome, in a real ultimate power kind of way.

I played this for a bit at GameCity in Nottingham this weekend. It's pretty cool, and yet another reason I'm tempted to get a 360. Death is meaningless because you can rewind time without constraint, for instance I died three times in five seconds trying to pin down some timing. This gives the whole game a pleasingly experimental bent where you throw yourself into danger to see what happens rather than avoiding it. Some of the puzzles have the same sort of "Eureka!" moments as Portal, in that you're interacting with a fairly traditional seeming Video game world in new ways.

I'm finding it quite funny so far. If they infest the rest of the forum and start to drown out Thumbs culture, then we may have to call in the exterminators.

I actually find Facebook an incredibly useful way of maintaining contact with people, especially when they're out of the country. Quite a few of my friends organise events through it too. A few people from my past have also got in touch through it... which cuts both ways, from someone awesome you've not seen in many years to... well, wankers. If you're easily distracted by and obsessive about projects, Facebook is an absolutely great way to prompt yourself into maintaining a real-world social life.

It sounds froody.

I <3 Michel Gondry

Thoughts: Yes. I won't be around on Steam until next week though.

Key points: Cartoony, violence so OTT that it's funny by itself, voice acting by Jack Black, music by Motorhead etc. The music is key. A not-so-gamey friend of mine liked the idea of a tiny plastic guitar enough, but was sold on GHIII by the Sex Pistols re-recording Anarchy in the UK.

Something awful just had a photoshop phriday on portal. It had one very clever entry with gameplay potential: A very large cannon sticking out of a portal on the side of a van.

The IT Crowd evidently has Marmite-like properties.

I don't get on with it. I persevered all the way through the first series and only one bit made me laugh at all. It's just not a patch on Father Ted.

There's another one, at least

Ok, I was in two minds, but now I'm definitely getting a Wii.

I'm in awe at how well Valve have done the whole digital distribution thing, and the way they've managed the Half-Life IP. I'm certain they'll be another Portal game, but I'm also pretty sure they're going to wait and look at user created maps for Portal before they build a second one (Yet another smart move). In one of the first bits of commentary, Gabe Newell said he's certain they've only just scratched the surface of portal gameplay.

I missed that one, and didn't realise there were multiples. I only found one in the shed, right at the beginning after the first tunnel full of zombies. Cigol, looks to me like it might be based on the Gnome from Amelie: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare/39stepscriterion/Amelie_MomentumR2_02.jpg

What sorted it in the end?

I saw the accomplishment and found

The Orange Box: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2541-Zero-Punctuation-The-Orange-Box The stuff about TF2 and Portal is pretty good.

Yeah. It's only double fine that stops me from thinking it's going to be lame. As it is, I still think it's a bit cheesy, but the exaggerated violence looks hilarious.

Wow. The whole thing looks completely passionless, and I suppose that's ironic. They even managed to make a pinball table look insipid and dull. I too am curious about this. WTF is going on there? Why must kissing couples be rearranged to allow a giant vegetable to pass? Why must the two things be associated at all? "Cumcumbers and melons: Putting the 'dirty' in dancing" ¬¬ I do quite like that the video has Kayne and Lynch at the sides

When I left home at 23, I thought "Why the fuck didn't I do this sooner?" I hope it all goes well Toblix

I saw a pretty good strategy for cp_granary the other day. My team were rushing the map with scouts and won a few games that way. Then the opposing team did the same, but backed the scouts with two pyros. They generally arrive before the 4 -5 scouts are done fighting over the centre point, incinerate the enemy scouts, and it's capped. Same combo plus the rest of the team for the next point, then a spy sneaks to the last point and starts capping while the enemies all rush past to try and retake their forward point. Both teams were uncoordinated bunches of strangers, but that strat led to a couple of stupidly fast wins.

Fun, spot on. I was a little disappointed when (I think at about 30 - 40% in) I finally hit a level I just couldn't do or be arsed to practice enough to beat. But it had entertained me mightily up until that point and I didn't resent it at all. Rag doll deaths with sickening crunches thrown in help a little Advance Wars Dual Strike did the same thing to me - fun, but one of the campaign maps was just so arbitrarily hard I ceased caring about any of the game after it. In N, watching the replays from the high score table was also highly entertaining - there are some incredibly devoted/talented people out there, and they turn playing N into an awe inspiring feat.

I loved N, both the visual aesthetic and the physics based gameplay. I never had any illusions of completing it though.