Wrestlevania

I'm up to the halfway point in series 1 of Ergo Proxy and my enthusiasm for it's been blunted somewhat. Having started out very strongly, it's gone rather flacid and now resembles a dislikable cross between Highlander and Ben 10. Plus it's also descended into the fist-gnawingly crap habit that so much anime seems to--namely one-dimensional navel gazing studies of The Human Condition. But with perhaps even less insight than the not-fucking bits the bastardised Western versions of Urotsukidōji had in them 15 years ago. I'm hoping it picks up again, but while the characters remain away from civilisation I expect it'll continue to flounder. Badly.

A car being recovered from one of our local beaches, after spending two nights in the tide: VFfjqj6Xf14 Drive that now, you stupid fucks.

Chris posted this on Twitter yesterday (follow me back, damn you!): sdrS6caOLy8 Looks like it'll be a fun cross between 3D Realms' Rise of the Triad and Imagexcel's Quarantine. There's a good overview of the project on its ModDB page: More from the creator's website: I like the scope and ambition of the project, and the graphics have a real charm about them too I think. Looking forward to playing this!

...ergo, you can't modify your Steam Community data - at least not your friends list - on the website.

Balls... unlike Xbox.com, you can't add people to your friends list using the Steam Community website. Ever so slightly annoying.

That's Apogee's 2D platform level editor, no? ROTT used the Wolf3D engine, but in a heavily modified form so it could handle "floors" (like in a hotel) and very crude up/down perspective changes.

Well feck me sideways... Mrs V's just phoned: UPS have just returned my Xbox 360 already! Instant thought, "what if they've not found a fault with it and just sent it straight back again?!"

One of the few gaming instances where "epic" was an appropriate description though, for me at least.

Absolutely. I think there's a fair chunk of additional source code development being done here as well--and not just on the AI either. The whole thing's reputedly able to run natively in Vista - i.e. without DOSBox - for example. Pretty fucking cool. I haven't checked to see if it'll have multiplayer, but that'd be a nice addition if it did. Doesn't matter if it hasn't though; I'm looking forward to the single-player experience.

Couldn't resist, could you?

It's UPS-to-Frankfurt here in the UK, too. That ugly moire effect is what I got several times just before my original 360 died. Fortunately, the grand skeptic in my kept the box they returned it in just in case it died a second time... which it did last week, after barely 9 months with its replaced innards. That's half the length of time the original guts lasted; I thought they were supposed to be making them better, not worse! This time around, however, it simply froze on occasion while reading a disc in-game. When it properly died, it wouldn't even boot before showing 3 red lights. Didn't even get to the dashboard--just a black screen in pre-boot followed by RRoD just a moment later. Fairly certain it was just the DVD drive that died this time, not overheating components like the first time.

I really liked The Machinist, although I suspect that's as much for the cinematography as Bale's portrayal of the central character. I think he's excellent as an abusive dismissed military nut-case in Harsh Times, however. Really good, intimate story (again) with some good twists which he evokes well on-screen IMO. I can't recall a recent bad film - prior Terminator Salvation, obviously - for Bale, thinking about it. But that film was just a horrible mess from start to finish. I don't think it's fair that some of the coverage has suggested Bale was the main problem. It was a pretty crap idea for a film in the first place, which no amount of on-set tinkering by anyone involved was clearly able to rectify. Just a mess--it happens.

Agreed; no interest in smear, just highlights the complexities of the situation further I think. As for including the backlash stuff - like the TIG Source competition - granted, that's probably too biased. Still, I only bring it up as noyb's game helped me grasp exactly what was going on the best. So a personal bias, admittedly.

Eurogamer have published a lengthy piece on Tim Langdell versus Monbigames today, written by Simon Parkin. In it, Parkin writes about his discussions with Mobigame's co-owner, David Papazian, about Langdell's approach to the company and later calls out Langdell on his apparent bullying tactics. Which Langdell strenuously denies . Rather annoyingly, however, Parkin doesn't mention Langdell's involvement with the IGDA, nor the considered indie game backlash of the past few months (I expected a cursory mention of - if not a link to - noyb's poignant critique).

We'll stick to one formal Thumbs event a week. Trying to organise a cascade of sessions over multiple days just doesn't work, and it'll break down. Ad-hoc's cool, though -- I'll be around tonight again I think.

T's uncle was making him practice high fives at the weekend; suffice it to say, Junior tackled the job with palm-stinging gusto. And I'm also speechless with regards to you not liking T2, Spaggles. You're pulling our collective Thumb-leg, surely?!

As infected, the game seemed to be saying that you could optionally set the tank as a bot when you took control. I'm certain there were no bots playing as any other special infected though, definitely not. All in all, it seemed like one of our shortest versus games yet, but also probably the most brutal and harrowing. Some of the ambushes on both sides were tremendous, though I should apologise again for completely fucking up our second round early on by dancing into the tongue of a smoker whilst everyone else was floored. I especially liked our hold-out after escaping from the church; Thayer (a non-Thumb friend of mine), n0wak, Scratch and myself managed to slay the tank quite quickly. But then we somehow managed to survive three rounds of spawning with one of us dead, two of us incapacitated and the remaining survivor flitting about trying to revive us whilst we gunned down specials with our pistols. The third time the boomer showed up is what really finished us off, but it was a brilliant hold-out none the less.

Was introduced to Carbon Based Lifeforms by Last.fm a couple of weeks ago, and have been listening to them (and similar) a lot in the last fortnight: hd61hUDwcwk Really peaceful and uplifting.

I am a committed gibbon fancier also; they have a big rope across their island (yes, they have their own island!) at the zoo we're going to today, and they like to dangle from it like pegged-out washing and people-watch. It is ace. From the archive: Not today (the monkeys are shut, apparently). We're going to Bristol Zoo this morning!

Yeah, I can see that being an issue with zoos. We're lucky enough to have one of the best in the world (apparently) not too far away, I guess.

...use search?

I have tried it, and suggest others try it too. I managed to eat enough fish and berries in time, but then I got lots of big stones and a badger in my car. Which made things... sub-optimal, and I crashed into a tree. I almost made it back to my cave before the snow filled my car. Almost. Damn you, badger!

Bollocks! Forgot to try that when I got home, arse. I will try it now.

Tomorrow, we're going to the zoo. Everyone who's also been feeling fairly shitty lately should get up early tomorrow and declare, "Fuck it, I'm going to the zoo too!" And then do so immediately.

Get out of my head!