James

The Game Gonegold insanity had me in tears of laughter, which is probably an acceptable substitute for tears of sorrow. And the news of the future was surprising and delightful. It surprised me and I was delighted. You guys are the best. Hooray for you.

I thought it sounded like him!

In this photo n0wak's looking kind of menacing. Was some kind of photographer duel going on?

I like the Bombcast, but it doesn't really scratch the same itch as Idle Thumbs in any significant way.

As far as I'm aware, all Idle Thumbs branded L4D activity thus far has been on Steam.

What if the infected couldn't see glows, either? That probably wouldn't completely redress the balance, but it would make setting up ambushes much trickier.

Don't forget the allusions to certain fundamentalist views on certain immunodeficiency syndromes.

Spoiler: the ending is shit. Of what I've seen, season six of the X-files has the highest density of episodes I like. I'm mainly interested in the standalone episodes. I find the whole conspiracy thing a bit tiresome and inevitably unfulfilling. I prefer it when they take an idea and run with it for a while, without being too restricted by the overarching lore nonsense.

It's definitely something to watch while you have something else to occupy part of your attention. There are parts of it where it picks up, due to story points or crazy enemies. Towards the end it gets a bit more interesting. I was disappointed that they didn't fuse more of the really elaborate personas, though.

Realism and versus appear as separate modes in the demo menu. That suggests not.

I was there when that was being confirmed! That isn't at all impressive or remarkable, but it delights me nevertheless. On a related note, Danny boy had assumed that melee weapons were replacing pistols as the infinite ammo option, making things more realistic. I understand why they haven't done this, but it did get me wondering whether it would be possible to set this up on a custom server. It would probably be easier to remove the pistols completely than add a new variable to keep track of their ammo (if that would even be possible without client-side mods), and you'd have to make sure everyone could get a melee weapon at the beginning (or even spawn them with one), but it could be pretty interesting to have bullets be a luxury, and to work out strategies for making the most of them. Then again, you can get through most of a game on primary ammo anyway. Perhaps that could be off more scarce, too.

Wine Is Not an Emulator Did you get the L4D2 demo running in CrossOver? Last I heard it was giving you difficulty. Or did I imagine that?

Unless you arrived quite late there's a fair chance I 'met' you when I was ticking names off the list for Nachimir. Unless I missed you, in which case I failed at an incredibly simple task and am thoroughly ashamed of myself.

Hahahaha, shit. I remembered there were lots of people called it, but apparently I misremembered the name.

Did you make the cop guy spaz out into a frenetic teleporting fit when he was handcuffed to the steering wheel at the end? I thought that was pretty funny.

Hey, it's the top of my head! For more complete reference, in case anyone is interested and doesn't already know: Top row: OssK, Marek, bbX1138, eljay, guy called Alex who was in charge of the bar tab Bottom row: me EDIT: Name correction, thanks Ossk.

My friends and I played a Wii minigame collection at the Eurogamer thing that had a The Wizard in it. Unfortunately one of my friends picked him first.

Yeah, I have definitely been missing the ability to go back and replay the highlights without having to pre-empt them with strategic saving or simply playing through the whole damn thing again. Also: I had to delete a couple of things to install this and I still only have a couple of megabytes left. Stupid space limitations.

I've been having increasingly frequent problems connecting to games. I hope this doesn't become a permanent feature, particularly with L4D2 on the horizon.

If the 9 is recurring it's not an error, just a different representation of the same number. Is BoGT out? I should buy it. I think I'll do that now.

I didn't see him. The guy who was telling us what to do was another Beatnik guy who I don't remember the name of (sorry). Eljay has some fantastic facial hair which I'm sure would have left an impression. Speaking of which, I really liked Plain Sight. I also played VVVVVV on Nachimir's recommendation, and was not disappointed. The indie games section in general was really good, in fact. I think that and attending a couple of the talks made this a more satisfying experience than the previous expo-type-things I've been to before. If you just play the big games, it's mainly stuff you're already decided on and which will probably get a demo anyway. Oh, but I found nVidia's active 3D much more impressive than I'd anticipated. So, yeah, stuff. Nice to meet Patters, and see Nachimir again. Sorry I didn't get a chance to see anyone else who was there (it turned out my friends were able to get in, after all, as there were tickets on the door from 1 pm).

Well, I'm on my way home. I met some thoroughly nice people, including Ben, OssK, SS Douche (who was very friendly despite being a self-professed prick), Eljay, ThunderPeel, n0wak, Nachimir, Marek, and some guy called Will who seemed pretty interesting. I would have liked to have talked to him more. And you all, of course. I'm afraid I wasn't being the best conversationalist for most of it. Anyway, on the way home I realized I'd accidentally bought a very expensive single rather than a travel card, which was annoying, but not interesting. I walked to the station with a design guy who gave me his card, mainly because he was proud that he had one, then on the train I got to know a very drunk pair called Ben and Sarah (I think) through Ben's efforts not to throw up all over me. He managed to last the four stops before he had to change, for which he should be commended. In the interim it transpired that they worked for Sega and knew Marek. So if you know a pair who fit that description and were working in the recruitment bit of Eurogamer, Marek, that was them. And now I'm on a bus and there is a young child who is wide awake at one thirty in the morning. All in all, a good night, notwithstanding the technical difficulties. Although I forgot to pick up my copy of the Thumbs newspaper (which I selfishly claimed for myself) from Ben, who was looking after it for me. This is a source of indescribable sadness for me. I will pay you to post it to me. Seriously. Or if you're at Eurogamer tomorrow, that would be easier.

The stairs themselves are cordoned off. I fear retribution for crossing them. I'm currently standing by the front door fiddling with my phone. Help!

They only have one face between them. That's pretty terrible. Kick them in it.

[PHONE NUMBER REDACTED] I'll probably be wearing a T-shirt bearing the likeness of two horses locked in bloody combat. This will equally likely be obscured by some sort of hooded sweatshirt, possibly with a picture of a bear in a tank. Probably not that last part, though.