Vorlonesque

The bit about Sean's roommate (or was it Jake's...I think it was Sean's) made me think of a story I heard second-hand from one of the Dorm RA's in college about a guy who used to live there who was a bit odd.... The guy walks into his dorm room and his roommate is in there getting head from a stripper and so he just walks over as they're doing their thing...and he turns on the SNES with Super Mario World and turns up the volume and just starts playing it with the door wide open to the dorm hallway almost oblivious to whats going on in the room.

I gifted my mom portal earlier today (well, yesterday technically). She's concerned that it might be too complicated or hard for her to play...but given that she's played Elebits, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, and Wolf3d way back when fine...I think she'll be ok (she's wanting something to play other than going back to Elebits on the Wii and Zuma, Plants vs Zombies, and Bejeweled on the PC). I think she'll really like it, and if not I'm only out a couple bucks.

Whenever I think of this game (journey) I think of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_Escape http://www.journey-tribute.com/journey/resources/atari2600/ We actually had that game...my brother bought it and I vaguely remember "beating" it.

OOooooh shiiiiittttt! I bought Hearts of Iron 3 like 3 hours or so before this podcast went up (maybe longer before...I got it for like 4 bucks during the gogamer 48 hour madness thing this last weekend). Also, I imagined a horrible thing during the Natal Parade discussion: Imagine a shirtless Steve Balmer with a Nazi swastika arm band and a bullhorn leading/commanding a Natal Deathmarch across the Vegas strip to a prison run by Cirque du Solei (I botched and butchered the spelling there I'm sure).

If you were to ask me what single player game I've enjoyed most this year...Stalker: Call of Pripyat would be very likely the one I'd put forth (Red Dead Redemption is also in the running...but CoP has AKs in it...and AKs will always get some love from me...especially AKs with real com-bloc style scopes on them (or the ability to attach them)). Anybody else love just scrounging around for stuff to sell and being a part of the world looking for artifacts, scavenging every useful scrap you can carry after a firefight, and all that. I've also found that the pump shotgun is amazing for killing dogs...and I realized that makes me a horrible dog murderer...especially after I started to love hearing their yelps after I put them down DOOM style (boom yelp click clack). I just wish I could customize the weapons more...I'd love to put some nice Russian laminate wood furniture on my AK-74 and I'd love to put some wood grips on my pistols and to have some stainless variants of some of them. I also think the drunk mechanic guy wants me...anybody knows if I can get sex in this game ME2 style? I want to see some awkward dude love mo-cap sex!

Weekend confirmed has grown on me. Its no idlethumbs or shackcast (original), but its good enough to listen to in the car or at work, even though I sometimes completely disagree with the guys on it (my views on a lot of things are actually fairly close to Remo's on a lot of things)...but disagreements are good and its good to get different perspectives from mine.

Who's going to be the third (Gary Coleman, Ronnie James Dio...now who?).

This is Richard Dean Anderson's nightmare. He has it every night and awakes screaming only to be reasured by his wife/girlfriend that he is no longer on Stargate and that the replicators aren't real.

The batman trading card made me laugh at work again last week (twice on the same day) causing me to wonder if people who can't see in my cube think I'm unhinged (OHHHH they think I'm unhinged alright...but I'm wondering if I gave them more reason...on a side note half of my casual conversations at work sound like excerpts from the idle thumbs podcast or the old shackcast (we have a guy who sounds exactly like Faylor)).

In response the the AR-15 discussion, AR-15 is short for Armalite 15...Armalite was the company Eugene Stoner worked for when he designed the AR-15 (and its parent design the AR-10). M-16 basically just means Model 16...the M is something the military uses across a wide variety of equipment types. It generally designates the model number for a type of equipment (which is why the M1 Carbine, M1 Rifle, and M1 Tank all share the same model number but are completely different items). Also...I just thought yesterday that you/we now have references or whatever to both Jeff Goldblum (Jeff Gold Gone Game Gold Game Blum Good Gold Game) and Samuel L Jackson (the severed hand dogfight and what-have-you)...it occurred to me that eventually idle thumbs will have weird references/running gags for the entire cast of Jurassic Park...and that these will all converge into a star studded movie about Big Dogs run amok making the Pyramid Head sound.

I think that you were correct on the general trend. As time goes by the general trend is that things become more fucked up. I envision a future in which we are hunted down by robotic anthropomorphic animal/furry real doll terminators wearing nothing but assless leather chaps and speaking like Ahnold on helium. This both scares me and makes me happy with laugher, and I see it as perhaps a slightly better apocalypse than some. I much prefer an apocalypse that can make me laugh than one that will only make me cry (so begins the countdown to the apocalypse of tears..."YOU WILL LAUGH TILL YOU CRY, AND THEN YOU DIE!"). Wow, I'm horrible.

Oddly enough I just bought a Hori stick and upgraded/modded it so that I'd have a Japanese style stick to go along with my US style stick (I like to have one of each). I went with yellow buttons on black acrylic plexi because it was the closest to the grey and yellow of the namco stick I could easily get: And this is my US style stick (an upgraded/modded X-Arcade):

This is what I love too. Its the difference between being especially creepy and off-putting (anime furries) and being hilariously awesome and surreal (what they're actually doing). I need this game. This and the podcast (hell just the podcast itself...simultaneous turn based combat...bought'd) have sold me on this game and I must buy it.

I think its a valid benchmarking method...I agree with respecting opinions on something like "feel", but those are subjective and while they're fine for forming opinions...I like the idea of having more objective benchmarks as well to give an idea of how a potentially expensive mouse might perform if they can't try it out. I DO agree that such a benchmark shouldn't be a quick and easy way to dismiss a product or system within a product (like laser mice). I did manage to make my g3 (which I still have lying around somewhere) skip in something...and I became paranoid about it (in addition to not liking the feel of it)...I was constantly worried that turning too fast would have me staring at the floor again (and occasionally that happened to me). I seem to remember it was when I made little twitchy movements...and thrashing around like I often do to see if someone is going to shoot me in the back or if a zombie is sneaking up on me...after that I became really hesitant to drop a lot of money on another laser mouse for fear that it would have the same problems (though I'm starting to wonder if the mouse I bought was defective). I guess my enthusiasm for benchmarks like the one I linked to was that it would give me one objective indication of how the mouse might work for me that I could work off of...where most mouse reviews leave me wondering if the guy reviewing it has the same preferences that I do (and I admit that I'm nutty about this stuff and picky as hell...I don't like using greater than 800dpi with a mouse because its what I'm used to...and I still prefer CRTs for my PC because the colors are far better than LCDs, I'm not locked into a native resolution, and I have more than enough space for one on my desk (I have a 22" SGI branded Sony FD Trinitron currently that I got from some place for around 300 bucks or so...and it weighs almost as much as I do, so it builds muscle to move it)). Anyway, before I start rambling incoherently again (too late), I'll just say that I didn't mean to link to anything that was all "1337 Pr0 G@m3r" or anything...I just thought it was a nifty way to benchmark things that made sense to my OCD computer programming math loving mind (and deep down, I want a turn table like that...I like having gadgets I'll never use).

Do laser mice still have problems with speed as mentioned in this article from 2007: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1265679 I've noticed a general trend towards laser mice, but I've yet to see anyone test newer mice in this manner (which seems to be a pretty good quantitative way of benchmarking them). I tried a logitech g3 mouse but I didn't like the feel of it and ended up going back to my mx300 and eventually a g1 mouse (which is optical). I will admit to being a bit picky about the feel of mice though and once I find something I like...I hate change (this is the reason I have a backup mx300 still in the box and I intend to get a backup g1 for similar reasons (what if I can't get the mouse I like anymore and mine breaks)). I tried a razer mouse...can't remember what it was called but it was optical and I liked it...but the shape just wasn't right for me...I couldn't find a way to grip it that worked. On keyboards I really like the mitsumi keyboard I have...its the best feeling membrane keyboard I've used...I wouldn't mind to get a mechanical keyboard (the ABS one looks good but I'm not sure how many keys you can depress at once...my mitsumi occasionally glitches when I'm trying to crouch, hold shift, and esdf around (I like using esdf because it keeps my hands on home keys so I can find my way around the keyboard easily without even thinking about it)). Mitsumi also made the NES, SNES, PSX, PS2, and Wii controllers among many others...all of which used membrane switches...which may be why I like the feel of their keyboard's membrane switches (I could go rambling on about mitsumi keyboards forever, but I won't other than to say I've had 2 of them (and an apple keyboard they manufactured) and they all still work flawlessly on the machines they're on). Edit: Ok the razor mouse I tried was the Diamondback. Also, crap I really got rambling up there.

I'm just glad my good friends Andre Hyppolite and Josip didn't live to see this (I didn't realize how the whole buddies mechanic worked with Josip and never watched for the blue smoke...so he died and I felt kinda bad about that...I made a heroic effort to save Andre (after Nasreen saved me when I got gunned down) who was a badass and my best bud in the game...and I morphined him again and again (I was all like "live dammit, live") until he died...I thought about reloading but I thought it'd be better not to just throw out that whole experience. Oddly enough I didn't feel bad about Xianyong Bai dying...I kind of actually tried to let him die after a couple bad experiences with almost having him die and having to play through the same experience over and over...he sucked and I was tired of his shit and bailing him out after he blue smoked after every fucking mission. So as I was making my half hearted effort to save him after clearing the area out...a truck happens to drive through and the driver either ran me over or shot me (can't remember), and the next thing I know Andre is reviving me and Xianyong is dead already. I wasn't too torn up...but then I go to a safe house and Andre gives me some speech about how I shouldn't feel too bad about Xianyong because at least I was there for him/with him in the end and thats all you can really ask for and I actually felt slightly guilty...Andre was fucking guilt tripping me and it worked because he'd bailed my ass out so many times and he was pretty much my favorite character at this point. So I felt weird as I drove around for the rest of that very melancholy in game day.

My biggest gripe about MW2's gun/upgrade setup is the fact that my beloved AK47 unlocks at level 70. AND they tacticlol'd the thing all to hell making it look like a glorified M4. I have found that the UMP45 isn't bad and the SCAR would be nice in hardcore modes (it doesn't have enough ammo to be worthwhile for me in non-HC modes)...except the modes I like to play in (DOM and CTF) don't have HC modes (DOM did back in CoD4...because servers could run whatever they wanted...now there are few if any HC-DOM servers (haha, hardcore domination) in CoD4 as people have moved to MW2 (there were very few of those servers to begin with)). I tried the Vector and liked it, but I find it eats ammo very quickly so I've mostly used the UMP45 (oddly IRL they both use the same ammo and would have similar ballistics...but the UMP does more damage...I assume for balance reasons). I am looking forward to the ACR unlocking after having used a few of those...they seem to be nicely effective.

That was actually my main gripe with the list overall. I could kind of guess with what they were going for based on the first three or four...but the more I read the less I had a feel for their criteria. If they just said "hey this is what we were really basing this on" I might have felt less confused. I guess with the GI list I felt like I couldn't really argue with the validity of the first 4 or 5 choices (even if I didn't entirely agree...they made perfect sense to me). I deep down think that beyond the first few they really didn't have any criteria...and the first few were more or less based on influence...and those were all very influential games. I think they basically just voted for most of the stuff and then wrestled over the top of the list and had a big discussion while the rest came down to an average of what everyone thought. Also, the goatse man and ghandi would definately make my top ten list of people (assuming being dead doesn't disqualify you)...though maybe not in that order (but probably...probably goatse is a more important person to me...he was certainly more influential...why I wouldn't have taken up that hobby if I hadn't...oh wait TMI).

Dammit HughesNet...I got a damned error when I hit send before and lost what I typed in...trying again after taking a break: I bought the game off Steam during the whole big sale and I really love the music (and the game). It makes me feel like a kid...gives me this strange happy child-like and calm feeling...I just really love the feel of it. And its fun.

Generally when I see a list I always take a view of "is it justifiable in some way". The Game Informer list actually didn't bother me as much as I expected. Most of the top ten I can really see the argument for...and they don't line up with my opinions...but I don't know what their criteria was and that can affect things (I feel LttP was better than Zelda1 (and I see LttP as the best in the series)...but if you're taking influence into account Zelda1 has more of that). I loved to see DOOM high in the list...and again; I would probably have that on the very top of my list and almost no one would agree with me on that. I also agree with what a friend at work said, that perhaps these lists should have some sort of moratorium on games that came out in the last 3-5 years...because its too soon and the hype and newness of something can affect a list (I mean I love CoD4:MW...but I think its presense in the top 10 of Game Informer's list is a perfect example of this). I remember EGM put out a list with Mario64 at #1 the year Mario64 came out...and one of PC Gamer's (or was it CGW?) lists had HL at the very top the year it came out (I can respect HL as #1...but there's something about the timing there where I can't help but ponder if newness and hype can skew perspectives in making a list like this). The PC Gamer list I didn't mind that much and it didn't much resemble the list I'd probably construct (and to be honest I never would...it would be a nightmare for me to try...and I don't think you can easily quantify such things to get any sort of grand order to it). That said I think its a respectable list and I find the choices to be completely sensible. Edit: I also had fun trying to find my PC Gamer magazine in the mess on my floor to refresh my memory. That mess is this: Also my PC desk is worse than the last time I posted a pic...but it looks perfectly stable:

I'd say Solaris holds up really really well on the 2600. I played that recently and was surprised at how much fun it was.

This is now my favorite, period. My absolute favorite.

The Secret Agent meets Under Western Eyes in Hell! Edit-- Nah I think this is better: Nostromo meets Under Western Eyes in Guam!

I am kinda sad that they don't have Wii Classic Controller or Gamecube controller support in this. I really would love a way to use an SNES, Super Famicom, or NES controller with this thing (I have NES & SNES -> GC adapters, a Super Famicom Classic Controller that plugs into my Wii-Remote, and I ordered an adapter that allows me to plug my NES or SNES or SFC controllers into a Wii Remotes nunchuck port as well). It seems like an SNES controller would be ideal to play this with. Then again I'm a big crazy about my controllers...after all, I'm the guy that posted this pic: AND I just got my hands on a supposedly new in box Genesis 3 button controller...but unfortunately it doesn't look un-used...so I may use the guts from it and the shell from a cheap knock-off to make an acceptable Genesis controller that doesn't freak me out (as used controller do) when I touch it to play VC Genesis games with (for 6 button games I generally use a Saturn PS2 pad with an adapter). I don't have a pic of the genesis controller because I'm too lazy to drag out my camera tonight.

This is one of two games I'm getting for Christmas...I always pick two or so games that I really really want that I'll be sure to look forward to in an insane way (last year it was Fallout 3)...it gives me something to really look forward to on Dec 25. The other game is Dragon Age.