Vorlonesque

http://bashandslash.com/ Wow, they're removing leaning from the game (it was a PC feature)...which was a running gag on the IW forums...and they're actually doing that. And one of the devs was bragging about having an awesome 100ms ping in a game (note: I find anything below 200 to be playable and I used to play Quake2 and Quake3 over 26.4k dialup with sometimes 400ms ping or a little higher and I'd sometimes get at the top of the scoreboard in an FFA with that (though anything more than 350 enters the realm of complete shit...and 250ms is really where things begin to break down...but I digress)). While 100ms ping might be fine for some (like me)...its not something to brag about. There also isn't a feature for recording demos, and there's no drop down console and your fov is going to be locked at 65. Oh and 9v9 is the maximum player count (not a huge deal for me, but it is pissing some off). Add to that the fact that my favorite weapon (the AK47) unlocks at lvl 70 and my favorite mode, Hardcore Domination, can't be played (no playlist for it and no dedicated servers that could enable it). More hilariously the only HC modes available are TDM and S&D (they tried to keep the number of playlists the same avoid "confusing" the players...and they had to make room for new stuff so some stuff got cut...I'm amazed that they have that low an opinion of the intelligence of new players...I mean you have to be literate to navigate their menus I assume...it isn't that hard to assume that 3 or 4 extra lines of text wouldn't be that big a hurdle). Its like they're trying to make this game as unappealing as possible to me personally.

My mom used to love Wolf3d way back when (the 2.5D and switch pressing of DOOM was too much for her though). She more recently played Elebits and enjoyed that and it was a pretty good intro to the more modern control style of FPS games (one hand aims the other moves). I think she'd probably like Portal...should have her play that sometime...but I'm not sure if putting Steam on her computer would be a source of confusion or not.

Holy Shit! Nick Breckon is in my neck of the woods (Giggidy Giggidy). Not to be creepy or anything (and thats still a 3 hour drive or so from here...but he's getting closer to me and soon...well...I'm planning our wedding as we speak). Again...I'm not being creepy at all. Seriously though...when I was sent for training to Rockville the Best Buy up there was the one where they'd be signing games that were preordered and the guy asked me if I was going to preorder it there to get it signed and meet the Bethesda guys and I was like "no I live in West Virginia its too far" and he thought I meant the pann-handle and was like "oh its only an hour" and I explained that I was in the middle of the state so it was 3-4 hours depending on whether I was in the mood to obey speed limits and other suggestions.

Seeing the soundtrack listing actually made me want this game a huge amount more than I did to begin with. There were a number of crazy hilarious songs I love that were in there (Thus Spake The Nightspirit, Her Ghost in the Fog, Rip The System, Progenies of the Great Apocalypse, Thieves, Angels Don't Kill, Crack the Skye, etc). I'm a huge metal fan (I even don't mind the growling and screaming anymore), but even if I wasn't this soundtrack would be great for both the newer stuff and the older stuff from the 80s. I can't wait to sit down and play this.

This is extremely depressing. This was the game I was looking forward to most of all this year (especially for its multiplayer)...and I have a feeling this will pretty much kill the potential it had for a thriving multiplayer community on the PC. Whoever made this horrible decision needs to change it ASAP. I don't care if it delays the game, though it shouldn't given the fact that they already pretty much had this code in place and doing this stuff would actually require MORE work on their part. I don't know if this is IW just really really not understanding their market on the PC side, or if its Activision (i.e. Kotick and company) being moustache twirling fucktards who are out to eventually take the fun out of playing games as well as making them...but this is really really horrible and it just makes me sad on several levels. I'm hoping IW/Activision get the message and change course on this. I don't care if it takes a patch or what...but I want to see this fixed. I am worried that even with a patch that this might hurt the PC version and may be used as an excuse to kill off PC versions of the CoD series (something I'm sure Kotick would like given the fact that he's a blood sucking parasite on the industry's ass who seems determined to drive things into the ground on the long term in order to enrich himself in the short term). Edit: Thought I'd add that looking at the IW forums a while back was really depressing as well, in that you had console people getting all pissed because PC gamers were pissed over this...and both sides were basically fighting and generating a lot of noise and very little was actually said after a while...it was just generally horrible. I'm not sure if I'll cancel my pre-order...but I'm tempted given that unless this changes the game is an unknown quantity and I should probably wait and see what issues others encounter before I put down my money. The fact that I'd even consider that is shocking given that yesterday at this time it was a given that I'd buy this on launch day and I'd likely buy a version for my brother as well.

I generally get stuff off the PSN (haven't setup Live for that yet, really should actually)...I like the idea of being able to use all my crazy controllers and anything that plugs into a USB plug should work with anything you get off of PSN (though you'll need an adapter for the 360 pad due to some weird stuff...until recently I didn't know they made one...I'm going to certainly get one now to go along with my many other adapters). I got Mega Man 9 on the PSN a while back in the hopes that I could use my NES->USB controller adapter with it. It worked, but the buttons didn't map out as I needed them...that is the biggest problem you might run into. On the subject of Mega Man 9, I really wish Capcom supported gamecube controllers with the Wii version...I'd love to be able to somehow use my NES pad (I have an NES->GC adapter too) with Mega Man 9...holding a wii remote sideways isn't the same thing at all and right now I'm making due with the Super Famicom classic controller (an SFC controller from Japan for the Wii) hooked into my wii remote as its the next best thing I guess. I'm getting waaaay off-topic...but yeah that 360 pad SHOULD work with an adapter...but until I get my hands on it I can't confirm for certain (and obviously motion based stuff like flower probably won't work...speaking of which I should get flower sometime).

Don't feel too bad. The guys on the Shoryuken forums would hate my stick and proclaim that despite my scientific measurements based on the tools they recommend that I'm wrong and seeing things (or alternatively that I was one of the lucky people to get some of the "good" adapters). I'll be the first to admit that the XBox adapter I have is horribly laggy and I never used the fucker...but everything else I got seems fine. That all having been said; if you build one from scratch you are more hardcore about this shit than I am likely. The idea of using power tools to craft my own personal stick scares the hell out of me...mostly the power tools part (shooting pistols at paper targets doesn't bother me (its one of my crazy hobbies))...but saws and cutting instruments scare the holy hell out of me like nothing else and the idea of using them makes me nervous for some reason. Edit: Oh and they'd also hate that I used Happ parts instead of Sanwa stuff and that I used concave buttons (I'm used to the arcade machines of my youth and I see those as being "right"...though I'm not using the harder to press concave buttons...I did get the ones that press directly down on the microswitches...and I'm not sure if those are what I used way back when...hell way back when a lot of machines still had leaf switches and I've been tempted to build a joystick with Wico leaf switch buttons and a Wico stick with the same switches).

All this talk of controllers made me snap a couple pics to share: These are some of my various controllers (most of which can connect to my PC...the exception there being the wiimote, nunchuck, and Super Famicom classic controller for the Wii (plugged into the Wii-Remote...originally sold by the Nintendo Fun club or whatever it is in Japan...though I had to ebay the thing)...the other Super Famicom controller is a standard SFC controller that I can hook to my PC with an adapter (and the SNES controller is also one that I bought recently sealed in its original box...I've got another that is in more pristine condition still sealed up in my closet). The nearer Saturn style controller is a USB Saturn controller and the more distant one is a PS2 Saturn controller that Sega made way back when. The Capcom SF4 pads remind me a lot of the old Saturn controllers and that was what inspired me to post this. This also comes in handy as well (I've tested it and its got no lag on my PC and PS3 (using a Pelican adapter)...I have a 360 adapter that seems to be lagless for it (an XFPS360) based on my testing...though its a pain to setup). I replaced the buttons and stick with Happ parts and managed to get ahold of a "chrome" plastic sleeve with another joystick that is identical to the ones IL used to make for the Super sticks (like the one I have)...so it has that nice Neo Geo cabinet look to it (a lot of SF2 machines here in WV seemed to have those same sticks...which is why I went that route...familiarity). I need to clean my desk so I can actually use the nice flight sim setup I have...I need to cleanup the floor too.

Speaking of Stunts...if Criterion (the Burnout people) would make a Stunts style game complete with horrific crashes I would be happy (if anyone made it I'd be happy). Crashday wasn't horrible...but I enjoyed it more because of what it was than how well it did it. Trackmania is great, but I miss being able to crash and watching the replay of said crash (even if the crashes in Stunts really required you to use your imagination...it was still great to launch out the side of a loop and gain a lot of altitude in the race car and then fall back to earth). On the subject of Forza, anybody know if MS is making any effort to allow some of the nicer wheels (with 900 degree or whatever turning radiuses and nice shifters) to work on the 360 with this game (other than the really expensive Porche branded wheels).

I just finished it today (playing a lot of PC gaming right now, got a GTX 295 recently...and after RMA'ing one of them (with a bad core) I got another with the same defect and gave up...I'm hoping its just an issue with XP or something...long story...but I'm still getting better performance with it in single core mode with the second core for physX than I got with my old 8800GTX). I really enjoyed it, but I had really low expectations. The combat was pretty annoying and I would have enjoyed it better if you could avoid guys. I did like that what amounted to the big final battle (the servers) that you basically had to get the guys to do the shooting for you. I really liked the design of the main character and I liked the general feeling of the setting...in that regard it felt like they were going for something different; but the story was best ignored I felt (it COULD have been much better...it felt like there was potential there and in it was pissed away in a number of different ways). Next up for me is finishing FEAR2 I think and trying to actually finish Fallout 3 instead of doing every side-quest and every fun little activity I find...I want to play through the expansions at some point but its rare that I actually mess with the main quest anymore (and I keep jumping back and forth between it, Farcry2, and various other stuff...along with occasionally loading up Crysis to fuck around with the AI).

I was just about to send an email with a couple video game dreams I've had (including one that was in my college rec center/lunch room...except it was CO-OP DOOM with DOOM enemies and the walls were all pixelated DOOM textures but the windows outside looked out on the normal scenery usually outside those windows)...but as I was getting ready to do it I loaded up idlethumbs.net and saw that you had already cast a pod of manlyness into my whimpering face...so I've instead decided to go to bed so I can be awake when I get up tommorow for work @ 6:00AM Eastern Time to work a loooong ass day that likley awaits me tommorow. I'm downloading the podcast overnight though (I'm on satellite internet, which means that I'm limited to 500MB a day, except between 2:00AM and 7:00AM...and I have 1000+ms of latency...and I pay ~150 bucks a month for this priveledge because its better than 26.4k dialup out here in hell's asscrack: a broadband blackhole). Also, as to the gatling gun comments from last week...while I agree that a turret sequence has no place in a game like CoJ...I imagine it was an attempt to have an homage to the classic scene in the movie The Outlaw Jose Wales where Clint Eastwood uses a gatling gun to mow down a large group of Union soldiers. As an aside there is some debate about the extent of the use of gatling guns in the civil war...as in one case a dozen of the guns were privately obtained by a general who used them in the siege of St Petersburg...and there are, I believe, other accounts of such instances. I think the confederates also had some sort of rapid fire equivalent if memory serves...but I'm not certain if they were ever actually used in combat (where the gatling gun actually was). An interesting side note is that toward the end of the war, the beginnings of trench warfare started to materialize in a manner that foreshadowed World War I (though no one paid attention to these trends in light of the quick Prussian victory over Emperor Napolean III in the Franco Prussian war of the 1870s which resulted in most military experts falsely assuming the next war would end in days rather than the years that WWI encompassed).

It may be completely unrealistic to expect on a phone...but Sega Rally Championship.

It was actually the Quake3 engine (well, a modified Quake3 engine that was used for FAKK2 or something). Its one of those games that I always meant to play (both to actually play it, and back when I bought it to see what they did with the Quake3 engine (as I was modding Quake3 at the time...and still am sort of, though I'm now messing more with the rendering code and some GLSL functionality I have working in it to help out a mod I like)).

I had to pretty much make myself play it for a bit as well. I played it in short bursts and a couple longer ones initially, but a couple of things happened with FC2 for me when it first came out. It had the misfortune of coming out among a lot of other games that were all taking over my life at the same time, and I didn't have time to give FC2 the time it deserved. I also think I let myself do something that I rarely but occasionally do; I got myself too excited over the game before it came out and ended up initially dissappointed that it didn't part the clouds in the sky and rape me through said cloud firmament hole. I find when this happens I'm better off taking a step back and playing other stuff and then coming back with my new shiny low expectations so that the game really exceeds them and is this new thing that I was wrong about...its like a jedi mind trick except I'm doing it on my own mind (which apparently works due to the fact that I am a retard). FC2 seems to be the sort of game that you really need to set aside a chunk of time to play...its not (at least not at first) the sort of game you can just jump into for a very short session and then just come back to later...not if you want to really get drawn in. I intended to do this for some time...and it was my intention to really get into the game before Christmas (when I was getting Fallout 3)...but it was in ever greater danger of being part of the ever-growing-pile-of-games-I've-barely-if-ever-touched-but-need-to-play. Largely due to the podcast and Chris Remo's enthusiasm in particular (he's soooo dreamy) I decided (read: felt guilty enough) to play FC2 again with the intention of getting through the tutorial section and into the real game in a sitting (I was already almost all the way to that point). I ended up playing for 4 hours or more (going way beyond my original goal) and I was totally engrossed (and still am). I think the game really took off once I bought a gun so that I could actually manage to fight...and then when I bought an AK47 with all the upgrades...everything was good (I have a thing for AK47s). This has become one of my goto games and I'm constantly going back to it to beat a few more missions whenever I feel like playing something (sometimes I think "well I'll play for an hour, give or take 15 minutes"...and then 3-5 hours later I realize that this is Civilization all over again...because there's always just "one more thing" you can do). There's a lot of variety so its fucking easy to just mix it up...and I'm constantly getting into this and that and its literally left me sleep deprived on a few occasions (as great games often do...Fallout3 did the same thing recently...and Civ4 was the bane of my well-rested existence...and lets not even discuss online DM with the Quakes). I should stop typing now, as my eye has inexplicably started burning like something is in it...and...fuck. FC is really good.

I had a button to die in my 5 or 6 year old X-Arcade stick...so I ordered some Happ concave buttons and an IL competetion stick with cherry switches (something I've been meaning to do)...though I may replace the comp stick with a super stick...I'm torn on that (I heard that SF2 had an ultimate stick...which is supposed to be kinda crappy (though I don't remember it being that way) and I think NeoGeo cabs used super sticks (always liked the stuff on the old NeoGeo cabs)...and I'm big on using the shit I remember...and the comp stick is used on a lot of machines and seems like a good familiar choice). I toyed around with the idea of getting leaf switch buttons for a REALLY old school feel...but I talked myself out of that (maybe I'll build a stick for that purpose). I'd add that I tested the PSX/PS2 adapter for the X-Arcade for lag and found that mine at least; is lagless. I haven't had a chance to test out my XB or GC adapter...but I use my PSX/PS2 adapter on both my 360 (via an XFPS360) and my PS3...and using the methods outlined on shoryuken's forums for testing lag, I'm ok on the PS3 and 360 front (I also tested out all my various PC adapters...and pretty much confirmed what I knew...that the old bulky 80s tech looking Radioshack adapters for playstation controllers are indeed badass, and that the Soyo adapter I have...well...isn't). I'd also mention to anyone interested that retro-usb SNES adapters *should* work with the PS3...so if you want to use your old SNES controllers that way they should work (I've only ever tried my old NES controller with a couple of PS3 games...I should give my Super Famicom and SNES pads a try just for some nostalgia on the SF4 front). There are also some really great USB and Playstation2 versions of the old Sega Saturn controller that might be worth looking into (I have one of each and they are good stuff...I may buy another...you really don't want to see the mass of controllers sitting on my desk right now).

Anybody know if it'll have mod tools eventually. I'd love to see that happen...I imagine a Stunts mod could be amazing with this game!

A handful of glitches immediately come to mind: Strafe running in DOOM1&2 Bunnyhopping in Q1/QW (basically, if you strafe and turn (in the same direction I think...but its been months since I last played) you could gain speed...but if you turn too far you lose a LOT of speed (and move slower than you would running)...so its this tricky technique and people who do it well can literally sometimes move faster than Q1 rockets for bursts of time. Strafe jumping in Quake2 and Quake3 As to the mentions about Stunts...that was an amazing game...I still have my old floppy disks (not even High Density as I remember) for it and the original manual for the copy protection (word #X on line #Y on page #Z). I'd love to see someone do a real sequel (spiritual or official) that really captured what the game was about. Trackmania is fun...but it didn't have the insane wrecks you could pull off...and Crashday just wasn't quite as good as it needed to be (it felt like they focused too much on the twisted-metal-esque combat stuff they tacked onto it...and you could just keep crashing the cars forever until they finally died...but it wasn't too bad and it had potential).

I have always been here! PUPPIES (skullfuck skullfuck skullfuck). Anyway, hi I've always enjoyed listening to Chris Remos voice since the shacknews shackcast and have wanted to make sweet love to his vocal chords and I'm hoping that someday this podcast and haptic technology makes that far off dream at least seem true...oh and Nick Breckon and the other guy plus the other other guy are all dreamy too (PUPPIES!!!).