Korax

Only one game? I used to play BF2142 a lot, so I used it all the time. Having a clock display available all the time is pretty handy, too.

Isn't that part of the suspension of disbelief in a multiplayer game? How does you guy keep coming back to life in Halo or UT?

The dying TV is an old Samsung DLP. I never really noticed lag until I did the auto-calibration for Rock Band 2. Several calibrations later (just to make sure something wasn't wrong) it had a lag of about 40-50 msec. That Aquos is looking mighty fine...

Played a little Penumbra today. Awesome use of 3-D manipulation. HL2 only used movement detection on 2 axes. Penumbra gives you a full 3-D area in front of you that you can move objects around in. It also has a "touch" mode that represents your point of contact as a small sphere in the environment, allowing you to run your "hand" across surfaces and swat at things. In order to open doors, chests, and drawers (the door to a chest of drawers?) you have to actually perform the motion and pull them open. If you have the cash to spend, I wouldn't hesitate to get one. The supported games may be limited in number, but it makes the gameplay more (visceral? mind-blowing?) interesting.

I have a minor video-gaming coincidence. I was sitting at my computer, playing The Wonderful End of the World and listening to a recent episode of the 'Cast. I came across a cobra that I wasn't quite big enough to absorb, and I kept getting knocked back. I thought to myself, "If only I could switch to the boy character, I could kill that snake." Shortly after thinking this, you read an e-mail from a listener who was going through the podcast back-catalog and had commented on the "Kill that Snake" song. I couldn't help but smile.

Doom 3 got spooky on a number of occasions when I played it, partially due to the fact that I was playing in a dark room with headphones on. At one point I was walking down a hallway, and the lights went out. Glowing red sigils appeared on the walls and strobed down the corridor, accompanied by a whispery "screaming of the damned" sound. I had to quit the game, turn on all the lights, and watch TV for a while before I could keep playing.

It's not really a problem as long as you have a bit of support from an arm rest or something similar. The HL2 support is a bit buggy, but I can't blame Valve since it's a mod by Novint. There were a couple cases where doing things "out of order" crashed the game. Tried a quick Left 4 Dead scene, and was impressed all over again. Valve added in shakes and bumps when reloading. It's satisfying to feel the pistol magazine slide into place after emptying it into zombie heads.

How's about some Sifl & Olly? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boae1KnvYfI&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boae1KnvYfI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Seconded. There are definitely a few levels that could go on eternally if there wasn't that time limit.

It's not gonna make much of a difference. 480p starts looking vaguely fuzzy when the screen is big like that (at least, on my TV it is).

Nah, I have audio notification turned off, so I can hear your lamentations just fine. Come on, just think of it as a goal for your achievement whoring.

I completely agree. Just playing a little Devil's advocate.

A fun, if stripped down, experience. The bots are hardcore, though. Definitely one to play with friends.

A little late to the party, no? Seriously, though, it's great that you're having fun with it, regardless of how long it's been out. All of the recent Diablo 3 teasing prompted me to start playing again, and it's just as good as I remembered.

Yes. While I enjoyed the challenge, there were definitely points when I just wanted to try the next level and come back later. It was disappointing that I had to almost brute force my way through a few tracks in order to keep playing the game.

And yet, there's a multi-million-(billion?)-dollar industry based around people doing just that. It's a crazy world we live in.

"Like the Holocaust, but good!" - ign.com "This game will force-feed you your own ass!" or "You will choke on your own ass!" - ign.com

Sounds like you might be a fan of Giant Bomb's Persona 4 Endurance Run. Vinny and Jeff play in 20-minute chunks every weekday. They're somewhere around 90 hours in. I enjoy watching people play games, but usually only in person. Commentary on the game is only really interesting to me if I can interact in some way.

Trials HD wasn't too bad with the ramp-up. It did, at least, give a nice separation by having the Hard and Expert categories. I gave up on Henry Hatsworth, though. All I wanted was a nice, friendly platformer, and instead I was force-fed my own ass. That and the "dapper gentlemen" Sim-speak was really fucking annoying. I don't really agree with Ouendan, though. I thought that it had a nice progression that trained me to be able to play the harder difficulties as I got to them.

LordKorax

http://steamcommunity.com/id/lordkorax

I had something almost exactly like that happen to me in 7th grade. I was called in to talk to the vice-principal because I was bored during a test and started drawing stick men that were killing each other with rocket launchers. And then again in 9th because the high school's admins apparently had the same concerns. Also: What's up? I'm (yet another) Chris, and I like to play video games.

Redneck Rampage and Sacrifice? Hmmm...

I've been trying to figure this one out for a while. For some reason, I can't seem to figure out what the system was. It was made sometime in the mid-to-late-80's, black, and (if I remember correctly) had a numeric keypad on the console itself. I could be wrong, but I don't think it used cartridges; the games were selected using the keypad. I remember playing Donkey Kong and some sort of top-down tank game. I've looked through Wikipedia and several retro gaming sites, but nothing has spurred my memory. I guess that would make Donkey Kong the first game I remember playing.

Let's rock!