JonCole

As I said on my Twitter, good on Blizzard for listening to fans, but a little lame that they didn't pull an Apple and force a paradigm shift in social interaction on forums like those.

I can't speak on the quality of Dark Void, but I do know that I love the soundtrack, which was composed by Bear McCreary (of Battlestar Galactica fame): <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVu5tbkf6SA&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVu5tbkf6SA&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

Yeah, I'd definitely agree that the section you're talking about is the hardest part of the game. Later on, I'd recommend using Impulse to swat them away... with TMD Equipment and more E99 at your disposal, a couple of Impulses can wipe out 20 or 30 of them with no sweat.

Haha, that's awesome. I never knew the pronunciation of that stuff, but now I get to see that every time I hit a loading screen. Thanks!

So, what'd you guys end up getting? My list: Left 4 Dead 2 Cryostasis Puzzle Kingdoms Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Gothic Bundle Max Payne Bundle Monkey Island Complete Pack Grand Theft Auto IV Shatter Thief: Deadly Shadows Borderlands: Mad Moxxi and The Secret Army of General Knoxx Star Wars: Empire at War Gold

Umm, are all of them really on sale? I feel like I remember some people whining a lot about how some games are not available... maybe one of them was Dissidia? I don't know.

Just finished Uncharted 2... I can see why it was labeled GOTY by so many pubs. It was the kind of game that made me alternately completely satisfied and begging for more... kind of a strange feeling that I only get with my favorite television shows between seasons.

Yeah, none of the websites I tend to frequent deal with your spacebucks, unfortunately. :/

A new guide on building gaming PCs at various budgets: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2365957,00.asp Nothing mindblowing in there, but I found it up to snuff.

Ugh, I have over 150 games on Steam now and the sale isn't even over. Steam is the best/worst.

I usually stick with Rosewill cases, personally. They tend to be pretty well made, the company has great support, and they don't charge you out the ass for their products.

I had a LOT of fun with the Butcher Bay remake. Dark Athena had me a little bit bored, but at such a low price it's worth looking over.

Apple is sorely in the past on this particular issue, especially since they really helped pioneer podcasts to their current state of popularity. The only useful app of this type that I've come by in the App Store is called RSS Player, which barely gets the job done. The whole "you can't duplicate official app functionality" clause of App Store approval completely stagnates interesting development on a lot of fronts like this.

Monkey Island Complete Pack for $11 yesssssssss

Yeah, Valve really should just rent out a whole new server farm when they have Steam sales, those worthless bastards. ... maybe you should give them a little break. Anyways, my general rule of with these sales is to just wait until the last day to buy all of the stuff that hasn't gone Daily Deal yet, but I couldn't resist with a couple choice games that I honestly don't think could have gotten any cheaper. I managed to grab The Chronicles of Riddick, Cryostasis, and Puzzle Kingdoms for $11. Great deal.

Beyond the stuff that Toblix said, if you ever plan on serving up streaming content to multiple devices a la PS3 Media Server, AirVideo, or Orb, it might be a good idea to have a CPU capable to quickly transcoding video files on the fly. It's not like there's a universal video format that runs optimally on all systems, the closest thing to that is H.264 and that doesn't even take into account aspect ratio. Additionally, if you plan on streaming DTS audio as well, a barebones CPU isn't going to do you any favors.

I dunno, I feel there's a pretty distinct difference between "good enough" and "something you want to actually own". In my personal experience, ION isn't all that it's cracked up to be (or in other words, it's basically just getting the job done on netbooks with barely any room to spare). I'll concede to you that if you want just an HTPC, Atom/ION should be good enough. But if you want that box to double as anything else, like a file server or you want it to serve up streaming content to remote devices, you can easily bump up performance at little cost and save yourself some trouble in the future.

http://dsiware.nintendolife.com/games/dsiware/puffins_lets_fish

Actually, it was a kind of funny coincidence for me that the Tested article was written when it was, considering the fact that I had built my own home server PC a couple weeks before. The main distinction that I kind of see between the HTPC vs file server is performance, considering the fact that a home server doesn't really necessitate anything powerful, while a DVR/HTPC requires a decent video card for 1080p output and a solid processor for transcoding. And then when you start to delve into those things, power consumption ramps up as does cost, which is kind of unappealing in a minimalist home server box. I currently used my home server machine for very little, as it's gaining prominence as I put more stuff on it. But to get into it, the best purpose it's serving for me right now is backup, which is great for me as I've got six computers, I live in power outage-prone Florida, and I have very few UPS units lying around. Besides that, it's holding about 100gb of ripped TV and movies that I had sitting on my shelf gathering dust. I'm currently working on ripping my music at a consistent quality and file format (AAC, 196 kbps) and ripping the rest of my video collection (mostly The Wire, which is kinda cumbersome). After that, I'll finally work on compiling all of the photos I have on several different cameras and spread among multiple "My Photos" folders on several computers.

I just finished that too and I felt that it consistently improved in a combat sense as well, much as Mass Effect 1 did (IE: The higher your gun stats are, the more accurate/effective they are, and the less dice-roll-y all of that stuff feels like).

I feel like there's a general sense of apathy towards new MMO's from the general gaming community, but this game doesn't necessarily deserve that. I listened to the latest Active Time Babble podcast where Kat Bailey interviewed a designer from Bioware; he laid out the fairly simple message that they started with a KOTOR-type game and scaled it up to an MMO proportions. As a result, there's a lot of focus on you having a ship, for instance, similiar to how you used the Ebon Hawk (from KOTOR 1/2) as a hub to communicate with your party members and use as a battleground for special missions throughout. Just hearing things like that is really quite satisfying to me.

Savannah is a pretty nice psuedo-little town. I guess it kinda shows something about me that many of my suggestions are food related, but Paula Deen's restaurant in Savannah is sweet.

The Ringling Art Museum/Circus History thing in Sarasota is pretty excellent. The Leu Gardens in Orlando are great if you're into... that kind of stuff. Little Vietnam in East Orlando is pretty nice if you want to get some good lunch. If you're passing through Jacksonville, Clark's Fish Camp is great for fresh seafood for lunch/dinner. Beyond that, nothing springs to mind. Hope I replied in time for you to catch stuff!

I think it's worth noting (on a tangential note) that there are a shitload of Kurosawa films available on Netflix Instant View, which are in my crosshairs for a one or two day mega-marathon. Watched Toy Story 3 today... I'll probably write up a blog post on it in the near future, but in a shorter form: - Far more mature themes than the previous two - Just enough quality to fill out the whole movie (in other words, it feels really good for this to be the final sendoff so it ends on a high note) - Really nostalgic for those of you who grew up with Toy Story, like me

Yup, I totally agree. That movie did "summer blockbuster" better than any other movie in the past few months, for me.