Category: Random

Almost made it!

I put myself on two weeks away from video games (not non video games, that would be preposterous) and the personal ban ends tonight at midnight.   I usually get to play stuff a few hours at night at the most and a bit on the weekends here and there.  So what did I accomplish instead?  Seems like there would be a huge list right?  uhhhh….not really.

1) Reading the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition rules and first campaign

2) Reading and prepping for a session with the Atomic Robo RPG beta

3) A game of 40K 2nd edition (!?)

4) Painting 3 bestigor and getting a long way on three more.  20 more after that is still pretty daunting..

5) Finishing Undaunted Courage (biography of Louis of Louis and Clark).  It’s great but the end is very sad indeed.

So during the two weeks, what game was I joneseing for the most?  the new Xcom was up there– I really wanted to play that more after losing my first campaign game embarassingly.  Torchlight 2 of course, but the one I really really wanted to play was Dark Souls…I’m stuck at the Capra Demon– I know HOW to beat him but I just haven’t executed properly to do it yet and this is gnawing at me something fierce!

Now however, look what’s out?  Hotline Miami, Blood Bowl Chaos Edition and a Steam version of Conquest of Elysium 3 from Illwinter– all ripe and ready for the nerdery action but Dark Souls is going to be the first taste…

Laid up ditherings

I got something, either some virus or god knows what off the disease bombs that live in my house and expose me to such things.  While I was largely comatose until 10AM or so, I got in some hours (feverish, granted) of DARK SOULS; managing to finish off the first real boss and then get killed during an invasion almost instantly afterwards.  This is how you do MMO’s frankly.  You either join someone’s game to help them or kill them, all the other mucking about in stores and towns and the socialization aspect is left far behind in the chatrooms where it belongs.  Fights are very fast, at most a few minutes and many over in seconds (like when I was invaded today).  Having trouble with a boss?  Call in someone to help.  Want to kick som ass? Invade other player’s games.  Otherwise the game is fantastic even if you never play it with anyone else–and comes to PC August 28th!

In addition, I spanned some time wandering around the internet and was fully titillated once again by Warlord Games “Bolt Action” by Rick Priestely.  While I have a few AT-43 armies and managed to find all my old 2nd edition 40K stuff recently, I’ve never been a big fan of miniatures games with guns, much preferring the huge blocks of sword and board armed models crushing into each other.  That said,  Bolt Action looks great.  The scale looks about what you’d expect for 25mm. ie not an out of control tank swarm game like 40K.  A couple tanks, about 30-40 guys and you’re good to go.  I will definitely pick the game up when it comes out later this year.   But will it ever get played?  Who can tell…

Maat in China

Maaaat is in China.  I think HE thinks he’s sending a lot of pictures but there have been very few so far.   I was waiting for a deluge of them, but it has not come.  He was in Shanghai then went up the Yangtze and saw the clay soldiers and the Great Wall, but all I’ve gotten for pics so far are somewhat hazy.  Cool but these could be in Maine or actually, the Dells for all that they are discernible.

Xmas vacation!!!

Have a Kathy Ireland Christmas

As of last night I am officially on Xmas vacation. This means GAMING. I got in a game of Agricola and Dreamblade last night with my buddy JP who has the pleasure of having worked quite a large chunk of the last few years on that little game we call Skyrim.  I pumped him for information which he was happy to give since the game was OUT– a far cry from last year when we couldn’t get him to say anything about this new ES game.

It looks like we’re going to get in on the most vicious of all games during the off week: Republic of Rome and try out the new fangled (not that it hasn’t been out for awhile) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition.  What’s more, a big game of Cosmic Encounter is in the works as well.  I promise to post something stupid every day about what ever sort of nerd crap we are all doing.  I know I will be trying to plow through my beastmen army, but I started getting an interest again in EPIC 40K and pulled out all that old stuff to give it a painting improvement before hopefully getting in a game. If anyone wants to read a run down of the sad epic (pun intended) of this failed game: read here.   It wasn’t because it was not a great design, it was because no one would give it a chance that played the old version.

As for useless and redundant blog posts, I also want to give a run down of 2011’s games that were great and those that were disappointments. We have had the greatest deluge of AAA class titles in human history this Fall, and there just won’t be a year like this for probably another decade.. but I digress. Vacation. Nerdery. Drinking. Yes!

It came from the wave 10/24

In addition to being the one week in the next month or so where the gaming industry hasn’t forced us to spend our hard earned cash, this weeks theme, if themeing of such randomness is even possible, would be “I MOUNT MY PLATYPUS!”

Apparently there’s going to be a micronauts film.  I don’t really think this is possible, but what the heck.

Some awesome color photos from the late 30’s and 40’s.  http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.asp

Some dude despecialized the first Star Wars movie, i.e.: keeping as close to the original film while bringing it to HD quality.

I wouldn’t mind getting telefragged in this type of situation.

Close to the worst indy game I’ve ever played.

Beta stats for BF3.  Pretty amazing how many people played.  Makes you feel a bit like dust in the wind, except of course then you think again about the fact that you are a sentient being living out what is, compared to most other organisms in the biosphere, limited immortality,  in a universe that is largely filled with absolutely NOTHING — then you can feel like a unique little flower again like they taught you in the 70’s.

And then this, posted in it’s entirety:

At my old house I had this old man neighbor that would wait for me to rake my yard and then come out and use his air blower to blow the leaves from his yard into my yard. I was confused the first time I saw it happen so I didn’t think much of it. I thought to myself, “Oh he’s just an old retired boob and is sloppy with his leaf blower.” the first time it happened. But then when I went back out to rake up the leaves he had blown over I saw him in the fucking window watching and giggling.

When I went back out to rake my leaves later that month, I caught a glimpse of him in the window watching me rake the yard so I was aware that he was specifically waiting for me to be done. Sure enough, as soon as I went back in the house he came back out and did it again. I was fucking pissed. So I came back out and he wasn’t outside so I went and knocked on the door but there was no answer. The neighbor that lived on the other side of him saw me and noticed my hulk smash expression and came over and started chatting with me and said that he’d been living next door to the guy for 12 years and it has been happening the entire time he lived there. His retaliation, which I got to watch in action shortly after our conversation, was to buy a leaf blower of his own that was more powerful than his neighbor’s version, and blow all the leaves back into the guy’s yard and when the guy came out to blow them into other people’s yards again he would stand out there with his more powerful leaf blower and they’d have some super fucking silly old man leaf blowing duel shooting the shit back and forth at each other.

I didn’t have the money for the leaf blower, so I just took all of the leaves and raked them up and flipped them all over his bushes and shit so he couldn’t blow them out of there. I also started pissing all over his wife’s garden every night and killing all of the flower and sleeping soundly knowing that they were eating vegetables that had grown thanks to drinking my piss.

In the winter, the fucking guy would do the same thing with his snow blower. He’d wait for me to hand shovel the sidewalk and then blow the fucking snow from his section of sidewalk all over my front porch, walkway up to my house, and the sidewalk in front of the house. I hate shoveling, even more than raking, so I wanted to slaughter him but Midge thought that maybe if I did something nice for the guy and chatted with him he’d stop doing it. So I gave it a try and helped him out with fixing some shit in house, including his broken ass computer, and the thanks I got was he started plowing in my fucking garage door back in the alleyway. At that point I had to give him a quality sensless style shouting until he went in the garage and started brandishing some shovel or ax or something at me. This just made me even angrier so I started making a physical move towards him so he ran back in his garage and locked himself in there for awhile. After that, I started taking ALL of the dog shit from my back yard, which there was a huge amount of (two black labs worth) and threw it all over his fucking yard and continued to piss through the fence all over the areas that his wife’s gardens were

From the wave – September

Rumors of google wave’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Vladmir Putin: ACTION MAN.

One meme that should never die.  Halt’ den Ball flach, Alter! 

Best Buy ad from 1996  – this has some crazy crap.  PSX and Genesis– but no Saturn stuff!?

Bowie’s Space Oddity as a children’s book.

Amazing shot of the alien from Alien chilling out on the set (note this has the faceplate off so you can see the skull beneath–not shown much in the film itself).

AirMech-  a Herzog Zwei remake

The real Guardian Heroes release date.

From the Wave – August

come on american apparel: leave the nerds alone!!

Lots of arguments about the clown-looking Diablo 3 infernal armor sets, the merits of buying Deux Ex after the second one was so bad and of course, lamenting that guardian heroes was not actually out as announced, complaining already that we weren’t in the diablo 3 beta (though no one had signed up yet of course) and a lot of links to a lot of crap.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/ultima_4/  – Ultima 4 for free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9nZoGASxmM – a “grab the chest situation”

http://i.imgur.com/6lpph.jpg – punished by the internet.

http://www.americanapparel.com/rsa8336.html – the brutal ads for american apparel incessantly on nerd sites (like boardgamegeek) continue and lead to this…

http://www.wimp.com/slopeflyingnorway/ – people can fly.

http://gizmodo.com/5828647/watching-people-fail-at-skateboarding-at-1000fps-is-actually-quite-fun – slo mo skateboarding falls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMUVFctJ2Xw – nipple tweaking and teabagging.