tempest in a teacup

Sonic is the only playable character in Project Needlemouse

I have to admit, that enemy concept art reminds me way too much of old-school enemy concept art. Having enemies with actual weak points that you can’t just hit anywhere will be most welcome.

That said, I’m not going to say anything substantive until I see some footage of this thing in action. I’ll just reiterate what I mentioned in my earlier blog entry on the subject – more Sonic CD/S3&K, less Sonic Rush, please.

Although I wouldn’t mind if they had Hideki Naganuma do the music again…not at all.

Here’s what I picked up, during both the Thanksgiving and Christmas sales on Steam:

• Mirror’s Edge (already beaten – they weren’t kidding when they said this was a short game)
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• Prince of Persia (the new one)
• Crysis Maximum Edition
• Torchlight
• Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition

Backlog doubled, just like that :(

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I haven’t been updating because of some real-life issues I’ve been having that I’d rather not go into here. That said, here’s what’s been going on with me:

• Added some more titles to my backlog thanks to Steam holiday sales: Mirror’s Edge and the last two titles of the PoP trilogy (as well as the newest one).
• Immediately removed Mirror’s Edge from my backlog because I beat it in 3 days
• Removed Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword from my list after beating it over Thanksgiving weekend.

More significantly, I upgraded my PC pretty much as far as I think I can take it – swapped out my old Core 2 Duo E6750 for a Core 2 Quad Q9650, which is about as fast as I can take it without buying one of the ridiculously priced Core 2 Extreme models. More cores certainly make a huge difference in games like Left 4 Dead 2, and to a lesser extent in Team Fortress 2. I also replaced my 8800GTS 512 with a GTX275, which has helped with some of the more graphic intensive games that I’m still working through (like Lost Planet). I also needed a new power supply for the new card, so I grabbed a simple 650W Antec one.

Just those three parts set me back a fair amount, so much so that I think my next ‘upgrade’ will probably involve just building a new box so I can get in on all the awesome i5/i7 action.

That said, I’m tempted to download the Crysis demo again to see how well these new parts hold up.

I just dropped $700 on new parts for my computer and $24 on all four Prince of Persia games, and then I saw the following offers on our Cyber Monday page:

Uncharted 2 for $40
Planet Earth Blu-ray for $40
Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 SA for $90

…

Dammit.

Went to see Whose Live Anyway this past weekend. I’m a big fan of Whose Line is it Anyway? (both the British and American versions, before you ask) so being able to watch this show was a real treat for me. It’s hard for me to pin down what my favourite part of the show was, so here’s a quick list of greatest hits (no pun intended):

• Drew Carey being a secret guest performer (although I should have guessed he’d show up, given that he’s the part owner of Seattle Sounders FC)
• Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops making a reference to the ‘Africa’s a continent’ incident from Whose Line
• Chip Esten and Jeff Davis taking the song title ‘Home Alone’ and turning it into a song about a prostitute called Malone
• Chip playing ‘The Ghost of Billy Mays’ during Celebrity Improv Jeopardy
• Jeff doing his Christopher Walken impression during the same game
• Ryan’s ‘WTF?’ face after someone in the audience suggested ‘Bangkok’ for the category ‘Names of places in China’

Actually, I don’t think I can remember all of them…it was generally a good time all around. Now I just need to hope that the Colin and Brad Show makes a stop around here sometime soon…

Fallout 3 has finally been evicted from my DVD drive.

(Because I completed it, not because I got fed up with it)

And no, I’m probably not going to buy any of the DLC, since the game itself didn’t impress me that much to begin with. And I don’t think I’ll be missing anything…not with the backlog that I have.

With my router between my modem and my PC:

With my modem connected directly to my PC:

Thee words: What the fuck?

EDIT: Apparently something in the router settings was messed up – I reset it to factory settings and suddenly I can watch 720p streams without buffering. o_o

I seem to have run into a bug that prevents me from progressing in the game without using a noclip cheat. WTF

Well, Doom Classic for the iPhone is a decent enough exception. It’s not perfect, but there seems to be a control scheme that at least approximates the feel of a keyboard and mouse. If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, like Doom and have $7 to spare, there are certainly worse apps you could buy.

The difficulty select is very well disguised on the menu screen, though – I played through the whole of episode 1 on Normal without realising that difficulty select was even an option.