tempest in a teacup

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…

For now, let me just say ‘omg the netcode in this game is really good.’

I just played 5 pretty much lag-free (or lag-really-well-hidden) matches. Lost 4 of them, but I’m a crappy player so that’s to be expected I guess :p

If you have the PS3 version, hit me up with an invite if you see me online. PSN ID is SonicTempest.

And yes, I use Ragna the Sol Badguy.

Played through the first level – pretty damn great.

I’ve been getting my ass kicked (with friends) in the first campaign, and I love it. It’s the first real FPS I’ve played that relies on co-op so much, and it does co-op really well.

We reached the finale of the first campaign a few times today, but never managed to hold out until the rescue chopper arrived. A truly ridiculous number of zombies assails you at that point, coupled with numerous boss zombie spawns (at one point we had a Tank, a Boomer and a Smoker all running around). At one point the Tank climbed up to the vantage point where I had been sniping from and basically punched me off the building.

Good times.

And now, it’s time for some screenshots from the full game!

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I only have one thing to say:

That said, 2010 will be an interesting election to watch, given Obama’s lofty goals (as set out in his platform).

A demo for Mirror’s Edge hit PSN today, so I took it out for a spin.

The demo consists of a tutorial level and what I assume is the first level of the game, that takes place on a series of building rooftops. Incidentally, this is the same level that was shown when the game was revealed for the first time.

Amazingly, I must say, the demo lived up to my expectations. Somehow DICE has managed to craft a first-person platformer that feels right. It reminds me of old-school (read: Genesis) Sonic the Hedgehog games a whole lot, as in there are multiple intertwining routes you can use to navigate the level (although the progression is still very much linear) and there’s a heavy focus on maintaining momentum through good timing and using it to pull off platforming stunts in the game world.

Where it differs, of course, is in elements like combat (which, again, focuses on disarming and incapacitating your opponents quickly rather than engaging in shootouts with them). Combat is fairly simple, in that you have a single button for melee attacks and another button for disarming. The trick is to combine your melee attacks, jumps/slides and disarming moves in such a way as to get the opponent out of your way as quickly as possible – in other words, to minimise their impact to your momentum.

In addition, there’s a mode called ‘reaction time’ that lets you slow down time briefly, allowing you to execute maneuvres like frontal disarms or precise jumps with more leeway. This ties neatly back into the core platforming since the ability to use reaction time is granted when you successfully manage to maintain your momentum for an extended period of time.

If I had to nitpick, there are a couple of things I would mention:

• The game uses Unreal Engine 3, meaning that things like dynamic shadows have aliased/jagged edges, which impairs the look of the game for me somewhat. On top of that, while the NPCs are modeled and animated extremely well, they seem rather crap at emoting, much like Mass Effect and other UE3 games I’ve seen.
• I found it a little tricky to use the right analogue stick to line myself up correctly for precision jumping – this is probably more of a personal preference, though, and I imagine you can tweak the sensitivity settings to get them exactly where you want them.

Overall, though, if the final product manages to maintain the quality of the level design through to the end, this should end up being a pretty damn good game. I imagine time trial nuts (myself included) will have a blast exploring the levels, trying to find that one improvement to their route that knocks precious seconds off their best times.

(Speaking of time trials, the demo also has a time trial mode, but to unlock it you need to have preordered the game on either Xbox 360 or PS3. I’ve already decided to wait the extra two months for the PC version, so I wasn’t able to try it out)

So here’s a random screencap from Gintama:

…of why I play the airblast Pyro in Team Fortress 2.

The backburner can be great fun in pure ambush play, but the ability to just run up to a control point and BLOW PEOPLE OFF IT is just too awesome. Bonus points if said point is suspended over an instant death pit :D

NASA officially declares that it has found water on Mars.

Now all we need is some gondolas, blue-eyed Martian cats and a few hundred years of terraforming and I think I’ll be ready to move there! :D

Weeeeeee~

All 13 episodes of ARIA the Animation, in one box set for $50, being released on September 30th. I approve of this news.

In other news:

School Rumble manga is finally ending

I thought the later chapters of the manga were rather lacking, and from what I heard it only seems to have gotten weirder from there (Tenma and Karasuma appear to have been shunted off to the side with Harima, Eri and Yakumo as the main characters).

I still have volume 1 of the manga on my shelf…after seeing how the rest of the manga turned out I kind of lost interest in completing my collection. Now that I know it actually has an ending, maybe I should reconsider.

Reminds me that I never did finish watching School Rumble Nigakki and Sangakki is around the corner…