Sweet. Always nice to have you in town. I was planning to come home whichever weekend was closest to the 3rd and 4th of July, but that's still over a month out.

Like the new look.

Haven't touched it. Still on my new game moratorium for another few months.

Back at'cha for Words with Friends.

See you Monday.

Couldn't say. It should be arriving at your place on the 24th. It isn't even going to be released for a few more days still (on the 21st). I mentioned this in the e-mail I sent you a few days back... >_>

Plus was a good deal for me going into it. I got Wipeout HD for free and a few other good discounts on games that I didn't have but wanted. So starting out it seemed really great. As of now, I haven't gotten too much extra value out of it. The games for free have been somewhat lackluster since Wipeout (Critter Crunch, Mushroom Wars, some PSP things) so I'm holding out for some better stuff.

I'm not quite at the point where I would recommend it to be honest... I could afford it without a problem since I rarely spend any money on games (Goozex ftw). And actually the other day instead of trading games back in to Goozex, I sold a bunch for $100. Makes buying $15 Castle Crashers a no-brainer. So yeah, I'm on the fence about plus.

Castle Crashers is a fun game by the way.

Oops, I meant to post to your Backloggery and must have hit PM by accident. Anyway, yeah you should be able to read it anyway. Looking forward to DA:O but just barely into it now. Will play Batman next.

Feel free to reply to my PM (if you want) on my Backloggery. My bad on that.

FF9 was one of my favorite Final Fantasy's. I really enjoyed that game. I actually started replaying it via emulator on my eeepc last year and got pretty far before I had to stop playing. Hope you make it all the way through, great game. Vivi is the man...er...kid...mage....

Finally figured out a fix, via YouTube, of all places. Some .dll file I just downloaded and dropped into the Fallout 3 folder did the trick. Go figure. That was after probably 12 hours of downloading, updating, editing, modifying, and otherwise doing anything that was suggested anywhere to my copy of the game, its parts, and any other drivers or software on the computer.

I'm almost tempted, nay, I will just go ahead and say, "The gall!" to people that want to suggest Mac gaming sucks. If this is how PC gaming is, bah. They can keep it (never mind me as I boot into Boot Camp to run it...).

Haven't seen it, but speak for yourself. Some of us actually already own Sly Cooper games (well, game).

And, ugh, probably spent 4-6 hours trying to get Fallout 3 to work in the last day here. It crashes to the desktop within about a second of starting a new game from the main screen (and that's an improvement over what it was doing before, which was crashing as soon as I hit "Play" in the launcher). Looking around the Internet, there are hundreds of threads about similar issues, but all of the fixes I've tried so far that work for most people haven't done the trick for me yet. Very sad.

Eh, I played it with my 360 controller and really enjoyed it. I've heard you comment on the precision issues in the past, but I had no problems with it, so maybe you just weren't that good at the game.

But yeah, I didn't realize just how much of the ending I saw when Curtis was playing, but I recognized most of the really frustrating parts. As I mentioned on Thorn's page, I went most of the game without using guns, and only actually started using them by accident at one point when I shot a guy. After that, it was sort of an, "eh, what the hell? Might as well" type of thing. So even though those ending parts would normally be more frustrating to people, to me, since I started using guns right around then, it made them suddenly seem easier than the stuff I had been doing, which kept it fun for me, rather than getting really frustrating.

But yeah, they really did spam it too much. Especially so when they gave those guys the heavy machine guns and a wide open area to mow you down, or else they sent up SWAT members with shotguns in pairs. Nothing sucked more than having to face a pair of shotgun-toting enemies at the same time.

Even so, I still loved the game. It pushed all the right buttons for me in terms of what I wanted to play right now. Very fun.

Ooh, and I see you picked up FF9 on PSN. Let me know how it is, since it's one of the few you and I have had that we've never gotten around to playing much. I'm curious how it goes, since I've been itching for a Final Fantasy game to play recently.

I sent Red Dead back. I had it on rent for the month from Gamefly, which can be a pretty cool service by the way. I never played GTAIV so I can't really comment on the similarities or differences of game mechanics, but I think it is probably more on the similar side. It looks really incredible if you ask me. Especially for the type of open-world "sandbox" game that it is. People say that you can just kind of get lost roaming around the countryside, and I wouldn't disagree. There are some supposed graphical glitches from time to time, but I didn't encounter any while I played it. It may sound weird from someone who didn't finish the game, but I would definitely recommend it to most. They really were able to take some of the best ideas and feelings from the classic spaghetti westerns and put them into a game which is really cool. I just don't have the time or bandwidth to play that type of game right now. I may revisit it later on though.

I tend to have times where I can play games a lot and times that I simply cannot, and I'm in a low gaming time right now where it is just not wise for me to put much time into gaming, but that isn't a reflection on the game itself.

Maybe I should go back and play the Batman demo again... For some reason, it didn't leave the best impression with me. Then again, I probably shouldn't judge the whole game on a half-completed demo... I have heard so many good things about the game though, so I can't imagine me not really enjoying it.

Tell me how Dragon Age is once you get into it a bit. I'm trying to decide whether or not to pick it up next, or get Batman. Of course I won't play either until I'm done with Fallout 3 and Red Dead though.

Actually, "gaff" is a word that can be used in that context in basically the way I intended (it means a "rough treatment or criticism" according to Mac's dictionary). That said, you're correct, "gaffe" was really the word I should have been using and was what I intended to say (i.e. "a mistake or blunder" instead). Thanks for the correction.

Yeah, it is definitely worthy of GOTY. I'm not sure how much multiplayer I'm going to do, as I have to be careful not to get sucked into online stuff these days, too many other things going on. Plus I actually am renting the game (for free) through a trial gamefly subscription that I'm going to cancel before my first payment is scheduled...

Free awesome games = win. I may end up picking it up later though, as it is surely a keeper in terms of quality and if I end up enjoying the multiplayer.

Well, Feiser is kinda the standard jack of all trades for the game. Icarus is definitely decent, though I was really liking Harimau when I started using it, and figure that it'll be my go-to car for most real races. For now though, I'm working on loyalty (trying to get 8k with each company) while playing through the Fury content for completion, so I've been switching around quite a bit.

I'm not a big fan of the Fury tracks, but I'm really liking the new modes. Eliminator is loads of fun once it gets crazy after everyone has taken a few hits, and Zone Battle is a nice change of pace from the usual races and battles.

For Sebenco, I was dropping off the track right before the final series of turns, right after you come out of that cave. There's a little drop off right there where you simply fall onto the track again. Only problem is, if you're at Phantom Class and are careening around that corner while trying to hit all three boosts in the cave, you're aimed at a point that is definitively OFF the track, and have to correct. Unfortunately, any little bump right them from another racer or a weapon will mean that you won't manage to correct in time, so off you go into the land just off the track.

It definitely does seem to have some rubberbanding, though, like you said, it's not nearly as bad. I have noticed, however, that the computer seems to get "magic boosts" sometimes, where it'll suddenly shoot past me after I've already seen it fire its weapons (so I know it has no boost) and miss the boost pads. Rather annoying. Not sure if it's a matter of my ignorance (i.e. mixing up which ones do and don't have boosts as an item), them using the barrel roll without me seeing (the computer does do barrel rolls at Rapier and above, I've seen, maybe even at Flash and Venom), or outright cheating.

I've also noticed that breaking past rank 5/6 and 2/3 is a major ordeal, since the field seems to end up in two packs, with those ones near the front of each pack, always loaded up with rockets and quakes, ready to go. I can't count how many times I've finally broken into the front half of the pack only to get rocketed immediately and dropped back into 8th again.

Anyway, like you said, not a perfect game, but it's a lot of fun. The music they have in-game does the trick for me, so I've just been enjoying that. The tournaments in the events aren't too fun for me, since I hate the pressure of having to win them, but just chilling out with them in Racebox is great.

Mostly been using Feiser for everything, though I think I'll give Harimau a shot, since I tried it once or twice and was doing better with it on Sebenco. The speed was higher, but the handling compensated for it nicely.

I saw that you were using Icarus on at least some of the tracks (specifically Sol 2, which, incidentally, I beat your Phantom Class Speed Run on by a decent amount :P ). I figured you'd be using either Icarus or the other one that goes at 100% speed since you tend to do that a lot (ever since we both learned how to handle Neva Kee in Pod Racer). But on Sebenco, on Phantom Class with other racers, I just get bumped around too much if the car is going at 100% speed like Icarus and I end up flying off the track in that little drop off near the end or in some of the jumps early on. Quite frustrating.

I'll beat it soon, I'm sure, since I haven't put much time into it yet (maybe just five attempts or so, since I got interrupted in my attempts by a roommate who wanted to talk and I used it as a convenient excuse to put it down for the night, otherwise I'd have finished it, probably), but Sebenco has been my least favorite track for awhile now since it has so many ways that you can throw yourself off the track and go from first to last in no time at all. I lost a tournament or two that I was leading by a wide margin due to exactly that scenario playing out, so it kinda soured my opinion of the track.

New theme, eh? I approve of the banner image. Cool stuff.

I take it you're not a fan of these so-called "deliberate twists" and convoluted stories eh?