Ego stroking. We <3

There are few things a true altruist likes as much as ego stroking, and White Mages are NO EXCEPTION! I've been visiting the GayGamer's forum the past few weeks. I had intended to get into it a while back and had a false start or two. IMVU proved to be my ultimate undoing, but I'm over it now, so nothing is stopping me!

If there is one thing I am proud of, it is my opinion and the internet is great for honing and sharpening one's wit. GayGamer has had a podcast for a while and just recently they have started a new feature where they discuss a thread on the board in the podcast. Much to my surprise their first thread of choice was one I have been quite vocal on and a couple of my posts (not my favorites) were quoted.

For the record, on GayGamer as with elsewhere on the Internet, I am in the continual process of retiring the screen name "Boogiepanda". I'll probably be doing that through the next decade.

Demos

Some thoughts on some demos I recently downloaded off XboxLive...

Lord of the Rings: Conquest

• OK, so could Pandemic Software's little movie for themselves be any longer?
  
• I really hope they change the voice for the narrator/guide, or make him talk less, or something. He is extremely annoying. I only got to play as the Army of Middle-Earth, and I have to wonder if the guide for the Army of Mordor is any worse or better.
  
• Different classes, different abilities, marginally different roles. At least in single-player. In the multiplayer I'm sure it works out better. But in single-player I don't see it making a great deal of difference what class you use unless the game forces you to choose one like it does during training. The general purpose is the same: kill things. Just how you actually do it that changes, and by consequence the game is pretty flat in single-player.
  
• I really hope objectives in future missions/battlefields are a little more clear on certain things. The training mode turned me into a mage and then basically told me nothing. I fought orcs for maybe 20 minutes with no end in sight until it then just suddenly did end. I'm still not sure what I did, but I think it was because I had tried using all my abilities. Which means that apparently it considered a mage's Guard as an ability, though it didn't bother telling me that till after I'd used it.
  
• Not terribly impressed with hero characters. Gave me a chance to be Isildur, who turned out to be nothing more than a pumped up Warrior class. And I still got my ass handed to me by Sauron, so I don't really see the point.
  
• Overall the game is interesting, but I think the main draw is going to be the online multiplayer. If I recall, that was the only saving grace of the Star Wars Battlefront games as well, of which this game is basically a LOTR version. Need to try the multiplayer to see if this game would be worth buying at all...

Legendary

• Oh yay, another FPS on the Xbox360! I'm terrible at controlling these things on a controller.
  
• This may be unfair, but really the game strikes me as Bioshock shoved through a mythology filter. At least just in first impressions.  Probably no comparison in stories.  Legendary certainly seems harder though.
  
• It does control well though. I mean, I suck at aiming in console FPSs, and that's always my major issue with them. But beyond that, the controls are not complicated and are well laid out. My only complaint is that I wish when you were throwing a grenade it gave you some idea of distance or something.
  
• You know, if you're making a demo to show off a game where your character has mystical abilities, maybe you should consider showing off more than one of said abilities? The Force Unleashed demo gave you lightsaber throws, force lightning, and combos that you don't start out with normally. And this demo just gives you the ability to heal yourself. Well... yay! Sorry guys, implying that I get different stuff later on doesn't exactly hook me.
  
• It looks like this game is coming to PC as well, judging by the "Games for Windows" tag. Think I'd prefer playing it on there. Well no, I know I'd prefer playing it on there...
  
• I like the concept that after I kill certain enemies, I have to behead them for them to actually stay dead. But, I don't like that they can die in such a way that their head is in a place that I cannot actually strike. Like, oh say, inside a wall!
  
• Overall, eh. If I see it for sale on Steam, I'll consider it.
  

Esunaga FTW

Hope your holiday was great. It is nose back to the grind stone here at SWML. In case you didn't notice, it is no longer 2008. Feel free to spit on the grave, no one liked that year anyways.

What lies in wait for 2009? More Full Metal Alchemist for one thing. It likely won't make it to the US until 2010 in any commercial sense, but you can it'll be on Youtube like glaze on a doughnut.

Another, not so hotly anticipated sequel is Patapon2. I'm excited, but I'm probably the only one.

We might actually get some decent games for the Wii as well. Fracture is set to pop any day now in Japan (the 22nd, incidentally the day that Littlebigplanet DLC is to resume) and one can only hope this will be the start of a chain reaction to reverse all the damage done by the piles of utter crap released for the system in 2008.

As with any new year, our enthusiasm follows the proximity to cat model:




So let's make 2009 a year to remember, like the release of Sega in India. Who needs a Bollywood version of Memento when you have commercials like that?

& WERE BAK! + Antics

So things got quiet all of a sudden. No, it wasn't a dramatic pause. It was the HOLIDAYS.

Good news is that they are rapidly approaching and I get two weeks off for good behavior and living in a totally hypocritical country. Really, our church and state are about as separate as the protons and neutrons of an atom.

2009 is totally around the corner. EXPECT BIG THINGS.

As for antics, It is great having a cheeky co-worker. I know the budget is tight and I know I am really low on the totem pole, but when I switched workplaces I brought certain expectations with me. One of those what that I would be kept in the technological life style I had become accustomed to.

Not so much as it turns out. I have to fight tooth and nail for everything, and pretty much lose most of the time. I do finally have a laptop on which to do development and testing, but only because I scrounged up 3+ year old laptops that no one wanted because Winbloat runs slow. Ubuntu + 3 year old laptop = pretty decent.

Unfortunately, because these were older laptops our stock of power cables was rather low and of the two that I was able to acquire, one now has a short. I try to keep exactly two for a very good reason: plugging, unplugging, wrapping, unwrapping, packing, and unpacking tends to wear them out over time. I like to have one cord for the desk so it is tucked away and convenient, and other in my bag. It IS after all a laptop.

I know I give my coworker flack, and it totally isn't her fault that she has difficulty procuring what I need to do my job. So after I asked her last week to order me a replacement power cord, I got the following IM this Monday:

Cheeky Coworker In Charge Of Supply Orders
hey! Remind me about your need for the power adapters

Me
you mean give a justification?

McCheeky
yesh

Me
formal or informal?

McCheeky
for me
informal

Me
BECAUSE THEY HAVE A SHORT THAT IS PUTTING OUT HEAT AND COULD BURN DOWN THE LIBERRIES
i.e. they are unsafe
and we don't have any others
and that is my development environment
so if you want me to code, and not burn down the library it is kind of crit

It is a good thing my department head has a sense of humor, because she saw fit to share this exchange with him verbatim.

I fully expect my replacement cord soon.

Unedited

Dear Sci Fi Channel

Honestly, I don't really care anymore when anime gets edited or censored, so long as it's not excessive.  I can understand alot of stuff.  Really I can.  But your crap with Gurren Lagann is just ridiculous.  The cuts that have been done to the English dub showing on your channel are beyond the scope of stupid.  Now I could be saying this because the cuts hurt the flow of the episode, or because they have - on several occasions - removed important moments or dialogue.  But here's the bottom line:

You idiots are making cuts to fit in more commercial breaks.

No one can tell me otherwise.  I refuse to believe that there could be any other reason for the cuts to the dub.  The cuts certainly can't be done for violence or sexuality, because if you were actually concerned about that, you wouldn't be showing Gurren Lagann in the first place.  If you idiots are really so desperate to get extra time to advertise your own shows, why do you bother showing the opening?  Why not cut out the 2-3 minute recap that occurs at the beginning of nearly all the episodes?

I'm just glad the DVDs are already out.  Yay for unedited, subtitled-only DVDs.  In the end, I hope this isn't going to be the norm for your anime block, SciFi.  But then, judging from your promos for it, I'm getting the impression your idea of cutting-edge anime is stuff that was produced back in the 90s.  So I don't exactly have high hopes, but who knows.  All I know is that if you keep making unnecessary edits just to stick in another commercial for your crappy made-for-TV movies, then I'm not going to bother watching.