Rereading Sorceror's Stone

I'm halfway through, and a few things strike me:

1. I really love (yarite) how the first third of the book focuses on Harry's life with the Dursleys. LAAAAAAME.

2. Hermoine really comes off as a bitchy cunt so far.

Bioshock and addictions

So, I finally got around to playing/finishing Bioshock. It was touted as a spiritual successor to the System Shock franchise, but it felt a lot more like a Fallout FPS (we'll see how Fallout 3 measures up later this year). Hilarious bits were pretty much everything involved with the Little Sisters: The pedo-tastic subtext, the enthusiasm with which they go about their task, and the hilarious way they wail when you slay Mr. Bubbles.

It also had a plot twist on the same scale as KOTOR.

And now, let's go watch the bad ending on Youtube...

...Eh.

Hearts of Iron II

Man, I'm seriously obsessed with this game.

I've pretty much played it nonstop for...a week or two? Maybe more? (Time is slowing down for me, but that's another topic of discussion).

I've played three mostly-full games so far: Poland, Nationalist China, and Germany (still in progress). I mean, it's just so mind-numbingly addictive: Building up your armies, researching better shit, out-maneuvering the enemy, and a shitload of alternate history goodness. For example, in my game as Germany, I've completely dominated everything worth fighting in Europe and Russia, and Alfred Landon is enjoying his third term as U.S. President. I'm also preparing to barrage their major cities with H-bombs.

I'm strongly considering picking up the other games in the series.

Top Shtuff of 2007

In no particular order:

Video Games

Supreme Commander -- The game which made me fall in love with RTS games. (Dishonorable Mention: Command and Conquer 3, for almost making me fall out of love). Perhaps I should go and copy all my observations from when I first played from my LJ and post them in here.

Hearts of Iron II -- Published in 2005, I only recently discovered it. It's so fun overturning the applecart of history. Poland forever! (Until I get bored and decide to play as Germany sometime).

Crysis -- Disappointing singleplayer, rather fun multiplayer. It's not a revolutionary game or anything, it's basically Far Cry with prettier graphics. And I don't even get that privilege, what with my minimum specs computer.

Postal 2 -- Another game which came out a few years ago, it's hilariously horrific and offensive fun. Basically, GTA minus the driving parts. It's so fun to dive into a crowd of people with a katana and leave behind a pile of torsos and limbs.

Civ 4: Beyond the Sword -- Yeah, I'm sure you've read tons of reviews fellating this expansion pack. They're all right.



Books

The Oblivion Society -- Good stuff. Stylistically, it's like Shaun of the Dead meets nuclear war.

World War Z -- Okay, this came out a year or two ago, but shit, it's my favorite book and this is my list, so suck it.

24 Declassified -- A series of novels starring Jack Bauer. Go read them.

1632 series -- Over a dozen books in the series. I'm currently working my way through 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, and I seriously wish there was a dramatis persona because damn, there's so many characters I can't keep track of them anymore.



TV

24 -- Duh.

Heroes -- The latter part of S1 was aired this year, so it counts. And I guess the ass-end of S2 as well, though the first two acts were terrible.

Journeyman -- Best show of the year. Fucking NBC cancelling it, fuck.

Life -- Upon reflection, it's alright. I'd take Journeyman over it, though.

Dexter -- A smashing season.



Movies

Hot Fuzz -- From the Shaun of the Dead dudes, duh.

Eagle vs. Shark -- New Zealand's answer to Napoleon Dynamite. I might have mentioned this already.

Casino Royale -- Best Bond ever.



L8r, g8rs.

EvS

Eagle vs. Shark is basically an awesome flick that is New Zealand's answer to Napoleon Dynamite, except it's about a thousand times funnier.

So

Tony is evil in the upcoming season of 24. I suspect that his bad haircut is to blame.

There was recently a method discovered to use the Portal gun in Half-Life 2 and other Source games. It's quite uber fun, but there're broken scripts and no voices -- so Alyx just stares meaningfully at me, occasionally moving her eyebrows, and I can't proceed past A Red Letter Day.

The next game I intend to play is Morrowind. You know, there are STILL mods for it that I downloaded years and years ago, and have yet to play.

Orange Bocks

Oh God, I love it.

WARNING UBAR SPOILERS FOLLOW





Episode Two:

Another excellent entry in the Half-Life saga. The G-Man returns and for once the bastid offers more than vague shit about his employers. Plus, there were some quite fun action sequences, such as the repelling of the attacking Antlions in the mines and the battle of the Striders near the end. When they killed off Dr. Vance, it was truly a sad moment. My one disappointment is that they didn't include a teaser for Episode Three, like they included Ep. Two's teaser with the end of Ep. 1. I'm srsly looking forward to Ep. 3, though; I can't wait to trash the Borealis and tell Dr. Mossman that her boyfriend died.



Portal:

Truly great. You run around in Aperture Sciences test facility or something and make portals. Aperture Sciences are actually an entity which competes against Black Mesa scientifically, and they owned the Borealis (look up, fool), so they're going to play a significant role in Ep. 3 most likely. (Hopefully, Gordon will get his own portal gun). And the song that plays during the end credits is too awesome.

HL2

So, in preparatin for the upcoming release of Ep. 2, I've replayed HL2 and Ep. 1 over the past few days.

Thoughts:

Highway 17 is still hands-down my favorite level of either game. I always become obsessed with cleaning up the dirty streets, and dub myself the Highway 17 Beautification Committee. Litterbugs will be shot!

I'm also still fond of the Entanglement level, because the game sees fit to give you dozens of friendly turrets you can bring with you. Except into the end-level portal :'(. Srsly, on my first playthrough, I tried to drag the turret with me into the portal, and the gate closed and separated us, and it finally fell, and I was like "NOOOOOOOO!" One of the most heartbreaking moments in videogame history.

I wish there were an easy cheat to get the super gravity gun for the entire game. As it stands, the only way I know to get it is to warp to the last level of the game, acquire the SGG, and warp back to the first level and cheat yourself the gravity gun, which will be rendered super or something.

My favorite parts in Ep. 1 are the last bit in the zombie area where it's uber dark (whee survival horror!) and the escort mission. Of course, playing through it the second time I made heavy use of the box of infinite rockets, so it was slightly unfair to the Combine. I was also fond of the dark reactor core, since I could throw people's bodies into it (hooray for morbidity!)

Cavemen and other etc.

So, last night's Cavemen was awesome. It looks like they took out the 'dumb one' from the pilot, which is awesome. Double awesome: They left in the smart one. And they also took out the stereotypes traditionally associated with black people, putting in stereotypes which actually make sense for Neanderthals. (Well, as much sense as stereotypes can make, at least).

Monday's Heroes was rad as well. Except for CLAIRE CUTTING OFF HER TOE OH GOD.

Journeyman was also good. One of my favorite new shows of the season. (With Life being the other).

I'm also liking Bionic Womangst, but only because it's swimming in angst. And by swimming, I mean the polar angst caps have melted, flooding the Earth.

Heroes & Journeyman premiere

Mm, I luvved both shows.

Favorite Heroes moments:

One shot early on of Claire and Mr. Bennet standing next to one another made it appear as if Claire were about 4 feet tall.

Takezo Kensei is a crazy gaijin! Most significant plot twist of the premiere.

Overall, the premiere raised a lot more questions than it answered. Why did Matt's marriage break up? Was it because he and Suresh are now 'partners'? How did Nathan survive being at ground zero of a nuclear fuck fireball? Did Peter remember that HE can fly at the last minute?

Also, woot at Ando being there. He's totally Samwise.



Meanwhile, Journeyman had its own fair share of awesome moments.

Does it count as cheating if you do it in the past?

I love the trickeroo of impersonating himself in the past.

And I really love the trickeroo of burying the ring under the brick patio before the patio was built.

Valve hires convicts and retards to operate Steam's website

Not convicts or retards.

Convicts and retards.

Both.

See, my plight begins with Steam: It's mysteriously broken. I chalk it up to the innumerable bugs cropping up in my copy of Vista (something I will talk about another time). It's been broken for a few months, but I haven't been bothered to look into it since, for the past few months, the release of Episode Two hasn't been imminent.

So, sometime last week, I registered at Steam Support and submitted my complaint, detailing the error message which pops up whenever I try to run Steam (unknown software exception, whatever the hell that means). And, well, the bastards still haven't gotten around to looking at it. Two possible explanations: Steam is so fucked up that they've been doing tech support for absolutely everybody who uses it, or they sit around all day jacking off to Alyx hentai.

On the advice of a colleague, I decide to register at the forums and ask my question there. Unfortunately, whenever I log in, it goes on to inform me that I MUST BE LOGGED IN TO VIEW THAT PAGE. Haha! Great fun! Fortunately, things work fine in Internet Explorer (I use Opera, superior to IE and its corporateness and Firefox and its fadness). Well, not fine exactly, since the forums don't have a search feature! Brilliant! How am I supposed to ascertain if anybody else has had my problem, apart from sifting through 60 pages of threads?

In conclusion, Steam is full of shit because it has its head stuck up its ass.

Alpha Centauri

It's just as fun as the newer entries in the Civ series, but in space. You can see a lot of the ideas that went on to be implemented in Civ3 and 4.

My favorite part of AC are the unique leader personalities. Lal is my favorite personality-wise, because he is a crazy motherfucker. My favorite faction to play as, though, would be University, as I heart researching everybody into the dust and then pounding them into dust. (As usual).

The unit customization is something I haven't yet seen in any other Civ game. It rules a bunch, I must say. When I've maxed out all techs and I have the space elevator, I like to create a unit with maximum attack, defense, drop jets, and an uber fast reactor, and call it the Juggernaut. With it, I can strike any land-bound city in the game (except when it has air defenses, even when there's no damn airplanes in the city). I usually only need one unit to take the city.

I rule.

Holy crap Dragon Wars looks awesome

http://www.dragon-wars.com/

Basically, it's Reign of Fire, minus the retarded.

And for once, it's Los Angeles getting its shit ruined, not New York.

I adore Facade

http://www.interactivestory.net/

I just played through as a guy who had to go to the bathroom. I kept asking Grace and Trip where their bathroom was, but the assholes kept ignoring me and focusing on their lame marital problems.

Grace and Trip (mostly Trip, though) are really self-absorbed assholes.

Other games I've been playing lately:

Hitman 2 - If they cut out uber-frustrating shit like the save-game limit and boring/difficult as fuck as fuck levels like the lead-ups to the castle in Japan, this would have been a great game. I've heard later entries in the series are better, though. Also stumbled upon an amusing message: "Guards are looking for a suspicious clone."

Alpha Centauri - Not quite as fun as Civ 3 or 4, since I can't totally conquer the other civs tech-wise and then steamroll over them with advanced units.

Europa 1400: The Guild - Hooray for killing my wife in a duel to gain control of her chain of perfumeries!

Shtuff I've been up to lately:

I played Postal 2. It's quite fun/awesome, basically GTA without cars. (Drivable cars, anyway). The expansion mostly sucked, though (except for the zombies).

I read Prey, Michael Crichton's novel on the terrors of nanites. While nanites could indeed pwn Earth, I doubt they'd rip off Invasion of the Body Snatchers and start imitating people whilst putting on a sinister conspiratorial personality.

I read Alas, Babylon. Shexy shtuff. It probably would have been a lot more depressing if the nuclear winter theory had been around when it was written.

Oh, and I don't know if I mentioned it, but I got a shweet new monitor, 19" widescreen LCD HDTV.

Man, I have about a thousand games that I own that I have yet to play. I ought to get on it sometime soon.

My Uberly Uberly Spoilerrific Thoughts on Deathly Hallows

SRSLY, DO NOT READ SPOILERS FOLLOW





1. Hermione was like, "You taste better than Crabbe and Goyle, Harry." (She's referring to his penis).

2. Hory clap, they killed Hedwig and Mad-Eye Moody like right off the bat.

3. The second fourth of the book was boring as hell, as it mainly consisted of Harry bumbling around in the forest and occasionally falling into a trap.

4. A shame about Tonks, and Lupin, and Fred.

5. "The battle for Helms Deep is over. The Battle for Hogwarts has just begun." (And was awesome).

6. I think Ollivander molested Luna while they were both in captivity.

7. Snape's revelation in his memories was uber sad. I seriously misted up.

8. I also misted up when Dobby died.

9. At first, I wasn't part of the camp that said "Harry is a Horcrux!" because that would have been fucking stupid. But I guess JK managed to not screw it up.

10. Peeves fought the Death Eaters. Whee!

11. Yay! Percy luvs his family again!

12. In this book, Voldemort was like a combination of Agent Smith and Darth Vader (minus the wussy Anakin part).

13. Neville, naturally, kicked ass. He slew the final Horcrux, assailed the Death Eaters with plants, and proceeded to become a teacher in Hogwarts, so that he could repeatedly sex up Moaning Myrtle. (HEY IT COULD HAPPEN).

14. I was sad that the sentient car never showed up again.

15. I totally guessed that the eye Harry was seeing was Dumbledore's brother.

16. Oh! Speaking of Dumbledore! I love how the book totally admitted that he was a huge jerk and a complete failure.

17. I noticed a recurring theme was Harry's shit getting busted -- the Firebolt, Hedwig, the Mirror of Angst...srsly a bad theme.

18. I liked how he and Dudley had gay sex in the second chapter.

19. It would have been nice if Voldemort chose the remorse option.

20. When Ron and Hermoine kissed, I was like "FUCKING FINALLY."

I've started a new deadlog!

http://survival-humor.livejournal.com/

(This is the part where I'd tell what a deadlog is, but all one or two of my readers already know, so meh).

Magically Delicious

I just sent this letter to General Mills:

I would like to know if your company ever intends to produce a 'marshmallows only' version of Lucky Charms. I enjoy Lucky Charms very much, but the non-marshmallow bits have declared war on deliciousness. Even if you do not currently plan to create a marshmallows-only version of Lucky Charms, please consider it. I do not have nearly enough condensed sugar in my life.

It started out totally serious, but then it turned into a satire on how insanely unhealthy my stupid idea is.

I'd still totally buy it, though.

Haha wow

Apparently, Vanilla Ice lives in Monroe, Michigan.

Did I ever mention that I'm basically ten minutes away from there?

I almost want to meet him to say something asinine.

Awesome Alert

1-18-08: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/

It looks like an awesome combination of The Blair Witch Project and Godzilla. I can't freaking wait.

Oh also my knee bent sideways yesterday and I'll be trying to see a doctor about that later today.