Mood:
I’ve been playing Texas Hold’em poker (oh here come the spam bots) with some friends in Vancouver once every second Sunday. What keeps happening every time I go is we can’t start before 6pm so it runs late, and by late I mean “holy crap it’s tomorrow and I still have to drive back to Chilliwack and I work at 8am.”

More often than not (well, 2 out of 3 times so far) I do fairly well so I’m in the final few. However, since I have a drive of more than an hour ahead of me and I don’t want to be a zombie for work I have to change my play style to speed things up, and this is where I start to fail. “6 and 10? ALL IN!” I got 4th out of 12 last night, but could have done better with more time.

Mood:

I’ve mentioned to a few people how open source (free!) Battle for Wesnoth is very reminiscent of Warlords II. It’s old-school turn-based strategy on a hex map with medieval weapons and magic. I’d played v1.0 and the beta of v1.2 was much better but it had some issues. Now v1.2 is a stable release as of 2 days ago, so go get it!

Mood:

I was reading Gamespy’s blurb for Half-Life 2: Episode One’s nomination for the Game of the Year and they were talking about things I don’t remember happening in that game. Then I realized: I never finished Episode One! I got to the underground area where I had to use my flashlight all the time and then got distracted by things like Titan Quest.

The problem with Steam is that you have to run it before you can see all the games available. I actually have a half-dozen games in there I installed but haven’t fully played!

So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be a little busy for a while…

Mood:

I’ve been playing Titan Quest for the last day or so, and it’s definitely filling the gap that followed after Diablo II. The controls and feel are the same and they removed the Diablo stupidity that when you die you lose all your equipment and have to return to where you died to pick it all back up, but since it was usually a big baddie that killed you, you have no chance to beat them without your equipment! In this game you just lose some XP. You can also teleport back to town to unload as often as you want, which is nice. I just wish there was some way of carrying more stuff so I didn’t have to teleport back to town so often…

Mood:

Downloaded and finished the F.E.A.R. single player demo. It’s very good. It uses the DOOM3 engine, but you can actually use the flashlight while you have your gun out (gasp)! It also allows you to use your superior reflexes to slow down time a la The Matrix or Max Payne.

The weapons are cool; I like the particle weapon, which flash-fries the enemy. The storyline is creepy, and there are a couple “what the–?!” freakout moments in the demo. Not too short; just enough to whet your appetite.

Eagerly awaiting the full game.

Mood:

Check this out.

Then shut up about video games making kids violent.
Not that any of my friends who read this blog think that…

Mood:

I picked up GTA: San Andreas. I like that it comes on a DVD, so I didn’t have to swap discs during installation. The part I didn’t like was when I tried to run the game and it said it couldn’t find an authentic disc.

The fine no-CD cracks at GameCopyWorld got me up and running, though.

I played for a bit. Classic GTA missions, but more swearing than the previous games, but given the hip-hop 90’s setting it’s expected.

After the first mission the voices completely disappeared Hey, Rockstar Games! How about some more playtesting next time?

Update: The workaround for the copy protection not working is here, and the fix for the sound cutting out is here. Gotta love The Internets…

Mood:

I had heard about how the ending of Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords didn’t sit well with some people, but the gameplay and story of the first 90% of the game was great so I put it out of my mind as best I could.

Now that I’ve finished it, I’m ready to agree. If Return of the Jedi had used the KOTOR2 formula, they wouldn’t have rescued Han Solo at the beginning, then pretty much everyone they met would have talked about him (”I heard he was frozen in carbonite”, “maybe we should go rescue him”), then after the Emperor was killed the last scene of the movie would have been the heroes going off in the Millenium Falcon to rescue Han, but then the credits roll! It’s an incomplete game!

Someone seriously dropped the ball on this. Talk about a letdown.

Mood:

Softball coach snaps the unwritten rules

Mood:

I asked for KOTOR2 for my birthday, and also got a Future Shop gift card, so I picked up Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich.

Overall, I’ve found Freedom Force to be the better game. It’s definitely as good as the original, and the new improved engine look great and they’ve still been able to preserve the campy Kirby-esque artwork. The voices don’t seem as good as the first; maybe they had to rush that aspect of it.