The Golden Compass

Ok...so this was on a flight, so I didn't really pick this myself. I was surprised by how much I liked it, though the plot was just a little too convenient at the end. Dakota Blue whatsername was good, Nicole Kidman was fun too, but Ian McKellern is not really an armoured polar bear. Still, a good way to pass a flight.

LoTRO rocks...but is a little small!

Yeah. Lots of Minstrelling for Kiaora in the last few weeks, even in spite of a trip to Germany (with my hacked PSP for company). Got my mount, done a few instances & suddenly the world looks very small.... I think it will only last another few months before we get into repeatedly going into the same dungeons, at which point my attention will wander. So what's next?

PSP hax04ed!

Yes, thanks to the GWJ "no PSP left unhacked" program, I am now the proud owner of a PSP that can do all the stuff that it should have been able to do if Sony hadn't decided to cripple it. Ha!

Now to see if I can get the emulators for PSX and PC adventure (SCUMM) working.

Lord of the Rings Online

Yup, another MMO. Since I played in the Beta for this, I'm pretty familiar with the lower levels, but this time I'm playing a healer - or in Lotro terms, the minstrel. Having a lot of fun so far, though the lack of an instant heal, uninterruptible heal or a heal that can be cast while running is making it easy to be overwhelmed by 3 mobs unless I can kill one before I need my first heal. (Damn spiders in the north of the Shire.)
My favourite gaming buddies are playing too, plus it sounds like some of K's family will jump in too, so it's sounding like a regular old social scene in there. Now we just need to get to roughly the same levels.

God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)

If you doubted the ability of a PSP game to look good, check this one out - it does look really spectacular in places. Plot-wise, I think there was one, but the game didn't do a great job of making it relevant - it's a very straightforward, single path from start to finish, with kill-everything-here scenes at regular intervals. The combat is very well done - I'm no twitch-kid, but I was able to do fancy-schmancy kills (intentionally) pretty soon after picking it up. Abilities keep being added, but were certainly not all necessary, so I tended to find a few good moves and stick with them. So this is not a complex game, but it is fun... I'm thinking this is an 8/10 or a 9/10, since it held my attention & I enjoyed the ride. A little more variety in the set pieces and plot relevance and this would be a 10/10.

Videodrome

No, not a remake. I'm talking the 1983, Debbie Harry, S&M-in-an-orange-room-infused version. (By the way, I like that our local library has good DVDs like this.) Themes of betrayal, messing with someone's head, power of the screen, S&M and a smattering of general weirdness make it a fun ride. Trying to describe a plot is pointless, as it's more about the themes and the hallucinatory ideas, but it's worth a watch, though not with the kids around. The cheese factor is actually not that high, as they were relatively sparing with the special effects that look dated, focussing instead on ones that actually age ok. Definitely some cheese present though...

Gamefly delivers! PSP is fun!

Well, GF shipped it a day after I joined & I the next business day (separated by a weekend). No complaints about that. So...God of War for PSP is in my grubby little hands. I'm astonished at the quality of the graphics, though a little underwhelmed by the gameplay so far. Don't get me wrong - it's a great button masher, but so far I've not found anything that's not been done before.

Also planning to hack my PSP. See the Gamers with Jobs and Legion's guide. Wish me luck!

Gamefly

I tried to sell some of my old games to a local second-hand book/CD/DVD/game place here & was shocked at how little value games hold after a few years. We're talking an offer of $4 for four games scoring over 90% 3-5 years ago. So, aside from trying to get linked in to this effort to send games to troops in Iraq, I started thinking about game rentals instead of purchases.

So I'm signed up to Gamefly. Let's see how rapidly the games show up, shall we?
Joined: 20/Mar

The next MMO?

So a couple of friends (who shall remain nameless) have suggested that Age of Conan is the next great MMO & that I should jump onboard & wave my big muscles at Arnie in the world of Hyboria. I have to admit the idea of a grittier, adult MMO does appeal to me...see my selection of the Oogaba version of The Witcher for my games-I-want-to-play list. Combat & life in these fantasy worlds is, in my opinion, generally portrayed in an overly-romantic manner, with good dentistry and conditioning shampoos available in every little mudhut village.
So..why am I not champing at the bit? Two reasons - time & grind. I'm not sure I'm prepared to devote the number of hours required into an MMO, but I really struggle if a lot of those hours are filled with "kill 20 rats", "bring me 24 eyeballs" and "take x from a to b" type of quests that we've seen a millions times! If the gameplay is good, I'll be there (hello TF2). If the story is good, I'll be there (hello Dreamfall). If there's just a lot of rats and eyeballs, I'm less interested.

Sam & Max Season 1 Episode 1

After much procrastination, I finally bought S&M (hmm...) Season 1 & just got done with Episode 1. I guess my main observations are: it's short! it's sometimes funny! it has lots of punchlines! I can still feel the exclamation marks!

Yes, there are some good bits of humour in there, but it didn't have the laugh-out-loud humour that I was really expecting. Maybe I'm just older and grumpier, but several areas, in particular the inkblots/dream stuff, felt like it was just trying too hard. On the plus side, it did set up what I suspect could be some new recurring gags, played true to the same old rabbity thing and puzzle difficulty was spot on for me.