New Favorite Gun

With two DLC’s, it was bound to happen.  This thing SHITS BULLETS!  Never runs out of ammo.  OMFG. 

Now playing: Switchfoot - This is Your Life

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx

Okay, so I am willing to admit that shooting zombies in the head does have the possiblity of getting old.  Who knew?  Still, the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was a pretty damn fun little expansion to Borderlands. 



I think the most complaint most people would have about it was a lack of variety.  All I did was kill zombies.  All the time.  Hordes of them.  Armies of them.  I shot them in the head.  I blew them up.  I shot them in the head some more.  I’m going to be killing zombies in my sleep for weeks, I’m pretty sure of that. 



I never get tired of these introduction cut-scenes, though.  I love every single one of them.



There’s really not much more to say about THIS DLC, other than the fact that the finale was both a letdown and freaking awesome all at the same time.  It was a letdown because you felt that it was abrupt.  It was awesome because, well, these introduction cut-scenes are awesome!

Undead Ned.  I’m still laughing at that one. 

Okay, moving on now.  The next DLC, “The Secret Armory of General Knox”.  I’ve played it for a total of 5 minutes before I saved and quit for the night.  If these first 5 minutes are any indication of the quality I should expect for this new DLC, I will say already that this one will be 50 times better than Zombie Ned.  First of all, it looks like I’m going to have an ally, or at least some kind of NPC to interact with.  Better already, since I was basically alone for all of Zombie Ned.  Soon as I loaded it up, I was face to face with her:



That’s just a badass design.  Also, it looks like there will be vehicles in this one, too, since Scooter is back.  Vehicles were also absent from Zombie Ned. 

So as I said, things are shaping up to be quite more kickassy in this one. 

Now playing: Green Day - I Fought the Law

Borderlands DLC

The great thing about being a gamer these days is that most game developers are interested in giving you what you want:  MORE. 

Or, in the terms of my generation:  MOAR!

That being said, it comes as no surprise to me that since the last time I’ve played Borderlands, not one, but TWO DLC (Downloadable Content) releases have become available.  After seeing the second one available, I decided it was about time I tried them out.  I started with the Dr. Ned’s Zombie Island first, and while there’s really nothing new here other than I’m killing zombies instead of skags and bandits, it’s great to have some new content to play with in the gorgeously cell shaded world of Pandora. 

Now playing: People in Planes - Narcoleptic

Well, the Bioshock 2 patch finally dropped today.  The annoying bug where you have to alt-tab out of the game to remove horrible game lag has been fixed.  Additionally, you can now skip the loading screens, which is probably my favorite change.  Also, general stability and connection to the game seems to have been improved.  I applaud 2K on improving the game for us. 

Now playing: Good Charlotte - Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous

Duh.

Now playing: Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta

You know, we have all these social networking websites now.  We’re always connected to each other.  Even right now, I’m writing to all of you out there online. 

I wonder when we’re going to realize that we really don’t give a crap about each other.  We’re only doing this because we like hearing ourselves talk.

Now playing: Carolina Liar - California Bound

Ok, so I’m a little behind here on my posts.  Blame the games industry for releasing too many games at once. 

In any case, I’ve given both Bioshock 2 and Aliens vs. Predator some significant play time.  With Bioshock 2, I’ve played some of the single player, but most of my time has been spent in multiplayer.  All the issues with the connection to the servers and the lag aside, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.  And I think all of us RPG players at heart appreciate the ranking system they have incorporated into it.  Thank you very much. 

My favorite moment so far?  Probably grabbing a Big Dadddy’s proximity mine with my telekinesis plasmid, and launching at some poor splicer, blowing him to bits.  Achievement name:  “Catch”. 

Here’s some Bioshock 2 screenshots from single player:













Now on to Aliens vs. Predator.  After some significant problems even getting the game to run (I froze six times on the opening cinematic), I finally updated my video drivers, which seems to have rectified my issues. 

I’ve only played the single player Marine campaign so far, but I must say I am impressed.  The atmosphere matches the tone of the movies very well.  I found myself yelling out loud on several occasions as an alien appeared in front of me (seemingly out of nowhere).  And seeing one racing along a wall at you is pretty freaking cool.  (Undies soiling cool, mind you.) 

The Queen boss fight was sort of lame, but the second half of it got me on the edge of my seat, so that’s okay I guess.  That’s about where I stopped, although I did play a bit further along enough to see the first appearance of the Predator.  Haven’t fought him yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long. 

Here’s some screenies:

Now playing: Cage The Elephant - Lotus - Winamp *** 3784. Cage The Elephant - Lotus

20,495 words on the story.  I did about 3,000–4,000 today, so that was some good progress.  It’s almost finished.  I think that it will cap out at around 25,000–30,000 in total, which is just about right where I figured it would be. 

Now playing: Muse - Uprising

Snowmaggedon

Here are some pics of the big ass snow storm.  Well, the aftermath of it, anyways. 

Now playing: Puddle Of Mudd - Radiate

Fallout: New Vegas

This trailer does nothing except tell you "Hey, we're making a new Fallout game!".  

But that's enough.  That's enough.  

http://www.actiontrip.com/rei/video.phtml?id=6043

What the fuck is taking so long?

To start with, let me put things into perspective.  I had to actually look back through my blog posts to find out the day my car accident occurred.  It's been that long that I forgot, and it turns out it was a bit earlier in the month of November than I recall.  November 19th, 2009.  That was 11 weeks go.  

And I still don't have my car back.  

As for the circumstances surrounding why such a utterly unbelieveable situation should even exist, I have no answers.  The place that is fixing my car has only relayed a message to me two times over the course of these 11 weeks.  The first time was a converstation initiated by ME, basically asking, "Dude, WTF?". At that time, they were awaiting some part they needed, and it was apparently hard to get.  (I guess getting parts for a new car is sort of like having to walk over water without being Jesus.  Right there in that particular area of difficulty.  I say use a fucking water walking elixir.)  

The second time they've contacted me was this week.  I was expecting them to tell me one of the following things:  

1.  Your car is fixed.  (This is the one I would have liked to hear the most.)

2.  Your car will be ready soon. 

3.  We're very sorry this is taking so long, but we expect to be done on X day.

Instead, I get a request to bring my rental car in on Saturday, because they don't want to have to start paying the rental agency extra cash due to them taking WAY too long to fix my fucking car.  So, in other words, my rental is getting repossessed.  How funny and fucked up is this situation?  How, in the name of Zeus' butthole, does every situation get this fucked up?  Who the fuck is in charge here?  All questions to which I have no answers.  

So they said they are giving me a car to drive.  Great.  Can't wait to see this.  And thank you very fucking much for wasting my time on my weekend.  Fuck you very, very much, indeed.

And I don't know, perhaps maybe you can fix my fucking car before we reach the THREE MOTHER FUCKING MONTH MILESTONE?  That's in two weeks.  I'm sure you can manage to be utterly inept for that much longer.

(That being said, I have no idea how much of this is their fault, really.  They truly were waiting on parts for a long time, but I'm damn sure at least part of this LONG MOTHER FUCKING WAIT is on them.  I've been told that places like this will delay large jobs while they fix dents and scratches and buffs which don't take long and generate a quick buck.)

What's on PD's whiteboard today?

Good thing our Product Development team isn't located in my office.  And doesn't read my blog.  Heh.  

Oh, and here's another statistical percentage for you:  Percent of WORK RELATED information contained on PD's whiteboards:  11.67%

Launch Day

It should come as no surprise that it’s Day 1 of Star Trek Online and the servers are down.  (Actually, they just came back up.  I’m installing a patch now.)

Back to that later.  In other news, I just finished reading Stephen King’s “On Writing” book.  I’m going to share my favorite excerpt from this book, because it’s just so good.  I was laughing my ass off as I was reading it.  It’s in regards to writing seminars and classes.  He notes that most of the people critiquing your work aren’t very helpful, speaking of how they like tone, feeling, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, saying things like, “It’s like well I don’t know man…”  My favorite part of this was:

“It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can’t describe, you might just be, I don’t know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”

So true. 

Now playing: Jack's Mannequin - Swim