This appeared in my pigeonhole at work today. I’m assuming it was put there because it mentions computers, and therefore is obviously my responsibility. Anyway, as is always the way with these things, it’s a scam. The company, TLAC Ltd, at Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX (address included for the benefit of Googlers) appears to offer “thankyou prizes and awards”, not unlike Survey UK. As before, I hunted around on the internet, and found this message on …
Four games against my wife today, with three wins for me. I also got the “underachiever” achievement, for playing 10 games without getting an achievement. What a strange achievement to get.
Absolutely amazing. It’s slick, it’s twisty, it’s got style, and Samuel L Jackson does what Samuel L Jackson does best. He plays the nephew of the original John Shaft, working for the police, and with a personal interest in anti-black crime. Two unrelated arrests cause a rich murderer and a drug lord to team up to take out a witness to a murder, and Shaft along the way. There’s shootouts, car chases, one-liners, bent cops… plenty to prevent the film …
Started, played, and completed the Grand Theft Scratchy level. It was OK, although a little repetitive. Once again however, the references improve things tenfold. There’s the way the level starts in a close-enough replica of Grove Street from GTA San Andreas. Then there’s the Missile Command subgame. And the fact that Poochy is the end of level boss. And, of course, Marge yelling “all my bitches” and stuff. Amaze.
Big budget, big names, some amazing effects and quite clearly epic in almost every way. However, it’s also mostly brainless, has the more ridiculous “win” plot ever, and Brent Spiner’s character dies despite him being the best one in the film. Things that made me ill: The first lady somehow survives (for a bit) The dog somehow survives Will Smith’s cigar “tradition” The drunken hick who flies into the ship killing himself And other bits. And can Jeff Goldblum play …
I bought this yesterday, in a deal where I got this and Mass Effect for £22.50, which was pretty good. It’s also the only thing I’ve played (so far) this weekend. First of all, I should point out that as a game, it’s nothing new. It suffers from the same irritations as most cheap and crap platformers (wonky camera, dodgy controls, item collection, and so on). However, it knows this. It even takes the michael out of itself as a …
Gamestracker changed the way their site works recently, so I’ve updated my Firefox search plugin to make it work again. You can get it from this page here.
Because when I went in there today, this is what I saw: It would seem that Boots don’t realise it’s only the first week in September. They had four whole rows of this sort of thing.
GAAAAAaaAGH! Hate hate hate! I spent ages making more planets and suns and stuff, so I had plenty in the sky to roll up to make the 1,500,000km Katamari. And guess what? Fail! Again! Once more, I ended up with a 1,250,000km-ish Katamari, and an accidental fall into the black hole. So! Annoying!
Chrome, the new web browser from Google, is very nice. It’s quick, it’s low on resources, and it’s pretty slick in general. There are a few bugs (like certain links can crash it), and there’s a nasty security problem in that your stored passwords aren’t protected in any way. Oh, and there’s no Mac version yet. However, once they’ve sorted these issues out, I might make the switch. In traditional Google Humour style, Chrome is also full of easter eggs. …
There were three new games on XBLA today, and I tried the demos of them all. Oh, what a bad week… Shred NebulaRubbish shooter with wonky controls. Pirates vs Ninjas DodgeballRubbish fighting game (well, it is!) with stupid too-far-away camera. Gin RummyRubbish card game. Well, OK – it isn’t rubbish, but it’s not very exciting.
Last night we went back to the midwife for the 24 week checkup. Thankfully, everything was fine, although once again the baby refused to stay still so it took a while to find him/her with the heartbeat-finding-device-thing that reminds me of those things people with no vocal cords use. But then it was found, and it sounded more like an actual heartbeat and less like Pac-man this time round.
I’ve been playing this a bit for the last few days. It’s very good, but I can’t help thinking the GBA Tactics game is better. I keep getting frustrated with the default camera angle, and the way I have to adjust the field rotation every couple of moves. But it’s a more-than-decent SRPG, and the story is already full of twists and betrayals and all sorts. I’m slightly concerned that, after 9 hours play, I’m still only on level 8 …
These old films about computers (see also WarGames) are amazing. They never manage to get computers right, do they? They just assume that computers in the future will get bigger, have more flashing lights, still be using floppy disks, and yet will have amazing artificial intellegence. Presumably squeezed into 16K of RAM. Demon Seed is about one of these computers. One with its own brain, and tasked with things such as finding places to drill for oil, predicting the stock …