BFF?

The Duke Nukem Forever demo was pretty cool! That preview delivered exactly what I was expecting before I read all those scathing reviews; a ridiculously mindless FPS with good-but-not-great graphics and a pointlessly interactive environment... Much like Duke Nukem 3D. My only real complaints are with the weapon and health systems (why did they copy Halo!?), and the linearity of the levels. Perhaps I won't be picking this one up at full price, but I do intend to buy it.

In the mean time, I was gonna sit down with Crysis 2, but then I heard about this, so I won't be playing it 'til Monday.

So I finally got around to finishing that free first episode of Back To The Future: The Game... Aaannnd seeing as how that didn't last very long, I'm thinking it's time to check-out Minerva's Den.

Really, anything to avoid Lair ;)

Oh, and that G5 is still sketchy after getting a less-dead battery in there... Wheee!

Neutered

So I was able to get that Power Mac G5 running stably after disabling the second CPU and getting the setting to stick... Didn't have the right bit to remove the heat sinks and do it physcially. Unfortunately, shutting down caused everything to kick back in, so I'm thinking dead battery. It's prolly worth the ~$10 to get the thing running as a single 1.8GHz machine; could be worth a couple hundred dollars on craigslist that way; won't be able to run HD Flash video though.

P.S. Outland is an awesome game.

Misunderstood?

Jikandia's a safe and fun little grind... The visuals, gameplay, and writing are all vaguely reminiscent of other titles, the one-line-at-a-time dialogue is sort of annoying, and the $30 price point seems a little steep, but it's not at all a bad game.

Uncharted 2 left me feeling about the same.

Anyway, I started Lair... If not for the analog control update, I would've turned it off after the first level. The art ranges from gorgeous to hideous, transitions between menus, cutscenes, and gameplay modes are noticeably unpolished, the dialogue is ridiculously contrived, enemies can be particularly difficult to see, and the story is painfully underdeveloped. I can definitely understand how disappointed people must've been when the game was first released, being forced to slog through that with SIXAXIS motion controls.

So removing a CPU on a Power Mac G5 is right up there with disassembling a Nintendo Virtual Boy in terms of arbitrary complexity.

Stuff

Got Crysis 2 Limited Edition for PC (gorgeous) for $20, Guardian Heroes for Saturn (badass) for $50, and Shining Tears and Shining Force EXA (haven't played them yet; can't wait to hear the god-awful voice acting I've read about) for PS2 for $13 each.

El Shaddai (PS3 demo; 360 still broken) is literally insane. Almost finished Uncharted 2. TITS has been kinda boring; gonna try Jikandia next.

A friend's Power Mac G5 bit the dust; looks like one of the CPUs is bad; gonna try disabling it.

Got a motherboard from a Dell Vostro 230 replaced under warranty; currently stress testing.

Trying to puzzle-out the best combination of server hardware and software upgrades to accommodate a major database upgrade at work... Not looking too good, given my budget.

Was pretty stoked to play Duke Nukem Forever, but the reviews are having me consider sticking to Crysis 2 for the time being.