Madness In My Method

Pics under cuts.

I was gifted with Wrebbit's Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral 3D Puzzle. I started it yesterday after work, worked on it till midnight, then finished it up today from between 11am and 5pm. I probably won't be able to keep it up for long, as I'm sure the kitties would happily volunteer to love and nom on the foam pieces.

While looking for online images of the puzzle, I found this. Now you too can put the 3-D puzzle together...on your computer.

( Notre-Dame Puzzle )

After finishing the puzzle, I went and butchered my first beef tenderloin. We had it for dinner along with some very buttery mashed potatoes and some teriyaki-flavored stir-fried veggies. I over cooked the onions and worried that they would taste burnt, but instead they caramelized nicely and melded perfectly with the flavors.

Eileen gave me the Wusthof to cut with, and a glass of the Zombie alcoholic drink.

( I didn't cut off any fingers )

I finished playing The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, it's sequel. There's no spoilers to give away for Dreamfall because THERE'S NO RESOLUTIONS TO ANY BUT ONE OF THE TEN+ DAMNED PLOT LINES! RAWR! TLJ resolves everything it presents, but Dreamfall was specifically being intended as a first of many parts. So, I can only hope the developer is just putting on the final touches, although he's been pretty busy on another project. Dreamfall Chapters has been on the table for quite some time.

Still, it's well worth playing both of these immersive RPGs if you are into those kinds of games. Even with having to keep the damned walkthrough open for TLJ (and I'm a pro-puzzle gamer!), I'd still recommend it for the immersive and story factor. Dreamfall manages to take the shiny, happy worlds portrayed in TLJ and thrusts in a little bit of Silent Hill creepiness and we're a little older than twelve adult themes, much to my happiness.

Culpa Innata was another one that was both frustrating as hell, yet good enough to leave me wanting the next installment that's been indefinitely stalled.

That's frustrating as hell. I really wish I could be a multi-bajillionaire just to fund some of these lesser-known Indie groups. If nothing else, I could be the primary test player for them. :)

At least Dreamfall managed to pick one hell of a closing credits song.

( Magnet - Be With You )

Interesting enough online game if you have the patience for it.

Dedicated to disgruntledgrrl and takhisis

This is either going to be really good or really bad, and yet I'm horribly curious either way.

This game had so much potential that I actually squeed when the menu screen came up, as it's a floating 3-D screen that shows off the grimy, yet fascinating world created in Immortal.

Sadly, I don't recommend this game. The voices for the Gods were great (although I couldn't tell if it was just one voice actor or two), and the visuals were good enough to keep your attention at least, although pretty basic in the world of game design nowadays. The puzzles, however, were fucking frustrating as hell. If you weren't pixel hunting for the exact item that was hiding in shadows, then you were trying to solve a ridiculously hard bit on/bit off puzzle that, unless you are a puzzle fiend, should have you running away screaming to the nearest online walkthrough (I recommend this one) so that you can actually at some point solve the damn thing.

Now, I've had to solve some pretty complex puzzles, and I quite pride myself on them. However, that's only when the damned things make sense. Trying over and over and over again to run away from the locals in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and having to do every single part of the sequence within a time frame only mythical RPG heroes can pull off STILL MADE SENSE. It was a pain in the ass sometimes repeating a sequence 25 times before finally pulling it off, but you not only could feel the rush of the scene every time, but you also could look back on it as a job well done. Congratulations - Pat on the Back - Good Times.

This game, what numerous times I did return to the walkthrough (which was at least half the time if not more), didn't make me feel like a complete idiot for not noticing something that I should have. Instead, it made me want to throw folding chairs at the programmers.

The last point - I think I've spent more time writing up this review than I have spent on ACTUAL game play in this game, not including the length of time I shook my head in wonderment at how in the world I could possibly be missing the solution to a puzzle only to find that the ground that all looks the same everywhere has a spot RIGHT THE FUCK THERE that if I move my cursor over it I'll realize that the dark shadows in my mind were merely obscuring the pebble rock brick the size of my head from my view - the one that I pick up and throw at the mirror to move it when I kept trying everything else in the book to make the mirror move or make the guy leave his seat or go and kill the guy with some of the other heavy statues and objects scattered around the "cemetery". There ya go, I just gave away a puzzle spoiler for free without even warning you - but I think you get the idea of how fucking inane and aggravating these puzzles were.

By the way, I didn't tell you where the rock was laying, so you'll still have to hunt around on the ground to find it regardless. It's not like I'm spoiling the time waste that trying to solve these puzzles works out to be.

I really did have high hopes for this game. :-/

Does anyone have Timesplitters or Timesplitters 2?

I never should have found this site.

I never heard of Logus, but considering how much I love my 15 Puzzle, I think adding the complexity of racing someone to make words would be intriguing.



Then again, some of these games just hurt my brain.

I'm playing an Indie game called And Yet It moves. The premise is simple enough. You can move your little guy within the world, or you can move the world around him. The game play is interesting because you have to solve basic physics puzzles that involve nothing more than the principles of gravity (what doesn't have solid ground under it must fall down) and momentum (if I fall too fast or something else is falling too fast towards me, I'll splatter on impact).

Seems easy enough, right?

Except, I also have bats. That I have to herd.

Think about that one for a moment. I'll wait.

The bats go in reverse and always fly up to the highest point and then hook on until I rotate the world again.

I'm herding bats. At level three no less.

So, just because of the sheer idea in and of itself that I'M HERDING FREAKING BATS, this game already has two thumbs up from me.

EDIT: I just rode a red-eyed, horned hamster like it was a bull I was trying to charge into walls that were in my way.

My 300GB hard drive is filled with shows and games.
That was one of the biggest HDs available when I built my system (they went up to 1T at the time, but the price was still out of range), and while I love games and load the crap out of my computer, I honestly thought that I would need to upgrade some computer stuff before having to upgrade the hard drives.
I have 2.7GB 1.2GB left and still plenty of online game purchases that need to be downloaded.
I guess I need to watch some shows* and upgrade my hard drive capacity.

**No, I don't want to just burn the shows to disks. If they are on my computer it's so that I can watch them and then either 1)decide if I want to buy them or not, or 2)watch them now because I was lazy and didn't set the DVR and they haven't come out yet to be purchased. If they are good enough, I'll buy them as efforts allow. If you know me in real life, then you've probably seen my DVD collection and know this to be true.