Sporknight

Exactly. She could easily have passed out, and came to later, or have been found/rescued/captured by the Combine/Black Mesa/The Resistance. Keep in mind, she's already been 'engineered' with exoskeletal legs that keep her from being hurt by falls, so it's completely likely that she's okay.

Clearly, we should just ban Frogg from the server, and none of this would be an issue. :eyeroll:

Judging by what we know about the Borealis from the end of Episode 2, we know Gordon will be tracking down and exploring the ship. I bet they're making a joint announcement of Episode 3 and Portal 2 at GDC. Hell, they could be the same game at this rate...Gordon trapped on the Borealis, being taunted by the GLaDOS onboard, while trying to escape with something that'll defeat the Combine...Or they could be parallel games, with a new test subject trapped onboard who has to work together with Gordon to escape. Two-player action puzzle co-op FPS with portals? Gordon fighting off the Combine while a new Chell solves puzzles? And whatever happened to Chell anyways? So many questions, so many ideas...

Yesterday there was an update to Valve's Portal, which included a mysterious achievement, and hidden radios that played hidden signals. These radios, when brought to certain locations, would play encoded signals. From there...it gets complicated. Here's a good summary of what's happened so far: http://netshroud.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/portal-radio-transmission-update/ This is the thread on the Steam forums: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1168990 And this is a good TL;DR of that: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13767776&postcount=2291 The TL;DR includes links to ASCII images that everyone is now pouring over. Also relevant is that GLaDOS is v3.11 here, and Gabe is receiving an award at GDC on March 11th. SPECULATION GO!

That's because nobody wants it. Duh.

Civilization IV, without a doubt. Every play creates its own story, so it's never the same thing twice. I love how there's rarely a single point of success or failure - it's a series of decisions made over the past 8 hours of play that result in some very dramatic victories, and crushing defeats. For example, realizing that I was going to be two turns too late on getting my first victory on Prince difficulty, while the enormous Zulu empire and its three vassals hammered on my poor nation, as I desperately scramble to get that damned spaceship finished anyways, only to have Zulu pull off a diplomatic victory with 10 turns to go. Two of my roommates (whom I have also addicted to this game) were hovering over my shoulder for the last 25 turns, trying to squeeze out every drop of productivity from my cities on the hope that we could actually steal a victory from under Zulu's nose. In the end it was a lost cause, and I've taken a break from the game since then, but I know I'll be coming back to it. FFV and all that are certainly favorites, but I don't know many other games that can wrest such a hold on me. I hope I'm not the only one who's sat down for "just an hour of CIV before bed" that turned into an all-nighter.

I present Penny Arcade's opinion on the matter: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/25/ Not too reassuring for somebody seriously considering QA with a major game developer as a career path, but from what I hear a majority of testing jobs (games industry or no) are like this.

Although I haven't watched these yet, here's a game of competitive TF2 with commentary. If it's any good, I assure you I'll be taking notes ; ) http://communityfortress.com/tf2/news/extv-alienware-finals.php

I say "bodyshawt?!?!?" the same way I go "facestab?!?!?!". When I do it, I'm just poking fun, really. God knows, I suck enough at sniper I really have no business telling the enemy team to L2P. One of my roommates consistently bodyshots, actually. He blames it on his Army training - he naturally goes for the center of mass.

A lot of the time you can just check out a copy of the book from the library whenever you have to do homework. I'm a lot more productive when I'm not sitting at my apartment anyways, and if the textbook I need is in high demand, that helps me commit to getting my homework done. This doesn't work for every class, though, so I'll check this site out next time I need textbooks.

Especially Portal. He liked it so much, VALVe put him on a plane so he could visit. Then again, everybody likes Portal.

Well, I'll see you there then

What time?

I was playing Pokemon Red on my Gameboy Color, and had FINALLY evolved Magikarp using the ole bait-and-switch. I run down the stairs to tell my brother, slip, drop the Gameboy, and the file gets erased. Neither of us were very pleased...

Yeah, I picked that one up yesterday. Never played the original, and I'm having quite a good time backpedaling bunnyhopping and madly shooting everything and anything that moves.

You know, my Army friend does that when sniping in TF2. Doesn't work out too well. You're right though about the stopping power on the combat rifle. It's good for picking off the far-off ones in a crowd when you don't want to sacrifice your mobility to the sniper rifle, and you can switch to melee for hordes. AK + sight sounds worth trying next time I play though, for sure. Realism mode is fun to play when you're looking for something just a little different, and are up for some extra punishment. It's also a great way to convince your friends to communicate over voice more, hehe.

I may have to try the AK again sometime, especially with a laser sight. I bounce around on weapons a lot, I've noticed. Usually I stray away from the machine guns since I tend burn through ammo fairly quick, unless I'm using the 3 round burst combat rifle. I'm a big fan of blowing big meaty holes into zombies with the magnum, though.

"Free" sounds right about in my price range for buying "Stuff". Count me in!

The chip they're putting in there is pretty powerful. It's actually the same one powering the Zune HD, theTegra. The Zune HD also supports motion control gaming, like tilt-based stuff, so it doesn't surprise me that the new DS will have the same. The big problem I would have with motion-control gaming is that playing on a bus or train can get very challenging. Obviously they're going to release another Mario Kart game with tilt-steering on this. Beyond that, I'm sure they'll find some way to milk their main franchises with motion controls as well.

The thing about the nightstick is that while it swings quick, it only has one point of impact. Compare this to the guitar/katana, which have slow swings but hit a ton of zombies. If you're just killing tanks, by all means go with the nightstick, but if you're wading through hordes you'd be better served with a different melee weapon (or the grenade launcher, heh). Speaking of the grenade launcher, does anyone actually use it? It seems like a fun toy to play with on low difficulty stuff, but with friendly fire on higher difficulties it becomes highly situational.

Man, so much happened at MAG, it's like I could go back in time, do it again, and not even bump into myself. Crazy-awesome-funtimes for sure. Can't wait until next year!

So at the New Years bash tomorrow, I'll be driving in from northern VA with Prophet Orwell. Currently, the plan is for us to drive back to my house to crash afterwards. However, if there's any possibility of stealing some floorspace on somebody's hotel room, that would allow me to be a bit more festive at the party since I wouldn't have to worry about the drive back. If anyone is feeling particularly generous, let me know so we can plan accordingly. Thanks!

So what about this lan party mentioned on the first page? Are there more details for that?

Just saw it in IMAX 3D. Worth it. Worth it so good. Sensory overload. This generation's Star Wars. Obliterates the uncanny valley. A visual smorgasboard. Etc, etc etc. Go see it. Make sure it's IMAX 3D.

A few weeks ago, my roommate and I got Zune HDs, and fell in love with them. The player itself is solid, very well designed UI and all that, but what really sold me on it is the ZunePass subscription service: $15 a month for unlimited music downloads, and 10 'song credits' a month to un-DRM songs so you can keep and share them. It all feels like it centers around music sharing and discovery, but! I only have my roommate to share my Zune music with. So, I figure, where else is better to look for more people with good taste in music than here? Post your Zune ID's! I go by my OCR handle, Sporknight.