Top Gun

Given how rare hat drops are to begin with, it would be kind of nice if they were tweaked to take into account the hats you already own. But like you said, Valve loev trollin'. (And I actually kind of like the Dr. Seuss hat.)

Me: "So hey, TF2, the item server was down for me all of last night, which meant that I couldn't swap out my loadout for something more useful. Wouldn't it be great if I logged in today and found out you'd dropped a hat for me?" TF2: "You know what, Top Gun, that sounds fair. Here's a hat drop!" Me: "Awesome! What did you give me?" TF2: "A Prancer's Pride! You know, that awesome reindeer antler for the Pyro that you already...have..." Me: "..." So...yeah. I'll probably offer to trade it to my brother, but if he doesn't want it, feel free to hit me up for it.

There's a certain Dead Ringer Spy I've seen play on the server who pretty much always disguises as Scout, freely announces that he always disguises as Scout, has the entire opposing team completely paranoid and spy-checking...and still manages to mop the floor with them. It's a scary thing to see.

Yeah, QuickTime Alternative is good stuff. I think The KMPlayer is able to play QuickTime files natively even without Alternative, too. ...what just happened? o_0

So one thing I noticed while I was fooling around with the replay system is that there doesn't seem to be any way to string multiple takes happening at the same time together, to do something like show the same event from multiple viewpoints. It seems like it'd be a really useful feature to have.

Oh, this should be something else. *obligatory replay whoring*

Doublecross is a lot of fun for just fooling around late at night when everyone's kind of punchy, too. Goofy stuff tends to happen on that map as a rule. And man, I almost forgot about Well. It doesn't seem to get much playtime on the servers in either CTF or CP mode.

Indeed. I usually enjoy Turbine myself, though, except when it turns into "One team camps the middle and makes things near-impossible for the other team."

RED was rubber-banding all over the place every ten seconds or so after the replays kicked in, so it seems like there's some significant overhead going on. Depending on if it continues, it might be worth rethinking enabling them. And huh, the new promo hats were added to crafting/dropping too. So much for rushing to buy Plants vs. Zombies. Though given the number of hours I've already put into it, it was a great investment regardless.

Great comic is great. And ooh, more achievements to whore!

I don't really mind crits being on or off either way (it might make me marginally better at Medieval if they were off, since I get critted any time someone comes near me there), but it would be great to be able to have the knife as an exception somehow. That backstab animation can come in very handy when you don't know if you're just out of reach of someone or not.

Yeah, that's pretty much been my experience too. It's addicting as hell.

Looks like you were right...Plants vs. Zombies is on sale for $3 and change for a few days, and anyone who owns it or buys it now gets those two hats. It's dirt cheap, and I've heard a ton of good stuff about it, so I'm going for it.

Oh man, Tomba! I discovered it on that one PS1 demo disk that just about everyone seemed to have, and I played the hell out of both it and its sequel (which wasn't quite as good). I'm kind of surprised to hear it's such a collector's item now. Do you have any more info about those legal issues you mentioned?

I was just thinking to myself, "I wonder when we're going to get nailed with the next round of promo items." And here they are!

Yeah, exactly. Plus, there's an inherent pride in looking at a shelf full of physical games/DVDs/books/whatever and seeing your entire collection laid out like that. A drop-down list in Steam or menu on a 360 simply can't replicate that.

That whole thing with streaming uncertainty is why I've never purchased any Virtual Console titles for the family Wii, even though there are a few (like Super Metroid) that I'd really like to. I plan on finally moving out sometime in the next year or so, but when I do, I'm obviously not going to be able to take the family system with me. And because Nintendo made the stupid decision to tie VC/WiiWare games exclusively to the console they're purchased on, I'd have no way of taking them with me. I've thought about buying my own Wii, but at this point, I'll probably just wait until whatever this new HD console is comes out and buy that. On the other side of the debate, I generally love Steam, and I've bought a number of games through it. And GOG.com is pretty much gaming nirvana. However, I've never purchased any music or movies via digital downloads, and I don't plan on doing so any time soon. I love my massive DVD collection, thank you very much.

There are some interesting ideas in there. Hopefully Valve will be a bit more responsive to whatever beta players think about them, so we don't have another change-then-change-back incident. (I just picked up a V. Stockbroker's Scarf for a Refined plus a few Reclaimed. That may be too much for all I know, but it's fun to have a promo item from a game I'll probably never play.)

Holy crap...I completely missed that. I was just thinking last night that all of those theories about Chell being part of Take Your Daughter to Work Day didn't seem to have panned out. So much for that.

My poor brother is a week away from final exams, so he hasn't even downloaded the game yet. I'm waiting on co-op until he's able to, so that should be a blast. I'm about halfway through the single-player chapter-wise (I think so, anyway), and it's just ridiculously awesome so far.

Oh man, that post is great. Hats invading Portal 2 was crazy enough, but I was pleasantly surprised to see my Mann Co. Cap pop up. And the game itself...hnnnnng. I had to cut myself off around the start of Chapter 2 last night so I didn't manage to polish off half the game in one sitting. Soooooo good.

Yeah, I'm more than ready to stop griping about potatoes and to pick up my Portal Gun again. Co-op should be crazy enough, but I think I'm looking even more forward to how the singleplayer is going to play out. I can't wait to see what sort of crap GLADOS is going to fling at us.

I'm fine with disagreement, but I can't say I was prepared to have people calling me spoiled or entitled, since that wasn't the mindset I was coming from. I think Koriantor wound up expressing my viewpoint a lot better, and it only took him one sentence to do it. I never was good at keeping things short.

Note to self: never post opinions on OCR in the future.

I don't even have a multi-core processor, but I managed to crash twice attempting to pick a class last night. (Heavy both times, too...maybe he doesn't like me.) Hopefully Valve gets working on some fixes once Monday rolls around. Oh, and I hope Brushfire managed to get IJ's messages to him at some point, because there were some real winners who joined BLU right after he left last night.