Games are like, 50 cents there. That's where I got such classics like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. I also found some AD&D 2nd Edition supplements, which I bought even though I play 3.5E. (Although they have spiked my interest in AD&D 2e. Seems more complicated and better for roleplaying.)

How is it that I get to this place? Who do I have to worship?

You get to this place by heading where nobody would expect: To Southern Ontario. But not to Toronto... no, to this place like an hour away from the big city.

Course, it's rare to find any good games there. My family goes about every week or two, so I've spent a lot of weeks coming back without games.

That being said, there's a ton of second-hand books of basically every genre, plus a lot of clothing, and a bunch of movies, plus more helpful items like cutlery and sometimes sofas or desks... even if it's not a game one can usually find something interesting. Still, it's only worth dropping by if you're in the area. (Like maybe a half-hour away at most.)

So I'd recommend worshipping Hermes. That should cover most areas.

I always bought my games in pawn shops for a long time because we had very little money; my first console was a half-broken playstation from there, only cost maybe 20 bucks, came with some games.

Slightly off-topic: Also, local hobby stores are really great. We have one in-town that sells games (irregardless of console, as long as they're current or previous generation (PS2 etc. / PS3 etc.) for 10 dollars and buys them for 5. They only deal second-hand games, but damn is that a good deal. You just trade in two games and get one.

[> Ask CASHIER why there is a DASHINGLY HANDSOME AND BRAVE SWASHBUCKLER on the WANTED POSTER _]

> Ask CASHIER why there is a DASHINGLY HANDSOME AND BRAVE SWASHBUCKLER on the WANTED POSTER _

Because we all know that totally couldn't be our brave and adventurous hero!

(By the way, do you guys mind if I use bolding for game commands? It's just that I want to separate them from my comments so that in skimming back over it's easier to pick up on. I'll stop if it's too distracting though.)

Most of my games library comes from thrift stores or this... well I dunno how to describe it. It's like if a thrift store took up a whole warehouse and people just drove up and dropped things off inside. Tons of stuff there.

Uhm... my brother has a knack at finding hardware there. He got a SNES for about 5 dollars with controller and Super Mario Land for 2. He also found a Sega Genesis for 30 dollars, including the manuals and original box it was sold in.

I'd say that the best hardware I got there was an old laptop for 5 dollars. 12 MHz, 24 MB of hard-disk space, probably 2 MB of RAM, 3 1/2" floppy disk drive... battery was dead though. Still works off of wall-power though. Screen is a bit crappy with low contrast, but it's alright for Word processing. Solitaire and this little Pinball game work alright with it.

Games are like, 50 cents there. That's where I got such classics like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. I also found some AD&D 2nd Edition supplements, which I bought even though I play 3.5E. (Although they have spiked my interest in AD&D 2e. Seems more complicated and better for roleplaying.)

Found a decent mouse in an alley somewhere.

But THIS... you my good sir... you have won. 

They are calling it Thi4f.  Not only do I hate that but it makes less than usual sense.

The only time a pun or letter/word swap in a game name has ever worked well was Left 4 Dead. And they made it even punnier by using a left hand. Surprisingly not many people I talked to knew that...

But yeah, Thi4f is just a stupid name. Like calling Elder Scrolls 5 "Elder 5croll5". It's like they're trying to be l337 or... something...

WAIT! THEORY! Perhaps you're gonna be a hacker or something in this game! Kinda like ripping off Assassin's Creed! IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!

Or rather, that's the only way it COULD make sense.

[> Enter VISITOR CENTER and point out BLATANT FLAW in ISLAND NAME.]

> Enter VISITOR CENTER and point out BLATANT FLAW in ISLAND NAME.

Then again, I suppose when you spend all your time on the internet in the first place, you wouldn't have to worry about friends.

Chicken or the egg there. Does the Internet cause lack of friends, or is it the lack of friends that causes the usage of such as escapism?

[tl;dr version: Twitter is more "social breadcrumbs" than "social networking", when compared to MySpace or Facebook.]

hdurrr check out how counter culture i am. i live in a cave and avoid human contact.

Oh come on Joe, you're smart enough to know that social networking sites are the mental equivalent of junk food.  Apparently being physically obese as a society isn't enough, so now we've found a way to be mentally obese (which I think is just being narcissistic and/or airheaded).

Actually this brings up a topic I'd like to discuss. I don't really think Twitter counts as "social networking" in the way that Facebook or MySpace do. In those cases you're maintaining a lot more information and personal contact stuff. Twitter works very much like a forum with no topics, not a "{bio sheet + personal items} wiki" as in Facebook, or a "this is a big webpage about tiny details about me" like MySpace. I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about Twitter. The idea is so much simpler: Just write a brief message about what you're up to.

Now, my argument against Facebook is that the information put there shouldn't be necessary to be on the internet for anyone who would need the information. They should either already know it or you need to tell them in person. Twitter, on the other hand, would equate IRL to walking up to all of your friends just to tell them that you realized how great pistachio icecream is. ...I don't know about you, but I don't really do that. Nor would I want anyone to do that to me because I wouldn't want them wasting our time on such frivolous things.

That being said, that doesn't mean I don't want to know it. I just don't want it as an interruption. Twitter works as allowing that person to comment on their stunning revelation and then a bunch of other people to read about it when they want to. But yes, it is unimportant. I just have an addon in Firefox that lets me use Twitter. It takes like 10 seconds to read, and maybe 20 seconds to write. It's not a bother at all and can be worth it just to either touch base or be amused.

tl;dr version: Twitter is more "social breadcrumbs" than "social networking", when compared to MySpace or Facebook.

I also am not sure how to use twitter. I think that has to do with me not reading it often. The whole "@" mechanic where you name someone's name bewilders me.

I think the best way to describe Twitter is IMing the Internet at large. Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me.

...yessssss, I know I do that frequently. I'm just a very bored person.  :D

[The Dig by Alan Dean Foster]

The Dig by Alan Dean Foster. {etc.}

Holy crap, I remember borrowing that game when I was little- so cool. Does it have the alien hamster ball in it?

I haven't gotten that far in it yet, but I hope so. It'll be interesting to see how it's described in the book. Ooh! Hopefully it'll tell us what it looks like from the inside! I was always wondering about that....

But yeah, I'd actually recommend trying to pick up the book if you enjoyed the game. (Well... if you can remember enjoying the game to a reasonable extent). Boston Low is fleshed out WAY more than in the game, and it really helps reveal a lot of motivations that weren't apparent before. I'm surprised at the quality of the righting for a book based on a game. Good stuff.


Now, in school I'm also reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I have to say though that I'm really unimpressed. The story is interesting, and the characters are pretty good, and the themes present are really well portrayed.

So I'm annoyed at how poorly written it is. For one, Golding can't seem to stop using metaphors, even when it's completely unsuitable. He abuses it to the point where key parts of the story have to be re-read because it's so unclear what the hell he's talking about. Most glaring in my mind would be...

 *SPOILERS*When simon is killed and it describes his body being pulled out to sea. He says there's white figures and pearls foaming across the rocks and simon's skin becoming silver and really surreal things like that. I read it about 4 times and finally got what he was saying, but... I'm sorry that's just not what someone stabbed to death being pulled out to sea looks like. What the hell was he thinking? *END SPOILERS*

I mean, I've read really good works before (The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco comes immediately to mind) and I'm just so annoyed that the good parts of this novel get erradicated by atrocious writing. So I have a question here...

Does anyone know a novel with the same theme as Lord of the Flies, but is written a lot better? Apologies if someone already stated one earlier, I just don't want to sift through 17 pages.

Seriously, can't MMOs move past Everquest clones?  I mean, World of Warcraft might have polished it to it's limit and fixed a lot of the small problems, but it still has the major problems that were around with Everquest.  It's still about auto-attacks, grinding, camping and kill x monsters/collect x items quests.

Whenever they try, they sorta fail. Either on the part of the community or the developers. See: Myst Online

I actually use twitter a fair bit, but let me just do a quick run-down of what I actually use it for...

-Mini-updates about my blog (like when minor changes have been made)
-Making comments towards internet people, often poking fun at them
-Occasionally shouting out ridiculous one-liners
-Yelling at my homework in comedic fashion
-Odd events... narrated in comedic fashion.

Yeah, I think the only time I'm not employing wit with twitter is when I rarely comment on what I'm eating, frequently comment on my blog's status, or on one occasion commented on when I was playing X-Com. Hell, even when there was a skunk in my back yard I proclaimed it was mother nature laying siege upon me. I think I may be nuts.

And it's not World of Warcraft... it's World of WarCRACK! 

Did you see what I did there, with the craft and the crack and... the... yeah that was terrible.

[The Dig by Alan Dean Foster]

The Dig by Alan Dean Foster. No, no that one about the excavation in England, that's by John Preston. This one is based on the classic adventure game by LucasArts, but goes a lot deeper into the backstory and characters than the game goes. It's a neat read, especially since I loved the game and it's neat to see more about the characters.

Oooh, ooh, how about the contents of most adventure games?

-Way too slow walking speed
-Ridiculous and unlogical puzzles
-Crappy voice acting that grates the nerves
-Terrible translation
-Timed puzzles
-Obvious glitches that any beta-tester should've picked up
-Lack of alpha testing on weird mechanics choices
-Inventory management issues
-Issues on what counts as inventory
-Issues on WHEN you can take things that CAN count as inventory
-Half-assed endings

The sad thing is that they're my favourite type of game.  I've been trying to move more mainstream to get away from crappy mechanics, but I really suck at most action games.

Oh, and here's another good one that I hate:

-Locked-in difficulty settings so once you start the game you cannot change it to lower difficulty.  It's hard to tell which games do this, hence why I always play on easy. That way my ass gets less kicked.

"Threshold" games. These are games where you spend the first half of the game just barely getting by. Then after some point, you'll just pass this "threshold", and everything is super-easy from then on. Most Elder Scrolls games had this, and Fallout 3.

Ugh, that really annoyed me about BioShock. I didn't even abuse the vita-chambers, and then at the end Big Daddies are unimpressive and wimpy to me because they die too easily. I really shouldn't have played on easy, but I suck at games so much that normal is usually too hard. =/

Oh awesome, we're talking about Bionicles now? I love those things. I still have one or two.

And that colored picture is even more awesome.

Dying. You wish I wasn't serious.

I have read this book. Isn't it mostly Dante either warning of sin or savagely insulting political rivals? It doesn't seem like it would make a good game, but the thing is that someone has already done it, and proven you all wrong,



EA cannot match this, but I am sure they will try. And Dante Multiplayer - wherein you will both lob political insults at each other before walking on and doing nothing - will be the only thing I will ever play, ever again.

Damn it, ninja'd.

But yeah... I dunno, if it was anyone except EA I'd say that we should give it a chance because the trailer is meant to appeal to gamers, so it may not show how good of an interpretation it is.

If it wasn't EA, that is. Now I'm gonna go read this epic before I even play that game.

Shake FIST at SMILING MOUNTAIN in disgust.

Why do you people have to keep adding movies to my "Watch Some Time" list? It's getting to the point where I'll have to organize by genre...

Just walk up some stairs. That'll learn 'em.

Actually, they can hover up them. Sorry to burst your bubble.