so i picked it up as it seemed like the thing to do prior to Halloween. it's a game with a concept/story drawn up by Clive Barker, after all. it's gotta have quite the scare/disturb the fillings out of your teeth to it.

unfortunately, the game has been more frustrating than scary. they expect you to do PRECISION shooting from the get go. hit these two spots on this monster while it's convulsingly lurching towards you along with 3-5 of it's buddies. btw, better hit those 2 spots before they reach you or else they'll EXPLODE and seriously injure/kill you/your squad members.

speaking of squad members, perhaps it's because i haven't had to micromanage npcs in a while but ugh...such a bother and it seems like they don't listen to me half of the time. i'll tell them to hold position, yet i'll see them running next to, if not AHEAD of me when i start moving. wtf? one good thing is while there's friendly fire, they don't seem to die from you shooting them. even in the head. of course, this might be because i currently have it on easy.

speaking of 'easy', i know there's generally a learning curve for any game but usually on EASY, it's like...EASY. this kinda goes with the 2 previous paragraphs but inbetween commanding the squad, shooting oncoming monsters, trying to hit those points on the splodey monsters, having to heal injured/fallen squad members as you're 1 of 2 people in a squad of 7 that can do so and hoping one of the splodey monsters doesn't feel like coming up behind you during the healing animation, it's feeling...not so easy. i like a challenge but typically, i'll go through a game on easy the first time through to see story/character development stuff, then go back to play it on normal/hard for the challenge. but yeah, it took me 4 or 5 tries to get past this one fight just because of all the splodey monsters, just...grrr...

a few other things that annoy is the utter lack of a map/compass/objective list to tell where the fuck i'm going/what to do. 'this is omega! we need help in the northeast sector!' cool! ass kickin' time! ...which the fuck way is northeast?! at the moment, i'm stuck at some big arena of sorts with 4 sphinx-like statues just...staring at them and the walls. i have no idea what to do. i even tried shooting all of my squad members in the head. yes, i really did. just...guh...

it's a shame because i do enjoy the stories that Barker comes up with but so far, Jericho isn't impressing me. if i can ever get past the stupid statues, maybe it'll improve but for now, i ain't holding my breath.

i'm tired as hell so i'll be slacking off on the paragraphs but i had to say that Hellgate London is made of absolute win. now that the NDA isn't in effect, i can freely gush about it. so far, i've tried out blademaster, marksman, engineer and evoker. blademaster is pretty snooze, evoker is alright but marksman and engineer are friggin' win. marksmen is better for teams while engineer is kinda like a marksman but with a small army of robots to help you kick ass. it's kinda like being a mastermind on CoV but without having to micromanage. at first, it worried stormdragon and me that engineers and summoners didn't really have control of their pets but after Jericho, i'll be sure not to take that for granted anyhore. also, NEVAR ENDING CLIP IS RABURII DESU! we'll be losing our beta characters but thankfully, leveling isn't that much of a pain, nor is raising money. it's pretty easy for anyone to farm for parts/money so hopefully there won't be an economy problem except for unique items. getting around is pretty easy as well. as stormdragon said, it really is what we were hoping to get out of Tabula Rasa but that got fairly convaluted pretty fast. so yeah, i'll likely be playing that along with CoH/V. inbetween homework, of course.

i'm not sure exactly when this happened but i know that this morning i was definately grumbly about how the macbook keep teetering about when i was trying to use it. i thought i had just placed it on top of a pencil, cord or some other thing that was making it teeter, so i went to school then work, not bothering to think on it anymore.

got home from work, sat down in front of compy and remembered 'oh yeah, i should move it to see what's making it teeter.' lifted it up to find that there was...nothing under it to make it teeter. huh. mmkay. looked at the actual underside of the macbook. 'maybe it stuck to it...?'

........

uh...

huh.

at first, i thought the release of the battery had caught on something on the desk and that part was popping out.

....then i noticed that the release was still in it's locked position.

...well, fuck.

so yeah. the battery done a sploded. thank GOD i still have the power cord because apparently, the bay area is filled with people who don't have theirs for one reason or another, and are pretty much SoL until Apple gets off it's rear and releases the NEW power adapter because they discontinued the old ones WAAAAAAAAY before they were going to release the new ones. smart, eh? so for y'all that have a macbook with the magnetic power supply, DON'T LOSE IT.

but yeah, guess it's a good thing i don't have class/work tomorrow so that i can go to Apple and do the WTF look as i show them the battery. even though apple.com doesn't say so, supposedly people have been able to get a brand new battery in the store with no hassle. yay.

just wow, though. mine didn't just bulge a bit. it BURST. i guess i should be glad it didn't just fry everything along with the bursting. *knocks on wood* that, and my hands/wrists aren't burning when i rest them on the laptop surface for the moment. n.n;

so since i have Colossus now, keisuke_chan suggested i really give it a whirl by playing the BioShock demo.

Colossus can handle teh Bioshock. :3

well, at least the demo of it. :x

it's a fairly shiny game but it'll still take me a bit to get used to the switching between the plasmids and 'normal' weapons. atmosphere is good, probably would've been better if i had put my headset on and turned off the lights but was still good. i can kinda see how Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation would say it's pretty darn easy with the amount of supplies that are strewn around everywhere. the lack of an actual backpack/inventory screen is a bit bothersome if you want to see all of your supplies in one screen but does show you how many of X you're carrying if you have it/it's weapon selected and you can always see how many medkits and syringes you have next to your HP/MP-err...E...P? y'know what i mean, gauge. and yeah...the respawn chambers really ARE everywhere. pretty much every room has one. so either a lot of people had 'accidents' even before shit went south or...i dunno.

on a slightly different note, Halo 3 DID NOT sell out at our store. :3 there were still quite a few collector's editions on our floor at the end of the day. no love for Master Chief head. ;_;

also, i'm slightly tempted to break my streak of not owning a Sims game and getting MySim. maybe it's because i don't have an actual Wii yet, thus no real Mii, and having MySim would kinda be a facsimile of it. kinda. or something. i dunno. we shall see.

dangit, i was gonna say one more thing but i just brainfarted... oh yeah, desslok, while i'm still quite in a state of BROKE from paying a colossal price for the Colossus, i wanted to ask just how much you'd want for the PSP? i ask mainly because we just got a load of those new Slim/Lite PSPs at work so i maaaay go with that if/when i'm out of BROKEdom. but lemme know anyhow.

oh, and Heroes was friggin' awesome. XD poor Hiro. angsty Nathan. NUO~ Takei~ ;_; so far, all the season premieres have been awesome that i've seen. sure, that's all of Heroes and Avatar but hey, it's a good start! recorded House so I'll watch it tomorrow after class. and yay for SpAshley smexing again on SoN, kekekekeke... i want say poor Kyla but ugh...she needs something to burst that bubble. also, oooh Bionic Woman tomorrow. *records*

alright, sleep. ugh parking tomorrow. UGH.

'new' computer is SHINY! like, really. i need to find another name for it other than Colossus but it's hard to since it's so h00j liek eckzbawx, metallic looking and heavy as fuck. now whether you think the comic book character or the one of the 'computers' that were used to break codes in WW2, they both fit the description more or less...

i had a few issues due to cabling. first, being that he kinda forgot to give me the power cables for both the monitor and compy, not to mention the dvi cable as well. and when i DID get them, the dvi cable was borked so i just went ahead and bought a new one. i'll probably have to format some of the hard drives since they're full of chinese movies or anime with chinese subs (if they at least had english subs, i'd attempt watching them).

for the hell of it, i went ahead and loaded up both LotRO and Tabula Rasa though i only had time to check out LotRO before having to banish myself to bed. SO PRETTY ZOMG THE COLORS AND THE DETAILS UWAUWAUWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! yeah, me likey. Celondim is beautiful on low settings but man...on Very High...dizamn yo.

but yeah, first day back to school. first class?

CIS 50A - Using The Computer - PC Windows! :DDDDDD

...hey, it's an easy A for the gen ed requirement. don't gimme that look. :D