And as the article mentions it, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to CairnsLAN.com, the forum through which Angelo hopes to organise the re-ignition of Far North Queensland's LAN party scene.
Download and have a read!
Looks... gloriously weird. Especially that guy with the cane. Does he remind anyone else of Luke Steel from Empire of the Sun?
I'm not sure whether I'm down with the idea of Recognizers with thrusters, though. Still, that's a quibble.
Bring on December!
]]>And as the article mentions it, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to CairnsLAN.com, the forum through which Angelo hopes to organise the re-ignition of Far North Queensland's LAN party scene.
Download and have a read!
So I'm currently re-installing everything under Windows, including Steam and Left 4 Dead, and will get to Ubuntu a little later.
Phew! Talk about an exhausting error-check, though. Getting the old PC down from the loft is a pain...
]]>Switching keyboards didn't fix it and it'd been a while since I'd opened up my case and cleaned the components; I began to suspect a short somewhere. The amount of dust and dog-hair I discovered when I removed the side panel was scary, so last weekend I donned a static strap, pulled everything apart, cleaned it off and reassembled. By the time I was done I was pretty tired and not particularly surprised when the PC didn't power on; I figured I'd connected the front panel to the motherboard wrong.
]]> Last night I pulled my PC out and fixed the front panel connections, then tried again, but the PC still didn't power on. I then remembered I'd unplugged the power board during one of the nasty storms of recent, plugged it back in and hit the power button. My PC began emitting a high-pitched squeal, the likes of which I'd never heard before. It took me a few minutes of trial and error to realise that the noise was coming from the last place I expected: My video card. I hadn't plugged it back into the power supply.I did so, but now, while my PC gives every other indication of booting up, my screen flickers back and forth from standby to online but never displays a picture.
So it seems I've somehow buggered at least a couple of hundred dollars worth of graphics card, if not the whole damned PC. I still have computing options; I can pull Vickie's old PC, which we gave to young Chookie at one point, out of the loft and reformat it, which will give me back web function and, probably most important at the moment, word processing. But no matter what, I can forget Dawn of War II, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, not to mention any PC games that get sent to work for review purposes, for the time being.
Fuck.
]]>This one was definitely out of my comfort zone. The first game I reviewed that I hadn't actually bought was Speed Racer, way back in '07, so I didn't have the anticipation and enthusiasm that kept me playing though Halo 3: ODST, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2. It's also a strictly real world game, right down to the licensed bike parts and rider gear, so it can't afford to go all arcade-y like Burnout Paradise. Still, all that made for a refreshing, challenging change.
As always, the review is a PDF file, so you'll need Adobe Reader.
Next up: Back to familiar territory with Capcom's pulp-SF jetpack shooter, Dark Void.
]]>I'm tempted to argue that for all the talk of empowerment, it's hard to escape the point that their characters were interchangeable guests in a franchise whose only constant character is the male lead.
Still, does that necessarily devalue them?
]]>Now, this should only be a minor inconvenience, as my Xbox 360 is also DVD-capable. However, within the last few months, something odd has happened; when I pop a DVD into the 360's drive and tell it to play, the screen suddenly pops down to a 4:3 aspect ratio, so the image is "squashed" horizontally. I can't find any way of changing the ratio back to normal in any of the 360's menus, and when I go back to the dashboard, I'm back with the normal, widescreen 16:9 ratio.
Oh, and my 360 has developed the odd habit of hanging lately. It could well be the heat and humidity up here at the moment (especially as it tends to hang wile playing Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2) and it's probably inhaled its share of dog hair, but I dare not open it up for fear of Microsoft refusing to fix it.
Before you ask, no, I sure as heck can't afford to replace any of the above, especially as we're looking at a $5-600 vet bill in the next few months to fix Ziggy's teeth.
So have you had similar trouble?
]]>This weekend. Between other engagements and cleaning priorities (you know, household stuff).
(Yep, Vickie's gonna kill me.)
Oh, erm. Interesting chatter about the office today regarding my role as game reviewer and the company's expansions into the digital space. More when I feel safe divulging details.
]]>To celebrate, here's my review for the paper of the Xbox 360 and PC game, Mass Effect 2. My editor reckons it's the best I've done so far, and that I'm really getting the hang of writing for an audience that isn't familiar with gaming. I hope you all agree!
]]>So, here this week is my review of Mass Effect for The Cairns Post's timeIN page. As usual, it's an Adobe PDF, so you'll need Adobe Reader to view it.
]]>In the meantime I'm not touching my PC, so you'll have to resort to the dreaded electric telephone if you need to contact me.
]]>Thus, today's review of Burnout Paradise. Download (make sure you have Adobe Reader, naturally) and read!
]]>Weather permitting, I intend to be out in our yard tomorrow, cutting some trees back and hopefully taking some assorted garden refuse to the tip; when the wind picks up anything, especially large palm fronds, could become a house-damaging projectile.
Wish us luck...
UPDATE 24 Jan 10 9AM: TC Olga has taken a turn toward the North, so they're now saying she'll ground around Cooktown. The threat area has been shifted so that we're outside of it, but Olga has slowed and is still gathering intensity as it sits off the coast; who knows what it could do next?
While we're in the yard, cleaning and putting away, we're also running backups of our vital data.
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