Okay, okay. I know what you're all saying in your heads. "David! We're Imaginary!"

"Better prep them ahead of time, or else we could have a Hickory Situation"

composing an ostrich for seventeenth century racketeers

Just saw a car with the license plate "Kaar".

Had a girl do that nervous, awkward thing at him today. She actually stuttered at me. Not when talking to other people, but just at me. was strange.

This game is HUGE! Two DvD's! 25GB! It seems to share some features with Diablo, but only as much as all good isometric RPG's must share features with Diablo, simply because Diablo was so sensibly put together. 5 times switched from one disc to another. The intro video would be very cool, if it weren't for the terrible, terrible music. I started with the "Temple Guardian" as my character, a cybernetic Anubis firgure which the game warned me was 'for experienced players' I've played RPG's for a while, so why not? Immediately, I am curious about my world. I am awoken by looters digging up an old temple site, and I must gather my possessions, some clothing, a hammer, and my teddy bear and ball. My Temple Guardian has both a melee and ranged mode, and he switches between the two sensibly.
The world is massive and well detailed, and i want to explore the grey sections of the not-on-fire in game map. A consequence of it being a freakishly huge game are the freakishly huge updates. My game crashed (twice!) and I spent close to an hour downloading an update (at 150kbps) to hopefully help with not crashing anymore. Immediately after I download the patch the first time, my computer freezes and when I restart, it says the file is incomplete. another hour or GTAIV sandbox mode, and I can finally install the patch. Start up Sacred 2, and the game freezes six seconds into playing. Restart computer, try again, freeze again.I tried to create a new character, thinking that might be the problem, but the game froze halfway through character creation, which in this game consists of four clicks. I'm going to reinstall. This game just takes forever. It took forever to install, took forever to patch, and takes forever to start up.

Then, my computer dies and I have to get a new one. So, on a fresh computer that meets all of the requirements (and then some), the game still takes a very long time to install, patch, and start up. I still wouldn't call it a Diablo clone. After some hours of playing, I would call it a 'Diablo-WoW hybrid' The combat doesn't feel urgent at all. in Diablo, if your character gets hit by an opponent, he reacts at least something like a person react - there is a character there, and if feels more like a role-playing game. In Sacred, your character gets hit and a small red number with a subtraction sign in front of it pops up from your character.
The only sign that your character is nearing death is when he or she actually requests healing. 'I could use some healing here!' I suppose that I could then cast myself in the role of some sort of god, but I don't feel as though I am role-playing anything. The voice work is bland, largely. there are some funny moments, such as when the character I am currently playing - the High Elf, a half naked woman whose armors all seem to consist of miniskirts and stockings. Three of six characters are shapely women, the other two are muscular males and the last one is the Temple guardian.
One of the heavily advertised features of the game is it's massive terrain, but since in an isometric RPG you can never see past the fifty or so in-game yards that your screen will show you when you at maximum zoom-out, it doesn't feel that big. Only when you look at the world map (which is quite a nice one) and weigh the black-and-white unexplored bits versus the colored explored bits do you realize that the world is absolutely bloody enormous, and because of your tiny viewpoint it seems needlessly huge. In a first person RPG like Oblivion or Fallout, you can see the scale of the land, and the sight of long-distant mountains fills you with a desire to explore. In Sacred Angel, I just want to give up. You can buy horses to cover gorund faster, but they are quite expensive and they are only about twice as fast as your character's walking speed. At a later level, you can summon a mount, but unless it is XR-71 fast, I can't imagine it being much better. Still, it's a decent enough game, and supposedly the Co-Op mode is a lot of fnu. If anyone gets it, drop me a line and we can find out.

You know, I don't think I have ever acquired this 'cool shoeshine' you speak of.


It is a good day.

It is sometimes very hard to maintain any discipline at work.

purse your lips and squeeze

I miss the world.

Today, n the way home from work i got caught behind a guy with a cool bike who spent like five miles doing wheelies and showing off. i've got a serious case of bike envy now.

Buzz Aldrin wants to colonize Mars. Sign me up!

I am in the midst of filling out a long and involved questionnaire about the future of the Command and Conquer line, and I quake. As a devoted fan of the two prime CnC series, I want nothing more than for the team at EA to continue, as they have done thus far to my pleasure, fleshing out the universes that were originally set out in 1995 and 1996.

Command and Conquer has set the standard for strategy games over the course of the last thirteen years, providing its fans with rewarding storytelling experiences through a wide variety of amusingly done cut scenes and well thought out missions.

However, when I head "MMORPG like player progression" in conjunction with a RTS, i throw up a
little inside. In some games, it can be done well. Empire Earth III did a card-collection experience gain system that worked tolerably well, but it still created an unbalance in between more 'casual' players and 'players who are willing to spend six months earning every card' players.

CnC has always been accessible strategy, and while I am not protesting all innovation in RTSes, I just worry about this particular direction. I like the way that Demigod, a RPG-PTS hybrid, plays. You have to gain experience faster than your opponents in-game in order to gain access to your skills, much in the way you have to gain experience to access your earned cards in EE3, but you are playing a 'character' one of eight Demigods. The problem comes when you take out the fact that you start at zero between missions.

The trend towards 'Bigger and badder' units is also a disappointing one. As much as I believe that giant mechs are awesome, I enjoy the strategy that is involved in the controlling of small units of people, on a level where a single fragile man can make the difference in a battle. The role of the commander on a battlefield level has become overstated. There are influences outside your little misty rectangle of map in the real world, yes, and i accept the desire for added realism. However, I want the emphasis to be placed on resource management and deft control, rather than the heavy-handed application of super-weapons or bonus cards.

I am now alone in this house for the next five weeks. someone should come up here for a wild party.

I wish that instead of summer, we had a half-mast school semester where we only take one or two classes, and work on the side. I am not so much enjoying the summer as it stands.

Home Home Home. Messy, messy home.

The number of things I would rather be doing instead of this immense paper are myriad.

Sanguine, my brother.