Yay! I beat Vagrant Story today. *happy dance*

End boss is a pain in the arse... took me an hour and a half to beat him, but beat him I did, and while I did look on Gamefaqs last week, the only thing it told me was that there was a way to avoid the insta-death strike that he gives during the end battle. Other than that, I didn't use a hint book or anything at all. Woo. I feel so clean!

It's my little Army brother Grant's birthday today. Happy Birthday Grant! Even though you can't see this... oh well.

He's 22 now. Yikes. Scary to think that my littlest bro is now 22...

It's sad. I now have my Uber PC and so I'm going through my collection of PC games and just turfing whatever I haven't finished yet onto the drive. No wonder I've got so many on the go!

X-Files was pretty sub-par tonight... or more to the point, it was closer to what X-Files has been the last 2 seasons than the rather stellar last few episodes. Oh well. 3 weeks left.

Add another game to the list of what I'm playing at the moment. I spent the day playing Tachyon: The Fringe on my PC. It's a pretty nice space-combat sim from a few years ago and it has the voice talents of none other than Bruce Campbell, which make it oh so fun to play!

It's been pretty entertaining so far. It's like a mix between Privateer and the Freespace games. Lots of quick missions with some pretty intense dogfighting and lots of pretty explosions. And you are effectively a mercenary, so you can pick and choose what side you want to play on as you choose your missions and it's rather open-ended that way.

Nice story so far too. I wasn't expecting the plot twist that happened right near the beginning of the game. I didn't like having to go from a rather nice ship to a flying lunchpail either...

Hmm... why does it not surprise me that, oh, ALL of the cast of Jason X were Canadian AND most of them seemed to have starred in Mutant X or Tracker, two of the worst of the worst of those crappy sci-fi shows that are on Space all the time.

Just thought I'd mention that... and now I'm really going to bed... bleh.

Ooo!
May 28: Harry Potter on DVD.
August 6: Lord of the Rings on DVD

I need to go to bed earlier. I've been lucky to get to bed before 4am most of this week. Curse those 3-11pm shifts.

I did end up looking at the Vagrant Story walkthrough on Gamefaqs, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know (like, oh, DON'T LET THE END BOSS DO HIS ONE-HIT KILL). So I don't really feel very guilty about it. I was busy today at my brother-in-law's graduation and dinner and then spent a bit of the night playing Asheron's Call, but I'm sure I'll beat VS tomorrow sometime.

Hee hee... just watched Jason X. Sooooo cheesy it hurts. It was entertaining and had some neat bits. If you can rent it when it comes out, do so if you are in the mood for a cheesy slasher flick. Or just download it off Kazaa like I did. But don't bother spending $10+ to see it at the theatre.

Hmm... Gamefaqs seems to be running REALLY slow... I can't seem to get the hints I need for VS, so maybe I WILL be able to beat it sans help.

Well... I finally broke down and had to have a look on Gamefaqs.com for tip on how to finish off the end boss of Vagrant Story. When you spend a good half hour or so pounding on the guy, he goes down not once but twice and comes back for more and hits you with a special attack that kills you with ONE HIT... well, I'm glad to have trundled my way through 99% of the game without any hints, but I need some help here :)

This news out of the states is kind of scary... especially when you break it down like the Lawyer of Doom does.

I love the list of games that were reviewed by the judge. Esp. "The Resident of Evil Creek"

I need to find that classic...

Vagrant Story is coming along smashingly. I am SO loving that game. I spent 5 hours at work yesterday just reading reviews of it and I haven't seen one bad one. It just may be the first game in a LONG time, of the RPG/adventure type, that I will be able to beat without looking at a single hint site or strategy guide. There are some real brainteasers, esp. with the crate puzzles, but they're all just hard enough to stump you for a while but if you go back and look at them again, you'll soon see how to do the puzzle.

I just wish I knew what this Evolve or Die thing that popped up on my screen once or twice meant. I will find out once I beat the game and can look at FAQ's without feeling really guilty.

Did you hear that Gamespot's moving to a subscription based model now too? Sigh. I hate that. I like a bunch of the Gamespot columns and news blurbs, but not enough to pay... though I'd be sort of tempted to. It and Gamespy pretty much serve all my gaming needs.

I just don't like how they're only letting you have free access to new content for 7 days after its posting. After that, yous gots ta pay.

This is an exerpt from Gamespot's site describing the new Gamespot Complete. You do get a month of free access to the whole shebang from early May till June 1. If it's worth it, I might concider signing up for a year as it's only $19.95 that way instead of $5/month.
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(What can I get for free?)

1. The last seven days' worth of content. This includes all story types (previews, news, reviews, and so on), except for downloads and video streams.

2. The last seven screenshots for each game, as well as every page in the screenshot index.

3. One movie (streaming version) per game.

4. GameSpot Live's 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week streaming video service.

5. All cheats, hints, codes, and FAQ pages for every game, as well as real-time pricing information.

6. Reader reviews and score submissions (excluding text-review submissions). GameSpot Complete:
(So, what the heck am I paying for?)

1. Unlimited access to all our content--that's everything you've ever wanted to know about more than 5,000 games, whenever you want to see it.

2. Unlimited access to all our downloadable demos and patches. We have thousands of files, and new ones are added daily.

3. Unlimited access to downloadable and streaming video. We have the world's largest and most comprehensive game video library--more than 80,000 files and growing.

4. Absolutely no annoying advertisements--say goodbye to banners, interstitials, eye-blasters, and pop-ups.

5. Reader reviews, score submissions, and text-review submissions.

6. Top priority for any support questions or concerns you might have.

Beat Takeshi! He is so cool. You have to see Brother to understand just how cool this guy is. He can just sit there and not say anything and ooze more cool than 80 penguins in a garbage compactor.

I'm currently working my way through the excellent Vagrant Story by Squaresoft from a couple years back. While I tried to beat it a year ago or so, I was promptly thrashed and sent running with my tail between my legs. NOT an easy game, that. I've come back and decided to play intelligently and am absolutely loving the game now. My brain can handle the insane weapon attribute and customization system and I also learned that there's this handy little quick menu when you press the L2 button, which I didn't know about before. I don't know how I played as much of the game as I did the first time not knowing about that little feature.

Anyway, I thought I'd point you towards this review as an example of Alliteration Overdose. It's an entertaining read, but ye gods, tone down the drama buddy :)

An example of their scintillating prose is as follows:
"In case you did not follow all that, Vagrant Story is the Denise Richards of video games."

Is that good or bad? I'm not sure. I mean, I think Denise Richards is quite nice to look at, but she's never struck me as overly intelligent. And Vagrant Story is very nice to look at too, but it's so deep, plot and gameplay-wise... *shrug*

Must... leave... work... must... play... more... Vagrant Story...

Oh, I spent about a half hour on VS today and thought I'd cleared out a room. I left my little guy alone to recoup his health and went to get ready for work. When I returned, I see "Game Over" on the screen... AH! I must have either missed an enemy OR been poisoned. Sigh. It's only a half hour to make up, but it's an annoying half-hour of play since most of my weapons are useless against the enemies I'm fighting at that spot.

I can't help it. There are just too many good Xbox stories in the news...
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Seamus Blackley Quits Microsoft - hardcore_pawn
Reuters has a news brief out this morning stating that the Daddy of the Xbox, Seamus Blackley, has left Microsoft to pursue another venture.

"He has left Microsoft to pursue other opportunities," said James Bernard, an Xbox spokesman at Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news). "We value his contributions."

The news comes just days after Microsoft said it would miss its fiscal year-end sales target for the Xbox by as much as 40 percent, a shortfall it blamed on weak sales. Those weak sales led to deep price cut in Europe and Australia last week.

Blackley's spokeswoman said he would not be ready to discuss details of the new venture for another two weeks at least, and she gave no indication as to what type of business the new company will pursue."

Want to see what our new townhouse looks like? Rather non-descript from the outside, but it looks nice inside.

They just killed off the Lone Gunmen on X-Files! AG! But they did a good job of it. Ah well. Only 4 eps left of the series. I guess they had to tie up all the loose ends. I still think it's a shame that the Lone Gunmen show didn't take off.