OK… Yes I have been busy this summer, so I haven’t been able to write that much, but then again I haven’t been playing games like normally.

One reason [and the point of this entry], is that my trusty old G3 All-In-One Macintosh Gabumon died. Since then, I finally gave in an upgraded to a ‘nice’ new G4 and Mac OS X.

Unfortunately, I have been less then impressed when it comes to playing games on it.

1. I admit, I feel like being a snob and just keeping the games off the new machine. I know, many people would say with so much new power, GAME ON! But I am feeling the opposite for some reason. I rather save all that; power’ for trying to mix 100 stereo tracks at once or something. Unfortunately, I can’t do that because, I ran out of money getting a new computer and until I get my next paycheck I can’t update my audio software.

2. When it comes to OS X native games. There hasn’t been that many I have wanted to play. Yes I am interested in Giants and Sacrifice, which I can pick up cheep if I look around. But I played the demos for PC years ago, and the interest in those games has faded with time.

But I was also an Unreal Tournament fan, so I was thinking UT 2K3… But after playing the demo… UT 2K3 is NOT Unreal Tournament. It is more like Quake then the UT I know and love. And despite Epic saying they are going to update UT for OS X too, that is still going to be a while.

3. So what about all my old games for OS 9? You would think with a nice new machine, they should run awesome, and I should get so much more out of them. Not really. I have tried, Elite Force, Deus Ex, and Descent 3. Despite getting whatever patches are available, I still can’t seem to play multiplayer, and the single play sides, just seem boring.

I mean, other then StarCraft and Diablo 2, what is the point?

Well, I am still working on Splinter Cell, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age on my Nintendos… Maybe I should just become a console person.

So what have we learned? It is a Friday night and I am bored.

Staque

The most tragic part of war is that you can only kill them once.

Hi everybody! Looking for some long-lasting fun? Stare at this for a while.

This is Fun

Awesome isn’t it? This is a screenshot from an old puzzle game called Jewels of the Oracle. I spent a long time partying with this puzzle and when my hand started turning blue (see Tim’s last post) I decided that it was just more fun than I could handle. There is, of course, a solution to this puzzle. The only problem is that even when you set the difficulty to ‘Easy’ there are still hundreds of possible combinations left and you’re stuck playing a long round of everyone’s favorite: Trial and Error. Let me sum this puzzle style up in two words: FUCK THAT.

If you’re going to make a game like this, give the player some motivation to finish the thing. Once that’s out of the way, try to make it so that the puzzles can be finished by humans with problem solving skills. Trial and error is not fun or interesting. This type of puzzle would have been perfect for Twiki the penis robot from Buck Rogers who had nothing to do all day but try thousands of permutations of tiles on a wall.

Many of the puzzles in the game are like this and do you know what you get when you finish this game? “Game Over. You Giant Asshole, We Can’t Believe You Played This.” After some asking around, it turns out that nobody has finished the game, not even the guys who created it. They all had so much fun with the puzzles that they consumed Clorox until the fun subsided.

If there is anyone out there who really does enjoy this type of puzzle, feel free to email me so I can walk, drive, or fly to your house and feed you a hammer.

That’s right, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I’m making it worse as I type this.

For those of you who haven’t experienced CTS or “shit-my-arm-hurts-yo”, it starts like this:

Then sparks shoot out of your wrist:

And if you don’t use one of these:

Then this happens!

It’s not as serious as it could be. Since it’s my left arm that is affected I can still masturbate, but my fiancee has to control the mouse while I do it.

When we last checked in with our hero Baldy, he was infiltrating the Russian embassy or something that smells just like it. The place was filled with high society types and Russian generals. The mission? I don’t even remember, but I think it was something like “Kill Russians until none remain”. There was, however, an unexpected change of events. As everyone knows, Tobias is a hit with the ladies. So when a housekeeping lady asks him to get up on it, he cannot refuse.

Opening the safe is street talk for “getting up on it” in Russia.

So, mission accomplished. One illegitimate child on the way and hundreds of Russia’s best dressed murdered.

Next stop: Japan. Time to start beating up on another nationality. I approached the fancy house/dojo wearing my best Kung-Fu Halloween costume. For the most part, nobody suspected a thing. One guard did ask who I was. I told him I was the pool man and asked him if he had called for the surface skimming and trap cleaning. End of conversation.

I smell ninjas…

Once inside I was confronted by a sushi chef hell-bent on teaching me the art of sushi preparation. Having not read the objectives for the mission, I figured he was my target.

I smell fish…

Eat my Wok.

So all that crap happened and then the sun came out again so I went outside. More later.

So phase 2 of my personal Summer Games began last weekend. While Jeff was laying the smackdown on Gran Turismo’s less-than-candy-ass, I was holed up in a rehearsal space/studio/small Harvard Sq. bar.

The tally for the weekend:

6 songs worth of drum and bass (as opposed to “drum ‘n’ bass”) tracked
2 national historical sites visited
1 engineer from Nashville safely brought up and returned
1 successful debut show completed
10 hours worth of in-studio video shot for later posting on the band website

All in all, a very satisfying weekend. The lack of gaming will continue for me, as my computer time will now be spent moving little bits of drum tracks around.