Again With The Heat

Yet another heat wave settles into Toronto for the remainder of the week and I have a sudden urge to nap in the frozen food section of the grocery store every time I pass it by. Nothing of note today except that I cranked Yet Another Article for GameAxis, and I’m now still mildly amazed at the fact the developers of that game, Lair, are going to actually meet with EGM (who gave them the abysmally average review scores) to debate on video interview many points, including the now controversial scores. I think this is the first time in the history of the industry that game developers are actually going directly challenge their critics, so this should be interesting, although it doesn’t happen ’till August 13th.

The Obligaory Mastercard Post

Buying a Playstation II: $140
Getting a Guitar Hero II Bundle: $90
Watching Dave Mustaine, real life Guitar Hero for Megadeath failing Hanger 18 on easy: Priceless.

And for everything else… There’s Mastercard.

They Broke The Internet

Had a minor heart attack when a friend online sent a request to send over some pictures and foolishly, I accepted the file transfer and opened it. It was a virus, but fortunately our Norton Anti-Virus program is up to date and it caught, quarantined and deleted it. Said friend is now likely hammering through his office PC trying to find and eliminate it because he’s sending everyone the same thing.

The other thing of minor note is the sheer, slack-jawed amazement I am experiencing over the Sony fanbase reaction to a single review. An upcoming game (which looks gorgeous) called Lair recently got trashed by old guard game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. The game-o-sphere literally went into meltdown when the news broke and all over the world, gaming forums were filled with hundreds of posts within MINUTES that have been truly frightening. Over at the EGM/1up forum the commentary went into immediate, angry denial with people claiming the review scores were fake, demanding scans of the magazine to prove it, and still almost unconvinced until EGM stepped in to assure them the scores were legit. Then the wind changed to EGM being angrily attacked with everything from boycotting to litigation if they didn’t change their score because “This game is awesome, you CAN’T give it a score like that!”

Even though no one outside the industry has played it.

Frankly, I’m amazed. The anger, the hate and sheer fanaticism exercised by the Sony fanbase is just a few degrees shy of enacting a crusade/jihad/genocidal “final solution” and the when they start arguing that a magazine must change its score because this is NOT freedom of the press (since that only applies to opinion, and clearly, with a game this “awesome” you are distorting a fact/truth when you give it that low a score) suddenly makes it all too clear to me exactly how the current presidential administration has managed to preside for two terms.

This is the future of America. Good God.

Of course, my old haunting ground of Singapore isn’t much better. I’ve read comments on the GameAxis board with rationalizations to the effect of, “EGM is stupid anyway, they judge a game based on gameplay when the only thing that matters is graphics. They should change their score. Any game that looks that good deserves AT least an 8 just because of the graphics.”

In future, if anyone asks me what system I own, I am going to tell them honestly that I have a Playstation 3, but then hastily add “But I’m not like those other PS3 owners. I won’t kill you just because you don’t own the same system and I’m willing to accept that not all the games for it are gifts from God himself.”

Man, is this what gamers have degenerated into? I have to divorce myself from the community of people that own the same console because they’re all raving, rabid, fanatically dedicated lunatics?

Mostly There

The computer is up and running as much as it ever will for now. What’s recoverable has been, and the various settings have been tweaked back to former levels thanks to the Wife. Now it’s time to start writin’ stuff on it again…

Recovery Process

Yep, my hard drive died. Without warning, inexplicably.

It’s very odd, because this has already happened to me once before but at that time, the death of the hard drive was a slow thing that gradually crept up on the computer. I received the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death for a few weeks leading up to the total collapse of the thing. This time, there was nothing of the sort. My computer was fine, I went to eat lunch, as per normal, the machine went on standby/sleep mode and after I came back, I shook the mouse around to get the screen and PC back up… only nothing happened. So I reset my machine, and when it started to load up, it, quite simply, failed to find any hard drive connected to it. It got a bit hectic yesterday, because afterwards the Wife tried to test the drive on her computer and somehow that resulted in HER PC also not starting up, but a few panicked hours later, the Neighbors from downstairs (who run their own business involving lots and LOTS of computers) managed to fix her PC, which was a simple problem of the computer having a bizarre “boot sequence” where it was trying to load up the operating system from places it shouldn’t have… like the network, instead of its OWN hard drive. Unfortunately my problem was much more straight forward, the hard drive is simply dead with no explanation. Just a month or two after its warranty expired as well, conveniently enough.

We brought it down a tech store where a couple of Uber Geeks looked at it and pronounced that even with power running through it, the disc inside refused to spin, so this was essentially fried hardware. Fortunately the only thing that was irreplaceable were a few pages of Lost In Loveless, but an earlier incarnation of the novel–dating back to January–existed on the laptop and the Wife’s flash memory card, a legacy of when I transferred my files over so that I would still have something to work with while my PC was on slow boat from Singapore. Other than that, everything else was non-essential. I have reinstalled pretty much everything that I need, but it’s still baffling that the silly thing decided to just up and die like that. Oh well…

Damn

My hard drive just died.

It’s A Quiet Week So Far

Wrote a bit, played a bit, shopped a bit. That is all.

A Walk In The Park & Other Things

Today was still a remarkably quiet and boring day by the standards of those whacky citizens we refer to as “kids” but it was still fun. We got an invite from the neighbor who was taking her dogs out for a walk to a nearby forested area in the city called the Don Mills Valley, or something to that effect. Since the Wife had never actually walked in a North American forest, this seemed like a good idea. And it was. I quietly marveled at how long it had been since I myself had done this, and it was nice to be in a quiet, forested area and know there wasn’t some python or tiger waiting to jump out and kill you, as is de rigeur in the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Old Friend also showed up today, which is always fun. I really gotta’ hang out with her more, because it’s kind of silly that one of my best, oldest and dearest friends is once again in the same city as I am, and I still only see her once every month or so.

And in geek news, the Playstation 3 has had its operating system updated and I have now plastered the Wife’s work as my PS3 “desktop” only it looks a lot more impressive on a big ol’ High Definition screen. I also managed to check out a new trailer for a game by Level 5, the Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy crew, who are quickly turning into another favorite developer of mine. White Knight Story looks COOL.

Another Boring Monday

Did some shopping, wrote an article, experienced a twang of disappointment upon finding out a game I’d been looking forward to has been delayed, but Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80′s should be winging it’s way onto my near dead PS2 soon in a matter of days.

Another Quiet Sunday

Messed around with the PS3, sent out order forms for Blu-Ray movies and hung out with the neighbors.