DarthTofu

... So my resolve cracked and I went ahead and installed Team Fortress 2 today, after discovering that I could uninstall Portal and would have no issues reinstalling it on another PC. Thus, here's my preliminary review: Fun. It has a fair amount of the action that you see in a standard FPS, like Halo, but the classes are all designed well enough that they counter one another. Not just that, but if you learn the tricks, you can dominate with one class. The sniper is very good at taking out strong, heavy units such as the named Heavy. He's poorer against the Scout, who can zip by and smack him with a baseball bat from behind, but if you can use the sniper's knife properly, you can kick his arse. All of the classes are well thought out, and knowing that I can get new weapons and the like by getting enough achievements really motivates me rather a lot to keep playing for a while. It's a good online experience, provided your team doesn't suck (My first playthrough had me winning points for the "Top of the Class" achievement, which you earn if you're the best player on your team), and the different battle styles (One involving pushing a bomb into enemy territory, capture the flag, and a sort of arena deathmatch) are all entertaining and varied. Multiple paths to the briefcase, multiple strategies, ETC. All sorts of fun- I recommend it.

*Het hem* Gentlemen...

So I picked up a copy of The Orange Box the other day. So far I've only installed and played through Portal, but that was fun. I can sort of see why it won so many awards, but quite frankly I don't think it was that spectacular. Don't get me wrong- it was rather fun- but in the end (and perhaps this is based around my puzzle-solving strategy) I found myself using more or less the same methods to beat the rooms. Put portal at bottom of chasm. Put portal on wall, high above ledge I can't jump to. Jump through floor portal. Repeat, more or less. The dark humor and all that was good, but I really didn't start laughing until about halfway through the game. Granted, from that point onward it was a hoot (I particularly enjoyed everything GLaDOS had to say whenever part of her was tossed into an incinerator), but I just didn't see it as too terribly special. Glad as I am to see a game where thinking takes precedence over shooting everything that moves (Sorry Left 4 Dead), it just really didn't deliver as much as I expected. My recommendations to make the next one more interesting: Let us manipulate the physics engine some. You still use the portal gun, sure, but now you can use another gun that will locally affect gravity, or one that will cause you to accelerate along a small strip of land, that sort of thing. People are constantly hacking around to alter the physics in games, so why not give 'em a gameplay option that requires them to mess with the laws of physics? It'll open that part of the game up to all of the people who never bothered to hack around in the menus so that they could alter gravity. That's my two bits. I'll probably play the trio of Half Life 2 games and some Team Fortress 2 (looking forward to that one) next week, so then I'll be able to give the yay or nay on them all.

Holy crap! I remember reading about that massive building in Popular Mechanics, or else it was Popular Science, but by and large I didn't know about this place. It's madness! That's just... pure insanity! Can you even imagine trying to hold off a zombie outbreak in a place like Dubai? With people crammed that close together, it'd be damned near impossible! On a completely unrelated note: Where the **** is Carmen Sandiego?

... and considerably less satisfying, I promise you. . Those inmates are impressive- made me go and watch We Are the World as soon as I finished. Well, actually that was my mother, explaining what that was, seeing as I was working on that "being a twinkle in the eye" bit when the song was actually made.

I just got back from Up. I wasn't expecting it to be more than a cash cow published under the Pixar banner, sort of like what I felt The Incredibles had been. I was surprised to find that it was really a fantastically heart-wrenching movie. The first thirty minutes of that movie comprised the thirty most depressing moments in Disney movie history. For serious! I read a review where I guy mentioned crying throughout. I laughed at him at the time. I got slightly starry-eyed in the theater. Never actually in danger, but it was still pretty tragic and epic. It's not the world's funniest movie, but it doesn't try to portray itself as a comedy so much as what I've already mentioned. Some of it might be a bit predictable (a moment or two at the end), but it still warms your heart. In short: If you're planning to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, don't. Go see Up instead. I saw it "in 3D," because that was all that my theater offered, and while I think it would've more than worked as a simple flat movie, it was still worth paying almost ten bucks for a ticket to a well-made movie as opposed to the $8.50 I blew on Transformers.

... and we care about all of that becaaaaaaause.... ? Edit: BTW, he isn't dead. Not anymore, at least. As of a little bit after midnight, we now have to deal with this: http://www.walyou.com/img/michael-jackson-thriller-remake-acapella-5.jpg

Congratulations on the graduation! Way to go! Told you that you'd make it through those exams! If it didn't cost a couple of hundred dollars in disposable income more than I have (hundred? Probably thousand, I guess), I'd totally fly out to Switzerland to celebrate with you. For now, you'll just have to accept my congratulations. Cheers.

That one would've been good. Judeo-Christian is where the best ones were. Raiders and Crusade both focused in that realm, and were better. Temple was Hinduism, but was still good. This most recent one, Crystal Skull, was Scientology. On an unrelated note: I saw Tansformers 2 today. It's very much like the first one- just about no plot, a ridiculous amount of comic relief to the point where I half-think they're just trying to pass the film as a comedy movie, amazing special effects, and did I mention no plot? One quick note, which really isn't spoilery at all. At one point a character references an "experimental rail gun." Bull. We've had working rail guns for a long time. The first one was discussed in the nineteen tens. We've had working ones for over forty years. It's not experimental at all. And chaos theory dictates that it really wouldn't work as well as it does in the film. Just saying. Like I said, though, the action is good, if confusing (the robots don't really utilize an easy-to-follow color scheme, so it's difficult to tell whether the gray robot or the dark silver robot is the good guy). Lots and lots of new transformers, all of which seem to enjoy changing back and forth between cars for no apparent reason.

Not to spam, but this is the most amazing thing ever:

Things I don't want to see: 1) More Science-Fiction-based plots. This is Indy; Atheist though I may be, the series is based in religious powers! 2) An attempt to win the fans over by basing the script partially upon a previous adventure (IE the Russians capture the Ark of the Covenant) 3) Shia Lebauf (that's inevitable, but I still didn't want to see it) 4) Any more stupidity involving refrigerators and nukes! 5) Digital technology that is sufficiently more advanced than what was available in the 80's, when they did Last Crusade. Now days they're just depending upon amazing special effects to do everything rather than working at the script; limit that and they'll have to come up with something good.

Oh, $#!*! If this piece of crap makes any money, I am gonna be so pissed off. Let it die, already!

That's wicked, E! The do-it-yourself Tom Cruise Movie Kit Edit: New JibJabness

Left 4 Dead Force Unleashed (I'm sorry, but I liked it, even if everyone else hated it)

So long as it's not Lurch. I'm Lurch. And Tofu. And "that one weird guy." Among other things. Nice drawing, though, Kryt... It seems like a cross between a Narwahl and maybe a hippo or a rhino.

If not, I'm sure you'll be welcome at the local college here. The acronym reads BCC, the last two letters of which are meant to say "Community College," the B standing for my county (don't feel like dishing that out to anyone). The students all refer to it as "Beer Community College," though, on account of the wild parties. Somehow, I think you'd be able to show 'em a thing or two about drinking and partying.

I have a picture of what I am about to describe somewhere, but I don't feel like searching for it. This last week I was in California, watching Tofu Sr. graduate from Stanford. She participated in something called the Wacky Walk, wherein the students did silly things to stand out and make light of graduation while in their caps and gowns. One group came out with a sign that said "I can has diploma?" Another said, "I can has government bailout for college debt?" My favorite had reservable signs, which originally read, "Today, I graduate. FML." and which were subsequently changed to, "Today, I am over 100,000 dollars in debt. FML."

lolzors!

When did all of the text and stuff suddenly shrink down? I'm on a PC, so that might be part of it, but sudenly all of the text and buttons appear to have shrunk significantly in size.

*Strikes a pose* Wonderful though I am, and egocentric though I am, I didn't start the thread specifically to talk about me. I knew you were also graduating at some point in the near future, and SOCL, the ever-present (slash, you know, ever-absent) moderator recently graduated from college, if I read his stuff on Facebook properly (no guarantees). It was meant, more than anything else, for folks to talk about where they were in life and where they wanted to go as they graduated. Maybe a place to pass on some wisdom, voice some fears about what was to come... Say, what's this? Mad actually wasn't off-topic at all! Is today opposite day or something? We're all more than willing to listen to you vent for the first and, at least for the nearly four years I've been on these forums, only time. Even if it had been off-topic, I think we'd've been willing to hear it. So, like everyone's said: No worries. You'll pull through this, and be stronger for it. The Marines if our country have a saying: Pain is weakness leaving the body. I'm usually not one to use a phrase like that, but I really do think that you come out made of sterner stuff for hardships.

First trailer- was that the same guy who voiced Optimus Pryme (sp?) doing the narration?

Rob... Look up about three or four posts. Click the link in my post- specifically this post. Then feel slightly silly.

Best thing for it is to talk it over with someone. Probably not somebody online, truth-be-told, but if that's the only place you feel comfortable going, it's better than nothing. A parent, a friend, a sibling, etc. It's all cliche and overstated, but that's because it's true. You are, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it) not the first person to have a whole bunch of crap dumped on your plate all at once. It isn't fun, by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems a bit more managable when you realize that other people have delt with that and more in the past. My solution (and, admittedly, it's a rather odd one) is to go about trying to perform random acts of kindness. That doesn't seem like it'll help all that much, but it's amazingly uplifting when you help someone else, and it takes your mind completely off of your own predicament. In your case, I'd suggest setting up a (nonalcoholic) study group of some sort to deal with your upcoming exam. Invite a person or two from the class (maybe a cute girl? ) and perform some studying for a while at your place. You'll get some done, and when you aren't studying, it's generally an amusing experience just goofing off and shooting the breeze. I remember that tutoring some friends in Calculus helped me through a particularly rough time involving a bad breakup. Sorry, now I'm focusing on me. I guess that the bottom line is this: Get active in something, and try to refrain from thinking, "I'm being active, so I won't be thinking about this at all!" Something physical, that'll make you break a sweat, will really make you feel better, help you sleep better, etc. Maybe develop a study game that involves dodgeball in it? Get the study questions correct and you're a dodger; get them wrong and you have to stand on the outside and try to hit the people in the middle with little rubber balls? Just suggestions. Best of luck getting through it, though.

Rest assured, you're not bothering anyone, Mad. That's aterrible, and I'm sorry to hear about how badly things are going for you! That's not pleasent at all; losing a pet is never fun, being sick is never fun, and taking exams almost always sucks. All in all, this is stuff you need to go ahead and get off of your chest; if nothing else, I'm more than willing to read about it on the net whenever things are bad.

Rob is correct; Steam and X-box live don't mix, despite the pure awesomeness that would occur if they did. Also: