Even coaxed me into buying Trackmania Sunrise Extreme (well, he was more of a catalyst than an instigator since I'd already been blown away by the demo) and I am sold. It's like Stunts, Wipeout, and Rollcage had a baby, only the baby was a ninja high on crack. On fire. Running through a hospital (which is on fire), wielding dual katanas and a wakizashi from its prehensile tail, slaying evil samurai-nurses. Something like that. The point I am clumsily trying to get across is that the game kicks utter ass. I love untraditional racers. I'm sure Gran Turismo and its ilk are cool if you're a professional driver in the Carrera Panamericana obsessed with automotive mechanics (or even an adolescent gamer with the same inclinations), but realistic racers have never been my thing.
June 2006
I hereby declare myself to be operating under Crocker's Rules. I have been doing so, implicitly, for as long as I can remember, but now it's explicit.
Blasting geometric figures to their constituent edges in a blaze of polychromatic glory upon a malleable blue grid floating in the black void of space may be more fun than it sounds. So yes, I've been playing a certain amount of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved lately. Some would say an insane amount. Others would say an appalling amount. I would say copious or ample or not enough. This game is just too challenging and fun to put down once you've tried it. Niels-Henrik (Aemanther) and I (Vossil) have also played Mutant Storm Reloaded's Tally mode something fierce, and are (at the time of writing) at 21st and 22nd place on the Xbox Live leaderboards, respectively. This means that we are the 21st and 22nd best players in the world. It's only an obscure arcade game, but who cares? :-P
Here's something I can do without: Reflexive idle European anti-Americanism. What I mean by this is Europeans who are idly and reflexively anti-American. I'm talking about you people who, whenever something, anything, about the US (or even vaguely related to it) is brought up, reflexively recoil in disgust and blurt out how much the US sucks, without specifying exactly what. Is it their foreign policy? Their president? The general citizenry? The culture? Their laws? Stop leaving me guessing like this, please, and just say what you mean without falling back on your reflexive anti-Americanism. Also realize that the US isn't a monolithic entity, and maybe you would sound less like a God damned idiot.
Let me take a moment to laugh at religious idiots: Ha ha ha! In particular, I want to laugh at Christian doomsayers relating to Tuesday: Ha ha ha! This Tuesday will be 2006-06-06, and the Rapture is near; all true Christians will transcend the flesh, ascend to Heaven, and have eternal joy by God's side, leaving non-believers behind. Let's just forget about the unfortunate fact that 1906-06-06 didn't happen. Or 1992-10-28 as predicted by Korean Christians. Or 1998-05-31 as predicted by Marilyn Agee. Here are my predictions for next Tuesday: Our planet will continue to orbit our local star, religionists will continue to believe weird things, and I will continue to mock idiots whenever the opportunity presents itself.
I've made a new and improved back end for my site. This means I can now manage key parts of my site (like adding, modifying, and deleting news posts) from anywhere in the world. (Well, anywhere with a computer and Internet connectivity, but this is a given.) It's also a lot more clean this time around. In other site-related news, I've linked to Google Earth Hacks from under my Google Earth link.
There are 3 posts for June 2006.