This week’s been kind of heavy hasn’t it? With implications of intelligence and such along with my vengeful tree-hugging, let’s lighten the mood a bit.

I’m working on my backlog of games lately. I typically don’t have a lot of time to devote to video games, or I get sucked into games that don’t have an end like Quake Live and Team Fortress 2. I’ve finished Super Paper Mario for Wii (Yes, I know it’s old), and moved on to Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for PS2 (Yes, another old one).

I’ll have a review for Super Paper Mario coming soon, but I’m looking back and seeing what else I haven’t tackled yet in the past few years. I was briefly considering Halo 3, but why? I was pretty on-top-of-things with the whole Gears of War, so I feel like I’ve gotten my fill of AAA shooters for a while now.

I need a puzzle game, I might pick up Puzzle Quest. We’ll see…

I’ve got a Linux machine in the living room hooked to the TV, and I’m slowly installing some older games on it. The computer itself is still no slouch, even though it’s over 6 years old. Ubuntu + Wine opens up a very wide spectrum of excellent classic titles. The latest is Carmageddon 2. It was no more problematic to install on Linux than Windows XP and it runs great.

For those deprived of Carmageddon 2, the setup is very simple: a handful of drivers enter a location populated with little people milling around and the drivers try to kill eachother. Killing pedestrians earns extra points, and various powerups are scattered around for collection. That’s it. The simpler games are usually the better ones. I remember Joe and I used to play this game for hours when it came out in 1998. A single player game of course, but we’d switch back and forth and cause mayhem.

I have an Xbox 360, but the controllers I have are wireless. I dohave the wireless USB dongle so they can work in a Windows environment, but the trick is getting it to work in Linux. It’s not a huge deal, and I may just get a wired Xbox 360 controller and be done with it. The best scenario would be if I can use the controller in place of a mouse for games like Baldur’s Gate. There’s practically no keyboard interaction there, and I hate having a keyboard on my lap and mouse at my side while sitting on the couch. I want to lean back and relax with a controller in my hand and enjoy the game.

The time will come.

What?! How’d you get in here?
- Molahey, Baldur’s Gate

Yes, my Xbox 360 caught the horrible plague that is the Red Ring of Death. I thought I had gotten away scot freeafter owning it for almost two years, but I think it was just denial. There were a handful of problems with the device from the get-go like disc read problems when the console was vertical for some games, horizontal for others. One day, Bioshock would not boot for some unknown reason. So really, yes, denial.

You may spot a couple new links on the Links to Other Places category. I feel confident linking to the Freakonomics blog without ever having been there. One day I had quite a lot of time to kill at a Half Price Books and read a chapter or two of the book. It was quite good, and I still want a copy. The other one, God Plays Dice, I stumbled upon in my adventures on the Internet.  It’s not on my rotation proper, but I go there whenever all my other avenues have dried up and I’ve got nothing to read. A glowing endorsement I know, but I’m almost always pleased when I go there. He tends to focus on math and physics, which is cool, but he sometimes gets a little too excited about numbers.

Then there’s Joel on Software. An amazingly excellent post got my attention one day, and it similarly went in my pile of things to look at when things are slow. He doesn’t post often, but when he does, it’s likely to be pretty good.

(Aside from not posting for more than a month…)

I’m gonna be posting a bit more regularly from now on; a daily schedule of something to talk about or show you something out there on the Internet that sparked my interest. This is all part of The Great New Plan^TM which I’ll likely roughly outline here in a few days. Without further rambling, let’s get to the real post, eh?

Games Season has already this year and I’m sad. I should be ecstatic, but I only, just today, realized that it had already begun. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was released on August 27 and it was one of the games I specifically bought my Wii for – and I missed it. I shouldn’t feel too bad though, my eyes have been glued on the Super Smash Bros.: Brawl prize since… well, let’s just say I’ve got the daily update tracked in my RSS feed so I don’t miss anything. Continuing with Nintendo stuff, I’ve yet to complete The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Paper Mario – both of which are very entertaining. Super Mario Galaxy’s release is fast approaching too.

My 360 is seeing some use lately too. I’ve enjoyed the demos for Stranglehold and especially Bioshock. I remember playing System Shock 2 briefly, but not having the time to play it. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I know this is heresy, but I got bored with the overly complicated tutorial which tried to explain everything too quickly before stripping all of those cool abilities away for the actual game. I’ll be looking to get those games as soon as I am able. Mass Effect is coming, and from what I’ve seen, looks to redefine the genre or make a new one entirely.

I consider Live Arcade as an entirely separate animal. Pac-Man C.E. is a magnificent game. I love going for the hi-score, especially on the global rankings they have there. I’m a bit competitive, so there’s tons of replay there. There are tons of other games that I’ve yet to purchase the full games of too like Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. Those two were introduced to me by an old co-worker, Rich. I never played them before the Live incarnations, but they play pretty old-school, so I’m pretty confident in their ‘one-to-one’ness.

Moving on to Sony… I’ll be getting Guitar Hero III for PS2. This is a certainty. Look at the Song List! I will say that, on average, GH2 song list was better than GH1’s, but GH1 had better individual songs than GH2. That’s why I say that GH1 is more fun, but because of control tweaks GH2 is a better game. There are some games coming for the PS3 that make me cringe, though. I cringe because I won’t be playing them any time soon. Hitting the top of that list is Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. I am a dirty whore for that style of gameplay and it pains me that I won’t be partaking in it sooner.

There are plenty of others out there that I’m sure I’ve missed. I need to make a wish list and prioritize them in order of ‘gotta-have-it’ness. Until next time, kiddies.