3 days ago...

3 days ago I ordered some stuff off of the Valve Store. Yesterday I got an email to say the box has been dispatched (from the states).

This morning at 10:40 am or so the FedEx dude rang the bell with the box in his hand. I find that just amazing.. within less than 24 hours (our time at least) the box has been through all the channels and traveled half the world to get here.

Anyhow, here's the inner-geek shining through:

A Black Mesa parking permit :)

This came with 2 bumper stickers:

(What Would Gordon Freeman Do?)

A Portal T-shirt. Front:

And, naturally, back:

Aperture Science mug:

Yes I'm a double agent! I work for Black Mesa, but drink out of Aperture mugs! Take that GLaDOS!

Finally, my most prized piece - all ready for when we're gonna play the game:

As you can see, the cap is in "distressed" style, ie all tattered, just like a survivor :)

INTRODUCING

Maximillian AlKhalidi.... or Nile Warp's spawn in other words!

How awesome is this dude?! Here's hoping he grows up following MY example :p

Sunday morning I'm waking up.....

Another L4D gameplay video

But this one's awesome! Watch as a PAX player throws a molotive cocktail at everyone (including a team mate!), gets vomited on (OMG!) and gets attacked by a tank.

This game is going to be bad.....

PS: Watch it in HD if you can. It's worth it.

Left4Dead demo confirmed.

Gabe Newell (of Valve fame) has confirmed that there will be a Left4Dead demo. Even better news, it will be both single player and online co-op!

No word on when it is though.

Joystiq has more details here.

Sadly true

Priceless!

Today is Apple event day (I can't remember what it's called).

Engadget are live there, blogging away as usual while Jobs comes up with new stuff. Mainly, 2 new iPods (new nano, new touch), and firmware 2.1 for the iPhone (at long last!).

Jobs is also claiming that the iPod/iPhone is "the best portable device for playing games"... hmm, ever heard of Nintendo Steve?... anyway, Engadget's quote from the live blog is priceless:

10:47AM "It's the best portable device for playing games..." gauntlet: THROWN.

Loool. The gauntlet is indeed thrown. Who'd dare claim such a thing when so many others have tried and failed against the Big N.... only time will tell if Apple are as lucky with games as  they are with .mp3 (hint: I highly doubt it).

Spore

is locked at 30FPS. How stupid is that?

What's worse - it tears like hell. Yes, my monitor is 60hz hence 30FPS should never tear, and yes VSYNC is forced on for all games in the CCC, but still it tears.

Still - LOVELY game. I've got legs now!

Pure

There's a demo out on Xbox Live for Pure, the disney racer that we're all not looking forward to, cos all of us don't really know about it.

Very under-hyped, the game is an off-road ATV racer coming for PS3, 360, and suprisingly PC even. I had a spin today and not only are the graphics awesome, the gameplay is great, and it's just really really fun.

So, I'm promoting it myself now: go read up on Pure, check the demo if you can, and download the screenshots/videos. And when it's out, get it :)

Faris

Google Chrome

Chrome is Google's foray in to browsers, which according to them:

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

It's only just (22 minutes!) been released (Beta, windows only. Mac to follow), and you can grab it here.

Let's see what it adds to the already dominated scene.

Hate2O

Let me get this off my chest: I hate, despise, loathe, just cannot tolerate levels based under water, or on ice!

I just hate them.

Under water levels make me feel motion-sick. The degree of freedom in an under water level reminds me of what Descent did to me when I first saw it, and the slow movement under water makes that sick feeling even worse. Urgh.

Ice levels? Damn you ice levels!! I think they are just a cheap cheap way to make a boring level just a bit more difficult, and for me, really frustrating! Again, the whole trying to negotiate a surface that's slippery and in which neither starting nor stopping movement happens when you actually want it to happen, it's just enough to make me stop playing a game all together.

My rant comes on the basis that yesterday and today I've finished 2 galaxies that are based on water/ice in Super Mario Galaxy. As great as that game is, as inspired and original and imaginative that it is, and as perfect a platform game that it is, those 2 galaxies were just boring, frustrating and dull.

So you can imagine that if the great Nintendo can't make a proper water/ice level, who can? The answer? NO ONE CAN.

Don't get me wrong - I love platform games. In fact, I think they are my most favourite genre of games (followed closely by FPS), and I love good old fashioned pixel-perfect jumping and timing. But ice and water just annoy me - you can't time anything on ice, and you move so slow in water (usually coupled with a crappy control mechanic to speed you up, like repeatedly pressing A or something just as stupid) that both of them just make me want to -to quote a good delicious regular- athib min rasee (throw up).

Which is why God Of War I and II come in mind as excellent games: their underwater levels are a delight (because Kratos can move EXACTLY as he can on the surface, and there's no dodgy camera to work with), and any level with snow/ice in it is just for the atmosphere. There's no slipping and sliding, God Of War doesn't need any of that to make a level challenging.

To Kratos, I salute you.

To Mario, you're still number one. BUT I wish you wouldn't get yourself in so much shit (read: water).

Say goodbye to laser?

Microsoft has teased us all with the below image, which is linked to an announcement on the 9th of September:

Say goodbye to laser? The only 2 consumer products I can think of that use laser are CD/DVD drives and gaming mice. I really doubt MS have come up with an alternative to data storage, so the speculation is a mouse that uses a blue LED. This, as far as I know, is the first of it's kind, as every other optical mouse before is either red or laser.

Allegedly, amazon.de has "leaked" the images of the product:

I'm actually up for trying this kind of thing out. But, if the image above is anything to go by, it's ergonomic for right handed people. Damn you MS :( PLEASE PLEASE make a lefty/neutral version.

9th of September tells all...

No more redirecting

You might have noticed (especially those of you that go to www.ali-sob.com), but I've finally managed to set blogger to publish directly to the domain, meaning that there is no more good-delicious.blogspot.com! (and :( also)...

So now visitors that go to www.ali-sob.com will see the blog directly, rather than be redirected to good-delicious.blogspot.com. Anyone who still uses that address will be sent to ali-sob.com automatically :)

It took my domain registrar 6 months to answer a ticket I opened, but they finally did! I might as well change them seeing that my registration ends next month.

Good Delicious!

AHA!!!

Spotted on the way to Bury St Edmunds :D

No wonder I keep hearing shouts of "medic, meeeeeedddiiiiiiiiic!!" at night....

No Comment

Left4Dead has been delayed till 20th of November.

We LOVE you Valve.

Geeky Twins :)

World War Z

A few days ago I finished Reading World War Z, which is an oral history of the Zombie World War, or Z War One.

Written very cleverly in mock-documentary style, Max Brook's draws a vivid picture of how a Zombie epidemic nearly wiped us from the face of this Earth. From the very first outbreaks (presumed in China), to the mass-hysterics and profiteering, the book tells a terrifying story of how the world as we know it may not have existed.

What's great about the book is that it's very easy to read. Each chapter is an interview with someone, telling their part of the story. There are lots and lots of characters, BUT you don't need to remember any, nor get confused by who's who. The genius of the book is that it's the overall story arc that matters. You don't need to follow a certain character as it's the Zombies and their War that are the centre piece here.

The chapters are small and easy to read through, and some characters really are notable for the brief period you know them for.

I'm not a fan of Zombies nor horror books in general, but this book I can whole-heartedly recommend to any fan of fiction. Read it, before the movie ruins it all in 2010 ;)

EDIT: forgot to mention, a DRM-free .mobi ebook of WWZ is on the kitchen ;) I actually bought it from ebooks.com (with DRM) so it's proofed and 100% official. You'll need the mobipocket.com reader to view. Enjoy.

Hot on the kitchen!

You'll find:

The_Prodigy-Live_at_V_Festival-x264-2008-mV4U

and

VA - Video Games Live Volume 1

First is video, second is mp3 ;)

Robocoaster!

Me and Haniboy on The Robocoaster, a thrill ride at Mall Of The Emirates, Dubai!
Amazing filming by the one and only, Salahtron!

PS: Most of the screaming is him, not me :p

I'm back

Had a great time. Just landed, waiting for my luggage in airport, then
the long drive back home.

More later :)

See you soon!

I'm off to Amman/Dubai tomorrow!

Part celebration of the end of 4 years of SHO-dom, and the start of 5 years of Registrar-dom, and part to meet up with family and friends, most of which I haven't seen for 8 years!

I'll be going alone, Mrs SoB has work to do. Back to .uk on 19/08/08

So, for those that I'll be seeing there - see you soon!
And for those that I won't see - see you when I'm back!

Surprised

Night 7 (and last!) - 10:07

The PERFECT breakfast! Courtesy of Mrs SoB :)

Night 6 - 05:53

Sexually explicit?! Ok then: fuck pussy wank!

Night 5 - 04:18

Don't worry sir, it's just a bell!

Night 4 - 09:32

Finally!!

Night 3 - 05:23

It hurts.

Night 2 - 01:06

The Payload.

Night 1 - 03:59

Dinner. Or is it breakfast.

FAT Princess

FAT Princess is a PSN-only game that was revealed at E3 this year. Essentially a 2D (great), cartoony (even more great), TF2-like (GASP!) capture the flag game, but the flag being the titular FAT Princess.

32 players battle it against each other to barge to the enemies castle and take the princess back to theirs. When players spawn they can wear hats (aka select a class) and go out and do damage. There are 5 classes, one of which is a Priest, akin to TF2's Medic.

The clever bit is, the FAT Princess needs feeding. Stop feeding her and she gets thin, light-weight, and hence a lot easier to carry. A team that just goes out fighting will leave her to starve, and hence when the other team reach their castle they'll find that carrying the Princess back is a lot easier :)

BUT, focus on feeding the Princess (albeit with magical vanilla cake that grows outside :p) and she'll get FAT, and heavy, and difficult to carry. A very clever twist to the age-old CTF formula, and one I think not only will be a success but also be copied in more traditional FPS titles.

The game is meant to debut later this year on PSN. PS3 Fanboy have more on the title here.

If you can't beat them, join them...

QUOTE:

PC using Rainbow Six Vegas 2 owners who purchased the game via the “Direct 2 Drive” service were in for a mess of a time when Ubisoft issued their latest patch for the game, bringing the version number up to 1.03. Apparently while the patch would work fine for standard disc owning gamers, downloadable versions of the game were incompatible with the new patch which ended up causing owners of this version some undue stress.Talk was rife on the Official Ubi forums, with users figuring out that an illegal No-CD crack created by the “RELOADED” group would in fact fix the problems that “D2D” version owners were facing. Of course, seeing as the crack was unofficial and illegal, users explaining this fix were issued warnings and the suggestions removed.Enter Ubi’s “own” patch for the problem, which fixed the problem just as the illegal patch had. Some enquiring gamers took it upon themselves to dig deeper into the inner workings of the officially issued patch and were shocked to see what they had found. The “official” patch issued by Ubisoft was in fact the same patch stolen from the illegal cracking group RELOADED.

The REAL Jebediah Springfield!

Heh I just had to post this :D

Saw this picture of a friend on facebook, part of his "trip around newfoundland" album:

And I was instantly reminded of Jebediah Springfield, the guy who allegedly founded Springfield, that of The Simpsons fame!

More Left4Dead info!

It's E3 people this week. Though not the same flair as years begone, it's still the most important event on the gaming calendar!

There's been lots of info about loads of stuff (new 360 dashboard, addons to the Wii, Wii Music (finally!) and more) and loads of new trailers. A great place for trailers would be gametrailers.com or rock paper shotgun's e3 page.

And of course there's new L4D info! Confirming the November 4th date (at last) but also revealing the real cast (new characters) and info about the procedural generation of the Director AI, which is panning out to be an awesome awesome thing!

Here's the video (cam) of the EA press conference (yes, EA, they're publishing it) including Director information and gameplay videos. Exciting stuff, and November couldn't come early enough!!

Where I am this unholy hour...

Queueing for the new 3G iPhone..

Pictures from Newby Bridge, Lake District...

Where we are now-The Picture!

Woooops! Forgot to attach the picture to the post below :)

Where we are right now

Some random park in Kendal. The weather has been kind, and we're
eating lots of lunch on the grass. An impromptu picnic.

Geriatrics and Newby Bridge

I've been on holiday since Monday, a nice, long 3 week holiday! Unfortunately I have a weekend on-call at the end of the 2nd week, and then I'm on nights at the end of the 3rd. But the weekend on-call was something I swapped in to, in order to give me an uninterrupted 4th week off between my nights :)

Anyhow, yesterday was a bit of an eventful day: I had an interview for a 5 year training job in Geriatric Medicine in The East of England region. This was literally my last hope in securing a job this time round, otherwise it would have been locums for the next year!
The interview was at 10:30am in Newmarket, a town about an hour away from Ipswich. After that, we drove up all the way to Manchester where we had dinner with Omar and his family, and then we went back to our old favourite, the Swan Hotel at Newby Bridge!

We're gonna spend 5 nights here till Monday, then come back to Ipswich. This morning I was expecting a phone call from the East of England Deanery to tell me the outcome of the interviews. There were 11 candidates for 2 jobs, so almost 6:1 odds. At about 11:30 I was too stressed and worried so I rang a friend who was interviewed yesterday for Endocrinology and Diabetes, and she told me she got the job and had found out by email! My heart started racing so I ran up to our room (luckily I had the laptop with me AND the hotel has free WiFi) and I checked my emails, only to find an offer email from them!!!

So I have now secured a five year training post, which at the end of I become a consultant in Geriatric Medicine, a speciality I've decided I wanted to do for a while now. The sense of relief is immense, and it couldn't have come at a better time than on our holidays!!

Sunday is my birthday also and we're going to the great great Blackpool Pleasure Beach!

So, it's all worked out fine, finally :) No more hunting for a job for a long time now!

Muahahahahaaaaaa! (Finally!)

Flipping Pyro fixed!!!!

• Fixed backburner's flame critical hits not being recalculated after collision. This meant that it would check if the target was looking away once and after that the flame could score a critical hit again even if the orientation changed.

• Added back some damage falloff to the Pyro's flamethrower. Not nearly as extreme as it was before the Pyro class pack.

And...



And...

Where's the "any" key?

Spy update leaked?

For the love of God I hope this leak is fake. If it isn't, then we're gonna be FUCKED by spies. A good spy can make or break a game, not to mention frustrate beyond all means.

There's a PNG that's allegedly a leak of the spy update, including achievements and the 3 new toys he'll get. The only reasonable new toy is a magnetic sapper, that can't destroy a building but it disables it for a while and CAN'T BE KNOCKED OFF by a wrench. This one's for spies that work with a teammate (Soldier? Demo?) so he can destroy the building once it's sapped.

The BAD new toys are the silenced gun, which does half damage from front but is a CRITICAL from the back. And it's quiet. FUCK.

Even worse is the alleged garrote, a thin wire that kills within a couple of seconds. Why is this really bad? Because using the garrote the spy DOESN'T LOSE HIS DISGUISE. Just ponder on that for a few seconds. A good spy can now literally disable a sentry ecosystem all alone: Garrote the engineer, sap the buildings - done.

Let's hope if they are true that REALLY SOON Valve will release the Engineer update. That poor man won't stand a chance against the all new Spy.

Here's the PNG.

Left4Dead Release Date Confirmed!!!

November the 4th it is people. Get your pre-orders ready, and a fresh supply of pants. We're gonna need 'em :)

Here's a new gameplay video:

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (Part 2)

Remember the original OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ?

Tonight something very similar happened to [Clan Khara] in TF2.
We were facing some really tough odds: because of the Pyromania that's swept over the game (due to updates to the Pyro class recently), the servers have become full of Pyros. Worse still, this server we were on was not only full of Pyros, but deadly, effecient Pyros. All of which always seemed to be on the other team as us....

Anyhow, we were all on the BLU side in Goldrush, stage 1. Having gone past the first checkpoint, we'd managed to push the cart miraculously past the dreaded chicane and in to the final stretch to seal victory. After a successful push and weakening of RED's defences, my Kritzkrieg had reached 100% uber, and I was healing Pyromax who was conveniently a soldier (soldier + Kritz uber = hell).

We decided to activate the uber and let all hell loose on the few surviving RED defences, while also pushing the cart forward towards that vital capture point. I waited for Pyromax to reload, and with excitement mounting I activated the uber and proudly watched the rockets fly out of him, glowing blue and crackling with that dreaded critical sound we all hate/love, and out of the corner of my eye I could see an enemy sniper and demoman both about to die horribly.

Except non of that happened. See, after activating the uber, Pyromax managed to shoot one single rocket, after which the server decided to crash. Suspended in mid-air, the damn rocket didn't even reach anyone! My precious uber was wasted on the ether, and Pyromax was just standing in limbo!
The cart grinded to a halt, even though it was just metres away from the final destination!!!

Damn you failing servers and damn you internets! All three of us shouted down our mics into Teamspeak, wondering why oh why did it have to happen now of all times! Our delicate plan busted by a crash. We even had 4:36 minutes to complete the level, so there was loads of time to win!!

I took a screen shot in despair. SIGH

The Pyro is a...........GIRL!!!

From CS-Nation, talking to Robin Walker:

"Walker: The Pyro is the focus on the next pack. We're making some significant changes to the base Pyro class & weaponry, in addition to the three unlockables and thirty-five achievements. We've never been terribly happy with the Pyro, in particular with her shallower skill curve than other combat classes. We really want highly skilled Pyros to be visibly more effective than the average Pyro, and the new features are designed to address that."

And a look at her purse:



OMG!!! Is it going to turn in to this??



Any thoughts?

SEGA makes kissing robots for REAL!

Foxnews reports today (no I don't watch Foxnews, but Maxconsole had the item!) that SEGA has created EMA, a female robot that's 15" tall and can pucker up on demand, entering "love mode" :D

You gotta give it to the Japanese, who cares what the rest of the world think! Come to think of it, she does look rather sexy........

This Japanese GLaDOS goes on sale in September all over Japan for $175.

3G iPhone confirmed

Yes the rumours were true. Again.

Slightly thicker, slightly curvier, and just as sexy. This time with black or white plastic for the back rather than the original metal. The original is gonna stop producing so I might just hold on to it for sentimental values. Particularly since I got it on launch day.

Or may be not. Who knows. I do know I'll definitely pick a 3G one up come 11th of July ;)

[Clan Khara] is born!

So it's late, and we're playing Dustbowl (I think).
We were also having our arses handed to us, by some members of some clan or another.

And that's when it was born, our new clan.

Someone (Pyromax or Blue Blood) said that playing against that clan was clan khara, then someone else (Pyromax or Blue Blood) said that Clan Khara should be what we call ourselves. After about 5 minutes of hysterical laughing/breathlessness we all changed our names to bear the [Clan Khara] tag :)

So now we're:

[Clan Khara] Blue Blood
[Clan Khara] PyroMax
[Clan Khara] Sobtanian

Hopefully we'll have more Khara members soon. We're very easy to please, even if you play like khara you'll still be welcome to Clan Khara. No khara attitudes though, we're about dishing khara out, no clan khara within Clan Khara!

[Clan Khara] PyroMax will be making us some avatars/spray images to use in game soon.

Finally, Clan Khara is not to be confused with Khara town, nor with Khara Deepwater.

See you next kharia.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 CONFIRMED!!!

Yes, yes and yeeeeesssssss!!

The sequel to one of the most beautiful, under-appreciated, and imaginative games has finally been confirmed!!

Michael Ancel's Beyond Good and Evil was a brave game which melded a few genres while telling the story of Jade the Journalist, with her now iconic-culty green lipstick look :D

Unfortunately, the game did crap at retail (as do most brave games) so the sequel has been in the dark even though the first game ended on a cliff hanger.

But in the recent Ubidays event, Ubisoft have confirmed the sequel and released a teaser trailer too!! There's also more info on Farcry 2 (for those of you that liked the original), and some other goodies.

Also, more info for the new, extremely stylish Prince of Persia game is out, including teaser trailers, some great screenshots, and concept art! The new POP is looking swish and very cell-shaded, which is great cos I LOVE cell-shading (or phong shading if you wanna be precise).

Head to Joystiq's summary page here for links to download HD versions of all trailers.

Those that haven't played the original BG&E must save their crime by getting the game now, and that's an order!! Steam as usual has a good $10 price, and you can also get it for PS2, XBOX, and Gamecube. So no excuses not to play!

And for heaven's sake pay for the game please, especially those of you that didn't last time :p

Goodbye

So, I'm getting married in 2 days time. We're off to The Swan Hotel, for a small, civil (ie no religion crap) wedding.

So I guess it's goodbye singlehood, goodbye blog, goodbye games..... NOT

All that's gonna change is my ring going from right hand to left hand. Otherwise it's business as usual in The Alsawaf house, except they'll be two Alsawafs instead of one :)

Hopefully Kelly Alsawaf will take this as a chance to stop beating me at Mario Kart. One can only hope. I can still look forward to regular TF2 sessions (I hope), and that bastion of co-op play that is L4D. Which reminds me, I hope it's good and I hope we play it.

Of course, it'll soon be time for an "upgrade" and some one calls it ;)

Pictures, more blogging etc come Thursday.

For The Love Of Shells

So we were playing Mario Kart Wii the other night.

After a long and hard 2 laps, we were racing on the 3rd and final lap. Bowser was first, I was second, and Kelly was third.

The finishing line was in viewing distance. Bowser was speeding away in a guaranteed first place, and I was trying to catch up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kelly, somehow managing to speed past me to take 2nd place. Damn it. I'm sure she'd used a mushroom or something.

And right behind Kelly was a Red Shell . No doubt sent her way by one of the AI racers behind us. As she was zooming past me, I saw the Shell home in on her and BANG! she was toppled! I looked to my REAL right (where she was sat) and saw that look of OH-MY-GOD-I-CAN'T-BELIEVE-THAT-JUST-HAPPENED-AND-DON'T-YOU-DARE-LAUGH-OR-MENTION-IT-EVER. I was sensible enough to understand the look (I've seen it before, see, when we used to play Mario Kart on the DS. It's scary) so I just glanced back at the screen.

And there it was. There was my saviour, zooming right above my head, in all it's blue and white winged glory. There was the Blue Shell flying above us all with one target in mind - the number one racer. Poor old Bowser, he must have been INCHES away from crossing the line and getting pole position, and then KABOOOM!!! And up he flew in the air, tumbling and tumbling.

As he fell down, he would have seen me, playing as the all-encompassing Mario, wooshing underneath his kart and getting that pole position, fair and square. Or should I saw fair and round, just like the Shells.

The beauty of Mario Kart is just that. You can spend all 3 laps in number one, be hit by one Blue Shell and finish 10th. It is horribly unfair, induces swearing fits, and is more of a cause of marital disturbance than any other. Which is what makes it the addictive one-more-go game that it is. Brilliant.

Left4Dead Information Avalanche!!

Left4Dead411 has got tons and tons of links for new stuff for one of my most anticipated games of the year!

There are 7 minute gameplay videos, interviews, details of a new "deathmatch" mode, and tons more stuff.

All we need now is a damn release date..

Lego Indiana Jones demo out!

For the uninitiated, a few years ago Traveller's Tales released Lego Star Wars, which was a great and funny platformer set in the Star Wars universe, with everything made out of Lego!

The games did so well that they announced both Lego Batman and Lego Indiana Jones. The demo for the last one is out now, where you get to play the legendary lost temple sequence from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

As always, co-op play is available, and the usual humour that was in Star Wars is back, including a poke at C3PO :D

The full game is out June. Grab the 464mb demo here.

The Coolest Talent Video Evah!!!!

05:17

Night 3. The messy procedure.

01:37

Night 2. The empty hospital corridor.

06:50

This is me. At 06:50. I have been awake for just under 24 hours. I
feel like death.

Two more night shifts!!!!!

Doom 4 announced!!

Yes, yes!
id today have confirmed Doom 4 is being developed.

Now I remember back in 2000, June to be exact. I had just left Baghdad, and was waiting for my passport in Amman. I spent most my time in a friend's internet café, discovering what I had been missing for years.

Anyway, back then we used to chat on ICQ. Nile Warp logged in to tell me that id had just announced on Telefragged that Doom 3 was in developement!! Man what a moment. And we all know how long it took them to get that one out, which, with it's expansion, are 2 great games (I thought - loved the engine and corridor-ness of it all).

So, I wonder if Doom 4 will come out 2012. It'll be the official game of the olympics :p

Then again, judging by how quick Quake 4 was announced then released, it may well be sometime next year if we're lucky. Fingers X-ed.

C&VG have more details here.

Lost Cities

You've got to blame the 360 for this. Specifically it's Arcade service. Small games that are budget priced, available to download and there's new ones every Wednesday. Some are awesome remakes (Rez HD, Sensible Soccer, Prince of Persia), and some are originals. It was Microsoft's idea of a service for Daddy, when his kids aren't shooting 'hos down in GTA, he can play his Hexic and his Frogger.

Unsurprisingly the service has taken off hugely, and has proven to be a major source of sales and distribution on the network. It has been imitated by the other manufacturers, and even the PC has it's own versions with Steam and Gametap and others. Still, the 360 remains the original, and to date the best experience IMHO.

Which takes me on to Lost Cities. This beauty was released last week. It's an Arcade creation of a popular (or so I'm told) card game of the same name. As always with Arcade releases, a limited demo comes out for free along with the full release. I downloaded the demo to see what the game was all about. 2 hours later and I'd bought the full version, having never even heard of the game in real life before!

Lost Cities is a 2 player only card game. The deck consists of 5 colours, each colour has 12 cards: the numbers 2 to 10, and 3 "investment" cards. There is also a board that isn't really needed, which has 5 "cities" on it, each one a different colour in tandem with the cards.

The purpose of the game is simple: you have to play your cards on the same-coloured city in order of small to large, and end up with the most points.
Each turn you can either:
a\ Play a card on a city.
b\ discard a card you don't want/need
Either way, you have to then draw a card, either from the deck, or from the cards discarded earlier.

To play a card, you have to put it on the same coloured city, and it has to be larger than the card you're putting it on. So if you have a 4 on a city, you can't put a 2 or 3 on top of it.
Investment cards can only be played if they are the first cards on a city. If you've already started playing on a city with a number card, you can't put an investment card on it at all. Therefore, investment cards have to be used early on and wisely.

And that's about it. The game finishes when the deck runs out.

Now all this sounds boring and stupid. And definitely not fun. It would have been all those and more were it not for the ingenious scoring system. Before I go in to that, it's worth mentioning that in the game's terminology, when you play any card on a city for the first time, it's called an "expedition", I guess in keeping with the Lost Cities theme.

Back to scoring: The game scores you as follows:
1\ Start of Expedition: -20 points
2\ Number cards 2-10: face value
3\ Investment card: x2 of total city score.

Simple? yes. Clever? definitely. To start an expedition costs you -20 points, hence say you want to start a green city, you had better make sure that you've at least got 20 points worth of number cards to just break even. Of course, your opponent is going to see your play and will make sure he or she doesn't discard any green cards for you to pick up!

An investment card is a great risk: it doubles all the score of the city, INCLUDING THE NEGATIVE SCORE!! As I mentioned earlier, you have to invest in a city from the very beginning. So if you start an expedition with an investment card, you're already -20x2 (-40) points down!! Investment cards can accumulate, so if you're feeling daring and brave you can put all 3 of them together, giving you a total city multiplier of x4, hence you'll have a deficit of 80 from the start!
Of course any number cards played after that are multiplied by the same factor, so an investment is worth it if you play enough cards to fill the deficit and make some points.

Again your opponent is watching all this, and when you see someone playing an investment card, you make damn sure that any cards in your hand of the same colour stay there, so as to minimise their profits!

As you see scoring is very simple, as is the game itself. It is very easy to understand the game, as those are the only rules needed. But the complexity in it is amazing! Do you start an expedition and lose 20 points? Do you discard a card that you know your opponent might need and use? And do you play an investment in the hope that you'll draw some big numbers to fill the deficit with?
These are all questions that you'll have to answer in a typical game session, and a single wrong move can cost the match!

Games don't last long which is another great factor. Board games traditionally take ages, remember Monopoly and Risk? But Lost Cities finishes a lot quicker because the deck of cards isn't too big, and the game finishes when the deck is empty. A nice tactic I learnt the other day is you can semi-control the flow of the game by drawing cards from the discard pile, rather than the deck itself. As the game doesn't finish till the deck is empty, you can slow the game down by not drawing from the deck. This can be used for great advantage, especially when you're rushing to play the big cards you've been holding on to all game long!

It really is a great, simple game. It's very easy to grasp, difficult to master (cliche I know, but true!). The 360 version also features online play which is great, there's always some one willing to play you're geeky little game with you!

If you own a 360 you'd do much worse not getting this little gem. If you're that inspired you can buy the proper game (the cards are apparently big and beautiful in real life!), or you can check the link above for further links to online versions of the game.

And finally, I found out today that the awesome dude that's on the Monopoly cards and box (fat guy with moustache) was officially known as Rich Uncle Pennybags up until 1998, when Hasbro renamed him as the rather boring Mr Monopoly ;)

Email from Valve

Hi.
Yesterday, we reset your Medic achievements because we mistakenly believed you had hacked around the system to get them. Today we discovered a bug in our code that resulted in you being incorrectly flagged as cheating. As a result, I'm emailing you to apologize for our error, and to let you know that we've decided to award you the full set of Medic achievements.
Have fun with the Ubersaw, Robin Walker.

How awesome is that! Today I briefly logged in to TF2 with Blue Blood and found out that most of my achievements had reset. Turns out quite a few people's had, so I didn't think much of it!

Time to try out that ubersaw me thinks ;)