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