On Portal is Free - Why are you still reading this?

Oh, and by the way. Portal's been free on Steam for a week now and it is available for the Mac or the PC. What are you doing reading this blog? GO GET IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!

If you have, good on you! Now go play it again and get all those radio station-related achievements!

*Eagerly awaits Portal 2*

On My Successful Return from Examination Argh-ation!

Hey everyone,

Well, it's over! The Spring 2010 semester has been successfully concluded and it is now summer time! I'm still waiting to hear back from a few internships that I am applying for, but I am now considerably more free now! Man, it's been like, what is it now, 2 weeks? Geez Louise I've been out of the loop for a while.

So, let's start with the biggest of news. Steam now has a new format (was part of the Beta so it is not a big surprise) and Steam now also supports Mac users. Tripwire Entertainment; the guys who made the awesome FPS shooter Killing Floor, has jumped the gun and is offering the game at 33% off; or $13.39 (two cents higher than being truly leet). Having played Killing Floor yesterday, I noticed quite a few more full servers than usual. It's quite nice to see the game come back from the dead (both literally and... well... realistically meta-physically). In fact, I would say it is a valuable lesson for any publisher who works with Steam to consider the advantages of adapting your games to work on as many systems as possible. More money is always a good thing, right?

Well, I'm going to go celebrate with a bottle of Bass beer (omigosh, he posted something related to alcohol on a website with Google AdSense Ads... EEEKK!!!) and a round or two of Killing Floor. I'll keep the blog posts coming and... hopefully, will finally get around to posting that Distant Worlds AAR.

On the end of the semester and the start of exams!

Hey all,

As I've written in a few past blog posts, the end of the semester has come nigh and hither! Woohoo! Alas, the examinations I will be sitting for has not yet passed, nor has the interviews for certain jobs that I am expecting to hope to be able to fulfill this summer. As such, my gaming has come to a relatively complete stop.

Distant Worlders, I have much love for y'all BUT my schedule does not. I've gotten exactly one hour of play since my last AAR and... frankly... not a lot happened to justify a good AAR update like the ones before (the Kiadians are STILL looking for a good planet to colonize; seeing waaay too many volcanic and ocean world planets for such a small galaxy, it's like one of those statistical anomalies you know can happen but never ever expect to see). I'm hoping that after the 19th I'll be somewhat more free.

In terms of gaming, I... Well, what I mean... I'm trying to say that... Meh, mayhaps I shouldn't have started a gaming blog in mid-April; a month before exams were supposed to start. Hehe...

Don't worry though, this is not the end of On the Optimization of Electronic Play; though it will most likely be a very quiet 2 weeks. And before you all go, ZOMG YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL LIFE AND NOT VIDEO GAMES ALL THE TIME. Well, yes, I am; it keeps things fresh!

On Laziness: Why I haven't been gaming for 2 days!

Work... Classroom related stuff... Preparing for exams... Job Interviews...

Life sure does suck when you have to do stuff that takes time from other stuff I'd like to be doing.

*Waits patiently for the weekend*

On that note, what are all of you guys out there playing nowadays? I've found a link to the demo of Star Trek Adventures: Year One; looks like a classic point-'n-click game set in the Star Trek: The Original Series universe. Lemme know what you think about it!

On The End of The Semester and X3: Terran Conflict

With the end of the semester comes the crunch of exam time. Indeed, why did I start writing this blog in mid-April when I was fully aware that exams'd be hittin' in less than a month? Because I frankly can, to be honest. I find that I always have enough time to do all the studying I need to do and get in some internship hunting or gaming time. The Distant Worlds AAR I have been working on won't be effected so much, but I have installed a few oldies of mine lying around on my Steam account just for some extra funs.

Games like X3: Terran Conflict; a game I stopped playing because it 'felt' extremly buggy and am now giving another shot at thanks to all the new Steam achievements that was recently added to it, as well as and Mass Effect; already beaten it once, but do want to go through it again on Renegade (the Dark Side, whatever...) for even more funs! This blogthor is just getting warmed up.

Of course, work and researching comes first, so what little time I have to squeeze in for gaming (mostly during the weekends) will be posted up on this blog in some way, shape or form. For the most part, though, I'll be posting little updates like this here instead.

Yesterday, in X3: Terran Conflict (the ultimate space trade and combat simulator... well... maybe not as massive as Eve Online, but still pretty cool), I learned how to set up trade ships to do manual trade runs. I can now make money without doing it myself and waiting as my ship plods around the galaxy at a boring 75 m/s (x10 SETA compression comes out to an experienced velocity of 750 m/s; still fairly slow considering the 60+ km distances the ship sometimes has to go)! That's one thing I wish you could do in Eve Online; set up an NPC network that does the trading for you. Oh sure, you need to keep an eye on the routes and make sure that it maintains a good level of profitability (versus, say, hiring NPC pilots to do the work for you) as well as keep them secure as they fly through low-sec, but that would help take the tedium away!

I'll keep everyone updated on X3 as I go along, though it will more likely be "Oh my Gawd I didn't know you could do [insert useful ability] in this game!". Playing X3 heuristically is definitely my biggest challenge to date (though it comes very close to figuring out how to play Dwarf Fortress).