h8r.net

…who will play him in the Law & Order spinoff episode?

Does Mariska Hartigay still have what it takes to play a way-too-attractive cop undercover as a way-too-attractive hooker?

You sure showed the world last night…

1.  You’re whiny as hell.

2.  You’re getting desperate.

3.  You aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.

Please go away.

To the Clinton supporters…I still can’t figure you out.

My apologies to Ben Franklin, that one quote of his has been beaten to death lately…but it’s so appropriate this year. How hard is it to see that electing a carpetbagging politician isn’t going to yield the huge changes that this country needs?

Remember: Clinton voted in favor of the Iraq disaster. That is unequivocal fact.

For those basing their votes for Clinton on the fact that she’s a female (to whatever degree): have you forgotten that she’s still married to a guy who abused his immense personal power to get blowjobs from a woman who was barely out of her teens… on multiple occasions? If your husband stuck a cigar up the cooter of some young chick, would you still be married to him? I don’t think it points to a huge surfeit of personal integrity, but then again, neither did whitewater.

I don’t get you.

Local media guy Colin McEnroe posted on his blog, preaching the virtues of independent bookstores.  He specifically cited the Bookworm in his post (my previous thoughts on that place are here), and I was somewhat less than surprised as a torrent (ok, a half-dozen) comments were immediately posted in which the Bookworm was almost universally hated.  Bet you didn’t see that coming :O  !

So after a week, I’m in a totally different place with this game.

If you look at the big picture here, EPIC is totally angling this game towards the console crowds — look at the dumbed-down UI (remind you of anything?…it’s like every single game on a console), relative lack of gametypes and maps, and even the obfuscated means of starting up an instant action game with mutators. The whole notion of having to ‘unlock’ characters is very console-esque as well, and the “Friends list” is straight out of xbox live territory. There’s nothing novel here. The game is just an overwrought re-hash of what we already had, with more than a couple key features stripped out.

They’re gutting it so that it will play nicely on the consoles, where the real money is. In my opinion, it isn’t going to be worth sticking around for. They turned my favorite game franchise into another Halo-wannabe. UT3 is nothing more than a multi-player centric Gears of War.

The campaign mode, where you have to listen to inane, ghetto-talkin’ Malcolm (Dis be where I buy my threads), and all the stilted voiceover explanations of why in this is a ‘war’ and not a tournament (they have respawner technology scattered throughout the city! Those aren’t flags, they’re FLaGs!)…it’s all crap. It’s all laid out strictly to play to the lowest-common denominator, which in this case is the console crowd.

Ok, so I got UT3 today (impulse shopping…my budget said ‘no,’ but my complete lack of self-control said ‘yes’).

On the way the game runs: I’m duly impressed. I have it installed on an IBM T-60 laptop (CoreDuo 2.16ghz, 1gb ram, ati mobility radeon x1400). With the game running at 800×600, everything on low except the screen size, which I turned up to 100%, it’s perfectly playable. After going into the .ini and disabling all the post-processing, bloom, trilinear filtering bullshit, it even looks almost as good as 2k4 . I didn’t check what my actual framerate is, but it was high enough on a 24 person server online for me not to feel at a disadvantage. It isn’t quite as smooth as silk, but it’s ok. Load times for the game itself and individual levels seem to me to be quite a bit better than 2k4.

On the gameplay: it feels different. I don’t know how to describe it. I think I’ll get used to it…but I’m not sure that it feels at all superior to vanilla 2k4, and it certainly isn’t as good as UT99.

Here’s what I wish Epic would have done for the development of this game: Say to hell with graphical embellishments and concentrate on gameplay only. Come up with some new weapons (there isn’t a single new weapon in this game), and more new vehicles. I don’t care if player models are made out of a million polygons with 25 blended textures to create the effect of sweat on some guy’s balls. I’d much rather they went with nearly the same engine as 2k4, and worked on substance over style.

Warfare is fun, but it’s just onslaught with prettier nodes. The hoverboard could be fun, but its stock incarnation is pretty lame.

The graphical look they’re going for with this game, based on all the screenshots I’ve seen of it maxed out in DX10…I hate it. I think the blurry, washed out, soft-filtered light look is horrid and should be sent back to low-budget softcore porn movies.

Still, it’s a new UT. I guess there’s that. Now get to work, modders.

Bookworm takes on Barnes & Noble for a second time.

Was Glenn Shafer given the assignment of flexing his euphemistic muscle for this fluff? The bookworm isn’t your little independent neighborhood bookstore run by a sweet old librarian.

It’s a tiny, expensive, distinctly unfriendly place with one of the worst selections I’ve encountered in any bookstore.  I don’t personally know anyone who cares for the place, but I’ve had more conversations than I can count with people who have been made to feel unwelcome by the snotty, rude staff.  God forbid you bring a child into their bookstore, and shame on any child who dares to act like - gasp - a CHILD while within their sacred walls.

I can’t wait until the Bookworm “doesn’t run away” again.

My favorite bit of irony in this article is the “We have no TV or movie-related children’s books.” quote.  In the print version of the paper, there’s a picture of the store’s proprietor, standing in front of a Darth Vader on a Star Wars display.  I guess that must be for the adults-only line of Star Wars books.

Sorry to be a total crank about this, as I’m sure someone somewhere is excited by it, but…the NHL store is seriously underwhelming. (Yes, I was in NYC again. NO, it wasn’t by choice.)

Aside from a slew of Crosby-centric offerings from Reebok that I hadn’t seen before, I don’t think I saw anything that I couldn’t already get at shop.nhl.com. What I did see: lots of fans going in before the night’s Rangers/Leafs matchup, poking around and then marching back out again, empty-handed.

There was a cool chandelier made out of hockey sticks and adorned with big screens playing nhl games, an NHL chopper from those dorks with the TV show, and a couple of mannequins wearing examples of this year’s new unis. Everything else you’ve seen before.

Too bad, really, seems like a missed opportunity to blow some people away.

Maurice & Edward