2008: Giving Up. (k3nshi)

That pretty much sums up my attitude in 2008. Somewhere along the line I decided I was stuck in a situation I can't control and effectively gave up. I decided I was tired and better off just eating cake and feeling sorry for myself. That is the raw and unpleasant truth of my psyche profile in 2008. I don't have any illusions that I will leap out of bed in 2009 and roll into some kind of super energized montage training sequence. I will however ensure I go on a well deserved vacation and take the time to recharge. And then start some hard work.

It wasn't all bad of course. Professionally I kicked ass in 2008. Did some good work and made a decent amount of money (and hoarded it away). I even enjoyed a lot of it.

2009 is going to have to be about focus. And focus is very hard indeed.

Year End Awards 2008 (k3nshi)

The Kenshi Institute’s Year End awards 2008:

• Man of the Year: Vladimir Putin


• Woman of the Year: Tina Fey


• Hockey Mom/Pitbull of the Year: Sarah Palin


• Film of the Year: Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite)


• Food of the Year: CHIPS


• Investment Bank of the Year: Bear Sterns


• Game of the Year: Fable 2


• Book of the Year: ‘Masters of Doom’ by David Kushner


• Banker of the Year: Dr Josef Ackermann


• Superhero of the Year: The Batman (Damian Wayne)


• Supervillain of the Year: Grant Morrison


• Feeling of the Year: Impending Doom


• Website of the Year: Twitter


• Agent of Change of the Year: Corpsicle


• Technology of the Year: HDTV


• Anti-Technology of the Year: Internet Explorer 6


• Blog of the Year: Robert Peston’s Business blog


• TV Show of the Year: The Wire


• Application of the Year: Google Earth


• Credit Crunch of the Year: The Credit Crunch


• Shape of the Year: Madelbrot Set


• Financial Instrument of the Year: CDOs


• Place of the Year: Kenshi HQ


• Colour of the Year: Charcoal


• Global Financial Crisis of the Year: The Global Financial Crisis


• Year of the Year: 2008

Games of the Year 2008 (k3nshi)

Games of the Year, hashedge style:

Gamer	Game of the Year	Platform
corps	Fallout 3	PC
Cyhwuhx	Chrono Trigger	Nintendo DS
dekay	Fallout 3	Xbox 360
franki	Grand Theft Auto 4	Xbox 360
Kenshi	Fable 2	Xbox 360
Kit	Saints Row 2	Xbox 360
Meh	Saints Row 2	Xbox 360
Milky	The World Ends With You	Nintendo DS
Pow	Rock Band	Xbox 360
qazimod	Rock Band 2	Xbox 360
Rayn	Fallout 3	PC
Schnibble	Armored Core: For Answer	Xbox 360
Shimmyhill	Rock Band	Xbox 360
sild	Wii Tennis	Nintendo Wii
Spanx	Little Big Planet	PlayStation 3
The-G	Fallout 3	PC
unspec	Fallout 3	Xbox 360
Van	N+	Xbox 360

Platform	Number of GOTY votes
Xbox 360	11
PC	3
Nintendo DS	2
PlayStation 3	1
Nintendo Wii	1

Best of 2008 (qazimod)

2008 lol
qazilol

More Contenders Eliminated (k3nshi)

More games joined the FAIL list. The full FAIL list is now:

• Mirrors Edge



• Prince of Persia



• Tomb Raider Underworld



• Mortal Kombat vs DCU (ok this was always an optimistic bet)



• Little Big Planet



• GOW 2 (which wasn't really on the list, but I managed to avoid getting press ganged into buying it. Ha!)



• Dead Space (bad demo, and annoying camera means I'm not getting it, no matter how good people keep telling me it is).

It's pretty lame that just a month or so ago there seemed to be so many GOOD games to buy this year. Fortunately for my wallet, a lot of developers seem to have experienced EPIC FAIL in delivering their visions satisfactorily.

Fable 2 (k3nshi)

Completed this last night and have generally loved it throughout. Stuff like the golden breadcrumb trail and the ability to teleport to quest locations are simple yet genius additions to the game that make it a lot more accessible. I dont like RPG games and havent played Fable 1, but Fable 2 is just accessible and mostly grind free. The game world is atmospheric and manages to do the medieval rpg scenario in a unique and colourful way. I liked that the combat was nice and simple. Being able to easily switch between sword fighting, guns and spells in mid-fight was pretty cool (a a little bit clumsy on the spells though).

The ending is a bit unsatisfying. I'm not sure if this is because you can go back to the game world and keep playing, or whether the choices you have to make at the end seem massively contrived and 'too big' as it were. I didnt mind the way the last couple of boss encounters were handled though (I've read how some people hated this, but I thought it was fine).

A few of the characters were great, Reaver and Hammer in particular. I only opened one Demon Door, and the 'level' behind it just oozed atmosphere - great stuff. I wish they had concentrated on more stuff like this, versus the town economies and jobs.

Anyway, I have been pretty surprised just how much I've enjoyed this game. Not really my kind of game at all, and here I am considering playing through it again with a new character or just playing on with my character and unlocking all the demon doors and finding and killing those damned gargoyles. Roll on Fable 3.

Contender Eliminated (k3nshi)

Games I was looking forward to and considering buying, but have decided have FAILED:

Star Wars: Force Unleashed. Mixed reviews means even I am not enough of a star wars whore for this.

Little Big Planet. Played the beta version and was distinctly unimpressed. Yeah the visuals are slick. Started faffing around with the level editor stuff, but got bored. When I go to play a game, I want to be playing a game. Not designing levels.

GOW2. Another one bites the dust. Apart from mulitplayer I was never a big fan of the first GOW. And multiplayer isnt enough to make me buy the sequel when there are loads of other good games coming out.

Halo 3... (k3nshi)

...New campaign incoming!

WOO!

Group Think (k3nshi)

Completion List (k3nshi)

Hmm before I lose track of all the games I completed this year:

• Tomb Raider: Legend
• Soul Calibur 4 (does it count if you just complete story mode with 1 or 2 characters?)
• Quake 3 Arena (on OSX, I had completed this before though back in the day)
• Half Life 2 (including Episodes 1 and 2)
• Halo 3 (on Heroic, again).
• Fable 2
• Uncharted

I think thats it.

Tomb Raider: Legend (k3nshi)

Finally finished this tonight - its got a kind of weak assed, Halo 2 style ending.

Not entirely convinced I'll be buying the next Tomb Raider game, but we'll see.

Future Perfect Tense (k3nshi)

...or games I am looking forward to, but which will probably be massively flawed in one way or another.

• Mirrors Edge



• Mortal Kombat vs DC



• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed



• Batman: Arkham Asylum



• Wip3out (PS3)



• Demigod (on PC of all things)



• Quake Live (free!)



• Little Big Planet



• Tomb Raider Underworld

There are probably more, but these are the ones I can remember for now (listed in the order I remembered them).

Quake Revival (k3nshi)

The chain of events that led to the Quake Revival were:

1. Read interview with John Romero in a recent issue of Edge
2. General hype about Quakecon, specifically Quake Live
3. Bought and read "Masters of Doom"

I had Quake 2 and Quake 3 cd-roms for the PC from back in the day. Knowing that ports/forks of the open source code base of these games were available on OSX I did a bit of hunting around on the internet. Before you know it I had Quake 3 and Quake 2 installed and running in super smooth hires on the iMac. One quick purchase of Quake 1 on the id software online store meant I was able to catch the one that had gotten away.

Quake still plays awesomely well. There is a real fiendishness to the level designs and the general atmosphere which makes this a damned good and fairly unique game. I haven't played Quake 4 or Doom 3, neither really holding much interest. It will be interesting to see how Quake Live and Rage turn out though.

King RAFA FTW! (k3nshi)

Amazing men's final at Wimbledon today.

Federer had me worried for a while there - it looked like he was gaining enough momentum to claw it all back.

Fortunately, Rafa sealed the deal with style.

Possibly the best tennis match ever played. Amazing scenes.

Nostalgia (k3nshi)

Yie Ar Kung Fu was the first beat'em'up game I owned. This was back in the 8-bit days, and I had to load the game using a tape deck on my goddamned BBC model B computer (which my parents had bought for my education, not gaming). So Yie Ar... was one of my few games, and one I really enjoyed playing. Hell, the BBC version had some totally hard opponent called Feedle, which was a bitch to get past unlike the other lamer versions for the other lamer machines of the time. Even my sister played Yie Ar... and to this day claims that it was one of the few games she was good at ('good' being a highly subjective term here, obviously).

So when I saw Yie Ar... appear in the LIVE Arcade list, I forked out however many points to play it. A pure nostalgia purchase, which probably wasn't worth the money. But for a brief moment it took me back to a more primitive gaming time, and the fun I had playing that game. So it doesn't surprise me at all to see LIVE Arcade clogged up with Retro games - it's an easy way to make a buck.

HD Gaming... (k3nshi)

...so I finally got a HD TV to go with my 360. And what game do I find myself playing most on this goddamned awesome display?

N+

Go figure.

2008 almost a quarter gone... (Steve)

Time. Terrifying stuff.

2008 has been a strange one so far. It feels like a year of change. Gaming's out, working out's in. Earning's out, investing's in. Marriage doomed, marriage saved. I feel tired, excited and scared and feel that time is against me.

I think I've always needed security above everything else. This year I have lost that security. But I'm feeling better, healthier and fitter than ever before... escaping corporate doom, even if only for a few months, is a great thing.

I think I'll go for a run... see ya.

No more weekly reviews on hashedge... (k3nshi)

I have decided to split out my weekly reviews onto a new blog.

A couple of reasons for this:

1. I didn't want my weekly tracking posts to take over the blog



2. The client I use to post to the blog kind of screws up formatting for lists UNLESS I change a blog setting. Which would then screw up the formatting on some older blog entries.

So easiest thing is to create a new blog and move the weekly update posts there. And so starts the 2008K blog.

Son of a BITCH... (k3nshi)

...missed my goddamned end of week death by spinning class because of some monumental tube fuck up.

And now I have lingering FURY over this. And I am bored. And it's a Friday evening.

Market says No. (k3nshi)

Well there goes the economy. When George Soros is talking to the press, talking up a recession and the worst economic conditions since WW2, you know 2 things:

1. He is probably right



2. The Quantum Fund will have shorted soooooo much stock and he's ready to reap the whirlwind! (Yes he is a Top Gun Regulator).

If you want to read about this kind of stuff, the best place to look is Robert Peston's blog for the BBC.

Smurfs, a hot AZN and a Leopard (k3nshi)

Spotted on Great Portland Street: a group of lads dressed up as smurfs, bringing much amusement to everyone who spotted them.

@Starbucks: hot, Hot, HOT AZN chick at Starbucks. She was interviewing some other AZN kid about uni entrance I think. It was a depressing conversation filled with things like:

Hot AZN chick: "Yes, I studied Maths and Physics at A-Level,"

Hot AZN chick: "...well I studied at a dance school in LONDON..."

Hot AZN chick: "..so what extra-ciricular activites do you do?.... Oh right, so that's just a hobby..."

Needless to say she was possessed with that kind of smug self-confidence only someone who finds things (everything) ridiculously easy. I felt a bit sorry for the nerd she was interviewing, but not THAT sorry. He'll be going home to tell his mates of the HOT AZN super-smart mega bitch. Just like I am.

Leopard: I had a play with this at Apple Store on one of bigger shinier iMacs. Some pretty slick features in there. Almost bought a Leopard family pack, but fuck it - I'll wait till Apple bothers to release another couple of megapatches to fix up any flaws. What's the secret to great software? Time. And patches.

Yes, I know you were expecting me to post a picture of someone like GRACE PARK here. Tough luck!

Corporate Wanker Wednesday (k3nshi)

For some reason I was feeling the DOOM of corporate existence today. Sitting in Starbucks at lunch time, drinking my green tea and failing to reach a Zen frame of mind, as I seethed at the CORPORATE ZOMBIES surrounding me.

So a day of mostly general irritation, I guess the total fatigue didn't help. No gym either.

Ok so my day wasn't as bad as the above, but hey! Matt Wagner is writing and drawing a new Grendel series called, Behold the Devil. So far, so amazing.

HD-DVD (k3nshi)

"It's dead Jim,"

Mundane Monday (k3nshi)

Check this:

Well it made me laugh. (Scan from WIldstorm: Revelations, issue #1).

Terminators are modest... (k3nshi)

Cake (k3nshi)

Click for the full size version and all will be revealed...

Amazing Flash Game: Cursor * 10 (k3nshi)

No idea if this is old or not, but its AMAZING.

Cursor * 10

MEGATON (k3nshi)

GODDAMNED

I used to be really scared of sharks... (k3nshi)

...as a child. Well, JAWS the film mostly, but I was ridiculously scared of that film and the blood and everything. But now I appreciate the sheer amazingness of SHARKS, which is why I was pleased to come across some amazing shark pictures today by Thomas P. Peschak.

I was going to stick an image here, but it seems that site has some cunning magicks to stop hotlinking of images. So I will respect the man's bandwidth and just urge you to click the link above.

Why so serious? (k3nshi)

Yeah I am looking forward to the new Batman flick (The Dark Knight).

Remember kids, Batman > *

Even Space Marines.

Mo'blogging (k3nshi)

So I have enjoyed doing the traditional hashedge end of year blog posts, so much so that I figure I should do some more blogging. Hell I'm even going to check out the rich client blogging app: Ecto 3. Anything beats using lame web apps and I can't be bothered to roll out my own custom, ninjafied blogging solution.

I'll try and keep it all BLOG 2.0 with lots of gratuitous pictures and stuff.

Hmmmm.

It doesn't get more gratuitous than that now does it?