Random bag prequels: Episode 2, the noun who verbed me.

... And THAT'S how I learnt that freedom of expression doesn't cover nudity in public.

• 68. I imagine for most people, when they think of fantasy cliches for 'good' and 'evil' characters, they think of the Knight in Shinning armour for good, and the sociopathic thief/assassin for evil (or possibly mage, I don't really do the magic stuff much). For me it's the other way around. My 'good' is the lightly armoured but quick and nimble swashbuckler, while my evil is the heavily equipped but ponderous armoured warrior.

And you get a second fact about me, because I'm feeling generous, and want to get past the number 69 as quickly as possible.

• 69. I thought I was over my shame at my geekiness. Apparently not. I have deleted the link to this blog from my facebook page. I don't want too many of my real life (or RL, as the acronym goes) to know I am this bad.

1. Playing Fallout 3 at the moment. I'm loving it, absolutely amazing game, any nerd who has not played it or have vague plans in the future to give it a try should be taken out back and suffer Old Yella's fate (receive a stern talking to and have their rabbies cured with a dart fired by the gun. That's what happened, right? Right? ... Right?)

Two things about it that I want to discuss specifically., though.

A) I love the living world they've got going. It feels like people are actually going about their day to day tasks, rather then just waiting for you to do your thing, with some random bystanders walking around to give the impression of a real world. That's what it is, but it's cleverly camoflaged. The trouble is that when you want to find quest specific people... It's impossible to find them. They could be ANYWHERE.

B) The V.A.T.S (Vaultec Assisted Targeting System) is a nice idea, trying to reclaim the turn based system of the original games. Trouble is... It makes it too easy. Fights where I think I'm meant to be a little frantic in, I just press V, relax, plan out exactly how I'm about to empty a clip, click accept, and duck behind some cover. There's rarely anyone left, but if there is I wait 30 seconds, repeat. The feral zombie-creatures are ridiculously easy when you just wait for them to come close enough that a headshot is 95% likely, pause and kill them all in three shots from a pistol.

2. Played Soul Calibur IV (as in 4, not Intra-Veinous, or however that's spelt. Well done Steve, you just killed a poor joke through worse spelling) at a mate's place. Well, I say 'played', we were on it for 90 minutes or so, and in that time we played about five 60 second matches. The rest of the time I was playing around with the character creator. Made an evil heavily armoured knight with a claymore the size of him, and a Pirate-swashbuckler, complete with rapier (I know pirates normally have cutlasses, but rapiers are more Swashbucklery).

Let me tell you, there is little more amusing then seeing Darth Vader get the snot beaten out of him by a Swashbuckler.

3. End on a non-nerdism. I went to a German Barbecque yesterday. The BBQ was at about 4:30 or so. I did not eat again until 7pm the next day. Even then I didn't eat much. I sit here typing this still feeling bloated. Now, people who know me know I am a big guy in many respects, I am more then able to hold my own at the dinner table. Germans are in a league of their own.

4. EDIT: ADDITIONAL: I can't believe I forgot this. Knights of the Old Republic MMO. As an enormous fan of Star Wars and KotOR, an appreciator of a good MMO and a fan of social gaming...

I am officially lukewarm to this upcoming game.

I know, it makes no sense, but to me it just sounds like they're trying to squeeze everything that's worked in two very different playstyles (singleplayer story campaign based RPGs and online social-based persistant world MMOs) into the one game. Sounds good in principle, but I don't think it'll work, to be honest. It's like combining the simple joy of watching cartoons in the morning with a bowl of cereal designed to kill you slowly, with the more complex joy of vigorous sex. Your first thought is "That'd be awesome", but then you realise you'd spill cereal everywhere, miss all the good bits of the cartoons, and probably offend your partner by looking at the screen more then them.

... Man, that was a horrific simile.

I really hope Zendulo doesn't see that one.

Still, with regards to the MMO, I can be persuaded otherwise if the stuff they put out looks good enough.

5. EDIT: ADDITIONAL 2: http://www.graphicsmash.com//comics/wonderella.php?view=current

Oh my god. Awesome. Most awesome thing ever.

If you did not laugh, your soul is gone, replaced with a cheese stick lodged in your humour gland.