Drama on sea...

Well I haven't had much time to play Battle Field 2 or anything lately, but I just had this dream yesterday night, where our standard team was chasing this Bond guy (wearing a suit and everything), who was fleeing in a captured hovercraft, while we were hot (not like hot coffee mod hot, to get this clear!) on his tail (again not the hot coffee mod kind of tail!), trying to get back those stolen plans (I don't remember what for exactly, but let's just assume they were for the dreaded Deathstar). Well Crawler was despite his usual urge to go slow quite fast and we caught up with Mr. Bond in like no time until there was this strange stuttering sound, a far-away tinkling of small bells, a strange light and a new sensation in my stomach that said something is trying to get out. Depicted below is what happened directly before someone was thoughly beat up by an angry sergeant and the bazooka missile that hit our boat, fired by the agent, missing me who was kicked into the water by Sarge Vanessa for inapropriate behaviour before I had even had a chance to say hello again to my breakfast for the second time.


Well I guess I was lucky...the piranhas liked my vomit better than me, so I could get on land again where Sarge and Ace had just re-incarneted. Then I woke up... Strange dreams we sometimes get huh?

Oh only for all of you who love chinese food: Tonight were having original chinese HOT POT at my girlfriend's parent's place - OMG I LOVE THAT... Poor you who has to eat toast with cheese... >;op<

A rare Phenomenon continued...

As you may all be aware the AT-AT is a maternal kid-raiser. The father leaves childbaring and care entirely to the mother and disappears immediatly after the act, depicted in my last exclusive insight into these mighty creatures habits. The shots I was able to take now have even more sensational quality, since they depict the return of a paternal AT-AT to his young amongst a herd of mother animals.


Seemingly the young one did not recognize its father which brought about a depression phase that this beautiful animal handled very much like any of us: DRUG ABUSE!!!

I do hope to be able to continue my research and bring about new sensational findings to you my dear scientific readers.

An Empire rising...

As some of you might know, Staroc already had an incarnation in the world of Star Wars. Krein Staroc was his name, a 'heroic' smuggler with crazy ideas... he hated the empire and especially the emperor himself, 'cause he was so damn ugly. He would have like to be reigned by a hot chick, yeah he really would have liked that! However, he may never get a chance, nor will we:


As you might have realized by now the old pope is dead and we got a new one, the sinister cardinal Ratzinger aka. Papa Ratzi! Some bloke at Wikipedia posted a certain picture of another person instead, but he/she was right:

Everyone with eyes in his head should have realized that Ratzi is the emperor come to THIS galaxy, to bring about a new empire... now we all know what really happened when Palpatine was thrown into the reactor shaft in episode 6... he was reborn into this world (yay the Bhuddists were right!!!).


Now he will grab his lightsaber and go on a new crusade, just like Indy or McDonalds and Microsoft >;o) :

All he now needs is a new Darth Vader, but as there are elections in Germany shortly, I guess he will know who to recruit... May the force fuck us all...

On not so related news - I found the following picture somewhere on the net: Smoking may be expensive but if you got all the money you can finally enjoy the FULL TASTE the way it was meant to be with the new SMOKINATOR (it's only 1000 bucks):


The minister of health already ordered 200 for his private collection. Stay healthy...

Wedding...

What was going on yesterday? Well it was wedding time for my girlfriend's sister. It was a crazy day with a vietnamese-cantonese-buddhist wedding-ceremony and I can't go into details. All I wanted to say here is:

CONGRATULATIONS VINH AND TAM AND THE VERY BEST THE WORLD HAS TO OFFER TO BOTH OF YOU

Please note that the white stuff in their hair is NOT dandruffs >;o) BUT artificial canned snow from Canada...

Let's close with a picture of my girl-friend's sister in her traditional (ceremonial) vietnamese wedding dress in red. The other girl is a good friend (yes, before you even try to ask, she's married AS WELL!!!):


Again best wishes to bride and groom (see first picture, idiots!)...

A trip to Paris...

Whew, if you have been wondering why there haven't been any posts in 4 days, well this was due to a little vacation my girlfriend and I made to Paris. Friday to Monday we escaped the sullen weather that seems to dominate the summer in Germany and experienced genuine sunshine.

So what happened on our adventures? I will spare you the details of what we ate, because this would by itself be enough for 3 blog-posts:

Friday:
We arrived in Paris at about 18°° and after a bit of search found our hotel, close to the Avenue de Wagram. It was a calm 'area', but the hotel itself was nice, though the room was a little small. After dropping all our belongings we made our way to 'cartier 13', the Cantonese-Vietnamese quater of Paris and had the 'buffet' of our lives. I was soooo stuffed afterwards, I had to sit down every few steps...

Then we went to the 'Tour Eifel' which was brightly lit at around 22°° but when we arrived at it's foot, the special light show had already ended. We then decided to do something romatically funny, like having some crazy asian guy draw a portrait of both of us. He still wanted 30€ for it after tense haggling and I said 'why not - if its good'. After one wasted hour we had to pay the crazy dude 15 bucks for something that did not even closely resemble any one of us. Mind you it was no caricature but a failed attempt at a real portrait. What a waste, but we still had a good laugh.

Saturday:
My girlfriend went to La gallery Lafayette in the morning which as every guy who has ever been to Paris with a chick knows is bad... even evil... well I went to the Lafayette 'Homme'-Store which had a delicatessen shop spreading the whole first floor. I could have eaten ALL of the stuff there if it hadn't been expensive as hell. The French sure know how to annoy foreigners by refusing to speak English and putting up price tags that millionaires would refuse to pay (them greedy buggers). For lunch and further shopping we went back to the 13th quarter and had Vietnamese soup (oh my god - FUCKING great).

We went to big Asia markets bought a whole lot of stuff and then went to an Asian gallery to buy even more stuff. My girlfriend bought herself a vietnamese style dress that looks absolutely fucking beautiful and was compared to the prices at Lafayette (185€ for a bloody shirt...no thanks) quite cheap. Then we had vietnamese baguettes for dinner and then went down to the Seine where quite a lot of people were playing 'Boules', singing, dancing, strolling along and having picknic. We wanted to play 'Boules' aswell and have picknic at the Seine but it was just not possible on Saturday. So we walked over to the second Seine-Isle had some great Italian Icecream before we went to Notre-Dame and from there to a nice little quarter where a lot of small cafés attracted a whole lot of people.

We then had our second dinner with snails, mussles and cheese and had our names painted in deco-fashion. It was great fun with all these people around there and with all the wine we drank...*hicks*

Sunday:
After sleeping a little longer...now might that be connected to the wine?!?...we went to the 19th quarter (where islamic and some asians reside), bought a new suitcase and had vietnamese lunch (self-rolled rice rolls). Then we went to the 13th quarter again, where my girlfriend bought even more stuff (like shoes fitting her new dress), while I had to wait...I guess it was then that my back began to hurt. Then we bought duck, baguettes, some desserts and left for the Seine to have our picknic dinner finally, after which we played some 'Boules' (you rent the balls but its free, you only have to leave a security).

Then since Saturday was so great with people everywhere and Sunday being so boring because no one was partying we went to the heart of town, to see if at least there, somethings going on... Nope! Nothing... so we had an expensive coffee and ate (YES ATE even more) some Sushi...

Monday:
I felt sick in the morning (basically still do a little). My first guess was that I had eaten something foul, but now I guess it was just my back hurting so bad, that my ribs started to hurt out of compassion as well, which then caused the strange feeling of sickness in my stomach. My girlfriend went to Lafayette again, while I got 15 vietnamese style baguettes for her family. Then we took the bus to Carles-de-Gaule and flew back to Germany. The sun from France still in our minds, we left the plane in Dortmund and wanted to go back immediatly. It was a bit like the 3-weather-hairspray commercial:

"Paris - blazing sunlight - the hairdo keeps its form perfectly. Dormund - rain and fog - the hair still looks magnificient..."

--> Only our expressions must have changed to >:o(

On our way back with the train, we stopped some time before our final destination because of a 'human-accident' - meaning that someone had killed himself on our route by jumping on the rails in front of a train. So my girlfriend's father had to fetch us with the car... At their place I was greeted by the horde of kids (yeah the same kids I went bowling with...) and then had a hairdo by my girlfriend before I fell into bed.

Today:
WORK! ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH >;o)

The jump...

I don't know if any of you guys remember my adventures in Star Wars Galaxies as Krein Staroc who made jumping at the Anchorhead cliffs one of his favourite passtimes... however every single 'Staroc' incarnation seems to have a slightly jumpy quality about them, as I have recently demonstrated in Battle Field. Gaze upon the mighty impact Private Staroc made on THE GROUND!!! (As always: click on any picture to open a larger version):

It so happened that I (always playing special troops or anti-tank) was up on a higher building when I saw someone sneeking up to Sarge Vanessa who was defending a flag down there:


Well an order is an order and since (s)he said 'at once', the stairs were of course NO OPTION! I knew I had to do THE JUMP (*imagine a horror tune played on an old organ*) - THE BASE JUMP MANEUVRE - there was only one tiny problem once I had jumped:


While our Crash Pilot Hermy had recognized my arrival as an immediate threat to his life, he didn't realize that jumping out of my way would be an option... He died as a patriot - stupid but proud! Since that is alright in the army, Sarge didn't blame him but me by comming back to the tiny detail that hat led to Ace Hermy's recent demise in our debriefing, immediatly after my impact...

I just don't understand why they don't kick me out of the bloody army, no matter how often I shoot the sarge... well at least my kill count has risen this way *evilgrin*.

Oh, er..., the other thing I of course didn't understant was the mental asylum part... I was just once in a 'hospital' you know for my 'illness' >;o)

Update on me...

Alright, some stuff on what's going on at the moment (with me here in Germany):

Guess where we went to yesterday?

Indeed, we went to a toy-shop... Nah it was bowling...of course! Before I explain to you how much I suck at this game, let me detail the events that led to me sucking even more than normally:

The night before I didn't get much sleep (went to bed at 2:30 but couldn't really sleep) and got up at 8. Then I went to work - I work at a university by the way - and had some nice progress preparing my doctoral thesis. So at 6:30 I finish my work and since my girlfriend came over earlier, 'cause she needed my car, I walked to her parents place (roughly 3-5 km away). So you can imagine I was a bit exhausted by then (especially since I was carrying my Backpack around with me, which due to Notebook, PSP and other stuff weighs round-about 7-10 Kilos).

Now I had to help my girlfriend prepare stuff for her sister's wedding, which is set for a course of 2 weeks, starting next week. I had to draw on and cut their names from cardbord (and since I had to do it nicely it was bloody painful for my fingers). After finishing at about 10, my girlfriend's sister called, saying that they are going bowling with all the kids (meaning most of my girlfriend's cousins - a band of 5 kids - all cantonese/vietnamese but some born in Canada, some in Germany --> oh yeah didn't tell you yet my girlfriend is asian).

Soooo at 10:30 to 11:00 we arrive at the bowling place, I try to get some feeling back into my fingers, ignore the tiredness I am feeling and watch all these amazing kids reach at least 8 points on their first go and three strikes. Well as I told you that I suck at this game anyways, the prospect of losing to a band of 10 year olds wasn't helping my mood nor my tiredness. So after a passable first roll, it just went downwards, ending my game with 61 points losing again to my girlfriend (75 I think) AND half of the kids.

Now guess what - they didn't want to play a second time, to give me a chance to get some more points (or even greater embarassment) but agreed that the next place to go would be McDonald's... So there we went. As I am seemingly the best person to order stuff, everybody just yelled their wishes at me before and while I was trying to place the order... Didn't help matters... In the end however everyone got what they wanted (Chickenburgers for the most part) and I could enjoy my McSundae caramel before I finally went home, fell into my bed and dozed off immediatly until my alarm clock rang about 2 hours ago.

Well need to get some work done now... At least I had some proper sleep yesterday, though it were only 6-7 hours >;o) *YAWN*

What's lost...?

Have any of you seen Lost yet? The ABC Primetime series about a band of plane crash survivors stranded on a (more or less) deserted island. Well obviously there's a mad french woman, a secret hatch and a damn MONSTER. Discussions have arisen starting directly after (or during...) the first episode ever of this TV must-see. Many think it's like in Michael Crichton's Prey - A swarm of nanobots. Some think it might be an invisible dinosaur, others think it's an alien robot or Metal Gear (see my little review *grin*) or it might even be a combination of all of the above. I do however have my own theory, depicted in this little (slightly modified) wallpaper:


Well someone else made an effort to tell the story of the people from the tail section of the plane that is 'lost' in the series (everybody thinks they are dead, however in the last episodes of season 1 there are hints, that they might still be alive). Please keep in mind that whatever he writes is purly fanfiction but very well done fanfiction in my opinion. You can find it HERE.

Also there was some speculation at one of my favourite web-sites some time ago, at PENNY ARCADE. Remember however:

THE ONLY TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING WILL OF COURSE BE FOUND HERE AT STAROC'S WOR(L)DS ONLY >;o) Maybe I should try to get an interview with the monster... Comment if you'd like one >;o)

A rare Phenomenon

Yesterday night, I could witness a very rare event, normally only occuring in a lightyears fashion of galaxies far far away. The sheer beauty of the AT-AT's mating act is something that would let every StarBiotechnologist's heart jump in pure ectasy. I was able to make a little recording of their mating call and mating ritual which you can download here (reminds me of Lost somehow...see next post). However the most terrific thing was the picture someone was able to take during the beautiful creatures' act:

A Buddy's Blog

Yup! If you like technology, geo-caching and funny stuff Han's Blog is definatly something for you. This old (there is the damn word yet again *cry even more than last time*) buddy of mine knows its way around all these topics and has an eye for cool stuff on the net:

Han's Blog

Visit him, pay him credit and damn you come back here for new Staroc's Wor(l)ds... >;o)

The best console gets even better!

The PSP has got lots of goodie homebrew fun for everyone already but now it got even more in the house for all us PC lovers:

"DOS - if you are as old as I am *cry* you can remember this..."

"Blue-Screen coming to PSP soon..."

Not much to say on that other than AWESOME, all the DOS and WINDOWS greatness coming to PSP - what more could I as an abandonware freak hope for? - Well okay there's one downpoint to the current x86 emu - it is slow as hell... keep your fingers (or if you are from Zemrulon 5, all your 7 tentacles) crossed for future updates, or even a running DOSBOX port >;o)

SHIT CITY - You know the one with SINS

We have all played Sim City I guess... You never saw the Sims themselves (beside their 2 extra installments that in my opinion are SHIT too), only the houses, cars and sometimes news reports on high violence and stuff.

Well there's STINK CITY now, a horribly artsy pansy movie-comic adaption in the tradition of recent 'highlights' like Elektra (which of course was bullshit as well).

Sin City (see I could already bring myself to mention its real name in the third paragraph) is the CRAP I have seen a day ago. Oh my god is it bad. Yeah there's violence, a good deal of hinted and real nuditity, however it's still lame.

First its in black and white (artsy), plus the 'story' sucks: There's the unbribable cop (Bruce-boy) who hunts down the DON's son who rapes little girls and kills them (and gets away with it 'cause of his mighty dad, who bought the whole fucking town [not a wise investment if you ask me...]). However he (the 'perv' not the cop) is a little impotent and 'can only get it up, when they (the little girls) scream'. Great idea for a story... Well the cop is almost killed first by his heart dissorder then by bullets from some bribed cop, after first shooting the pervert.

Then there's the Barbarian (A bit like Crawler actually) who has sex with a whore who is dead next morning. Instead of looking if he crushed her accidently, he immediatly 'knows' she has been murdered by a hobbit (Yeah Frodo's a manical girl killer [yup there's 2 in the movie] and EATER in this one). So Mr.Conan declares war on the city, kills everyone who doesn't answer his questions plus those that do, finally finds the killer and his protector (a bishop). Then he shows the padre his favourite boy's head (again the hobbit) and kills him as well before being caught by the police and fried on one of these high-voltage chairs.

Next there's the Doc from 'Closer' who kills for money, yet loves a city amazon who he can't be together with (properly - fucking seems to work though). Well his new flame (not the amazon but some hairdresser...) is bullied by her old boyfriend, who later goes to the Amazon part of town (oh you know whores WITH GUNS) and is promptly killed. Well turns out he was a cop. Since there was a truce between amazons and the police this means war, if any info leaks. Well it leaks to be short and there's a lot of action to try and conceal it (mostly concerning an interesting trip with the talking corpse of the cop and the 'Closer'-Doc - did I mention the Katana Amazon [Kill Bill anyone?] had choped up the cops buddies so they would fit into the car's trunk?) with all cops that rushed to the scene being shot in the end.

Zoom back to Bruce-Boy still alive in hospital - who is now imprisoned by the Don-bribed police for eight years (well actually this is eight years ago from the barbarians and 'Closer'-doc story - he's arrested for girl raping...). The girl he saved writes him letters every week for eight years (So then, now is the same now as the Barbarian's 'now' - oh, because of the letters he sort of falls in love with the kid, though never seeing her again until the new 'now', which again is the barbarians now - figure it out >;o) ). When he gets out of prison she (the girl who's 19teen now - oh its Invisible Girl from Fanta 4 by the way), who's now a lap-dancer falls in love with him and he gives IT to her, then a creep shows up (not the hobbit but a yellow goblin (really depicted in yellow, since for even more artsy-ness, they put in colours on certain people...) who is the kid-fucker from the beginning after multiple operations trying to save his life since Brucy-Boy shot him 8 years previously - Well he kidnaps the girl,

Bruce (now in angry mode - facial expression stays the same due to 3-weather-Hairspray) finds them brings an end to creep, kisses girl goodbye and then brings an end to himself, though apparently his heart has stopped anyways. This luckily brings the fucking ton of shit people like to call movie (or comic adaption) to an END, before my heart actually stopped (was close though *evilgrin*)

GREAT MOVIE - NEVER GO AND WATCH IT IF YOU AREN'T AN 'ART-LOVING CULTURE CRAVING SADO-MASOCHIST PANSY COMIC BITCH WANKER

Thank you! I know, I watched it, but I didn't have my warning beforehand - YOU do >;o)

The Truth on Gaming Violence...

Well as we all know, we gamers are a brutal murdering lot of unsocial alone-living friendless ugly-looking fat idiots that have never seen daylight. Of course we are all most comfortable with this. >;o)

Now however one professor by the name of Dmitri Williams tries to shatter what we all know and love as the only reality and truth:

"Results of some of the first long-term research into online video game playing, conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alongside Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has reached results claiming that there is no evidence of a strong link between video game violence and aggression behavior in players.

Studies were made of players of Turbine's massively multilplayer online role-playing game Asheron’s Call 2, where, after an average of 56 hours play a month there was found to be “no strong effects associated with aggression” caused by the game. Players were found not to be statistically different from the non-playing control group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they were before playing – according to Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Gameplay was also found not to be a predictor of aggressive behaviors. Compared with the control group, the players neither increased their argumentative behaviors after gameplay nor were significantly more likely to argue with their friends and partners.

"I’m not saying some games don’t lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet," Williams said. “Until we have more long-term studies, I don’t think we should make strong predictions about long term effects, especially given this finding.”

The new study involved two groups of participants: players – a “treatment” group of 75 people who had no prior MMORPG play and who played AC2 for the first time; and a control group of 138, who did not play. The participants were solicited through online message boards and ranged in age from 14 to 68, the average age being 27.7 years.

The results of the new study, Williams says, support the contention of those who suggest that some violent games do not necessarily lead to increased real-world aggression. He does concede though that because the study didn’t concentrate solely on younger teenagers, “we cannot say that teenagers might not experience different effects.” "

English Source
German Source

Now how would he know anything from this dumb game? Has he never heard of Doom, GTA, Quake, Battlefield or even WOW or Everquest (the spawn of evil - already led to a kill...)? Asheron's Call is for pansys at best *evilgrin* Well obviously he has, since he limits his own proclaims in respect to other games aand teenagers...

--> Get it into your head Mr. Dmitri Williams do the same thing with these games and people then (only then) the world might start to believe you and all of us gamers will have to seriously think about getting friends, going out (into the sun) and getting a life. Gosh what a bummer - otherwise people might think we're different >;o)

A bit of background story:

The following excerpt is in GERMAN and gives a bit of background information for the novel ('The Change') I am writing. If I find the time I might translate it, for now just ignore it if you don't understand it or for fun results try an online translator like babelfish. For all of you that can read German, this story will be continued:

Die Zer'sha und die Feydhal

Kapitel I

"EIN LECK, WIR HABEN EIN LECK!" hallte es den Flur hinunter, begleitet vom röhrenden Alarmsignal und dem blinkenden grünen Leuchten, die Gefahr bedeuteten. Elian war klar was das hieß. Rennend hastete er auf die sich schließenden Schleusentore zu. Die verdammten Zer'sha hatten ihr Schiff entdeckt und die richtigen Schlüsse gezogen, bevor sie endlich in den Hyperraum springen konnten. Elian hätte eigentlich gar nicht hier unten sein sollen, aber er hatte sicher gehen wollen, dass die spezielle Fracht sicher verstaut war. So konnte einem das Schicksal manchmal mitspielen. Er musste zurück Richtung Brücke, man würde ihn dort brauchen. Er hätte Lanielle schicken sollen, sie hätte hier mehr ausrichten können und er selbst wäre beim Kommandostab gewesen als die Zer'sha angriffen.

Noch nie zuvor in ihrer modernen Geschichte war so etwas vorgekommen, dass eine Gruppe anderen Idealen folgte und dann auch noch zu neuen (oder musste es heißen zu alten?) Wegen aufbrach. Ein Problem war wohl die Größe der Gruppe, die trotz ihrer friedlichen Motive und dem selbst gegebenen Versprechen ohne Kampfhandlungen heimlich von dannen zu ziehen, als eine Revolution betrachtet werden konnte. Das andere war wohl, dass sie das modernste, größte und kampfstärkste Schiff der Flotte dauerhaft 'entliehen' hatten um ihrer Bestimmung zu folgen.

Der Rat der Anthoril hatte gar keine andere Wahl als sie zu verfolgen und militärische Schritte zu ergreifen. Die Emeril (Südstern) stellte eine taktische Bedrohung für das ganze Imperium dar, nicht nur wegen seiner Kampfkraft und den erfahrenen Generälen und Geheimdienstlern die mit ihm flohen, sondern es enthielt auch sämtliche Archive und Aufzeichnungen ihrer Rasse, Gensplicer und –rekonstructer, Technologieparks mit Werkstätten und Selbstversorgungssysteme aller Art, nein es hatte auch den Prototyp des Hyperantriebs installiert dessen Pläne die Zer'sha nach langen Verhandlungen aus der Ausgrabungsstätte auf Gradius 4 hatten bergen können. Als ob das nicht schon genug wäre war die Emeril unauflöslich mit der zentralen KI des Imperiums verbunden, die als Schaltzentrale für nahezu alle Nachrichten öffentlicher, privater oder geheimdienstlicher Natur diente.

Elian lachte in sich hinein… Der Gedanke, dass es seine wagemutige Idee gewesen war, die dieses Unterfangen erst ermöglicht hatte und das er eine tragende Rolle bei der Übernahme des Schiffes gespielt hatte beflügelte ihn. Seine großen blauen Augen leuchteten freudig während er schnell die ihm wie seine Westentasche bekannten Gänge der Emeril entlang eilte. Die ersten neuen Haare, eigentlich kaum mehr als leichter Flaum, auf seinem Kopf kitzelten ihn, als sie den Windzug spürten. Sie würden bald länger wachsen, wie sie einst bei seinen Vorfahren gewesen waren.

To be continued...

Serious Business...

After all that games business, something a bit more serious:

If you are interested in white boards that allow for semantic structures, i2-brain, a program I found on the net, might interest you. It still has some flaws, as it is not totally intuitive to use, but the overall capability of differently filtered views on available information is already quite well implemented.

You can download a free trial version from their web-page:

www.i2brain.com

Have a look at their samples. It is quite interesting really only notintuitive enough yet...

Games I play at the moment

Well okay this is just to give you a short round-up (you already saw Zuma in the last post):

1. Battlefield 2 (EA Games)

A multiplayer tactical FPS combat game - my squad (Ace Herm Crawler, Seargent Vanessa Starlight and myself Private Staroc Bitch [Staroc will never get beyond private...]) and I have a lot of fun going round killing everyone else and in Crawler's Case 'us':

Sitting in an airplane Crawler shouts into his headset: "WOooooo I can see a whole nest of them down in that village - BOOoooMMbbbSSS FaaaLLLiiiNNggg..." - Vanessa cries : "Noooooo DON'T Drop the bombs, it's us down here!" I look up and see little falling things until the world dies in heated explosions.

The following scene is taken directly from gameplay... no modification


As you can see, we have great fun with our little team (guild) that exists in the same constellation in the other game we play(ed):

2. Guild Wars (ncsoft)

A massive multiplayer online guild-oriented roleplaying game. Yeah we have a guild there with our gay mage Vanessa Starlight, our slow (in every aspect mental and physical...) Barbarian Crawler that's always late and myself the slutty Necromancer Khara Staroc.

I am currently looking for a nice group-picture put let's start with this little one and one of Khara for all you dirty pigs:

"Give me all your gold!!!"

Naturally fun is guaranteed here aswell when we're out with our guild 'Civitas Venatio' hunting 'furs'...

3. Metal Gear Acid (Konami)

One of the best PSP games out yet, though of course not AS funny as the group oriented games above. This is single-player all along, tactical shooter game that bases it's rounds and actions on a stock of cards you hold (weapon cards, movment cards, armor cards, ... you get the idea)

Big points for the execution, the graphics and mainly of course (like with every Metal Gear) the story! Set in a not so distant future the governments of the world act like any big corporation and secretly build bipedal mobile nuclear battle tanks called metal gear. As terrorists and psychics get hold of these machines there's only one guy a genetically enhanced agent (cloned from the most efficient soldier ever) in their way: Solid Snake...


Prepare for some nice (unexpected) plot twists... TRUST NO ONE!

4. Lumines

Argghhhh... If you like Tetris this is for you. Same principle basically only you just have quaders of 4 blocks with each one of these 4 in one of 2 colours. Giving you a total of 6 variations. Do clear stones you must arrange patterns of at least 4 blocks to a square...

Addictive like Zuma, here a picture of the PSP version and a link for a PC clone

"Be wary of the alien dancers..."

And here the link to a PC-Clone of Lumines called 'Lumines'!!! Steering is a bit difficult as W,A,S,D are mapped as Up, Left, Down, Right and 'J' and 'K' can be used for turning the blocks.

5. Ridge Racer (Namco)

Another PSP favourite... Never really was into racing games, but this one definately is FUN. Only bad part is that the horny babe from the intro flic is under represented in the game itself (not visible at all) --> GTA 3 is better in this respect, if you know the same Hot Coffee Mod I know >;o). Well I can already imagine our wizard playing the game in 'HOT' Mode:


Yeah that looks about right *evilgrin* - But if you own a PSP this game is a must-have guys, even without cheerleaders in it...

6. Squarez (Globsoft)

Squarez is homebrew for the PSP and another one of these addictive little games I so love. As the name says it's all about circles...

You are a blue square and your only instinct is to eat, you want to eat those yummy green suare that is around. Yet when you eat it there's suddenly a new green square and a moving red one. Now remember what Mommy said: "Don't play with the red ones Harry! They'll steamroll you when you want to eat them and nobody likes to be a steamrolled Harry Potter!"

So only eat those when you are properly protected (safer sex --> safer feed) with a yellow circle...make that square. Other toys are the kill all normal red bomb (deep red with counter), slow down all reds (light blue, counter) and big splitter bomb (yellow-orange with counter) that can possibly even kill a boss red (double outline - cannot be eaten even in protected mode) if a splinter hits them...


Confused? Download it here and see why Squarez are cool, Circles boring and Sprites suck >;o)

The game that haunts my family...

Alright I went home last weekend, visiting my Mom & Dad (aswell as my sister) and showed them an interesting little piece of game software that a friend (Hai) has 'infested' my computer with. Within minutes after his first demonstration my girlfriend and I were already addicted playing nothing else for hours...

The same happened at my parents' place - Mom, Dad and Julia (my sister) were fighting for a place in front of Mom's new notebook (where I had first installed it) until I told them I had left the installation file on the harddrive. Now that everybody has their own copy of ZUMA DELUXE, the regular fighting has ceized and now fights about highscores begin to errupt (btw. I have to admit that my girlfriend holds the record having reached level 10 or 11 with a score that would reach over 2 lines of space here *grin*).

So if you don't know Zuma Deluxe yet, go here to download it directly, or here to play it online.


The principle is quite easy: You are a stone frog in the middle of the playfield who turns around his own axis to face the mousepointer (it remains fixed on his spot however). Now on predefined lanes coloured marbles start rolling down slowly toward a 'death hole'. If they reach it the stone frog, 'you', loses a life! You have one chance of surviva: Dissolving the marbles. The frog can produce and spit randomly coloured marbles (You see the colour of the marble that can be spat at the moment and the one that is next [you can also exchange these by right-clicking]). If you create a pattern of at least 3 marbles with the same colour linked directly, these will disappear.

Sound easy? Try! When you succeed - try doing COMBOS! Still easy? Try reaching level 10? Still easy? DAMN YOU >;o)

Did I mention that Zuma is great fun? No? IT IS GGRRREEEAAAATTT ADDICTIVE FUUUUUNNNN!!!

Playstation Portable (PSP) Mania

For the past month I have really learned to appreciate the best handheld console of them all - the Playstation Portable.From Games over Music and Videos to Emulators, Homebrew or Applications you can have all the fun in the world with firmware 1.50 that is!!! Whatever Sony tells it's customers about the NEED to update to 2.00, don't do it, when you want to use the PSP in any possible way.

I know the loaders and hacks allow to play pirated games right now, which I despise by the way, but why the hack should I not be allowed to play Lumines (which I own) from my MEMSTICK if I want. That is the prospect I am talking about - own it and then play it any way you want!!!

What happens when you update to 2.00? Well okay you get a web-browser and the possibility to play movies in a newer MPEG4 Codec that still plays only in a maximum resulotion of 320x240. WOW! Well not so 'wow' when you consider that there are first homebrew browsers (or some ripped from games) out already or in development and that there's a DivX/Avi Player (homebrew again) that can play videos in the PSP's native solution of 480x272... Didn't give me much trouble deciding to keep my 1.50 firmware... What about you guys?

Some may ask: What then about games requiring newer firmware (like Rocketman Dash, GTA, ...)? Well I guess there will be overrides for these! Don't get me wrong I will still buy them, but I will not play them from UMD but from my memstick and skip the bloody update!

If you already upgraded you can only hope that someone will find a way around firmware 2.00 and enable you to run homebrew on that aswell, but chances are sinking with every new upgrade 'cause Sony closes every hole they find...

So guys have fun with 1.50 --> and if you consider buying a new PSP, there are still 1.50 PSP out there only living in Europe you would have to import them, 'cause when selling them starts on September 1st over here in, they will all have firmware 2.00 >;o)

My new Blog!

Just wanted to say 'Hi everybody!'. This is my new BLOG...

Don't know what I'll put in here yet, but I guess it will be about anything I deem funny or noteworthy in whatever way... you'll see >;o)

Staroc