If you haven’t already heard, Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2 that adds new fun to what was perhaps already my favorite class, the Pyro. But more immediately amusing (and impressive) is their latest introductory video, “Meet the Sniper”.

I think it’s their best machinima to date, and shows that as good as Valve’s efforts have been, they’re getting polished even further. These guys know how to tell a story. But don’t just take my word for it, watch it yourself.

I finally downloaded—and finished—Portal a couple of weeks ago. As many, many people have already opined, it’s a marvelously clever HL2 mod, and I had a lot of fun playing it.

But it’s been two freaking weeks and I still can’t get the song (that plays during the end credits) out of my head. Still alive, indeed.

After a recent stint wearing the togs of one of the lesser-played classes, I just wanted to throw a couple little tidbits of wisdom out there for the general TF2-playing public. You know, a few little “pro tips” that might add up to that little extra edge, something to sharpen your game.

Medics are some of the hardest-working members of your team. But it’s a two-way street. You gotta give a little to get something back. To wit:

• When you call for help from your friendly team Medic, stand fucking still for just a second, could you please? Especially if you’re jumping around in a roomful of other idiots. The “health hose” doesn’t automagically lock onto your sorry carcass just because you’re mashing the “call for medic” key.
• Don’t run and cower behind your Medic when an enemy Heavy or Pyro rounds the corner, then whine and bitch that you “could have taken him if the Medic had used his übercharge” after the Medic, thanks to your brilliant display of cowardice, turns into a collection of bloody chunks. You’re in front for a reason, dumbass.
• Don’t instantly become a petulant little twat and complain that your Medic “can’t keep up” or “should have stayed around” if the healing suddenly stops. There’s a good possibility your Medic got backstabbed, torched, or gunned down, and you were too dense to notice. Guess who’s next in line to be fragged, shithead? Look over your fucking shoulder every once in a while. Protect your Medic, and he’ll protect you.
• For fuck’s sake, don’t charge into that four-sentry crossfire unless you can see the übercharge is already at 100%. And when you stupidly do it anyway, ignoring the Medic’s pleas to wait, don’t start screeching about how much your Medic sucks. There’s only so much a Medic can do. Down to half your hit points? Gotcha covered. Are you a halfwit? Can’t help with that.

Bitte sehr.

I finished the much-anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode 2 over the weekend. I have to say I wasn’t very impressed. If it wasn’t for Team Fortress 2’s inclusion in the Orange Box I’d be feeling pretty ripped off. I was eager to see more of the Half-Life story unfold, and in this, Episode 2 did not disappoint. The atmosphere and graphics were stunning as always. The gameplay? Unimpressive. Perhaps it’s just my impression, but Episode 2 seemed to deliver noticeably less content than Episode 1, and much of what it did bring to my desktop was lacking in excitement.

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I’m really getting riled up to play Team Fortress 2 when it comes out. The latest player class showcase video from Valve is not only entertaining and awesome in its own right, I love it because playing as an Engineer is one of my very favorite things to do online. I’m all about the D, baby.

I can hardly wait for the thing to finally ship. It’s been at the top of my wish list for ages. It’s going to rock.

After many, many bouts of severe frustration playing Civilization III I swore off the franchise. I was through, I told myself, with suffering through blantantly cheating AI and non-existent or simply horrendous multiplayer functionality. Though I dearly love turn-based 4X games, of which precious few exist, I turned my back on Civilization, though it pained me no end.

Until, of course, the siren song of Civilization IV was sung. But not too long after purchasing both Civ IV and its expansion pack Warlords I found that both were well-designed, highly entertaining games, but sadly lacking in the development department. Civ IV suffers from constant video memory-related crashes (with an error dialog advising me to “allocate more video memory”. Hello? this is the year two-thousand-fucking-seven; users should never even be suggested to manually juggle memory for any reason. Warlords will occasionally just freeze my system and cut to a black screen during leader trade dialogs.

Both the base game and Warlords are patched up (to 1.61 and 2.08, respectively, the highest patch versions available). It’s both interesting and exasperating to note that the last Civ IV patch was released in April 2006, and Warlords’ last patch was published in October the same year. Searching in vain for an answer to my problems, I thought I’d found the solution in the Mehmet II patch (written by a Firaxis developer to solve a problem with a particular leader dialog, but never released through official support channels), but, alas, no love. And the Firaxis’ (the developer) and 2K Games’ (the publisher) sites offer only the lame suggestions of updating Windows (no problem) my video drivers (done) or playing the game in 800×600 resolution with 16-bit color.

I’m sorry, but fuck that. 800×600? 16-bit color? Are you fucking kidding me? Those are crap answers from people either unwilling or unable to fix bad code. The QA team and the engineers behind them should hang their heads in shame.

And meanwhile, I’m out $70. And heartbroken. Again.