Not only have I failed to post recently, my games are suffering harshly from my increase in stress and work.
Ironically, Lash La Rue has improved greatly due to its source of positive procrastination, which means that my negative procrastination; the playing of games has fallen of recent.

I turned on my computer for the first time in ages and played some Strong Bad, as I cannot start playing Telltale's Wallace and Gromit without finishing the Strong Bad series, but it felt strange and wrong, and although I didn't have any work to be doing, I could not continue playing it.

Similarly my console gaming is down to possibly a record low, I have not even touched Resident Evil 5 yet, granted I did play a little Fallout last night, and delighted in a chapter of Left 4 Dead while Tim was home, however the only real game I've been playing is Peggle deluxe on the 360, it's become my new Freecell, an addiction I can never lose until I become a professor of Peggle and finish every challenge.

Which makes me think over the last few months and has me question, have I simply become a casual gamer, I divulged in games like Zuma, and Jewel Quest over Fallout and Resident Evil, I play more time on Solitaire on my netbook over doing anything productive, as a former hardcore gamer it has me worried, questioning if I am slowly getting over gaming, and progressing to a state where short-term quick games are a thing of the future *gulp*

Update on Eidos pumpkin competition: yes they may be busy with their take-over, but I still don't have my damn prize!

Link: http://gamesoc.newport.ac.uk/ggj

Over this weekend I will not be doing film related work, and I will not be doing my dissertation, this weekend I am taking part in Game Jam, a global event where in various places groups of people will be getting together and making a game from this Friday at 5pm til Sunday at 3pm, so if anyone is wondering where I have gone, it is there

Hopefully something nice will come from the experience, not sure what input I can give, but I'll try my best.

I'll post up the results possibly Sunday evening, depending on if I decide to make a Falling in Love Chocolate Mousse Pie as seen in the Waitress

Toodles

Oh, also if you check the web address in the title of this post you will find the website of my local game jam event in Newport, where upon commencement tonight there should be a live webcam feed

A discovery has been made, I now have found perfection, and it's name is Krispy Kreme; never before have I eaten such doughnuts of perfection, especially in the form of the simple commonplace ring doughnut! yum.

I also would like to add that I won the pumpkin competition on the eidos forums! yay! although they have yet to send me my prize...

But prizes I need not when I've got a nice house, and Tim to keep me company, not to mention that I'm still playing Fallout 3 and still absolutely loving it.

Also managed to pick up Suda 51's Flower, Sun and Rain in the sales at GAME, quite an interesting game, very Suda-licious!

Halloween is such an amazing time of the year, not surprising when my birthday falls on it, but also for the excitement of choosing what to carve on your pumpkin, and waiting patiently on your sofa for some small child dressed up as a knight to knock on your front door in search of candy.

Another fun thing with halloween is the contests that take place in the gaming spaces of the internet, sadly no doublefine contest this year, not that I entered last year. Telltale had another competition; the winners having some awesome entries. Kotaku had an epic contest to win a dead space helmet, sadly Catherine didn't win I entered as well, but I think I did it too late.

Doesn't matter though, because I carved two particularly awesome pumpkins this year!

And the very first Adam Jensen pumpkin straight from Deus Ex 3!!

Fallout's vault boy was my own halloween pumpkin for this year, Deus Ex's Adam Jensen was for a competition on the Eidos community forums; fingers crossed I win something!

Tune in the same time next year for more pumpkin carving action!

Ok, this may not be a surprise to some people that I have mentioned this to, but recently I... got a hold of most of Stephen Chow's films. (Be them directed, written, or just even starring him)

Before I did this I had only seen Kung Fu Hustle in the first year of uni; having taken it out of the library through pure curiosity, and it wasn't until perhaps a month ago, when I was looking on Love film’s world cinema section and saw The King of Comedy (not the Scorsese film, mind) I was immediately interested by its synopsis and sort to find it, after tracking it down I was not disappointed, and the film was one of the best (as in funniest) Cantonese films I had ever seen..

It's definitely something about the way Cantonese is spoken, a person can be so animated, similar to the amusing Escape from Hong Kong Island, the acting scenes are also helped by Chow's face, which he enunciates with a lot. His films follow the practice of 'Mo lei tau', generally used to mean, makes no sense. Something that I had already seen an early example of in Jackie Chan's Fantasy Mission Force, and what's best is that Mo lei tau can be either verbal or slapstick, physical humour being a good friend of mine I find myself enjoying his films to no-end, and on occasion having to bring Catherine into my room so I can show her something utterly absurd and humorous.

So far I can say that I have seen a total of seven of his films so far, Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer being so-so. But found great enjoyment in God of Cookery, King of Comedy, The Lucky Guy, Tricky Brains 2000 and Forbidden City Cop.

One complaint I seem to hear a lot of his films are that Chow only ever plays the same character, which is slightly true, but not wholly. There are certain themes that seem to run quite a lot in his films, primarily he plays an under-achiever that beats the odds (king of comedy, Shaolin soccer, Forbidden City Cop) or an arrogant overachiever who has a lesson in humility before fighting back (god of cookery, Kung fu hustle) playing a sort of underdog of characters, but I feel that although he is playing similar characters, each film has a sort of breath of fresh air, which I love so very much.

So I recommend his films to all; even though a few people I know hated Shaolin Soccer (which i sort of do as well because I had to watch a dub!!!)

I am a bit disheartened watching his newer films now that I have gone and seen his older works; and find his emphasis on cgi rather than verbal humour to appeal to a wider audience is not as effective to myself, but nonetheless I want to see CJ7 when it released in the UK (unless they chose to dub it) because it looks just as sweet and funny as his films in the past (despite having the largest budget in Chinese history.

Another reason I love his films so are their surreal humour, not too mention Lee Kin-Yan's many appearances as a cross-dressing man with his finger up his nose.

When it comes to relationships, your resident weirdo is not very accustomed to them. But from last august; just before amecon I had the luck and fortune to be asked out by the incredibly warm and cuddly Tim *see picture, because he probably wouldn’t like me posting a photo.

All is well, I went to see his family. For some reason he agreed to coming round our house for the Christmas holidays. So it was pretty cool that for once I would get to spend Valentine’s Day with someone (Catherine always getting attention from people, not forgetting poor Ben)

The day began in an extremely exciting fashion as any other does, doing all the dishes that had mounted up during the start of the week, and having to go down to the shops to pick up some eggs so the day had already started amazingly, then I pretty much sat at my computer for about 3 hours until Tim arrived and surprised me with a most beautifully huge rose accompanied none other than with pussy willow (the most amazing plant in the world.)

Along with my awesome new best friend, who is very squidgy; a definite plus, and the awesomely cool 25th anniversary blade runner OST. So all-in-all making him amazing boyfriend of all time, and me crap because I couldn’t think of anything that I could get him

After hanging around for a little bit we set out for the Red Lion for tea; unfortunately the weather had turned Wednesday night, and it was bloody freezing, and then attack of the crazy dog at someone’s window wasn’t very helpful either.

The Red Lion was nice and cosy and the tea light at the table gave off a lovely burning-candle-type-smell, plus also proved almost hypnotic to look at until I realised just how bright the flame was, to have it burnt into my vision.

Had an awesome starter of bread crumbed camembert (much nicer than my own attempts at bread crumbing cheese!) with apricot jam melted for a sauce, best -omg- thing I've ever had! Especially with some buttered bread!

My main course was very interesting, an aubergine gateau, which had a tad too much feta cheese but was damn yummy, especially as the skin of the aubergine had crisped up and had turned crunchy! yumm!

After that went down -which was hard to do as there was so much of it that I couldn’t actually finish, something that does not happen often to someone like me!- we shared a real nice Lemon torte, which admittedly did go well with poured cream -even though squirty cream owns all cream types!-

Which made for a very amazingly nice dinner, the main conversation being very video-game based, as well as Tim's hopes for stereotype wars (and a dream for zombie apocalypse) which I won’t mention, but OMG it has to be done!!!

Returning home to an even colder night we were to watch a film -as I had opted out of the cinema- and I popped in Brazil, which maybe I shouldn’t have done as it is a fairly long film, but one of my favourites.. So, sorry if you didn't enjoy it as much as I did

So if you are reading this, I will remember it, and it was a really lovely day, thanks Tim *sends much love your way*

I am a bad bad, very bad person! I have owned the Longest Journey for at least 4 years, maybe longer, and to tell the truth somehow I have always told myself I've never had the time to really play it, I've tried many times in the past years, installing it, getting somewhere in the first chapter and never really exploring enough to get any further.

If you want excuses the game seemed too serious, or maybe it was the setting was the usual bright colourful happy I'm used to in adventure games, that and my game always used to crash for some reason.

So I decided to give myself the time of day to play it, and it's took me maybe a week maybe less to play through it in my spare time.. and I'm just ashamed that I hadn't played it further.

Of course, being an adventure game there were times that I needed a little helping hand, and I literally praise the ground that the uhs-hints system was built upon, the amount of times that thing has helped me with adventure games without spoiling anything for me is great. But I did play as much as possible trying to work things out by myself, but its like Freecell, every-now-and-again you need a bit of a push in the right direction if you aren't thinking straight.

The game is a absolute jem, and one of the first engaging almost-feminist games that began a nice slow flow from similar-like minded companies in Europe.

It was funny, it was sad, it had an amazing female character (who I hear was not so likeable in Dreamfall) it told an amazing story, and I know why Carlos loves it so much!

It creates an imaginative world full of diverse creatures, each with their very own characters and mannerisms, its a marvel of game design and involved me in it's story far more than any other games I have played of recent

It referenced Brazil, and I'm sorry, but when a game does that, well it wins prizes ^__^

Also, the brain-man of the game, Ragnar Tornquist, has a fairly interesting blog here

Having finished the game I am now raring to play Dreamfall, and I bid you adiou

Ok, I haven't updated here in ages (sorry loyal followers) but I've been very busy at my shiney christmas tempage job in GAME!

So I've had hardly any time to play the pile of games that have wraked up, and still need to do my uni assignments *gulp* but I thought before I do any of that crap, I'd celebrate Christmas; which was awesome by the way, thanks to Tim for coming round our house.

Just before the gay old time had at home though, I thought our little house deserved some christmas cheer (trust me this is actually the most christmassy it got)

So I made these

I hope everyone else had a great gaming christmas, and a happy new year as well!

If you live in a hole (by my standards anyways) then you may not have heard of Double fine’s newest original amazing mishmash of a game; Brutal Legend!

Yes, this news does come rather late on my blog of all that is holy, but I've been busy and stuff... that's enough of an excuse.

Who am I kidding; there is no excuse for not getting out the excitement and perhaps even merriment that Tim Schafer is working on a new game! (Wait scratch that) Has been working on a new game for months maybe longer in secret hiding, where no one can see what's happening, but somehow everyone knew what was going on, and only because Jack Black wore a Kochamara t-shirt to some American Idol thing, not to mention being spotted in Whispering Rock T-shirts also.

So yeah, where was I? Oh yes, how excited am I!!! Come 2008 (the year of everything mind you!) There will be more delectable Tim Schafer goodness on the shelves, and it features Jack Black; so everyone will buy it and rejoice at the amazing sales!!

What's the game actually about? I hear you ask... well you assume the role of Eddie Riggs; roadie and some crazy imaginative stuff happens and you are transported to sort of the world of rock and metal. This is where the amazingness comes into play.

Now I hear you saying, Charlotte you're not a fan of metal... well no I'm not, unless for some strange crazy reason David Bowie came under the classification, but it's that magical clichéd world full of skeletons and strange album covers that the game will be sponging from.

How will they be allowed to sponge from them? I hear you ask; well they've got the backing of like a million pretty darn famous bands! I know, how awesome is that!

Ok, ok so it's going to have an awesome story, and some amazing dialogue thrown in there, that's a given after all. But what else does it have? Well it may not have the crazy imaginative designs of Scott C (see Psychonauts characters and general all art) but it's still got a lovely cartoonyish vibe going, DF will hopefully always stick to this characteristic, as it's a lovely –almost- pass down from adventure games (who wants realism after all).

So this game is pretty much gonna rock 'nuff said.

Thank you for asking so many questions, I've never heard you talk so much!

Now I don't mean to gloat, but how awesome is our pumpkin this year?

Of course, my pumpkin, once again game-related is a reference to this years game of the year (in my opinion I've already forgotten everything that came out because of it's brilliance and writing) Portal. Because you can't not finish the game and not love it.

I dunno about you guys, but I love pumpkins, ever since a few years back when I did my first (the very nice and easy bat-logo) I always look forward to doing them the next year, and on the theme of game-related pumpkins make them even more fun.
So then the second year I progressed onto pac-man, and no not the shape of a simple pac-man, I went all out and did a cute cartoony one.
The third year was fun, as it was our first birthday at uni, which called for a special one, namely Mr Mario

And if you thought that was it, think again!