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Monthly Archives: April 2011

Enoch Birthday, Easter Travels, Portal 2

I forgot to mention it in the last post, but we had a surprise party for Enoch a few weeks ago. I was a bit late since I was working and also went to buy some snacks for the party, and I ended up going to the apartment when almost everyone else were actually hiding in the backyard to surprise Enoch. When I was to go down, I was almost spotted by Enoch who was on his way up with the elevator! Luckily I figured that since the elevator was taking such a long time to arrive right after I took it, someone must be on it. So I went down to the lower floor to take the elevator from there instead. From there I could hear Enoch getting out of the elevator and Elin greeting him when he went inside the apartment. I then went down to the others, who called him up and asked him to look out of the window, to see everyone standing there!

Enoch's birthday cakes!
Enoch’s birthday cakes!

We didn’t really do anything in particular at the party, just played a bit Alias and ate and chatted. Never got around to play mafia or watch any movies either. But it was fun anyhows!

During the Easter week I went to two cities. First I went to Stavanger to visit some friends there, since Anna was going there in Easter to visit Man Jai, and asked me to come join too. Most of the time I was just staying at Elisa/John/Janey/Cecilie’s house, talking and playing card games with my friends, watching TV and eating. It was nice seeing people again and chatting with them!

Friends in Stavanger

Then I went back to Oslo, where my parents had a birthday party for my mother with lots of their friends. Bought her a bath pillow in Stavanger as a birthday gift, since her previous one was leaking air. Ate lots of great food!

After that I went to Stockholm for the NCCC Easter (youth) camp. I enjoyed the camp and talking to my friends there, and I also met pastor Dick Lee that I went on a church internship with about ten years ago! Tried to find photos from the internship trip that I had, but I couldn’t find any, I guess I didn’t take any photos during that trip? Huh…

Me and Dick Lee
Random mugger in the background

Unfortunately I was kind of sick during camp so I spent a lot of time in bed instead of talking more with people… The camp is too short! By the time we got "warmed up", the camp was over… I do feel reminded about how God has answered a bunch of my prayers!

Anyhows, Portal 2 came out during Easter! I played a bit before going to Easter Camp, and finished the rest of it once I got back from the camp. It truly is an excellent game with an interesting and well-written story, even though it’s basically a puzzle game made with a first-person shooter engine! And the game is also quite short, though longer than the first Portal game. I want to try the two-player coop mode, but as far as I understood it that would require my brother (or some other person) to buy another copy of the game. Hmm, I guess I’ll check if anyone else has the game…

J. K. Simmons is hilarious as Cave Johnson in the game, who sounds pretty much like J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman, only caring about his own goals and totally disregarding other people’s wellbeing. Wheatley is also funny and likeable, though it’s kind of sad what happens to him. I won’t spoil it for you though. You should play this game if you like puzzle solving and funny dialogue! Unless you think it’s too expensive for a short game. According to Steam, I finished the game in only 6 hours. I guess it’d be longer if I tried to get all the achievements, and also if I get around to play the co-op mode.

In other news I’ve been home from work after Easter because of being sick. Been in bed almost all the time, except when doing stuff on the computer. But I got some medicine now, so hopefully I’ll get better soon!

 

Posted by on 2011-04-28 in Rambling

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Games and stuff

Since last post I’ve finished a bunch of games.

Batman: Game of the Year Edition XBox 360 Boxart Batman and Joker
Batman: Arkham Asylum – There weren’t so many of Batman’s enemies actually in the game, though character profiles for many of his enemies are unlockable by solving Riddler’s puzzles and finding his hidden trophies. I actually found all the secrets before beating the game! The fact that some of the secret hidden items are maps that show where all the other secrets are, really made it easier. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1 Boxart Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 2 Boxart Penny Arcade Adventures screenshot
Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness – Episode One And Two – Somewhat enjoyable, though the humor is a bit hit-and-miss. Still, too bad that they discontinued the game, it was supposed to be four games in total I think. It was kind of interesting that you could create your own character and have that character carry through through all episodes, interacting with characters from their web comic (which also has some hit-and-miss humor, but I still keep reading the comic).

Crysis Boxart Crysis: Warhead Boxart Crysis screenshot
Crysis and Crysis: Warhead – I like the fact that for once, regenerating health is actually explained (because the main characters use advanced nanosuits that self-repair and apparently have infinitely self-refillable energy). And the various superpowers that the suit give are nice to have, though I weren’t particularly good at using them while fighting enemies. Stealing the enemies’ vehicles and then shooting them from inside said vehicles was usually more effective. Just had to make sure I got out of them before they exploded. (I’m sure the vehicles aren’t supposed to explode when the enemies are just shooting at it with guns, but whatever.)

Oh, my laptop overheated when playing the Crysis games! I had to turn all settings down to low to prevent overheating, but with Crysis: Warhead it would overheat anyway. Just having my laptop overheat and shutdown didn’t bother me that much, but the biggest problem was that the game sometimes stopped working after the laptop shutdown from overheating, forcing me to uninstall and reinstall the game for it to work again! I ended up buying the Coolermaster NotePal Ergostand to help cooling the laptop down. Seems to work, Warhead didn’t overheat my laptop once after I started using this.

Coolermaster NotePal ErgoStand Notebook stand

I picked this notebook cooler over various others because many of the other notebook coolers didn’t have adjustable stands. With this one I could raise the laptop higher, so I can use the laptop screen as additional screen estate if I want. Without having to prop the laptop up with books or whatever I find in my apartment, I mean. Also this cooler has a 4-port USB hub. So it’s almost like a docking station! (Although I almost never take my laptop with me anywhere anymore, the iPad works quite well as a substitute. So it’s not as if I need a docking station, I mean.)

In the photo you can see the 3DS resting in its docking cradle. I must admit I haven’t played much on the 3DS since there just aren’t any good games out yet. But I like taking 3D photos with it!

sbs_HNI_0074
I made Mississippi mud pie for my brother’s birthday!

3D Enochs bursdag 2011 - 62
Me and Elin tried to use up all the letters in Bananagrams.

I found a great utility called StereoPhoto Maker which can batch convert the 3D photos (.MPO files) into side-by-side JPEG files (like the one above here) or into red/cyan images if you want. (Though I haven’t tried that since I figured most of my friends probably don’t have a pair of red/cyan 3D glasses available.)

In the photo of my laptop stand you can also see something else I bought recently, a Logitech G35 Surround Sound Headset. Can’t say I’m overly impressed by the simulated surround, I felt that it was hard to hear whether sounds were coming from behind me or not when playing Crysis, though left and right was (not surprisingly) easier to distinguish. Nevertheless, the headset definitely gives better sound quality than the cheap headsets I usually buy! So I don’t think I’m going to try and exchange it to try and get a "better" surround headset. I guess there’s no guarantee another surround headset would work better for me anyhows.

Logitech G35

Also, even though my new policy is to not buy any games unless they are games that I have really looked forward to getting, I ended up buying the third Humble Bundle. The game I mainly bought the bundle for is Trine, which is a platform game slightly resembling the old Lost Vikings, but less puzzley and more actiony. Also I bought the bundle to support the Finnish developer company (Frozenbyte) which made the games in this bundle. (Finland is right next to Norway!) And to support charities. Well anyways, Trine will probably be the next game on my playing list. Haven’t tried the Shadowgrounds games yet, but they seem to be a bit like the old (ancient!) Alien Breed: Tower Assault game that I tried a long time ago! I kind of liked Tower Assault, but I think I kept dying on the first stage so I gave up playing it.

Oh, I also bought lots of other stuff online, in particular I bought a pair of shoes:

bobbie-burns-bacis-slip-in-1003444 (1)

It was only because I got a coupon for that webstore! I’ve now got 9 or so pairs of shoes in my apartment. Way too many. I will never buy more shoes unless I throw away some of my old ones!

Aaaaand that will be all for today. I should clean my room. Maybe tomorrow. *sigh*

 

Posted by on 2011-04-15 in Games

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