Author Archives: TheUser

Off-Road Drive

Off-Road Drive | PC, PC Games, Reviews, Racing, Simulation, 1C-Avalon, 1C Company

After seeing Off-Road Drive two years in a row at 1C Company’s annual preview event, Another Night in Moscow, they finally provided me with a copy of the game. Even though I had already tried the game, I was very impressed. You’re not going to find a better off-road truck racing simulator than Off-Road Drive. With a wide variety of trucks and locations, lots of control over your vehicles, and even the ability to leave real ruts in the mud, this game is a blast.

Joystiq Praises Man Who Chokes Teen

Guy chokes a kid after being made fun of in Black Ops, we’re … upset | Joystiq

We read in horror today the story of Mark Bradford, a 46-year-old, jobless father of three from Plymouth, Devon (UK). After being killed and then taunted by a 13-year-old opponent in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Bradford tracked down his teenage opponent (in real life) and proceeded to mercilessly choke him. The attack was luckily thwarted by the teen’s mother and Bradford later admitted to one count of assault.

The author of the Joystiq article, Justin McElroy (their most hilarious writer), proceeded to talk about how horrible this was. Then, after the break, he made a joke about having to hide this from his boss before praising the man.

We hope shithead kids tell stories in hushed whispers about Mark Bradford. “No, no, he came for my friend Danny! He teabagged him like 40 times and like 30 minutes later, an eight-foot-tall guy in a trench coat shows up and made him eat 40 tea bags … at gunpoint. It’s true!”

I can’t believe he’d write that! Note that I don’t think he believes it was right. I’m pretty surprised though, not at the fact that people would joke about this but that Joystiq would publicly. Yet another reason to keep Joystiq as your source of video game news!

Amazon’s Tablet Announcements

Live from Amazon’s tablet event in NYC! — Engadget
Exciting news for mobile computing fans.
Kindle Touch – Seems to be designed to compete with the Nook Simple Touch. No keyboard but touchscreen and definitely appears to be e-ink. It’s $99 for the regular and $149 for the 3G version that works in 100 countries. Time to enable 3G, Barnes & Noble? Also, people can choose to pay $40 less for the same thing or $10 more for 3G compared to Nook. That makes me sad. Price drop time?
Kindle – This seems to be an entry-level device. It has no touchscreen but, of course, has buttons, and only costs $79. I don’t see why people wouldn’t want to drop an extra $20 for the Touch, but whatever.
Kindle Fire – A Nook Color ripoff! How surprising! It’s a 7″ Android tablet for $199. There wasn’t a mention of how much of the Android OS you can reach. In other words, really a Nook Color ripoff! Again, it’s cheaper though, so I suspect we’ll see a price drop from Barnes & Noble. I look forward to their response!

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad 2

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad | PC, PC Games, Reviews, Action Games, First Person Shooter, Shooter, Tripwire Interactive, Tripwire Interactive

Recently I had the privilege to receive the deluxe edition of Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad from Tripwire Interactive. Running on the Unreal Engine 3, it’s a World War II first-person shooter focusing on a realistic take on the war. As the title suggests, Heroes of Stalingrad is centered around the Battle of Stalingrad, July 1942 through February 1943. You can play as either the Russians or the Germans in both single-player and multiplayer. While there is a single-player campaign, the game really shines in multiplayer where there is online stat tracking and the ability to rank up to be a Hero! Despite a few problems and a less than stellar single-player campaign, it’s a great multiplayer shooter and really scratched an itch I’ve been having for a World War II first-person shooter!

Burn It All

Burn it All for iOS | iPhone/iPod, Reviews, Action Games, Puzzle

Burn It All – Journey to the Sun is a new iOS game that’s bound to be a huge hit! After Bulkypix provided it to me last week, I’ve spent a lot of time playing and enjoying it. It’s currently $0.99 on the App Store, and it’s fantastic. I think we’ll see it on a lot of phones in the future! It’s fun, you can jump into and play it in one minute chunks, and you can sink a lot of time into it if you want. You can try to get through levels quickly or you can try to make perfect runs. It features a simple concept but builds on this concept throughout the game.

Really fantastic game!

Toshiba

Today was my first day of work at Toshiba, and I think it went well! I attended part of orientation (with more to come tomorrow), learned how to use a bunch of resources, met a ton of people, went to a couple meetings, and ate some tasty food from the cafeteria.
I really enjoyed my first day. I think I’ll have a great future with the company!
On a side note, I went to my mom’s after work. She made dinner, and I’m going to go over again tomorrow. That works out quite nicely!

Changes

Wednesday was my last day at Barnes & Noble! It felt really weird leaving. I’ve a couple dreams about the store since then. Rather than the usual dreams about making metrics, they were about strange changes to the store and how I no longer worked there. I’ll miss all the fun I had and the fantastic people.
Speaking of fantastic people though, I had a party to celebrate my new last night. Most of my friends from the area came, and I had a great time. There were a few guests who hadn’t hung out with me outside of work before, which is always cool. I also got to catch up with Patrick whom I hadn’t seen in years. I climbed a tree at one point, hopped across a field on one foot, and hung out at Katy’s house for the first time. It was definitely an awesome night.
Monday’s my first day at Toshiba. I’m nervous but also looking forward to it!