As I’m sure most of you have noticed, I’ve switched to the Roll Tide Roll theme. I’m sorry I had to switch off the Theme Switcher. It seems that WP-Cache was interfering with it, so I’m hoping that will be resolved soon so that those who enjoy using the other themes will be able to access them again.
Alabama’s first game is next weekend, against Hawaii … though it’s PPV (yes, I’m still grumbling about that one *grrrrr*).
In my most recent fit of Google addiction, I decided to dump the iCalShare calendar feed from my Google Calendar for Alabama’s playing schedule and decided to make my own. It’s incomplete, but I will fill in the times and stations as soon as they’re published to the University’s website. (also available as XML or iCal link)
Work’s still really busy … and stressful. We’re well into our “busy season” … that, and I’ve purposefully NOT blogged about several happenings lately due to many reasons. The biggest being that I’ve noticed referrals coming in from search hits via searches by who I believe are either clients or members of management. There are several “touchy” subjects I’ve tossed out into the open and/or set on fire lately, and I think I’ve pissed off enough people for now … so better safe than sorry. (for now)
I will say this … if the next few days to couple of weeks go well, I may not have to worry about that anymore. *crosses fingers!*
This quick posting is aimed at those who love mystery/murder and solve-it based games.
I’m sad to say that I’m disappointed in my latest acquisition: Crime Stories. I bought it Friday at CompUSA and finished the game in just a few hours’ straight play. In short, I can sum everything up into 3 words for y’all: Save your money.
I had been eyeing this game for a few months, but knew little about it. From the images show on the box, its enclosures, and the website, this game looked really promising. I thought maybe I had stumbled across another jewel — like Still Life. (Whatever my qualms with its ending, it was and is a VERY good game, and highly underrated!)
Funny enough, the two are published by the same company: The Adventure Company. Crime Stories is nowhere near as easy to maneuver as Still Life was, nor as challenging. Sadly Still Life was limited by outdated graphics, or I think it would have done a LOT better. Crime Stories had slightly better graphics, but there were too many bugs to overlook:
Too many items were mislabeled. For example, a mouseover on a statue would say “Police car”.
Conversations flowed as if William Shatner wrote them. “I can’t believe … *pause* … this is really happening … *pause* … to me!” — I shit you not, this was the most annoying feature of the game, IMO
The very beginning of the game leaves you feeling a bit clueless because you don’t know what to do to get started. Most games will at least give you the right direction. i.e. get this from said person for this to happen, or you need this to gain access to this building.
Moving around in the game is awkward at best — there were several scenes where I had to keep adjusting where the player stood so that it would stop moving the view from one place to another in order to achieve my objective. BIG ANNOYANCE!
My biggest complaint would be the lack of challenges. If you don’t count having to figure out what items to combine for certain events and/or access to sections of the game to occur, there were only 3 puzzles in this game — the answer to one of which was included on a slip of paper in the box.
The game as a whole is way too short, the dialog needs some serious grammar and spell-checking, and IMO they should fire their QA/beta testers for not catching what were blatantly obvious flaws in the game.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the Law and Order and CSI games. Those have great graphics, and tutorial levels so you can familiarize yourself with how everything works first. Plus, a major thing they had that Crime Stories doesn’t: realistic looking dialog scenes — the mouth moves only when the character is speaking, and generally matches the syllables and sounds. (Rather than looking like a really bad 70’s Godzilla movie style dub!)
But that’s just my $.02 … and a waste of $20.00.
… I wish I had bought the City of Villains special edition DVD set instead — at least it came with toys!!
Growing up in north-central Alabama, I saw and learned to track many different types of wildlife — from deer to quail to coyotes and so on … game was always abundant, all you had to do was know where to look. Raccoons were never in short supply. We had a small creek that ran behind our house fed by the Warrior River — I can count on one hand the number of times I saw it dry.
I could always count on seeing their prints in and around the creek (after all, crawdads could be easily found!), around my mother’s fruit trees encircling our house. I’m sure they probably nipped a bite or two from my dog’s food dish as well … over all, they were never a problem.
I love animals. I love all living things. (well, except a few…) I love all things cute and fuzzy, and that most definitely includes raccoons. How could I not? After all, like the guy in the article says “They’re cute as a bug’s ear”.
But if one ever attacked my cat … I’d be grabbing my gun faster than you can say “Reach for the sky, bandit!”
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.
But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?”
“It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,” the Meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.
One week later he called the National Weather Service again. Is it going to be a very cold winter?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man at National Weather Service again replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.”
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every mess of wood they could find.
Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. “Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?”
Absolutely,” the man replied. “It looks like it’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever.”
“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, “The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.”
This quick posting is aimed at those who love mystery/murder and solve-it based games. 
