Tried to play the Undergarden demo via Steam today but it'd load then close. Two attempts and boof! uninstalled.

The Ball is surprisingly good. Had I read the description I'd've skipped the demo and glad I didn't. Adventure, puzzle, gets more action at the end. There's a boss fight with definite action timing so not all here may like it but it's a deceptive fight: it's a lot less action than it first appears, mostly a differently wrapped puzzle. There's some clever stuff: the pull-the-ball has infinite range, far as I could tell. Not sure I could take a full game listening to the grinding noises of pulling/pushing the ball around and don't plan to buy but it was a nifty surprise.

Crawl is toying with me. It is distributed squatting in the worlds' computers, using the extra processing power for its evil AI mustache twirling.

I decided to move off the easy-mode class/race combinations and mix up a bit. Naga necromancer. Naga are stealthy but very slow and can't wear most armor. They do get poison breath (exchange satiation for ranged damage attack) and can eat poison corpses. Necromancer starts with Pain, a spell which hurts the enemy and the character. A few levels later they can resurrect corpses as little minions. It was a dodgy start but ten minutes in everything clicked: an orc dropped a halberd of pain. The pain brand does extra damage scaling off the necromancy skill, and Boop the Naga had that in spades. Whomp, whomp, smacking goblins & frogs. With army of zombie goblins & frogs, smacking ogres and quasits. Untouchable. Set up home in the Ecumenical Temple. The Snail God asked if Boop would like to become Ponderous (ever slower) in exchange for stat boosts and Slouch, the ability to slimedamage any monster which dare move quickly. Boop dug the ubermucous and swore his scales to Lord Mollusk.

Twenty minutes in: Book of Unlife drops. None of Boop's ancestors had ever seen the third Necromancer book. Upon examination, one of the spells turns stacks of corpses into nearly invulnerable Large Abomination minions. Who needs speed! Boop is a snake with Vatican Guard and can explode all infidels in sight with a laconic twitch of the claw. If Boop can't be bothered, the pair of X will deal with the baddies for him.

Twenty-one minutes: Nine teleport scrolls, ten healing potions, two wands of lightning bolt and a random artifact glaive which has magic resistance and pain. Now guarded, pain causing, AND nearly impossible to hit with spells. All praise Our Him, the Beneficent Shell-ed One, His Polypness the Provider and Fear His Sticky Wrath Boop prayed while sacrificing corpses not made into ever more bodyguards.

Twenty-five minutes in: stairs to the Lair. Awesome, already cleared the far harder Orcish Mines. Boop'll go down the stairs and Mr. Player will jam a pencil into the keyboard to force turn repeat and make a sandwich while the guards mop up.

Twenty-five minutes and two seconds in: go down stairs to find an eight-headed hydra and a four-headed hydra adjacent. Boop instantly explodes. Mr. Player, who didn't think ANY hydra, much less a big one, could appear in Lair 1, and having them AT the stairs being totally unfair, Ponderously unfair, becomes extremely angry and edits a post on FFC.

Twenty-seven minutes: Mr. Player masochistically creates Flotsam, the super speedy vegetarian spriggan enchanter. Got dagger, will stab.

Twenty-seven minutes and nine seconds: Flotsam is killed by the first monster he meets. A newt. A fucking NEWT.

I've been back at The World of Warcraft since Cataclysm came out.  The last time I played was like two or three years ago.  It's amazing how much faster you level up now and they edited a lot of the starter quests to make them a lot less tedious.  I'm an Orc Mage for the Horde.  I've made it up to level 13.  

I havent joined a guild yet.  I've really just been playing tourist...took a blimp to Brill, toured and Silvermoon City and doing some of the starter quests over there and seeing the new stuff.  The last time played, there were no expansions.  So I'm really enjoying it this time.  🙂

I'm also playing Penumbra Black Plague and I'm enjoying it..although some of the puzzles aren't very intuitive.  I've learned to start trying to break things open if they dont have a key.  🙂

In preparation for getting a small HD tv and my PS3 up and running again, I downloaded Borderlands on the PC to check it out.  It's not bad, although I have to play it with all of the settings turned right down.  I'll definitely get it for my PS3, and I'm looking forward to seeing it as it should be seen.

By the way, I heard that the Tron game was rubbish, but I'm thinking of getting it purely for the light cycle component.  Does anyone know if you can play the light cycle parts in arenas, and set up 'bots to race/play against?  I see that the game is only AU$48 (which must be close to parity now with the US$).  Damn, I miss my PS3.