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     TheToiletDuck's Blog
Vidcon comic (from SA)
 by TheToiletDuck on 05.08.2008      4 comments




This is a blatant plug for the latest Comedy Goldmine at SomethingAwful.



Give the rest a read, it grows on you:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/castle-vidcons-game.php?page=1
The latest steam update made TF2 worth my purchase (again)
 by TheToiletDuck on 05.01.2008      5 comments




Not just because it's stops cheaters, but because it fixed my complete dumb ass actions. Please learn from my mistakes, an internet dumb ass.




It all started Wednesday night wheni had got back from dinner with my partner and thought I'd round off a great evening with a bit drunken Team Fortress 2 on the new Goldrush. No one was in the dtoid server so i thought I'd go to a random server with low ping.

I was playing quite happily with a few random people when:

"Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____
Steam id here: has earned achievement _____"

"What the hell? How the hell did he just earn 57 achievements at once?"
Was pretty much the reaction of everybody.




Now i'm not ACTUALLY a complete dumb ass, but apparently i play one on the internet because i said "ha ha, yeah right whatever" and copypasta'd it into the console

"TheToiletDuck has received a payload of achievements, firmly up his asshole."



Thing is the medic is pretty much the only class i have any chance of earning achievements because it's my most played class. Now I'm not going to get into a debate on the validity of e-penis scores, i don't care about the fact that my gamer card is just over 2000. This sucks because my stupid actions had pretty much fucked up the cool feeling of accomplishment you get when you get an achievement.



Also there is the more tricky issue of at what stage could i use the new weapons without feeling like a cheater? How could i show my face at dtoid (where i might add i am considered one of the best players ever...... yep, and i have a huge cock).




Well, turns out i didn't have to think long (and honestly i didn't really, it's just a game after all). Valve updated Tf2 and removed all the extra achievements i had received through achievement_unlock_all. I do however, still have all the achievements i earned legitimately.




So thank you Valve, you made my game challenging and took away evidence of my stupidity, well until i went and blogged about it that is.



Footnote:
This is the complete opposite opinion of someone who played last night and just wanted the weapons. That's cool, people can think what they want **cough.. cheater.. cough cough** i for one am stoked i can now try to earn the new weapons legit like. Seeing a player with the new stuff is not really that cool unless it's a true representation of that person kicking ass.

now if you excuse me i have to go back to being dominated.

Attached photos:

Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo
State of gaming (abridged)... plus pics
 by TheToiletDuck on 04.29.2008      1 comments




Wait, his level!? It's under 1000!!?!?!?!!11

Woohoo, my one goal in life was to get my destructoid rank past 1000.. and i did it.. i can't believe it oh my god.

Anyway...

I was planning to write a post entitled 'the state of gaming in NZ'. But with gta4 being out i don't think i'll have the time to do it justice so will just give a more bloggy version.

It was meant to outline the fact that nz was a country raised on sega rather than nintendo (i think as a result, nintendo wii never sold out properly here). Where outdoor gaming advertising is everywhere (from the hoo-haa kotaku makes of billboards and posters i assume this is not the case in America?), and where playstation 3 owners think they can sell their console second hand for more than it costs in a store (umm, k)




We have one pretty decent arcade in the whole of Auckland.


Which has an inordinate amount of puzzle bobble machines.


Basically, the whole arcade is there to appease fighting game, puzzle bobble and shmup players because no one is playing the shooting games/driving games/bishi bashi/ or using those photobooths that give you wallet sized pieces of rubbish.



Of course We do have more than one arcade but the others hardly compare to yifanz.

See yifanz, even has tekken 6 (that's 6 times more tekken than tekken 1!).





When i was a kid, we had one/two game franchises in auckland with like 6 stores total. Then years later along came Johnny Ebgames who planted his gaming mcdonalds seed all over the country. This was actually a very good thing. Now kids had somewhere to be left while their mother spent three hours looking for shoes that fit her cankles.


In our gaming hay-day we had 3 more franchises in the fray. Alas, they could not compete with Eb and the last of these new non-eb franchises have long since closed down.
As far as i know (and i'm taking an extreme Auckland-centric view here) is that all that remains now, are those original 2 franchises, ebgames, and my favourite gamestore in auckland where they give me most games a day early :)

I'm not going to start a rant about ebgames is evil. Ebgames isn't evil, they are business so fair game to them. But it is a bit sad that its getting harder to find an alternative to Eb, and even sadder that you have to send ALL your kids to one store instead of spreading the babysitting around other stores.




In other words, this post is pointless and half-assed... except to show you the best name for a elevator repair company ever.




Please, correct me if you know of a better Arcade. I would genuinely like to visit it.





....

Attached photos:

Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo
Is GTAIV worth walking in the rain to pick up my preorder at midnight?
 by TheToiletDuck on 04.28.2008      9 comments




Apparently not.



It's raining and i have work tomorrow.


This was going to be my first midnight launch since picking up a gamecube. I thought GTAIV would be the one to pull me back into rabid gaming. Spending ridiculous amounts to get a game day one. Walking to every store in the city on the hope that someone will sell it to me early... "Break the release date dammit, i need my gaming fix."

Nope, turns out once you go through that period through college where you need to give games a break, you come out a different man. One that doesn't really care whether or not you get the game on the very first day it comes out, practicing the multiplayer before the servers are rapant with american kids who are ridiculously better than you.

Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe GTAIV will still be the same game tomorrow and it's just not worth getting a cold for.


Hmm, then again i may take the day work off on Wednesday. I'm still a gamer after all.




...

Attached photos:

Photo Photo
Not my Turning Point gaming Rig
 by TheToiletDuck on 03.14.2008      2 comments




Okay, I'm a whore for competitions. I'm not even sure that i am valid for this one (hey, Destructoid if i win, i can pay shipping to NZ if it means i get a free computer :P). Anyway It doesn't matter because the bigger deal is that i've finally started a C-blog. Will see how long it lasts.

So anyway, here is my Rig. It's only about a month old. I have just upgraded from a 4 year old pc that was driving me nuts. I got a lot of help finding deals and advice from the forums members at CheapAssGamer. So big ups to all you guys. It's hard building a new computer when you are a lapsed pc gamer.




Specs:
Monitor: LG 22inch widescreen monitor with 5ms refresh time (i think)
Video: GeForce 8800 GT, 256RAM
Mobo : P5Kr
CPU: Core2 Duo E6750 (probably should have got quad, but the cost impeded it)
Memory: 2 gigs Ram
HDD: I'm not sure, probably about 1.3TB or something. I know one of my drives is 500Gb alone. I have a few external drives sitting around the place.
Printer: Yes.


Here are the few things that are on my desk, rig associated and potentially more interesting.

The Single Best Innuendo Horoscope i've ever read. I am a Pisces too

Dr Zoidberg bobblehead.


Mr Destructoid clock


Few other tidbits, Kauri Snail shell (these are an endangered predatory snail, i didn't kill this one for it's shell btw), Scorpion, badge and Mr Destructoid again.


I intended for my computer to be a pretty decent gaming rig, which i think it is, but i spend i seem to spend more time on in watching Bulgarian Pop Idols on youtube (Ken Lee) then getting some pretty decent game time in. Though in saying that i've been trying to join games of Team Fortress 2 on Friday Night Fights lately (which is saturday day for me) and had a blast last week. I also picked up Crysis, which takes me back to the days of playing Far Cry against my brother (not that it was very long ago, mind you).

The thing i love most about this Pc is my monitor. I think it's really important to buy a decent monitor, considering you're going to be staring at it more than any other part of your computer.

Haven't really got much else to say about my pc (and desk), and if you excuse me i'm late for a Team Fortress game.

Tata.
-TD

p.s. my room is a mess.
I started playing video games when i was about 7 years old. My parents bought a Commodore 64 and subsequently a Genesis and PSX. Before all of that i was playing outside with snails, spiders, ants and various plants and fungi. Now I'm 26 I've managed to turn playing with with things outside into a career and i work for a Research Institute, paid to collect fungi around the country for scientific research.

Lucky for me, my 9-5 has allowed me to indulge my gaming habits. When I'm home i play my 360 (gtaiv), my Wii (Fun Fact: 10 minute Smash Brawl games are an excellent oven timer) and I've still got a lot of love for my Ps2 (FF XII is going to take me many more months to finish). I've also been trying to get back into PC games, thanks to Orange Box (Team Fortress 2 in particular).

I live in New Zealand, which can mean some long waits for PAL releases (Rock Band) but I've been importing for a good number of years now and always try to keep up to date with daily video game happenings. I once worked for EB Games, and don't recommend it. The customers were good people to chat with but the management can really wear you down.

My day job can mean a lot of lab work, so i'm fortunate enough to be able to listen to a lot of podcasts. I try to never miss the Podtoid (duh), CagCast, GFW Radio (which i recommend at least to hear Shawn Elliot.. the rest of the cast are fantastic too), and 1up Yours (though Garnett is a bit of a dick). I also catch the IGN podcasts now and then as well as the CAG Foreplay on CheapAssGamer. I don't listen to NZ gaming podcasts, because frankly i feel like it's getting gaming news from people under a rock, with fingers in their ears, in a cave, on mars.

Guess I'll finish up with a few lists

My favourite games/series in no particular order: Legacy of Kain, Katamari Damacy, Loco Roco, Monkey Island, Team Fortress 2, Final Fantasy, Xenogears (probably more than all the final fantasies), Soul Calibur, Worms, Puyo Puyo, Street Fighter (particularly 3rd Strike).

Music: Outkast, MF DOOM, Madlib, Quasimoto, The Roots, Kid Koala, Mr Scruff, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Gang Star, LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Erik B and Rakim, RjD2, The Shins, Smashing Pumpkins, Dizzee Rascal, Gomez, Dan the Automator, De La Soul, DIPLO!!!, Edan, Flaming Lips, Hot Chip, James Brown, Lauryn Hill, Nas, Mint Chicks, NOFX, Peter Bjorn and John, Panda Bear, Prince Paul, Pendulum.

TV & Movies: Harvey Birdman, Venture Brothers, Bottom, Futurama, Heroes, The Mighty Boosh, Project Runway, Scrubs, Criminal Intent, Batman Animated, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Hannibal, Fargo, Sin City, Donnie Darko, One Hour Photo, A Christmas Story, Shaun of the Dead, Ghost World, X-men 2

Books: Phantoms in the Brain By V.s. Ramachandran, Hannibal by Thomas Harris, How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker, Ripley Novels by Patricia Highsmith, Anything by David Attenborough, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Inner Circle by TC Boyle

That is all.

Bring back the mutant league games.

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