Alabama leads Auburn 24-0 and blows it (including fumbling twice in the red zone that really could have put the game away).  Oregon pulls it out after being down at halftime.  And then Boise State collapses after taking a big lead into the half, capped off by missing two late field goals of less than 30 yards. 
 
Gah.

Big Steam Thanksgiving sale has started.  Not sure I'm looking to buy any of the items on day 1, but I have to recommend the Deus Ex collection, Borderlands, and above all, Alpha Protocol.  I also own Prototype, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everybody.  I might bite on Shank or Sam&Max, we'll see.  I haven't touched the Sam&Max franchise since the first one (back in high school).  I absolutely loved it then, so it might be time to dive back in.

I finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat close to two weeks ago now, but I've been busy between work and travel and only just got a chance to put down my thoughts about it.  I will start by saying that the main plotline is pretty weak.  There is a mystery about what took down a number of military helicopters, and the answer is a fairly big letdown.  That being said, pretty much everything else about the game is really well done.  Other than the main storyline, this game is a clear improvement over S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.  There are a lot fewer bugs, the weapon upgrade system and artifact sensors are both nice new touches, the game is generally clearer about quest objectives, and there is a fast travel element that makes the whole world feel a bit more manageable (but still large).  And the game world is still very immersive, with an item management system that really makes you think carefully about what you want to carry (bullets have weight), and a really good combat dynamic.  It's pretty satisfying to score a headshot here, which is a big difference from Fallout: New Vegas, where I would sometimes fucking unload on a dude's head in VATS and only take off half his health.  I'm not planning on writing a review for this one (I think there are several good ones already on the site), but it's definitely worth playing.

When I was in high school at some point, I came across a shareware version of a game called Tyrian that was basically a topdown shooter in outer space, with a story, over-the-top enemies, and terrific customization options.  I played it not too long after I first tried Raptor (a very similar game that was itself pretty popular at the time), and I thought Tyrian blew it away.  At the time I didn't have much money, so I didn't actually unlock the full game, but I must have beaten the first mission a dozen times on the shareware version.  I loved it.  Recently, I found out that a more recent version (Tyrian 2000) is being distributed online and can be played via DOSBox, so I gave it a shot again.  The graphics obviously have taken a hit, but they were very good at the time and certainly still playable.  The story isn't quite as cool as I remember, but the gameplay is still very solid.  Tyrian does a great job of putting a ton of enemies and bullets on the screen at one time, which makes for really frenetic gameplay.  Anyway, if anyone's interested, DOSBox can be found here and Tyrian 2000 here.

After finishing my first playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, I found myself still hungry for a post-apocalyptic setting.  When I finished Fallout 3, I got into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl shortly thereafter, and enjoyed it (even if I found it a flawed experience, which I describe in my review here).  So I recently picked up the latest entry in that series, Call of Pripyat, when it was on sale on Steam.  So far I'm really enjoying it.  It's a very different experience (it has a Russian environment with no real towns to speak of, a bleaker outlook and less humor, but an even more unforgiving inventory management system).  It's pretty fun just to wander the desolate landscape and hunt for artifacts.  So far, no huge bugs and no crashing to the desktop, so that's a really nice change of pace, but I did come across this really bizarre encounter after taking out some mercenaries.  Fun with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s physics engine, I guess.  We'll see if the story can match up with that in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but I'm optimistic for now.
 
  

After taking a break from Arcania (Gothic 4) to beat Fallout: New Vegas, I finally went back and powered through the last 7 or 8 hours to beat the game.  I noticed there were no reviews on Giant Bomb for this game yet, so I put mine up here.  Admittedly, it's pretty harsh, but I was fairly disappointed with it.  It's one of the few games that I played all the way through that I never really got into.  Almost every moment I was playing it, I felt like I was wasting my time.  I'm a little OCD when it comes to gaming, so I felt obligated to finish it up.  And then I felt obligated to warn the world.  In a lot of ways, it felt like the exact opposite of New Vegas.  It was polished, the graphics didn't look dated, and there were very few bugs (and certainly no game-crashing bugs).  But I never really had any fun with it.  The whole time I was playing Fallout, I wanted to keep playing Fallout, even when the game randomly decided that I couldn't, or quests got screwed up, or something else bizarre happened. This sort of crystallizes the importance of good design/writing in game development.

I'm still working my way through Fallout: New Vegas, and while I still am pretty positive about it, I keep coming across weird bugs.  Obviously, the crashes are the worst, but here are some less annoying ones I've come across in the last few days.
 

This looks like it might turn into a series.  I've been getting a lot more Facebook friend requests and random messages from strangers since The Social Network came out, some of them nice, some of them filled with refined crazy.  Frankly, I'm impressed that some of these people are able to use the Internet at all.  Given the number of these messages I get, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook inbox must be completely unusable.  This guy below sent me a long, Torah-related message a few days ago.  I didn't even know how to respond to that, so I did nothing until I got the message below.  I figured I had two options with my response here.  I could, as a lawyer, carefully explain to him what the First Amendment does prohibit (government restrictions on speech) and what it does not prohibit (private company restriction on speech on a privately-owned website).  Or I could taunt him.  I chose the latter.
 

I've been having a lot of fun exploring the southwestern wastelands the last few days, but there have been a fair number of noticeable bugs.  Crashes to desktop are fairly common (for me, they seem to get much worse when I'm near some body of water), and there are a number of times where quests or conversation triggers don't quite work properly.  I haven't experienced anything game-breaking yet, which has kept me pretty positive about the game.  I think it's pretty typical Obsidian: great story, poor quality control. 
 
I've attached a few screenshots below showing some of the lesser bugs I've come across in Fallout.  None of these are a big deal, but I thought they were interesting as I made my way across the wasteland. 
 

I got Fallout: New Vegas a few days ago, and before I knew it, I was right back in the situation I was in when I originally got Fallout 3.  I wake up in the morning, and I want to to play.  I finish work, and I want to play.  And over the weekend, God help me, but I'm lucky if I manage to leave my computer to go to the bathroom.  This was completely predictable, but I'm still kind of blown away by the damage this does to my life.  There's just something about exploring the wasteland, meeting the inhabitants, and trying to figure out why somebody would want to shoot me in the head.... 
 
So good work, Obsidian.  When my marriage unravels, I'll know who to blame.