Any three GTers want to go in on a 4 pack with me? If three peeps speak up withing 5 hours or so, I'll buy it and divvy it up.

If you want to see campaigns, don't bother wasting the 4GB download like I did.  It's unadvertised, but the free weekend is multiplayer only.  Playing multiplayer without the benefit of some single player practice is a joke.

I have one copy of Terraria left from a 4-pack if anyone wants to buy or trade something for it.

It's an FPS for all intents and purposes.  I'm sure you could map keys to a gamepad if you can play FPSs that way.  It definitely plays more like an exploration game than a modern shooter at times, but there are some tricky shooter parts.  There is no adventure game in it at all...you won't be picking up items and using them in illogical ways.

It's a great game though, especially the music. 

I used to do a lot of fixing up of xbox 360s until they became so cheap that people just buy new ones.  The clicking is most likely the metal shim thingy inside the drive that has come unglued.  Here's an entertaining youtube video that may help you if this is your problem and you like to fix things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEGKDGPj1iw

YMMV, but I have used DFEND with dosbox for a very long time now.  I haven't had a game yet I couldn't run with dosbox and the DFEND front end makes it all easy to set up and use.  For the newer games (Crusader for example) make sure you crank up the cycles until you get it running smoothly.  Once you figure a good CPU cycles setting for a game, update it in DFEND and you won't have to set it ever again.

I haven't played bioshock believe it or not.  I'd love to try it.

I'd be in on the trine pack.  I won't be able to check back until tomorrow evening, but if you get a crew consider me committed

The Just Cause 2 pack is all gone.     Thanks to all participants and sorry to any who missed out.

Well, that was quick and easy.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to belong to such a good online community.  Big thanks to everyone who went in on this.
I still have one gift copy left if anyone missed out and is interested when the work week starts.

  OK. I'm going to put the buy on this.  There's still room for one more.  I'll have the extra waiting if someone wants.  Please PM me your steam info and I'll send them along.  My paypal addy is [email protected]
  Don't send money until you have the game to avoid any mess ups.  I'll be chasing kids around for the next few hours so it might take a bit, but I'll have them sent out tonight.

Thatick
MYo/sudy
Blackhawk
earicci
SwampIrish
Isgrim

If you're on the list, shoot me a PM

I'm so obviously new to this.  In addition to the PM, also please send a friend request to Elbino\Homard on steam and include your steam profile name in the PM.  That makes it easy to send it your way.

Thatick
MYo/sudy
Blackhawk
Me
earicci
SwampIrish
Isgrim

one more and we're all set

thanks for pointing that out...I'm very very tired right now.  Yeah, I screwed it up.

Thatick
MYo/sudy
Blackhawk
Me

= 4

brother is not interested so we need 4 more.  Also if anyone here is a regular on Quarter to Three, they have a bunch of people looking for a Just Cause group.  I only lurk there occasionally though.

so far:

Homard
Thatick
Myo
Blackhawk
Myo aka sudy


that's 5.  When the list hits 8, I'll buy the pack and wait for PMs with steam accts.  I'll reply with my paypal acct. and send the game.  Sound good?

Pete

I'd love to get in on the just cause pack...I'd even be the collection monkey *IF* reliable people are part of the group.  My fishing season starts tomorrow so I'm looking at 15ish hour days on the water for a week or so and won't have time to chase deadbeats around.  Let me know, if 7 people want to go I'll dust off my paypal acct which I haven't used in years and be the orderer.

  I finally finished this at slightly over 60 hours played.  I enjoyed it for the most part.  I only finish 1-2 games a year and I actually stayed with this one until the end.  That being said, I did the deep roads -> landsmeet last and I was only playing it to finish it at that point.  It was too protracted and the fights, which I'd been enjoying up to this point, either became cheaply difficult or time waster easy on hard difficulty.  I bumped the difficulty down to normal and steamrolled it just to be done from the landsmeet on.
  That being said, it was good enough to finish, which means it was pretty good.

  The ramp on the right will eventually lead to a reasonably high scoring 4 ball multiball.  Just keep hitting it over and over.  During this multiball, hit all of the ramps, but try to hit the right ramp every chance you get as it can extend the multiball.
The shark multiball can be a high scorer if you can managed to feed the shark or whatever by hitting the left orbit after hitting a ramp.  In all of the multiballs, just keeping things going (feeding sharks, hitting the mine ramp, getting super jpots) gets you a bonus (5M usually) at the end of the multiball.
  Make sure you hit the ramps on the upper playfield on the left.  They relight the magnasaves for the outlanes.  You can have these charged up to 3 times I think.  Get them charged every chance you get.  IMO, this table is really about keeping the ball in play and getting lucky or in the zone on a few multiballs when they eventually happen.

Installed fine for me, but the update nuked my GFWL offline saves in Batman, DOW2 and GTA4.  Hooray.  10 cents and 10 hours worth of saves.  I expect it's probably not going to be worth it.  I can't believe how awful GFWL is.

The marvel stuff looks pretty good.

My least favorite by far is buccaneer.  Bored to tears.

My scoring methods are:

Secrets of the deep:  Get the ball to the upper playfield via the mine ramp (furthest to the left).  Keep the ball in play up there as much as possible.  The mine ramp will start multiballs for big points.  You'll also accidentally start shark attacks which are big points.  Keep those multiballs going as long as possible.  That's it.  I just like trying to hit the ship targets with the swingy ball 

Pasha:  Abuse the spinner.  Snake multiballs are worth a lot of points.  The spinner is a very safe shot.  Try to hit the compass points for the 5M oasis, but you can probably get close to 5M by just abusing the spinner oasis shot from the left orbit (it's a tough shot IMO).  The magnet game is worth a lot of points, hit the palace whenever possible.  The book of tales is very risky.  It's a tough shot close to the flippers.  I never try to start a tale intentionally.  I get all of my points from palaces and snake multiballs.

Biolab:  Ahhh, I just hit the monster thing.  Over and Over.  Clone multiballs should happen from time to time and you're all set.  Experiment to find the correct strength for the 8X skillshot, it's worth it.

Rome:   My score sucks.  I drain from hitting the ramps way too often to score well.  Also, the modes on this one seem difficult (requiring a lot of shots, or timed shots, or avoiding some while hitting others), but it could just be me.  The mission start scoop is small and requires a good shot or you risk a quick drain.

I'd love to hear other scoring strategies.  I play pinball like I play golf, try to stay out of trouble.

I'm trying hard to unset ping on *one* table.  I've managed one, but he's already posted a higher score than he had this morning.  Hopefully I can hold out a bit longer until I figure out how to get a good score on another table.

Bah, I'm not even in it.  I can't remember if pingwrx is here or at OctopusOverlords, but his scores on Pinball FX2 are just silly.  I can't even bear to *look* at his pacifish score on Geometry Wars 2.  The sum total of all of my games of Geometry Wars probably doesn't add up to half of that score.

I really like the operators menu too.  I've always loved games that keep detailed stats.  Also, pretty soon the kids will be able to play this one and it'll be nice to give them an easy setup to keep them interested.

My gamertag is Elbeano5.  I just enabled live gold for a few months so I'm going to try to add some of you pinball playing GTers if you'll have me.

  Got myself on the leaderboards.  155M on Biolab, good for 4th place.  Unfortunately, all my other scores on the other tables combined are less than that.  My "strategy" was so be so awful at the Reflex mode that I had to play it about 15 times before I finished it.  I got a lot of points by being so inept.  Unfortunately I lost my ball as the display was doing the animation for completely upgrading my creature, so I don't know if any new modes are unlocked after the 4 upgrades.
  Pasha, which was my least favorite, is now my favorite.  Once I figured out to hold the right flipper out of the way when shooting for the palace, things got a lot more fun.  I can't wait for new tables in the future.

Short Review.

  I've played pinball for a looong time.  I've had early 90's pinball machines in my house and played/repaired/loved them.  I played the cunning development games more than I care to think about (Timeshock, etc).  
  PFX 1 wasn't very good.  The flippers were so strong they'd have broken a real world machine to pieces in a few minutes.  The physics felt like you were playing with a ceramic ball.  The tables were also not very complex.  Sound was lackluster.
  PFX 2 fixes all of these things.  The old tables for the most part play better too, which is a bonus.  Huge props for updating the old tables and I bought FX2 sight unseen just because of the goodwill from Zen.

  BUT.  There is one big problem with these tables in general.  I can't figure out why they do this.  The mode start shots are generally the most difficult in the game on every table.  This makes the most fun part of modern pinball, the "mini games", the most difficult thing to enjoy.  I don't care if the modes themselves are tough, they should be.  Making them hard to start makes the tables frustrating and probably alienates a lot of first timers who would enjoy pinball.  Look at the 90's Williams or Data East machines.  The modes are fun and challenging, but on most machines you START the modes by accident it's so easy to do.

  Does anyone else feel the same way?

EDIT: OK, I take it back, it's only Pasha and Agents that are really killing me on the mode start, the other ones are pretty good.  The new tables really are excellent all around.  I haven't gotten too far in any of them.  The Roman table seems pretty standard, the modes I've done are very fun, especially the shipwrecking one.  Biolab is so busy I haven't figured out much other than there's a lot of things to hit.  Pasha is probably fun but has been annoying me.  The Undersea table has some gimmicks (magnets, shooters and swinging balls) and so far seems to be the most accessible of the tables.  The swinging wrecking ball thing is well executed.  I don't know how I'll go back to the older tables

The Chrysalids: Dystopia seems to be your thing
The Pearl: This is usually part of grade 6 reading in schools around here, but is a perfect story simply told
The Earthsea trilogy: This maybe isn't considered a classic, has all of the same qualities as The Pearl

I'd also throw in for Slaughterhouse 5, hard not to like it.

I was looking for Risen and Torchlight.  Looks like Risen has probably fallen off the cart and now my pessimistic side says Torchlight will be gone too, or now $19.90 instead of $19.95.

Yep, that's a good list.  Torchlight and Risen weren't in the Steam sale, so that would be great.  I didn't want to get another digital distribution site going, but Mass Effect for $5 already broke that standoff.

This is the first day with no buy for me.  Having already gotten Dead Space, I figure I can do without Resident Evil.  Also, L4D really doesn't do anything for me at all, so I'm out.  Trine looks interesting, but I'd probably never get around to it.  I'm still hoping for Risen!

Ouch, Majesty 2 and Dead Space.  There goes 1/4 of my budget already.  This sale is nuts.

I'm only subscribing to one digital distribution system to try and keep temptation to a minimum.  Although if Elemental over at Impulse is as good as it looks like it could be, I might have to break that rule for a short time.

This sale, if the quality remains the same throughout the week, is going to make me very very poor.

Here's hoping for Risen, Dead Space, The Witcher, Torchlight (even though it's already cheap enough), and maybe even GTA4 hit the sale bin too.

Country: Bosephustan
Dictator: Bo "The Crim" Selecta

+1 to El-Producto, the original playa hata, for the episode 1 gift on steam

[Spoiler]

Eternal Dagger was the first real rpg I ever played way back when on my C64.  IMO it's better in every way than Wizards Crown.  Also, Nahlakh and Natuk by Tom Proudfoot are very much like these games except they add some nice features.  Helherron adds even more goodness to the mix IMO. 

Eternal Dagger works great on any of the C64 emulators, I like VICE the best personally.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I remember finally beating the necromancer in ED and thinking I had won the game...only to find out there were still 2 more, much larger islands to complete.  I had no idea games could be that long

Well, I officially have no hope.  Sick kids, sick me equals no time or desire to game for the last half of the month.  I'll bump this thread up in a few month when I finally catch up.

  I've made one decent batch using 25ish litres of canned apple juice.  Juice was pasteurized and not from concentrate.  I also added a fair bit of raw very brown sugar.  This gave it a bit of a brown sugar taste.  The alcohol content would have been pretty low without sugar I think.  I'm judging this stuff to be maybe 7-10% having added ~5 lbs of sugar before fermentation.
  The only thing I recommend is aging.  After 3 months of aging (and solid month and a half fermenting) this stuff was foul.  It would burn the tongue out of your mouth.  However, after aging 6 more months in the carboy, it was a lot better.  After aging another year in 1 litre bottles, it's pretty good.
  It's very dry, like a dry white wine.  The apple flavors come through though, but not until the aging has taken all of the fire out of it.  If you want english cider type stuff like Scrumpy Jack or Strongbow, I'd guess you need to sweeten and carbonate to taste.
 
  I currently have another batch in a carboy.  I fermented it and left it there.  It's been in there over a year without racking it off the old yeast.  I'm going to open it up someday, but I expect it's a total loss. 

I've managed to put in a little bit of disjointed time.  The atmosphere of this game is better than anything I've ever played, possibly excluding fallout.  The music is just right for a game; not intrusive, but you might very well find yourself humming it after you turn the game off.  Also, it's nice to finally play a game with voice acting that sounds like real people talking.  If the first half hour of the game is indicative of the whole game, I'm looking forward to playing this one through to the end.

I bought this and a bunch of other games at the local Movie Gallery at xmas time when they were selling most everything for $4.  PS2 version.  I think I'll have to give it a go now.  I probably won't make it through the whole thing, but this is as good a chance as any.

  I'm interested in giving guild wars another go.  I've got a ranger/warrior up to level 10 and I'm still learning the basics.  Is there a way for me to use heroes in the Prophecies campaign instead of the henchmen?  I also have Factions and Nightfall, but haven't even entered them yet. 
  Anyway, Homard OO would love an invite to the new guild.  Perhaps I'll learn how to actually play a little this time around.

Pete