Torchlight is the direct descendant of the first Diablo game. It follows the first Diablo in every aspect. One town to get quest. A deep deep dungeon to kill monster for items and gold. Just about everything in that first Diablo game you can find here in Torchlight. The game has a number of old Blizzard devs on board that helped make the first Diablo game so the similarities maybe obvious. The music was done by the same guy who did the music for the first Diablo. So it is no surprise that on more than one occasion it reminded me of the music from the First Diablo.

Torchlight has a very cartoony feel that one suspects was influenced by World of Warcraft.

The game does bring a few things from the Fate games (which themselves are inspired by Diablo). The pet for instance is pretty much something retained from Fate. This pet though is handy since you can send your trusty dog (or cat) off to the surface to sell when you fill up your inventory. A few other things worth mentioning is that once you beat the main quest you get the option to retire your character and pass down an item to a new character. When you do this an infinite dungeon opens up as well. So reply value is up there.

The game has three classes. Follows the usual templates with minor variations. You got a big bad warrior, a magic user, and a ranged type of rogue. All of them can specialize in melee and they all get 4 spell slots. And of course a three tiered skill tree to specialize in different buffs and powers.

Torchlight is single player only. Only on the pc. The game sells for twenty bucks. They eventually will put out the games editor so you can make you own levels, monsters, and items (just for a start). This currently is only available online from the games website or third parties like Steam. The devs mention a free to play mmo is on the table next.

Wow what happened to October? Games happened. To many good games to play. Two in particular that grabbed me and took up my time. These two came out towards the end of October. Borderlands and Torchlight. Both of these games share a few things in common with the Diablo games. The only thing in common with Borderlands and Torchlight is that they both have loot. Wonderful abundant loot. But the similarities end there between the two games.

Borderlands is first and foremost a first person shooter. It has a cell shaded style that may turn some off. I think it’s more of a comic book cross hatching style myself. You can see in the screenshots what I’m talking (maybe) about.

Borderlands has a very light rpg mechanic pasted into the shooter. And these guys get it right by keeping the shooter aspects dominate and letting the rpg stuff be secondary. As mentioned Borderlands has loot. Lots and lots of loot. They borrow from Diablo and World of Warcraft so you if you played either of those the loot will look familiar. You got white vendor trash, green, blue, purple and orange items. Each color denotes a higher quality of item.

Borderlands is out now on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Be warned despite what the developer of the game may say the pc version is port of the console game. It currently suffers from a number of problems and I suggest the console versions over the pc game.

Time flies when your having fun. Below is the audio recording of the phone call of me getting “fired” by my then boss the sheriff:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Played 297 Times

I listen to that every now and then to make myself chuckle. I love the reason given to why I was “fired”:

they they deemed that the morale of the team would be better without you

That bit still makes me laugh out loud.

Because I keep forgetting and Gawain reminded me here is G’s remix of the above call:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Played 38 Times

Man I’m smiling on the inside and the outside. Two news articles to link and do minor quoting. First the links. Missed payment costs Ramada owners and Court names receiver for Ramada. The Rockford paper has the better article so I’ll use that one. Here is the good shit right off the bat:

The owners of the Ramada Inn and Conference Center were removed Thursday night after failing to make a payment to the city.

Owners Nooruddin and Farida Sadruddin (Tejany) were removed from the premises, and court-appointed receiver M. Neal Eckard, president of Nationwide Asset Management Group LLC, took over the hotel.

Good riddance! Hot damn! It goes onto say:

Eckard will run the Ramada Inn until it is in foreclosure; then the hotel will be for sale.

Now its auction time again and you got to hold your breath something worse than these fucking idiots buy it up again.

“We called over there; they said they were going to bring a check right over,” Kirichkow said. “Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

Manager Zar Zahid told the City Council she was trying to buy the hotel, but Kirichkow said she was removed from the hotel Thursday with the owners.

They even threw out the cousin/sister/aunt that was trying to save the hotel. This chick was going to turn the place around. She did a wonderful job didn’t she folks?

Kirichkow said the situation is good for the city.

“We’re guaranteed to get paid now. The court will see we get paid,” Kirichkow said. He’s confident the hotel will be under new ownership soon.

“It seems nothing but positive from this day forward,” Kirichkow said.

Kirichkow is a dreamer. These douche bags they just threw out were in the worst hotel ever because of a similar situation. In 2002 Tejany bought it for less than 2.3 million dollars way back in 2002. The place surely won’t get 2.3 million here in 2009. Only trash worse (and/or related) to the kicked out owners would buy that shitheap the worst hotel over. No I hope someone buys it and tears it down and builds a parking lot. Only then will the damage done by these removed owners begin to heal.

I had to go get a crib for a guest and this below is what I saw:

It made me think of the pictures the Fail Blog has. I imagine you got to blame dumb bellman. I’m glad whomever did it can’t read. It gave me a good laugh.

The worst hotel ever is on fire. The below pictures were taken just 20 minutes ago:

The title is just a dream of mine unfortunately. The real story is that the worst hotel ever just had a clothes dryer have a small fire. That was coming from the guy parked next to me who was listening to a scanner. This little dryer fire had South Beloit, Rockton, and Beloit fire departments come to the scene.

I do admit I got my hopes up when I came down the road from the interstate and saw fire trucks at the hotel. I still hope that one way or another that damn worst hotel ever gets whats coming to it.

This is the gayest thing ever:

What a bunch of faggots. And yeah I don’t give a shit if I’m offending these gays/faggots/dykes. Grow a pair. It’s just words. Slang words on top of that. I’m surprised these guys never heard the childhood saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

And for the record here is my count (not counting this post) of how many times I’ve used these words on my blog:

Dyke shows up just once.
Faggot shows up seven times
Gay shows up more than 15 times

All of these terms are used in replacement for words dumb or stupid. The exception being the Starbuck post. I still say the chick looks like a dyke.