Oh! Recently an interesting series of events has found me working with the owner of a local Homestar Runner store. I guess he contacted the owners of the site, and they gave him the go ahead to start selling stuff from a kiosk in our local mall. We went over to check it out, and for some reason the owner and I seemed to recognize each other from somewhere… Turns out he was our waiter once, like years ago. Good memory on both our parts eh? So, we talked for a while and I gave him some suggestions for free advertising etc. Next thing I know, I’m handing out coupons for stuff at work left and right, and getting kickbacks for my referrals. Go me! Hopefully soon he’ll have more info on his online store, but in the meantime if anyone wants anything let me know and I should be able to get some discounts.

UPDATE 1/16/06
Bad news for those people who have been asking for coupons… The store that I was talking about was in a local mall only, so only if you lived in my town would they have worked. And sadly, the store didn’t last for more than a few months, so while I still have stacks of coupons they do no one any good. Sorry!

So, I did actually buy Doom 3 recently and have spent a while playing it. I am willing to admit I short changed their “story” a wee bit… But not much. Sure, there is a plot, and it has some nice ideas to it. But that’s mostly because it’s the plot to Half Life… Guy shows up at research station… is looking around… gets first “easy” assignment… all “hell” breaks loose… dead co-workers wandering around… often crossing paths with some “man in black” character… So far, I feel it’s just re-hashing Half Life with a bit of a Doom flair. I will admit, the Doom flair of it is really frickin creepy. This is not a game for kids, that’s for sure… The satanic ritual rooms are disgusting, in such a cool way. The game is also quite dark. Normally, when using that term with satanic ritual rooms one would assume “metaphorically” dark… but that is not really the case. I guess a factory on mars that produces roughly limitless energy doesn’t like having lights that work. The dark is just overdone to be blunt… sure there is using shadows to create suspense, but turning out all the lights and having a mob of zombies attack isn’t suspenseful, it’s just annoying. Good thing someone found a roll of Duct Tape! Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten all that far into it as I get a headache after about half an hour of playing. I’m still holding out for Half Life 2 though!

Speaking of which, IGN recently posted a couple vids of the intro to the game. From just those clips of the intro, I say again that Half Life is going to be head and shoulders over Doom 3. I mean, they actually have lights that work! how cool is that? In my opinion, the train station intro makes me feel far more creeped out than any gathering of shadows Doom 3 could put out… But, we’ll all be able to make our own comparisons eventually.