The Longest Journey 60% off on GOG.com ($3.99) today only

I've talked about The Longest Journey (and its sequel, Dreamfall) more than a little bit in the past, so I won't go into any great detail here. All I will say is that I believe TLJ is pretty much the single best old-school point-and-click adventure game that has ever been made, bar none.* If that appeals to you even the slightest bit, especially if, for whatever reason, you've never actually played TLJ yourself as of yet, then I would strongly urge you to consider this deal. You can get it here on GOG.com, for a price of $3.99 today (7/19/2011) only, but even normally, it's still only $9.99.

* - And this is coming from a guy who has played games like Gabriel Knight, Quest for Glory, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and such, so I know it has some stiff competition for that title. But as much as love all of those other games, I still think TLJ takes the crown.

The X series.

I downloaded the X series from Steam the other day, since the whole thing was on sale for a total of around $11 or so. (Normally, that same package is $39.99.)

So far, I've only been playing the first game in the series, and I'm "only" about 40 hours in or so,* though it kind of feels like I've still only barely begun. When reading about this series on various websites and forums, I've often seen the recommendation to just go straight to the (currently) last game in the series and not even bother with the earlier ones, since that one is apparently the best of the bunch. I'll just say this much: if that one is as good as everyone says it is, and given the fact that I'm enjoying the first game as much as I am, well... when I get to that one I just may never play another game again (figuratively speaking, of course).

So, "What is the X series?" you might be asking. (Or, perhaps, you may be berating me for not having played these games at all until now, given that the first game came out in 1999, and if so all I can say is, yes, I totally agree. I was completely missing out until now.) I'll just describe the first game, based on what I've played, and then what I know of the sequels based on what I've read on the Internet.

( Description behind the cut )

So yeah, while the series probably isn't for everyone, if you are looking for a slow-ish paced game in which you fly a space ship around, docking with various space stations and trading stuff, then you can't really go wrong with the X series.

Also, there is apparently a new game in the works. Whether or not I'll have made it through the previous games by the time that one comes out, I'm still quite interested in that now.

* - According to my Steam account, anyway. The game clock, associated with the save games, says I'm over 100 hours in, but I think this has to do with the "Singularity Engine Time Accelerator" or "SETA" device, which increases the game speed by up to a factor of 10, which is useful for when you're flying a long distance from station to station or system to system. Apparently, this also affects the save game timestamps as well.

"5 Reasons We Need Classes on How to Talk to People"

For an article on Cracked, this wasn't very funny at all (even in the usual "here is some horrible news that we're going to make jokes about" sense), but still somewhat interesting.

I am self-aware enough to know that I absolutely suck when it comes to people skills, at least as far as face-to-face stuff goes. I may be fairly (or perhaps, at times, overly) verbose online,* but if I am dealing with someone IRL, unless I've known them for a while, I usually tend to completely clam up, only giving terse answers to direct questions (if even that much). If it's a professional situation where I know I need to at least seem like I have more interpersonal skills than a rock, I might be able to half-ass it for a little while, with extreme conscious effort, but it's very draining, and probably not very effective.

* - At least on blogs and such, anyway. Even online, I tend to avoid posting to very active fast-moving forums or hanging around in chats with more than maybe two or three people, or if I do I just lurk. Means of communication where the reply isn't expected to be instantaneous and I can think about what I want to say, I have no real problem with. Means of communication that are occurring in real time, however, be that an Internet chat, a telephone call, a face-to-face conversation with someone or whatever... I'm not nearly so good with those, particularly if I'm talking to someone I don't know well or at all.

Petroglyph Games

I've long been lamenting the loss of Westwood Studios, among many others, to the ravenous, amorphous cancer that is Electronic Arts, such as in this recent post. Well, as some of you are probably already aware, a lot of the old Westwood guys got together back in 2003 and started a new company called Petroglyph. One of their previous games was Universe at War, and before that Star Wars: Empire at War. They have several other games out and coming soon as well.

Here* is a preview of one of the games they're working on now. Granted, for me personally, the apparent MMO aspect of this is putting me off (there's one, and only one MMO that has my interest so far), but from what little I have seen of it, it does looks fairly interesting. And as far as I know, there haven't really been very many massively multiplayer online real-time strategy games as of yet (if any), at least not potentially big titles like this. Maybe this will be something worth checking out, after all.

* - Ignore the typically shitty Desucktoid commentary. (When, oh when, will I learn not to scroll down beyond the bottom of the article, seriously. -_-)