So I got to play Duke Nukem Forever this weekend. That's pretty weird.

You are alone. Or at least it seems that way at first glance. In front of you are grassy hills spattered with trees, and behind them lie some larger mountains and some odd looking stone structures. You turn around and see sand and a vast body of water. Is it an ocean or just a large lake? Difficult to say. You can see some islands off in the distance but not much else. You take in your surroundings and gradually realize that you're not actually alone. Up on the hills appear to be a few cows and a pig. They don't seem to be doing much, but it's nice to know living things inhabit this place.

Okay, now what? Better look around, right? Seems logical. You head towards the hills and mountains. You discover hidden alcoves and shallow caves. You meet more cows and pigs and even some sheep and ducks. What exactly is this place? You keep wandering and eventually stumble onto a much deeper cave. It's dark and scary inside. You can't even venture too far in before it becomes impossible to navigate in the dark. You turn around and head back to the outside. The sun is setting. That makes you nervous, though you're not sure why. Maybe you should take up refuge in this cave? That thought doesn't sit well with you, plus the cave is too dark anyway. Instead you dig up some dirt with your bare hands, just enough to make a small makeshift house in the side of a mountain. You leave only an opening big enough to walk out of.

Inception is a movie that makes you think, but perhaps not as much as it could. I don't make any claims so be some sort of film intellectual, I'm perfectly happy to watch Die Hard for the tenth time, but when a movie like Inception comes along it lends itself to thinking about it in a way you would not judge a film like Die Hard. Not that I think either movie is bad; Die Hard is one of my favorite movies and I enjoyed Inception a good deal.

In case it needs saying there will be plenty of spoilers to follow.

I just kind of enjoy the Chrome ads in general:

After hearing about it and knowing what it does and even seeing a few examples my curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to mess around with some CSS3 stuff. For those of you who may be less web developer-y, it's just CSS but with some added wackiness that actually goes beyond just simple styling and into crazy territory. Of course it also goes into browser support territory and ends up being woefully inconsistent among most browsers (shocking, I kn0w), so it's ultimately useless right now unless you want to force people to use Chrome or Safari (which is not recommended).

Clicking 'Read More' will get you some quickly done examples of a couple of CSS3 properties, including some Webkit specific animation stuff. So if you want the full effect I recommend you read this post in Chrome or Safari or your Webkit nightly build of choice. Firefox 3.5 will work for some, but not all, and Internet Explorer will fail in every way. See how annoying that was?

I have some other stuff half written but not completed which includes my 'best of 2009' list (February isn't too late to put that out, right?) and one or two other random articles. Before I potentially get around to finishing those I would like to note that since my video games update I have actually completed Trine, Machinarium and Hitman: Blood Money from that list. I also played a good deal of Torchlight though I didn't beat it. On top of that I purchased Crysis and Crysis Warhead and beat both of them. So I'm pretty happy about that too! Still a lot of other stuff waiting to be checked out, but I never expected to finish all of that. Oh, all of those games are totally worth checking out, by the way. Blood Money in particular is pretty great. Video games!

While I will probably write up some kind of non-definitive list of games I liked best in 2009, there is one game not released in 2009 I feel deserves some attention. Somehow Team Fortress 2 has been getting constant, content-heavy updates since its release in 2007. While there's the usual new maps and game modes (which sometimes piggyback existing maps and modes) the concept of adding new weapons to each class that need to be unlocked (or found) is a highly interesting concept.

One of the most recent additions is the WAR! update, which comprised of new unlocks for both the soldier and demoman. The latter class I barely ever play as because of my complete inability to face off against anyone coming directly after me. I've mostly taken to wearing a top hat and running around with a sword (which I got as a random drop). The soldier, however, is a bit more my speed. It's the most 'classic' of all the classes, as you get a shotgun and rocket launcher (and a nearly useless melee weapon). My main gripe with the soldier was always the speed of the rockets.



As a way of perhaps trying to keep them from being overpowered, soldiers can only chamber four rockets at a time and they are rather slow and the reload animation is fairly lengthy. My main issue was the rocket speed, as it forced most soldiers into a mid-to-short range game of shooting people in the feet. But no more! The new weapon, dubbed The Direct Hit, rewards people who hit guys directly. The damage is 25% higher and the speed is 80% greater, making them pretty fast. The downside is that there's almost no splash damage, so if you miss even by a little it's mostly wasted. I was never amazing at Quake 3, but I always enjoyed the hell out of it, with the rocket launcher being a primary reason.

None of the unlockable weapons are a huge improvement over what they replace. The scout's melee replacement, the Sandman, is a bat that's identical to the default one, except that you can also hit a baseball that stuns any enemies it hits from within a certain distance. The downside is that you have 30 hit points fewer, but with a scout that doesn't necessarily matter.

Some unlockables are just plain fun. The sniper can use a bow and arrow called the Huntsman. It's inferior to the sniper rifle in every way possible, except that you can shoot arrows which can pin bodies to the wall or stick out of them if you connect but fail to make a kill.

Valve deserves a lot of credit for breathing new life into this game on a pretty constant basis. It's not something many game companies could ever afford to do, which is why the situation is so unique. Since TF2's initial release I've dropped it and come back a number of times (probably four or five), when generally with online multiplayer games the first time I drop it ends up being the only time.

It's not a game that was released in 2009, but it's certainly one that I enjoyed a lot in 2009, and that's pretty cool.

I've suddenly become overwhelmed with games I own (or am planning on buying) but haven't completed (or bought) yet. It's a lame ass problem to have for sure, but I can't recall this being much of an issue in my life before.

• Red Faction: Guerrilla - I really want to finish this but I haven't had the time. Nevermind that I never played the second one (though the first one was great), I'm trying not to think about that. It's fun but kind of repetitive, but it also fuels my desire to be a gigantic asshole (in space).
  
  
• Trine - I put off buying this even though I loved the demo and now it's $20 on Steam and I pretty much need to buy it.
  
  
• Machinarium - I played the demo and I liked it a lot, plus I like the stuff these guys have done before this game. It probably won't take me too long to beat either, maybe I can put it off or something.
  
  
• Hitman: Blood Money - Highly recommended and bought during a $5 Steam sale. I am pretty sure I will love this game, but it's also probably going to sit in my Steam list, uninstalled, for a while. Kind of like Beyond Good & Evil did.
  
  
• Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That - Also bought for $5 on Steam! I heard these are good and funny and I wanted to support the developers. I haven't had time! I think I might play these on my laptop over Thanksgiving (possibly along with Machinarium).
  
  
• Torchlight - I'm not even sure why I want to buy this, but it sounds neat and everyone is heaping positive praise onto it. I've never played Diablo (which angers many, many people apparently) so I guess maybe I don't know what I'm getting myself into. I haven't bought this yet, but I probably will!
  
  
• STALKER - I got this for $5 on D2D. I'm pretty sure I'll think it's great, but it's going to sit around for a while like Blood Money.
  
  
• Brutal Legend - I have a copy but I haven't started it at all yet! I might hate 50% of it! I'll probably like the world design a ton though.
  
  
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - I don't even own a PS3 yet but I need to play these! The first one is like $28 or something so that's pretty cheap.
  
  
• Super Metroid - Some day I'll play this game!

So there you go. Video games.