Sealhat.com

My three movie tickets have finally arrived. Time to see Pirates of the Caribbean and other high budget action summer flicks.

My Titan Quest prize has arrived in NJ (July 25, actually). My brother was nice enough to take a picture of it for me.

Bellevue, WA, July 14, 2006 – Valve, developer of the blockbuster series Half-Life and Counter-Strike, unveiled Team Fortress 2 and Portal, two new games to be included in its next release, Half-Life 2: Episode Two. In addition, the studio announced its plans to deliver these products, plus enhanced versions of Half-Life 2 and Episode One, in one tremendous package for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. #

Yes, TF2 is alive once again! I still play Team Fortress Classic every once in a while and I’m very happy that Valve decided not to leave the franchise to rot. In terms of the new cartoony non-realistic style…what do you think? It looks like The Incredibles, Evil Genius, and the No One Lives Forever series. I guess once I get a better computer, I will be able to play multiplayer Source-based games. In the mean time, I will have to stare at the pictures.

So tonight was the Xfire Titan Quest Developer Chat. Titan Quest is an action role-playing game in the mythology genre. Think Diablo 2 or Dungeon Siege 2. Now let’s talk about the actual chat. Personally, I find the Xfire chats to be somewhat unorganized. It’s a combination of the immature/young chatters and the Xfire interface itself. The people tend to easily flood the chat windows and it makes it seem like a shouting contest. In any event, the devs were pretty insightful and I’m glad they took their time to chat with us gamers.

Now let’s get to the good part…

[20:03] [Xfire] matteox: Prizes will be as follows…
[20:03] [Xfire] matteox: 1-3 place wall scroll and game
[20:03] [Xfire] matteox: 4-5 prize game only
[20:03] [Xfire] matteox: 6-7 prize wall scroll only
[20:04] [Xfire] matteox: lol to the UC room
[20:04] [Xfire] matteox: 7th place (and winners please PM me…
[20:04] [Xfire] matteox: …..Lucifer!!
[20:04] [Xfire] matteox: 6th Place: Sallad
[20:04] [Xfire] matteox: 5th Place: Wootstachris
[20:05] [Xfire] matteox: 4th Place: Ynos
[20:05] [Xfire] matteox: 3rd Place: Ghostey Wohstey
[20:06] [Xfire] matteox: 2nd Place: Lord Rick
[20:06] [Xfire] matteox: 1st Place: Iron Chef Italian
[20:06] [Xfire] Artaxs: Congratulations, guys!

Iron Chef Italian…that’s me! I won a Titan Quest game as well as a Titan Quest mini wallscroll. Photos will go up as soon as the prizes arrive. This just so happens to be the third prize I’ve won through Xfire. The other two were a Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad n52 and a The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II Collector’s Edition game.

<3 Xfire

Update: The chat transcript is now available.

For those interested in a free Zooomr Pro account, follow the directions in this Zooomr blog post. Pro allows you to upload 2GB per month while Basic (Free) allows only 50MB per month. Both accounts feature unlimited storage. If you’re wondering, Zooomr is kind of like Flickr–Web 2.0 photo sharing. On Friday, Zooomr will be launching their new site design so the offer may be over after the transition.

On a personal note, I’m very happy about the launch because I find the current site’s layout extremely confusing. For instance, try finding a comparison chart for Pro vs. Basic account features or finding how to geotag a photograph. Their “Help” page also lacks content and organization.

I saw this video over at CS-Nation, so I thought I’d share it with you guys. Instead of buying Episode 1 via Steam, you could watch this for free. It is well worth your ~45 minutes and is much more enjoyable than a speed run. The video also includes footage of G-Man getting hit in the crotch with the gravity gun so it must be good.

According to estimates from Box Office Mojo, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (the sequel to 2003′s $305.4 million blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) has broken the opening day and highest-grossing day box office records of 2005′s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith ($50 million), earning an estimated $55.5 million on its first Friday. Weekend estimates as of mid-Sunday are around $132 million. The way things are going for it, it’s almost guaranteed to break Spider-Man‘s three-day opening weekend record of $114.84 million from 2002. #

I will probably be seeing the movie the weekend after I get my Blingo movie ticket from June 18 in the mail.

Update: Weekend total has been adjusted to a whopping $135.6 Million. (!)