Red Faction: Guerrilla

Stunningly Average. Worth: $5
based on 360 retail

On Mars, no one can hear you yawning.

Plusses: Knocking down buildings with a sledghammer.
Minuses: The difficulty balance is all over the place, and the feature-set (no co-op?) is circa 2003.

So I finished the main story of RF:G. Lots of mangling and exploding, and yet somehow it was all a little tedious. I can't quite put my finger on how I feel about this game. The lack of co-op definitely buries this game, but there's more to it than that.

For one thing, the balance is wildly all over the place. Some of the Transporter jobs are nearly impossible. On one of them I nailed every corner and had good traffic luck and only made it by 12-hundredths of a second. That's 0.12 seconds. And that was a great run! I was like "You've got to kidding me." even thought I completed the mission. Other jobs I found to be really easy, like Heavy Metal, and the Guerrilla Raid jobs. Within one type of job, Destruction Master, I found them to be either a one-shot easy-peasy walk-over, or an incredibly obtuse, luck-reliant, controller-crushing nightmare.

Saints Row 2

Most Improved Franchise. Worth: $25
based on 360 retail

Did the developers ever imagine Gas Station Hockey?

Plusses: Incredible mayhem, good weapons, solid controls and camera, great voice-acting, good support characters, decent story. Fantastic customization options for player character and vehicles. Our self-invented mini-game: Gas Station Hockey.
Minuses: The difficulty balance is all over the place, to the point where the game can feel broken.

I played the original Saints Row and it was dreadful. Really hard, no checkpoints, long pre-mission drives to do over and over, and then you die at the end. What crap! I couldn't believe it when SR2 was announced, and I vowed never to play it. Then, three years later, a helpful person at GameStop reco'd SR2 to me as a fun co-op game. It was only $17 so I took the chance. It turns out that SR2 is a good game, period.

Gone is the original game's tedious no-checkpoint mission structure. The missions in SR2 can have their frustrating moments like any game, but generally the checkpoints are well-placed and contribute to maintaining positive progress through the jobs.

The exception to this happy balance are the semi-optional Activities. Some of the Activities are super-easy walk-overs, while some of them are as controller-crushingly difficult as Gears of War on Insane. I classify the Activities as semi-optional because the rewards for completing them can be very valuable. Earning unlimited ammo, invulnerability to damage from falling, and reduced police notoriety all contributed to easing my path through the rest of the game. But actually earning these helpful perks could be an absolute bitch.

I assumed that playing with my co-op partner would help smooth out the difficulty, but that has not always been the case. While some of the Activities are easier with two people, some of them are programmed to get even harder in co-op. This is a shamefully poor decision by the game designers.

With that said, most of the regular story missions get much easier and more fun in co-op. What also gets fun in co-op is coming up with crazy self-assigned activities like Gas Station Hockey.

Gas Station Hockey was invented by one of my buddies back when we were playing Midnight Club. It's simple: you drive your car into a gas station and blow it up. The explosions in Midnight Club would send you flying across the street. It was pretty fun.

When my co-op partner and I tried this in SR2 we almost stopped breathing because the gas station's explosion launched our car -- with us still in it -- 110 feet in the air and we landed three blocks away. When we finally stopped laughing we tried it again. This time we got 125 feet and four blocks. Thus was born our primary reason for playing SR2.

We've spent the last three weeks playing SR2, and during every session we put in some Gas Station Hockey time. At this point we've found the best and worst cars for flying (cop cars are terrific, big heavy trucks aren't), and the best high-speed approaches to each gas station. Our records include: Distance, 850 feet; Height, 298 feet; Flips: 1,250 degrees. Most of the time our characters remain in the vehicle for the whole flight, but sometimes we get ejected on launch. My character's record "Windshield Cannon" is 980 feet.

We've had plenty of "Ghost Rider" flights where the car bursts into flames and explodes in mid-air. The trick is to throw yourself out of the car before it goes off. Here's where the no-damage-from-falling perk comes in real handy because many of these self-ejections happen at 200 feet or higher.

A sub-activity has become driving through a mechanic's garage and instantly repairing our shattered wrecks without slowing down. My partner invented this one night by mistake, and it's become a regular part of the action.

We've learned how to aim our launches by hitting the gas tanks at different angles. We've landed on top of ten-story buildings, in the middle of highway overpasses, and on top of moving tractor trailer trucks. One time we landed on top of a moving train which promptly crushed us into an exploding paste. It was awesome.

Borderlands

Guns. Lots of guns. Worth: $25
based on 360 retail

This may be you sometimes when playing this game, but most of the time you make the baddies want to do this.

Plusses: guns, guns, guns! Built for Co-Op from the ground up. Mission structure. Game world packed with things to shoot.
Minuses: it doesn't look all that great, and the difficulty balance is all over the place. Confusing information layout.

There are a lot of good things about Borderlands, and I'll probably like it more as I get better at it. What I miss though is my Halo 3 control scheme, Bumper Jumper. My Borderlands character has the agility to avoid a lot of the damage I take, but the control scheme doesn't facilitate the Gypsy Two-Step and so I get the crap beat out of me.

A major disappointment for me was that the unique gun-generation system is handled entirely by the game code. I thought I'd be able to construct my own weapons, but sadly this is not how the game works. What does work is the shooting, the mission structure, and the game world. The characters you meet are barely two-dimensional, but they get the job done.

I'm ambivalent about a major design decision: the areas in the game world repopulate with baddies almost as soon as you clear them. In fact, I had one area respawn it's baddies while I was still standing in it. Not surprisingly, I got my butt absolutely blown off. The respawning allows me to churn my character's level very quickly, but it also means you have to fight your way _everywhere_, even if you were just there. Again, there is good and bad to this, so I have mixed feelings about it.

I think I'd notice these flaws a lot less if I were playing Co-Op. Once I get a chance to do that I'll revisit this review.

Mass Effect 2

In space, no one can hear you flapping your jaws. Worth: $20
based on 360 retail

All that time in hyperspace makes people really, really chatty.

Plusses: story, characters, art direction, sound design, control scheme, dialogue, relationships, combat.
Minuses: needs less talk and more rock, zero replayability.

Your story continues, literally. You can import your character from ME1 and live the results of the decisions you made in that first installment. This second game in the series shows many improvements and much more mission variety, but it is still a book on wheels that will come out essentially the same way no matter how you play it.

Yes, there is the notorious Suicide Mission, but having nailed that on my first try (purely by luck I assure you) why would I do it again?

Saboteur

Looks aren't everything. Worth: $17
based on 360 retail

Voulez-vous shoot Nazis avec moi?

Plusses: mission design, lots of stuff to blow up and shoot, surprisingly good driving, city-as-jungle-gym a la Assassins Creed, sprawling game world, palpable sense of being the underdog.
Minuses: story, voice acting, art direction, characters, character animations, graphics are totally last-gen.

This game is weird, but once I got the hang of it I had a great time. It looks and sounds like crap, but the controls and character handling are solid and consistent. I liked using dynamite to take out Nazi sniper towers and fuel depots. The variety of weapons is actually better than other WW2 games because the game designers made the decision to include some high-end fantasy weapons like the fictional MP-60 that spews bullets like water out of a garden hose.

Driving around Paris doesn't feel like the real Paris at all, but it was still fun to clamber around on the Eiffel Tower, Arc de' Triomphe, and Sacre Cour. The use of black-and-white to indicate occupied territory as opposed to full-color for the liberated areas was even more striking than I thought it would be. Once I opened up some of the city to the full-color of denazification, the black-and-white Nazified areas were positively chilling. I anticipate that this design feature will be heavily ripped off in future games from other developers because it did a great job of motivating me to colorize the entire city.

Assassin's Creed 2

Party like it's 1499. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail

Italians tend to be very nurturing, until the stabbing begins.

This is the best single-player game I've ever played. Everything about the experience is so polished that even titles from game-making giants like Bungie and Epic pale in comparison to this masterpiece of interactive entertainment from Ubisoft.

Plusses: story, graphics, camera, control scheme, dialogue, voice acting, art direction, game world.
Minuses: none (although a Co-Op mode would have made this the best game of all time for eternity).

Dragon Age: Origins

Chatty-Chatty Bang-Bang. Worth: $40
based on 360 retail - special thanks to the GamerGal

Warrior, Rogue, or Mage, tongues will flap and heads will roll.

DA:O is a terrific game, once you get the knack of it. The GamerGal has been instrumental to my hanging in there with this game. She's already got the hang of it from playing Knights of the Old Republic (1 & 2) and Final Fantasy (7, 10, X-2). I however, had a steep road to climb before I figured out how to have fun with this sprawling RPG from BioWare.

The following article is an intro to playing Dragon Age Origins, but it is not a walkthrough. It's a general guide for people who haven’t played this kind of RPG before. If you’ve played Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy then you don’t need this. If you mostly play action games but have been sucked into this game by your friends, then you might get something from this.

Stuff you’ll always want to do:

Save. A lot. Save after every fight or transaction. Save before you open any door. I save every couple of minutes, sometimes every ten seconds depending on what I’m doing. The fights in the game are not leveled, meaning it is easy to walk your Level 4 party members into a Level 20 fight. Momma said knock you out.

Take the Coercion skill and level it up as soon as you can. Anybody in your party can kick ass. Only _your_ character can talk to people and persuade or intimidate them. Coercion makes the game a LOT easier and more fun.

Pace yourself. This is a long game, and while there is a lot of action, there is also a lot of talking and a lot of party management. When I need a balls-out action-fest, I play an FPS. When I want to relax and cool down, I play a big RPG like this.

Conversations

- Talk to everybody you see, everywhere you go.
- Especially talk to your party members (mostly in your Camp). Its good to get them to like you because they will fight better. Plus, you can take them back to your tent and fool around with them (the cutscenes are only PG-13).
- Faster conversations. If you can’t stand sitting through all the chit-chat, you can fast-forward by turning on subtitles so you can read what they are going to say, then hit the Skip button (Xbox = X). This speeds up the talking a lot.

Party Members

- Always take anyone who wants to join your party.
- Listen to your party members. They have conversations with each other that can be illuminating, entertaining, or both.
- Your party members have distinct personalities. Your interactions with them need to take this into account. For example, try to avoid saying anything to Sten that ends with a question mark.

Pay Attention

- Explore everywhere. BioWare loves to hide loot down back alleys or behind things. Peek at your map to see if you’ve explored everywhere.
- When something adds itself to your Codex, take a quick look when the notice "Added to Codex" appears in the lower left of your screen (Xbox = "back" button). You don’t have to read everything, but at least quickly skim it just so you know what it was.

Let yourself get the hang of it

- On your first time through, be nice to everybody. This opens up more of the game and generally makes things easier. You can be a nasty S.O.B. for your next character.
- Get used to the Action Wheel (Xbox = Left Trigger). This will pause the fight and give you time to see which party member needs health. Almost everything you "do" happens from the Action Wheel, including Poisons, Potions, and Traps. I tried using the short-cuts for a while (Xbox = X, Y, B) but since the Action Wheel holds _everything_ I find it easier to use that instead.
- Don’t run around too much during a fight. The characters can fight or move but not both. When you move you are not putting out any damage. Sometimes you have to relocate, sure, but don’t just run around for no real reason.

The Tactics Screen

Take ten minutes out of a gaming session and really figure out Tactics. Here’s a good starting point:
- Have the first Tactics slot be "If this character’s health is less than 25%, take a health potion."
- Have the second slot activate a sustained defensive ability, if available. Warriors can activate a Shield mode, Mages eventually can get Bone Armor, Rogues can activate Stealth.
- The rest of the slots depend on the character’s class. Warriors should use Taunt, then hunker down and draw as much enemy attention (aka "aggro") as possible (this strategy is known as "tanking"). This will draw enemy fire away from your lightly-armored but high-casualty-producing Mages and ranged weapon Rogues. Mages should Heal any party member whose health falls below 50%. Rogues can attack with bow and arrow.
- You could use one of your Warrior’s slots to say basically, "If an enemy is attacking my Mage (or ranged weapon Rogue), stop whatever you’re doing and attack that enemy."

What made this game fun for me

Here’s the number one thing that made this game fun for me:
Play as Morrigan. She inflicts more than twice as much damage as any other party member. She has so many great spells in her Action Wheel that it’s practically impossible to set up her Tactics to use everything, unlike a Warrior or Rogue who can be more of a fire-and-forget once you get their Tactics set up.

This meant letting go of my own character a little. I set up a Female Warrior Human (named "Jade") and have not leveled her up very well. This is typical for the first time I play an RPG. It takes me a character or two to get the hang of what’s important. For now I have Jade’s Tactics set up so she acts as a heavily armored Ranged fighter who hangs back and shoots at people. If an enemy attacks Morrigan, Jade's Tactics have her shoot at that enemy. If an enemy attacks Jade, I have one of my Warrior’s Tactics set to come and help her out.

Here’s the number two thing that made this game more fun:
Make a ton of health potions. Who needs skill when you can health up 75 times in a row? This has saved my bacon many times and let me avoid getting knocked out by Momma (see above). The merchant in your Camp has unlimited Flasks for sale, and the merchant in the Dalish Camp has unlimited Elfroot for sale (you need both). You'll need at least one party member with at least one level of Herbalism. Then you can crank out dozens of health potions for your party members to chug down during your fights.

Good luck!

Brütal Legend

Bring Your Contraughler To The Slaughter. Worth: $9
based on 360 demo

The Hell's Bells on my Crazy Train just called Doctor Love.

I only fired up this demo because the GamerGal made me. Within ten seconds we were both laughing our asses off, and not because the game was bad, but because the writing is fantastically funny. It helps that we both know a lot of musicians and went to High School back when Heavy Metal was in its heyday.

The voice actors spin the great writing into top-notch performances. The dialogue is delivered with just the right mix of down-to-earth, yeah-this-is-happening realism and over-the-top head-banger awesomeness. Jack Black is terrific, naturally, and perfectly cast as Eddie the ultimate roadie.

The game itself is pretty simple, essentially playing out as a button-masher where you pound A and X to fight and press Y to grab stuff. The graphics are at least four years out of date, but at this point graphics weren’t too bad four years ago. The music, as one would hope, is very promising -- as long as you’re into Metal. The story feels very linear and replay will be extremely limited.

This game doesn’t get a high score, but it’s a lot higher than the Zero I expected to give it.

Darkest Of Days

Shoot your way through history. Worth: $20
based on 360 demo

What a concept, an FPS with a concept!

Whenever I try out a new shooter my mind basically says the following: "Hey, a shooter. Wow, I can shoot. Yeah that's terrific. What else ya got?" It turns out that Darkest Of Days may have that rare quality in this genre: originality.

Bloody Harvest
The demo features the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history (23k casualties). After a few minutes you can see why it has this notorious distinction, as thousands of soldiers fight for a cornfield the size of a schoolyard. Huge volleys of gunfire fill the air with metal and clog the farm's drainage ditches with heaps of shattered dead and howling wounded. The scenes depicted felt spot-on to the descriptions I've read about this battle.

Why can't I get a cellphone signal in 1863?
The game has some similarities to the short-lived but excellent TV show Journeyman, where you travel through time so you can affect the lives of historically-significant people. Where Journeyman focused on everyday life, however, Darkest Of Days centers around history's great battles.

Point and shoot, and reload. Still reloading. Ughh, still reloading...
In the demo you began with a time-accurate 1860's single-shot rifle. Slow... inaccurate... you can see why they don't make a lot of Civil War era video games. But then your time-traveling handler gives you an assault rifle. Needless to say you suddenly become the highest casualty-producing soldier on the battlefield as you wipe out entire enemy companies with a single clip. This historical twist is an engaging "What If" scenario, which appeals to me because I like Alternate History as much as I like regular history.

Unique, fresh, and interesting
This game plays well, and although the graphics won't win any awards, it looks good enough. The demo presented me with what felt like a tightly-researched experience, and promises much more from other times and battles. Good stuff.

H3 ODST Firefight

This is the way Bungie saves Multiplayer. Anticipated Worth: $200
based on 360 video and online previews

My next year of gaming

Clearly Bungie has heard the feedback from enough gamers like me to realize that H3 Multiplayer has been hijacked by cheating betrayal punks and is totally un-fun for anyone with even a modicum of honor and good sportsmanship. Firefight is a new (to Halo) gaming mode that combines the best of Campaign Co-Op with the best of Multiplayer, without all the Ridalin-fueled 15-year old racist homophobic teabagging assholes.

See this well-written preview for more.

Wet

Guns 'n Swords 'n Rock 'n Roll. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Kill, lanky Tarantino babe, Kill!

If you had Quentin Tarantino run Tomb Raider, BloodRayne, and Stranglehold through a blender you'd wind up with Wet. QT's influence does the same thing for mindless killing games that Tim Gunn's influence does for fashion: makes it fun, accessible, and stylish.

The camera does a fantastic job of following the main character, Rubi, as she soars, slides, and sails around the screen dealing out a non-stop barrage of dual-wielded death. If anyone in the crowd of goons survives long enough for her to get close, she can instantly switch to her sword for turbo-charged butchery.

And then Rubi gets _really_ pissed off.

When this happens the game switches to a very hip, Frank Miller-esque red-white-and-black graphic style, with all the same gut-blasting moves as before, just super-posterized. It's a bold and refreshing art direction decision that works really well.

The third game mode could be called "Highway To Hell." Rubi rides on top of cars, shoots bad guys, and leaps from car to car just in time to avoid a bridge, a pile-up, or an all-purpose explosion. So with all this amazing alliteration, why isn't this game Worth more? Because it's all frosting and no cake.

Wet offers an experience so constantly off-the-hook that I'm absolutely sure I'll get sick of it after a couple of hours, just like I did with Stranglehold. A good game has good pace. The only pace Wet has is Full Kill Ahead.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Longer than school in real life. Worth: $16
based on 360 retail

Relive your school days as a short scofflaw.

This game shares so much with it's big brother that it could have been called "Grand Theft High School." While Bully has got fun things to do, decent controls, camera, etc., the story is so long it feels like I could have gotten a real-life degree in the time it's taking me to plow my way through this scholastic epic. I've been playing it for a month and I'm still only 40% of the way through. More on this criminal-in-the-making when I finally finish.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Damn You George Lucas. Worth: $10
based on 360 retail

La la, ARGH! La la, ARGH!.

The difficulty level on this game is so all over the place that it's a wonder I didn't pitch my controller out the window. Yes, it looks great, sounds great, and has a good story that connects Trilogy I with Trilogy II. But certain areas and rooms are so suddenly and egregiously challenging that I learned to just have the GamerGal read me a walkthrough any time I got killed more than twice in the same room.

Pet peeve: Boss fights that finish with a button puzzle. I can't see the coolness when I'm doing a goddamned button puzzle. I cannot _wait_ for button puzzles to go out of style. It's such a cheap shortcut. Just give me a good boss fight, don't clutter it up with these mindless button puzzles. With that said, at least the timing for these button puzzles was relatively forgiving. Mercenaries 2 and God of War 2 gave me practically no time to hit the buttons.

Most rooms were fun. I'd Force Grip someone and throw them around, or I'd zap fools with Lightning. Sometimes I'd stab them with my Light Saber. But... that's kind of it. It's a pony with a great trick, but it's only got the one trick. Replay is practically zero except I wanted to see how the two endings looked. And don't get me started about the signature Force Move Of Amazingness, pulling down the Star Destroyer.

The signature Force Move Of Amazingness, pulling down the Star Destroyer
This goddamn puzzle managed to ruin what could have been the coolest video game moment, ever. Ripping a Star Destroyer from the sky and dashing it into the ruins of a once-great city. But the way this is handled is so long and tedious that it just becomes something to get over with, like doing the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner. It's a huge missed opportunity, and it sums up the entire experience of playing this solidly-built but deeply flawed game.

MySQL vs. CS4 on OS X

In brief:
Two partitions:
Boot partition: case-insensitive. Adobe CS4 installs normally. MySQL installs from easy-to-use binary installer pkg.
CaSe partition: case-sensitive. Holds MySQL data files.

Create this file:
/etc/my.cnf
...and enter:
[mysqld]
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
datadir = /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data

Copy the data files:
sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/bin/data/mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/bin/data/myDB /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDB

Then:
sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql

For PHP:
sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
line 761 (or so) find "mysql.default_socket=" and add "/tmp/mysql.sock"

Restart.

The Problem:
Gypsy 6's MySQL databases require a cAsE-SensiTive boot drive, but Adobe CS4 requires an case-insensitive boot drive.

The Brainstorm
Maybe it's only the MySQL _data_ that has to be on a case-sensitive drive, while the MySQL server software can be on a case-insensitive boot drive.

The Pain
Five years of installing CS2, 3, 4 on a case-insensitive virtual disk, totally foiled by Flash 10 and Actionscript 3. Nineteen straight hours of formatting my old 40GB external hard drive with various formats and then installing OS X and MySQL, over and over again.

The Result
It freakin' works!

---

Prologue - The Death Sentence
I made a back-up of my client's database with the MySQL GUI tool called "MySQL Administrator". It was super easy. I could also have done this in a Terminal window, but I didn't so I don't have that command here. Just Google "back up MySQL database".

---

Act I - Installageddon
- I formatted my 40GB external drive with two partitions. One partition is about 35GB and is the default, case-insensitive format and is called "LaCie 40". The smaller 5GB Partition is HFS+ (case-sensitive) format and is called "CaSe" (<- no spaces in the name!!!).
- I installed OS X Leopard to the case-insensitive partition.
- I did all the software updates (which got me up to OS X 10.5.7).
- I ran the user-friendly installer for MySQL 5.x. on the same case-insensitive partition (you don't get a choice, the MySQL server software _must_ be on the boot drive).
- Restarted my Mac

---

Act II - Terminalator
- I made a new folder on the very top level of my case-sensitive partition "CaSe" called "MySQL_data" and used the Info window to make all the permissions for that folder "Read and Write" for every user I found.
- I created a new file: /etc/my.cnf by typing this in the Terminal:
myMac > sudo bbedit /etc/my.cnf (you can use the omnipresent vi if you don't have bbedit)
and put the following text in it:
[mysqld]
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
datadir = /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data
- Then I did this:
myMac > sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/data/mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
The MySQL server software uses it's own database called "mysql". The above line copied it to my case-sensitive partition. I've moved the actual mysql datafiles!

- Restarted my Mac

---

Act III - Permission To Ill
Now I use Terminal to set up my database:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql

If this gave me the fucking "/tmp/mysql.sock" error I did this:
myMac > sudo echo
myMac > sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe &

(See UPDATE 2 below for a more permanent fix for the mysql.sock problem.)

and then I left that Terminal window open. Maybe I didn't have to, but what the hell, Terminal windows are free.

Then I did this again:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql

Which got me the happy "MySQL is working" message and the mysql prompt:
mysql >

Hurrah, MySQL is running. Now I log out of MySQL (type "exit") and then do this:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password myPassword

Now log in again as root like this:
myMac > su
sh-3.2 > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p
and at the mysql prompt I did all this crap:
mysql > CREATE database MyDatabase;
mysql > GRANT all on MyDatabase.* to root@localhost identified by 'myPassword';
mysql > GRANT select, insert, update, delete, create, drop on MyDatabase.* to MainUser@localhost identified by 'UserPassword';
mysql > GRANT select, insert, update, delete, create, drop on MyDatabase.* to MainUser@"%" identified by 'UserPassword';
mysql > GRANT select on MyDatabase.* to WebSurfer@domain.com identified by 'WebPassword';

I opened another Terminal window and restored myDatabase like this:
sh-3.2# ./mysql -u root -p MyDatabase < /Volumes/myMac/web_sites/client_1/client_1_backup_file.sql <- your .sql file will be called something else.

---

Act IV - Wacked-Out On PHP
From here it was the normal OS X web server set-up, including /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, /etc/hosts, and copying /etc/php.ini.default to /etc/php.ini like this:
myMac > sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
myMac > sudo bbedit /etc/php.ini
I opened /etc/php.ini in BBEdit then scrolled down to line 761 where it says "mysql.default_socket =" and added "/tmp/mysql.sock" This is what makes PHP know how to find the MySQL server.

This did it. Now I have case-sensitive databases and a case-insensitive boot drive for CS4 to clog up. But this process is so long, and so many things can go wrong, that the best I can hope for is to provide a rough guide to be used in combination with the guides I used to figure out all this horseshit.

---

Comments, addendums, fixes, all are welcome. This problem is not going to go away for me, so any extra info I can collect will help me the next time I have to do this.

UPDATE 1:
Adobe CS4 installs perfectly. Everything runs great.

UPDATE 2:
I migrated the external drive to my regular drive in my laptop, which generated a lot of permissions trouble and I couldn't get MySQL to run at all. I ran the permissions clean-up from the command line:
myMac > sudo /usr/sbin/periodic daily weekly monthly
the I Restarted. This helped a little. I could get MySQL to run, but only with difficulty and MySQL wouldn't launch automatically. After fighting with the permissions for a while, this worked:
myMac > sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDatabase
myMac > sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDatabase
myMac > sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
myMac > sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql

sudo = "do this as the root user" (you'll need to put in your root password)
chown = "change user (or owner) that can access this"
chgrp = "change group that can access this"
-R = "do this for this folder, and everything in this folder"
the first mysql = "user name is mysql" (this is the mysql server's user name)
the second mysql = "the MySQL database called mysql that is part of the install and stores all the MySQL access info"
myDatabase = "other databases I need to access"

Good luck, and again, any war stories related to this are welcome. It seems like every time I do this it comes out a little different.

Two Worlds: full review

Okayest Game Of The Year. Worth: $15
based on 360 retail

$60? No way. $15? Sure thing.

You know how the original Star Wars movie transcended its genre? Meaning, that even people who don't sci-fi liked Star Wars. Two Worlds is so poorly designed and developed that the only thing it transcends is my ability to believe that a major game with such crappy craftsmanship ever got released.

And yet, its still fun.

Make it your own
I'm 13 hours into my first character and I have to say that despite a bad camera, terrible framerate, ugly artwork, corny dialogue, and hard-to-follow quests I'm having a good time with this game. I play it with the sound completely off and listen to music on my iPod. When I get lost on a confusing quest, I look it up on a walkthrough. This is not a game I'm going to devote months to (unlike Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3). I'll play through the story, check out the different magics, upgrade my weapons, level up my character, and then get the hell out. This game is also benefitting from the fact that there aren't any other games out there for me right now.

You had me at hello
There are lots of cool things in this game that I hope other developers pick up for future releases. You can pay an in-game character to help you rearrange your skill points. You can carry three portable teleporters. I dropped one teleporter next to my favorite merchant. When I get full of loot, I drop a second teleporter, then zap to my merchant. I unload my loot, zap back to the second teleporter, pick that teleporter up, and continue adventuring. You can fight and cast spells from horseback. Your horse can carry a huge amount of loot for you. You can add damage crystals to weapons, and then keep on adding them to that same weapon (1,000+ fire DMG anyone?). There are tons of things to spend money on, so you don't hit that wall where you've got a lot of dough but nothing to spend it on. Because you can upgrade your weapons and armor with same-name items, there's always something to look for at the merchants. Even if you're wearing great gear, it can always get better. Even the Alchemy is well-conceived, once you get the hang of it. My favorite things to make so far are potions that permanently(!) upgrade my character. I've never seen that before.

But you lost me after that
My impression is that everything about this game that was done on a whiteboard was envisioned by a team of creative and talented professionals. Those planning meetings were so good that this game survives the shamelessly shoddy hack job it received after the initial planning was done.

If you really like Role-Playing games (like me), Two Worlds is worth playing. Everyone else should just wait for the next release from Bethesda.

Stranglehold Boss Fight

Now with colorful toxins! Worth: $10
based on 360 retail

Here's Gypsy 6 running to catch a taxi.

First time I've ever seen this: a breakable level.

I'm fighting a boss named Vlad. He runs up some stairs, I follow. I take out his henchmen and shoot the boss a little. Vlad runs away, down a different flight of stairs. I follow, shooting more henchmen. Vlad dashes across an open area. I'm about to follow when he turns on a massive grid of laser beams, tied into land-mine booby traps. One touch on the beams and I'm dead. So rather than try to fight while I sneak through the beams, I go back upstairs and engage Vlad (and more henchmen) from above. This makes him run away out of my sight, triggering another set of laser beams. I go back downstairs and sneak through the first set of beams, but get to a dead end. There's a barrier of beams between me and the next room where Vlad is. I look, and look. I go upstairs to reconnoiter. I sneak over here, nope. Sneak over there, nope not here either. I try shooting stuff (this game has a lot of environmental destruction). Lots of sparks and busted furniture now, but still no way forward. Maybe if I sneak up close to the beams and DIVE THROUGH ---

BOOM!

I'm fighting a boss named Vlad. He runs up some stairs, I follow...

I repeat the above cycle so many times that the game asks me if I'd like to try it on Easy difficulty level (I was on Normal). By this point I'm so pissed off I said, "Sure, I have no shame anymore, I'm clearly incapable of playing this fucking game!" Repeat, repeat, repeat. Look it up on Google. Sit through FIVE video walkthroughs. Repeat repeat repeat. WTF !?!!! Finally I'm so pissed I decide I might as well have some fun and just sprint after the boss, not stopping for anything.

90 seconds later I'm done.

If you make the boss advance, he activates the next stage of laser beams, which include some beams BEHIND YOU to keep you from backtracking. But I was getting him to advance without being anywhere near him, so the pattern would lock me out by activating those anti-backtracking beams IN FRONT OF ME, effectively breaking the level. The pattern doesn't try to detect where the player is, only the boss. The assumption is that if the boss is at point D, the player must be at point C. Meanwhile, I'm still all the hell way back at point A. This is clearly a huge oversight from lack of testing. There's no way I'm the only person to ever do this, and I did it fifteen times in a row!

Stranglehold is ok, but it's not good. I'm glad I waited so long to get it. While the frenzied bullet-fests are fun, that's literally all this game is. So far, the whole experience is like the Library level in Halo 1 with an occasional dose of the (shudder) mine level in Psi-Ops. Plus, the boss fights are weird. There's always some unnatural thing you have to do (like charge after the boss so he doesn't break the level). If it weren't Chow-Yun Fat and John Woo, I wouldn't have bothered to get past the second chapter. But, I love the movie Hard Boiled, and this game recreates the action scenes really well. Sadly, that's all I see coming from this one-dimensional serving of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs.

Halo Wars

This is the way the franchise ends. Worth: $4
based on 360 demo and videos

Mom, can I keep these guys?

I'm a Mac guy, so I knew about Halo way before it came out on Xbox and then PC. I first heard about it as an idea for a Mac-only RTS. Later it was going to be a Mac-only FPS, but at the time I promptly forgot about Halo the RTS because RTS games are tedious, stressful, and more often than not you spend hours on something that doesn't work out. In other words, you can lose.

To hell with losing. Getting my butt kicked, sure. Getting my ass handed to me, fine. But losing? That's too much like real life. I like FPSs, Racers, and RPGs because ultimately you're going to win. The only strategy game I've liked since Myth:The Fallen Lords was Civilization Revolution, which is an RTS like Will Farrell is Phil Hartman. CivRev is strategy-Lite, which is fine because it's so much less challenging than the typical hardcore strategy game. When I played CivRev I felt confident that my three hours of gaming would end in world dominance and not in frustration.

Halo Wars may not be totally hardcore, but it's still got the tedium of building a base and moving your little guys to the battles. The problem is, I'm not having any of the fun. All my little guys are. The game itself works great, the controls are easy to learn and use, the maps are easy to navigate around on, and c'mon, it's Halo! It's got to be good, it's Halo! Halo!!!

But it's not Halo. This game is why the minds at Bungie circa 1998 switched Halo from an RTS to an FPS. It's boring. They should have made another Halo 3 expansion like H3 Recon (aka ODST <- terrible name!). Why not H3 from the Arbiter's POV? With so much rich material it's a shame that this much talent went into something so forgettable from an otherwise stellar franchise.

Fallout 3

Future's so dark, I gotta wear a Haz-Mat suit. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail

No really, it's good radiation.

This sprawling, radioactive sandbox RPG is the most dualistic game I've ever played. It's huge, but you know it's just a small portion of the actual world affected by the story. There's a palpable sense of scarcity, yet you can always find more ammo. It's gorgeously rendered, but bleakly monotonous.

It's also super-gory. Heads, arms, legs, (and sometimes all of these) come flying off at least half of your victims. It's so detailed that you can actually see your enemies' eyeballs burst out of their sockets and land on the ground, where they remain for your gruesome inspection.

The world is spectacularly well realized, but this accuracy to post-apocalyptia is also a turn-off to the GamerGal. As she puts it, "You go from one desolate shithole, turn a corner, and surprise! Another desolate shithole!" While the monchromatic and uniformly forlorn game-world is pretty depressing, it's also fascinating, and jammed with things to see, do, and of course, blast into limbless gore-splattered torsos.

I loved Bethesda's earlier RPGs (Morrowind and Oblivion) and I love Fallout 3 also. If you like the idea of a big RPG / FPS / 3rdPS / sandbox mix (and I'll bet you do) than you may also enjoy devoting an entire month of late nights to playing this game. This may be the best game of 2008, which has been an excellent year. I give it my highest recommendation.

PROS: Big, fun world. Well-written characters and stories. Excellent weapons and armor. Good mini-games for locks/hacking.
CONS: Very short main quest. Leveling up stops very early at 20. Main quest has unsatisfying finale.

(Reading my CONS make me realize that I'm looking for more of a good thing.)

Fallout 3 custom weapon parts

Bottlecap Mine*
- Lunchbox
- Cherry Bomb
- Sensor Module
- 10 Bottlecaps

Dart Gun**
- Paint Gun
- Toy Car
- Surgical Tubing
- Radscorpion Poison Gland

Deathclaw Gauntlet
- Wonder Glue
- Leather Belt
- Medical Brace
- Deathclaw Hand

Nuka Grenade
- Nuka-Cola Quantum
- Tin can
- Turpentine
- Abraxo Cleaner

Railway Rifle
- Fission Battery
- Pressure Cooker
- Steam Gauge Assembly
- Crutch

Rock-It Launcher
- Vacuum Cleaner
- Leaf Blower
- Firehose Nozzle
- Conductor

Shishkebab*
- Motorcycle Gas Tank
- Motorcycle Handbrake
- Lawnmower Blade
- Pilot Light

* Indicates high lethality. All the custom weapons are fun to have, but these kill things quickly and reliably.

** Special note: use the Dart Gun as your first shot and your enemy will be significantly slowed (both their legs get crippled). Leaves you much more time to gun them down, even without VATS. Weaker enemies like Raiders will be severely affected by the poison and may just drop dead after a few seconds. I've found this gun to be amazingly accurate and it's become the gun I keep in my hand as I explore wide-open areas in the Wasteland.

Overlord

Get in touch with your inner ###hole. Worth: $12
based on 360 retail

For bossy people of all ages.

Control a platoon of minions who obey your every command. Sounds great, right? It is, kind of.

GRAPHICS, MUSIC
The game looks great, sounds great, all that good stuff. Honestly, I take this for granted now, but it stills bears mentioning because I'm sure it's hard to do.

CONTROLLER
Maneuvering a squad of minions is mapped to your controller in a way that mostly makes sense and is easy to use. It's just that controlling a horde of minions is so different from every other game that it takes a while to get the hang of it. Then if I go off and play some other game I have to re-remember how to play Overlord.

MAPS
There is something about the maps that make them impossible to remember where to go. They're like Halo 2's difficult-to-remember maps gone to hell. I'm lost - all the time! Even the GamerGal can't figure them out, and she has a preternatural sense of direction.

MINIONS
They're hilariously enthusiastic. Vicious and utterly without fear, they _are_ the game.

OVERALL
For some reason, I just can't stay with this game. It's too hard, and I spend so much time lost that it becomes an exercise in frustration. As good as this game seems to be, I can always think of something else I'd rather do instead.