9/28/2004

Doom 3 patch today, and quit complaining about the darkness. Get over it pantywaists.  Turn on a night light or something.

An 11,000 word review of the Star Wars trilogy?  Now this weekend a buddy and I thought it'd be fun to eat a bunch of salty unhealthy food and watch some of the movies. Watched Clones, then Empire, then Jedi. By the end of Jedi, my meter for Star Wars dialogue was done and we had to stop. 

9/27/2004

10 hours of non-stop Total War on Sunday and I really come off of it with a good feeling about the game.  Admittedly, Medium difficulty isn't that hard but that's probably because I obsessed over the previous two iterations of the game.

Penny-Arcade is an entertaining website, there's no doubt about it.  It gives me just a few brief moments of geek humor then I can go about my day.  Heck, I even put a link up to the site at the bottom of this site. Naturally, they didn't do the same for me since my site doesn't deserve the traffic it even gets now. 

Regardless, something in Tyco's post today made me think that perhaps gaming isn't as great as I'd like to think.  Tyco stated:

I'd rather see a new army altogether, but honestly I'm still so elated that they didn't completely fuck this up that I'm willing to invest a bit of faith in them.

So, has that what gaming has become today for people, a cycle of just hoping a game doesn't sink below expectations? Shouldn't a game DEFY expectations or possibly amaze you at what they did?  I mean, should we be happy with games that merely meet what we were hoping for rather than amaze us?  Maybe marketing's got too much influence over all this anymore. 

9/23/2004

Rome: Total War. FINALLY!! I was at the store picking up my copy and some guy was there asking about it. "So, it's like Age of Empires?" he asks. ARGH!!! NO!!! I couldn't help but bail out the salesperson. "It's like Risk but also has tactical combat with up to 10,000 soldiers.  I'm addicted to these games."  I doubt that last part was a good selling point but it's the truth. 

9/22/2004

Now dammit sometimes when they say a game will ship that means it's already in stores but sometimes it means it actually just did ship and won't be on the shelves until the next day.  The latter is the case for Total War: Rome and I am pissed.  Curses!!

If there's any wonder why Computer Associates is getting the crap kicked out by Veritas in backup software it's probably because seeing your former CEO get indicted for fraud doesn't help one's ego or pride of working at a company. Nice job Kumar.

Go AMD go!!  I really hope they keep Intel reeling because when Intel catches up and comes back with some super processor, the prices on all processors will crater and that's good news for us computer buyers. 

Because the CAN-SPAM did nothing of value, why not try to stop malware and spyware since it will be easy to enforce that too. pppppthh.. stupid

9/21/2004

Ok, so today the game Star Wars: Battlefront came out and on the big super fantastic plus side they also released a dedicated server component. I'm actually running this at the following IP: 65.247.172.55.  A few problems exist but this might be because I've been spoiled on all the console tweaks available in the Quake 3 engine.  

1. No ability to set up a private slot(s) for friends or buddies or even myself in case the server is full but I still want to get in.  Consider them VIP openings

2. Not enough console commands

3. Why the hell can the server name only be 14 characters long? WTF

4. Need more console commands or even an in-GUI command line to do stuff.

5. No specific admin commands so you can't kick people who are being jerk-offs

6. No Punkbuster

What does look nice is that there's an online stat gatherer and a nifty little site

9/20/2004

So much stuff to buy this next week but not enough money. Star Wars DVDs tomorrow and then Total War Wednesday. Sorry George, Star Wars will have to wait. 

9/18/2004

Well obviously the courts don't just understand and appreciate the "business model" the Phantom brings to the table.  Dirty courts just don't understand the Internet economy and one's ability to swindle on it and be a 21st century huckster!

So there's a movie coming out called "Friday Night Lights" which makes me ashamed since it shows where the true focus of Texas education, and probably most other school systems, really lies. 

9/17/2004

Yes, we don't like spam, but is it really necessary to say this:

Anti-spammers have been batting the idea back and forth on Internet newsgroups and in chat rooms since last week. One contributor went so far as to compare the hurricanes to Noah's flood: "And God saw that the wickedness of spam was great in Florida," he writes, "[and God said] 'I will cause it to rain upon Florida forty days and forty nights; and every living spammer that I have made will I destroy from off the face of Florida.'" 

The quote is brought about since the theory exists that spammers, many of whom shack up in Florida where a lot of mail and phone scams originate is now getting hammered by Ivan. A bit on the tasteless side though.

Bad idea.  One day of paintball is starting to cost less than a video game.

9/16/2004

So Sony bought MGM which gives them a huge movie library to push their Blu-Ray DVD format onto the market.  Yeah just what I need, five more times the crap on a DVD of "bonus features" about make-up and the key grip's life story.  If they really want to use this Blu-Ray right, put two or three movies on one disc.  Better still, let me CUSTOMIZE the DVD like my own personal library collection of favorite DVDs.  Sony should work on that. Then I'd definitely buy a Blu-Ray DVD

9/15/2004

Apparently, people are trying to run the Call of Duty expansion on servers but just a note here people: a 32 player server will not work on your Cable Modem.  Crank it down to about 4-8 and you might be ok but it will of course depend on your upstream.  Activision even had to release a notice about this:

Several of the servers out there right now for Call of Duty: United Offensive are running 32 or more players on connections that don't support that many clients. As a result, players are getting a poor experience playing Call of Duty: United Offensive and thinking that the lag is due to the game when it's actually the connection that the servers are running on. 

Let me get one more for the road, it's good for me!

9/14/2004

Total War: Rome comes out on the 22nd of September.  I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can play this while driving to work and while at the gym since I'm sure it will own my soul and completely eat up my time. Girlfriend who? Food what?  Sure, there's another game or two out or soon to be out, but let's be honest, do any of them having packs of rabid dogs or flaming pigs?!?! No. 

Windows boosting security in their OS? Yeah ok. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 300 patches later, shame on me. 

I wish I knew Photoshop because I had the best visual when I read this article about World of Warcraft and Nvidia "teaming up"  I envisioned a World of Warcraft box with a massive heatsink and fan on the side. So funny, yet so unskilled on the graphics.

So. Awesome.

I'm watching "Terminator" on AMC right now and there's one point where a Terminator barges into a compound and starts shooting all the humans in the future world.  Wasn't it also that the Terminator just point blank kills some barking dogs too? That part wasn't in the movie right now.  How the hell is it that a slaughter of people is ok to depict but show some dogs getting smacked down is a no-no.

9/11/2004

So I actually took the time Saturday morning to download the Warhammer 40,000 demo and play it inside and out.  First, the nice thing is that the game is not as much of a click fest as some other RTS games like Rise of Nations. Second, there are fewer units but you can attach special units to each one.  However, the really nice thing is you can upgrade them on the fly while the units are moving and the upgrades and addition to the squad appear in the squad and not back at a resource point or building.  Anyway, my basic point is less clicking and more emphasis on tactics such as special units and special weapon additions.  

The bad side is this engine looks like it's from the Lords of Everquest game.  Second, the game doesn't really offer a whole lot of new things to the genre.  I think only people who are big fans of Warhammer will enjoy this game.  

9/9/2004

Now as I understand it, Warhammer possesses a similar cult following as, for example, the Branch Davidians, minus the whole holding of weapons and burning your own kids vibe going for it. A demo of the Warhammer game is now out on the 'net but it's nearly 300Megs. I really don't need an introduction movie in my demos but I guess THQ disagrees.

Even if he does retire, Carmack is the man, was the man, always be the man in terms of programming game engines.  If he wants to move on then fine by me and good luck Carmack.  Interesting how these articles now are getting headline status on CNN Money.  

PBS is not just for Seasme Street and cool episodes of Nova.  Now there's a whole series on Video Games and the phenomenon of it.  Dang, it started last night!

9/7/2004.

Halo put out a patch today for their game.  I read the fine print but nowhere in there was there mention that the game would be fun.  

Quite a few sites are reporting about the planned Star Trek MMORPG.  I won't be subtle about this, I absolutely love Trek, particularly Ds9.  But two things need to happen with this game for it to be any sort of success.  First, there better be Cardassians.  Second, it better not be another level up click fest like so many other online games or else it will just be people joining the Klingons and Borg to shoot each other all day in their ships. In fact, how would ships work? Would each server be a ship and then people are on the ship and it takes them wherever. Do you have to start out as an Ensign and work your way up in the Starfleet (or KDF, or Cardie military?  If, and it's a BIG IF, they can make some sort of special class for each species that people can work towards and those upper level works have a direct impact on the overall gameplay (like empires could fall), then I think you'd really have something. But if it's just going back and forth doing tasks, reading the tricorder and so forth then I'm not interested. 

9/6/2004

Bringin' the funny on Labor Day like only SomethingAwful.com can do.

9/3/2004

Feel different after playing games?  This study might explain why.

9/2/2004

Now, normally I take my doses of email spam in stride.  It's pretty easy to ignore and dispose of using MailWasher. Spam is one of those side effects of the Internet, similar to having to clip your toe nails while you're alive; you'd rather not have to bother but it beats the alternative.  Regardless, how the hell can something be addressed from "Your file sleeps around man."  How can someone be called that and how does that even make even the most remote sense. 

I really like this piece of Star Wars merchandise but there's no way I'm paying $100 for a shirt.

New ATI Control Panel, but why is .NET needed I wonder. 

Nokia announced they reached the one million mark in shipping of N-Gage devices.  One million shipped, 10 sold. Good job.  Waste all your profits from your phones on this garbage. 

In a shock to absolutely no one except possibly some native people in Madagascar, the open source groups have rejected Microsoft's push for email authentication and security because of how the licensing is worded.  According to Ars, the open source folks don't like how the license is worded since it says people can't change it or modify it.  I mean, who knew that people would want to be able to add to or subtract to a possible standard format.  

9/1/2004

Welcome to Total War: Rome fanboy central which this site is quickly mutating into I'm afraid. I might have to defer the review to someone else.  Here's another preview of this game.

Now just how the heck will the tradition of someone blowing their fingers off continue if fireworks are made safer?  What's the point!