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"...like it was written by an angry, illiterate 12
year-old" Want to email me? Go ahead! When do I update? When I have the time. See them links there? Click them bad boys! 2/8/2007 Where have I been? The less we talk about that the better, ok? Please man, I'm fine just got some issues I have to work through. Honest, I'm not addicted. Regardless, do you feel the need to add MORE shit in your office that will somehow make you feel like you have a bigger computer penis than any of your friends. Well move over PCI slot RAM card, cause an external enclosure for your video cards is right around the corner. To be honest that does seem kinda cool and maybe let us get away from these massive power supplies in our PCs. My future brother in law bought a machine with a 1000 watt (1 Megawatt for you with the math skills) power supply. His power supply could power his machine and mine. Screw dual SLI lets run dual motherboards! I'm trying to work my way into getting an email interview with the folks at SplashDamage about Quake Wars since by now the desire for this game has reached some sort of Pavolovian state of being. The two words together in the same sentence literally make my toes curl. All sorts of stuff coming out about Vista recently and now that the drivers are getting tweaked I'm most likely going to go ahead and take the plunge with my new system if and when I finally get my tax return. I have no zero interest in the fancy GUI interface or any of that nonsense but with the lifecycle of XP set to end in about two years I'd rather deal with the growing pains now rather than have to upgrade later to keep playing games. One thing I will definitely have to do though is either run RAID-1 or use a second drive for full time system backup because this is after all a new Microsoft release. 1/15/2007 Hiya, Happy New Year. Have a new game review. This time its Medieval 2: Total War. Clicky. Sometimes I wonder why other game sites actually pay their writers. Let us play a game. I will take a recent interview from CGOnline. This interview deals with Quake Wars, a game I am jonesing for by now. I will take the interviewers questions which are quite dumb and fill in what Paul Wedgwood probably was thinking considering that these exact same questions have been asked by about 20 other game interview sites. 1. What is the general storyline of the game? Have the Strogg just landed on Earth or is it a bit later in their invasion? Okay, so you live under a rock. The Strogg come to Earth. Earth people fight back. Kill each other, and by the way we're using the Doom 3 engine which will make all other games, except for Half-Life 2, look like a Lite-Brite drawing. 2. How did you come to the decision to make the game objective-driven? What game play elements are available with the team strategy opposed to the free-for-all method? Have you lived under a rock the past four years? Which would you rather play? Unreal or Enemy Territory? Halo of Battlefield 2? Point whoring and weapon unlocking, that is the future of first person shooters. We started that with ET and we will continue to do so now that we have the Doom 3 engine. 3. Actually, the third question was pretty good. 12 maps across four campaigns. 4. Will the game have a ranking system in place? Will awards and unlocks be available? For the billionth time, YES! Damn read some of your competitors information. If you're going to get paid by the word Mr. Interviewer, please at least make your words new and not rehashes of everyone else's questions. 12/30/2006 Some site made a video of the worst ways to die. #5 might be a bad way to die but it is definitely the best way to kill someone. 12/26/2006 All the other sites do it so here's my review of the games for 2006. Of course I only played five this year so take that for what you will. 1. Defcon -- Absolutely brilliant in design and ruthless in overall gameplay. It can tear friendships apart even before the first volley of sub based nukes hit. 2. Echoes of Faydwer -- Is this what the whole goal of EQ2 was in terms of scope and execution? Because if so where was this when they released Sinking Sands and Barren Sky? This expansion and additions and fixes brought out by this expansion put those previous expansions to shame. 3. Medieval 2: Total War -- Still immersed in this but so far it is the same formula that has worked in the past. But, after a while if you've seen one siege you've seen just about all of them. And it still has no co-operative campaign support which is a damn shame. On the plus side, no squalor bug as exited in Rome: Total War. 4. SiN:Emergence -- Good shooter but it doesn't appear their episodic content took off as rapidly as they hoped. The first chapter was a bit cliched but the action was quite good. It just needed more new stuff and not the same old placement as seen in just about every other shooter ever. Chin up those guys, I still believe in y'all for SiN: Emergence 2! 5. Godfather -- Good idea, poorly executed. A definite console port that lacked content but does get bonus points for various means of executing your enemies. 12/12/2006 The Christmas crush is here and hopefully you have your list of things you want. Personally, I bought myself Medieval 2: Total War but my buddy Maulf fell into the EA/Dice machine again and bought Battlefield 2142. Not that I blame him, there is an almost instinctive desire for him and I to play shooter games going back to our days in college and Quake I. Unfortunately, I just can't bring myself to play anymore Battlefield and instead need to wait for Quake Wars. I still stand beside my review of Battlefield 2 of course and still think its one of the best shooters around but some of the nuances just turned me off from EA and Dice and that probably won't change for a while. Regardless, stomping Irish scum or freeing the Holy Land is a fantastic sojourn. 11/8/2006 New review today!! This time it is Defcon. Enjoy, I sure did! 11/7/2006 Ars has a great write up on their site regarding Valve attempting to harness the ability of multi-core processors in their future games. On the one hand I find this very exciting but on the other it could mean a steep increase in any future computer purchase I decide to make next year, particularly if such technology can become mainstream. The most interesting aspect of this article states: While this technology probably won't make it into Episode 2, look for a repeat of the Valve Lost Cost HDR demo. Eventually, all Valve products will support this technology and the company has plans to back port it to older games such as the original Half-Life 2 (Newell wouldn't talk about Half-Life 3). Valve intends to distribute their frameworks to all of its licensees as well as making it available to the mod community. The first little spurt of the holiday game deluge begins on 11/14 when both Medieval 2: Total War and the expansion for EQ2 are released. I already have my copy of the expansion for EQ2 pre-ordered (did I just admit that? Oh dear me..) so then it becomes an issue of whether I can actually afford more games this month seeing as how Christmas is right around the corner. I don't know about anyone else but I despise asking for computer stuff on the holidays, a time when I probably need clothes and should ask for them since the females in my little circle of friends and family have much more fashion sense than I -- or any guy -- could possibly hope to have in their lifetimes. However, not getting Medieval 2 can be slightly justified since when I tried the demo it didn't play that great with decent graphical settings. The inability to see the royal emblems on the soldiers or clear details on their chain armor took a little bit away from the battles for me. 10/24/2006 It has suddenly become a solemn day at the Sanitarium as we say good-bye to our dear friend the Radeon 9700 Pro video card. It appears that last night while playing a game something happened that made the video RAM (as near as I can tell) stop processing data correctly because now Defcon looks like this. Oddly desktop images look okay but video is jacked up and as you can see games aren't much better. But, it is reasons like this that make a junkyard like Ebay useful for finding a holdover replacement until I can hopefully replace my computer next year with all the new bells and whistles like PCI-Express. $60 for a 9800 Pro seems pretty good to me though for now. Little 9700, we're gonna miss ya here. We'll especially like how it was other people's money that paid for it since someone demanded to pay me for some computer work I did for them. 10/23/2006 As you can see I don't update much anymore and I don't review much anymore. The past week has been a blur due to contracting the flu and just now getting over it. Also with the budget a little tight due to real life things it makes playing and reviewing new games difficult. The only I have played recently that's new is Defcon so hopefully I can get around to writing a review about it but I'm still doped up on whatever the doc gave me and sticking to a diet of soup, water, Gatorage, Sprite, crackers, and Tylenol is not the mind stimulating diet to make the creative juices flow. Not that I have huge vats of creative juice at my disposal mind you, in fact I doubt I even have a small cauldron of it. Truth of the matter is that I haven't felt like playing too many games beyond Defcon and Everquest 2. Battlefield 2 grew tiresome and Battlefield 2142 just didn't look good when I tried the beta. Sure there's these rumblings about advertisements in game but so what, I think that's pretty darn clever and people have already found a way to block them anyway. Besides which if you think that people don't already have some of your online information you need to stop being naive. Transforming clothes? I call dibs on the one that turns me into Starscream, prick attitude and all. 10/12/2006 The gaming gods continue to smile upon us. Demo Medieval II: Total War demo is out and waiting for you to get to the smiting! Looks like the first two demo campaigns let you take the British crown. A good way to get started for sure but when do I get to kill the Irish? 10/11/2006 Defcon is the type of game that a gamer should HUNGER for while sitting in their cubicle wiling the day away in their Cheeto stained manga T-shirt. Simple to pick up but terribly difficult to master, games are quick, brutal, and oh so rewarding. My buddy Maulf and I have been slowly getting the grasp of this game against the computer before facing off against other people but we're definitely getting better. Finally getting a feel for stealth, bomber tactics, and naval warfare. Making a successful surprise attack against one's enemy gives the same heady rush as one might encounter after a successful string of kills in any normal shooter. However, a successful attack in this game results in Moscow and Leningrad disappearing under a cloud of nuclear ash. It's unfortunate that more games can't measure your death ratios in the hundreds of millions.
10/2/2006 Since the Sanitarium is on a budget I've been hunting for a cheaper title and I have found one! Defcon appears very promising and takes deathtoll to the megadeath levels. Can't argue about that.
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