Straight Jacket Type Fun

Back to Front Page

3/31/2004

What's that? You want some information on Serious Sam 2 cause it's the best g'damn co-op game ever created by human hands?  You got it!

I saw the name of this game and thought, "We're in a sick world if there's a game made for watching celebrities on the toilet." Then I realized I mis-spelled the game's name. d'oh

There's some words in computer articles regarding the actual programmers that shouldn't be used. One of those SLAM as in this article's headline.  I just can't help but see scrawny white men taking on the entire Japanese gaming community (and their pale scrawny selves) in some sorta tangle of pale matchsticks in a battle royale.

3/30/2004

AMD's 64 bit processor to be in the X-Box 2?  Not a bad thing for AMD that's for sure but will it have the uber fan in it like my rig?

Hey now, look here!! Painkiller set for an April 12th release.  Nice.  I could go for some single player no-brainer shooter action.  Will it have anything new? Probably not in terms of overall first person shooter gameplay (though I'm intrigued by the Tarot card type power up thingies), but will it tide me over till Doom 3? YES!

So the new scramjet worked. Of course to make the scramjet work it first must get up to Mach 5 and to do that in the test they needed a Pegasus rocket which would seem to negate any environmental benefit.  What they are saying is that you use a ramjet to get up to high mach then use a scram jet to get to ludicrous speed.  Of course, Domino's needs this tech. Get your pizza air-dropped in 30 minutes or it's free.   

Leisure Suit Larry is coming back which hopefully means the return of maybe some other notable Sierra titled classics.  Police Quest is what I'm hoping for mostly. 

3/29/2004

As if it's possible, Infinium Labs, makers of the non-existent Phantom gaming console, are even bigger assholes than we thought before.  

Infinium is hoping to get the Texas suit dismissed and drag out a lengthier (more expensive) suit in Florida.

Nice tactics there guys.  Be sure to run over some orphans on the way to the courthouse. 

I certainly am glad I don't let my imagination run too wild.  Just a few weeks ago I was thinking to myself, "I've had my TV for quite a while now. I wonder when it might go out and I'll have to buy another one?"  Well, you guessed it, the thing started letting off that rank ozone smell and the RGB color guns seemed to have gotten out of sync.  I ceratinly am glad I had not thought, "You know, I wonder if a TV could reach out and eat my spleen" for that would be painful

3/28/2004

The Far Cry demo is quite a bit of fun.  Despite the size of the demo (500Megs!), it really brings some nice features to the table such as bright colorful levels which might remind some of Serious Sam, some fun weapons, vehicles you can control (the dune buggy being a personal favorite), and computer controlled characters which will definitely keep you on your toes.  I'm pretty sure this game has the best computer controlled bad guys to date.  They look for cover, try to flank, and throw down suppression fire so their squadmates can move forward.  One control I do like is that instead of having to put down your primary weapon to throw a grenade, you simply hit the G key to toss a grenade and then keep on firing. 

Will I get this game?  I do like that Ubi is already talking about putting Punkbuster in the game but right now it's an issue of money in pocket.

3/27/2004

Dan's Data is such a nice place.  In this article he explains a lot about memory in just a few short paragraphs. Read up, m'kay?

3/26/2004

Doom 3, soon.  Hopefully, maybe

So, despite being on the shelves for maybe three hours, there's already a patch coming for Far Cry.  Nice to see though that this game has a clue about integrating Punkbuster right off the bat unlike other games!

Microsoft discusses their search engine goofs and how they mis-stepped on it. Would that mean they made a Goofle?

Nokia says they expected the N-Gage to have a tough time making in-roads:

"We expected it to be hard. We expected it to be challenging," Polonen said. "We got all we expected from that perspective."

Yes, every company expects their device to sell like shit, over ship it, then be forced to drop the price.

3/25/2004

I'm pleased to put up today's news, mostly because it's some more ORIGINAL CONTENT! Read the fun of me upgrading my system. 

Gray Matter Studios was announced today to be making an expansion for Call of Duty.  Gray Matter, you might recall, are the fellows you made the single player for RtCW. Which was greatly eclipsed by the multiplayer. They also made Kingpin: Life of Crime.

3/24/2004

Ok, so now I'm being accused of slacking. Fine you jerks!

First up, Ubi and Red Storm have released patch number 3000 for Athena Sword and Raven Shield.  3D Gamers has it as well as the 30 other patches you need if you want to run a dedicated server.  I've seen fewer patches on a hobo's jacket. 

A new Call of Duty patch is out. No Punkbuster still?  Let's move on then.

Microsoft to be fined $617 million dollars by the EU.  Considering they have six BILLION dollars in cash and cash equivalents (as of 6/2003), Bill Gates is just going to mail them his wallet, including his now cancelled credit cards.

3/22/2004

Well, after about 48 hours with this new machine the only problem I'm having is that for some reason IE keeps locking up when I try go to Bluesnews.com. But it works fine with Netscape 7.1. Odd.

3/21/2004

Where have I been? System upgrade time! Athlon 64 3000+ and Serial ATA is some serious hardware that's for sure.  Not top of the line but nothing to scoff at either.  I should hopefully have a review up sometime in the near future about my trials and tribulations regarding the build.

3/17/2004

Has time passed me by or am I just too cynical on gaming anymore? Everyone is going nuts for Battlefield: Vietnam but I just don't see the hype. Especially after reading forum threads regarding how it's not running that well.  Here I sit though still playing a two year old game and most of the time still enjoying it.  I just don't want to spend more time patching than playing.  I guess others have the patience for it but not me. Then people also go on and on about EA dropping support rather quickly for games.

At any rate:

Hellboy, which looks interesting, is in theaters Friday. Movie about shooting Nazis.  I already give it 2 stars just for that!! I'm surprised there's no talk about a computer game.

3/16/2004

Do you like a signature for your messages in a message board? Well, mine's way better than yours now. Just deal with it!

Quakecon inbound!

Sphinx's addition:
Resort website: http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordtexan/
Directions: http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordtexan/get_here/directions.cfm


This is close to a major outlet mall called Grapevine Mills and another city called Lewisville which I'm pretty familiar with (more correctly, at least where the Hooters is.. heh)

This location is about 15-20 miles north of the downtown Dallas area.
Area Map:

http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordtexan/get_here/area_map.cfm

So if you fly in you'll notice it's about 10 minutes from D/FW airport.
The closest major clubs are to the south back towards Dallas or there are a few in North Dallas as well (Times Square has something for every taste in music).

But in my opinion, I think Ft. Worth offers a more tourist friendly venue (free parking downtown on weekends, good food, fun clubs).

And that's my Chamber of Commerce plug.

3/15/2004

If I don't answer my phone, I've probably run to Canada. Why? Selective Draft.  I swear, sir, I only know Windows 3.1!

It's not a planet. It's a distant rock.  

My machine is bought and on the way but if you're looking still, check out this review of the Nvidia Nforce 250. Doesn't appear to be much difference from the Via KT800 though.

3/14/2004

An interesting read I found on slashdot regarding how game developers might help their sales by making their game engines scalable. Still reading it but my question: would this require writing two or three versions of the same engine?

3/13/2004

Intel is playing copycat to AMD. This time with naming their chips. 

Something missing from Rise of Nations is back in the expansion. That thing? Elephants!

3/12/2004

And first up tonight in our screen shot bonanza (well this one shot at least): Athena Sword has bullet time!

Free.. your mind.

Ok, so after picking up Athena Sword today, I come to find out you need to apply a bunch of patches to the game to get it to work. Ready for this?

- Install Raven Shield (of course). 

- Install Athena Sword (2 CDs again)

- That installs patch for Raven Shield (version 1.54) and Athena Sword (1.0)

But that's not all! Then get over to 3dgamers.com and then install the 1.55 patch for Raven Shield and finally the 1.01 patch for Athena Sword. Phew.

But also don't forget that you have to have Disc 2 of the Raven Shield pack in the CD Rom drive. And for some reason my machine wanted it in my second CD-ROM Drive.  Go figure

3/11/2004

Ok, wait a second here folks. Let's go over history.  SCO, who is widely hated in the Linux community due to their shady practices is being invested in by Microsoft. SCO, by the way, used to be Caldera, who made a serious push against Microsoft's MS-DOS back in the days before Windows and in fact sued Microsoft regarding Microsoft's shady business dealings.  Now, however, Microsoft is investing in SCO.  I'm all sorts of confused right now.  

Dave Attel is in town this week!  You know I'm going.  

3/10/2004

Ok, I forgive you all. Athena Sword shipped today but there's already a patch. I don't get it.

By all indications, if someone tries to push a motherboard with PCI Express on it, it's all right to say no and not give into your geek side for the latest and greatest. 

I'm really tempted to get one of these things. Looks interesting to say the least. 

Godfather, the game? Perhaps there is an offer I should refuse.  Please, just let this beautiful trilogy rest. 

Steam engine all wonky again.  Glad I don't play Counter-Strike or else I might give a crap. 

New Catalyst drivers. Get to updating.

3/9/2004

I'm very disappointed in all of you.  No one reminded me that Athena Sword was out on the shelves.  And there's already a patch! But it makes no sense how to update this stupid thing.

And let me say that buying computers is difficult when you try to customize.  But the field is getting narrowed. I'm hoping to purchase it either this month or next which of course means more insightful content here. Or embarrassing content in my attempts to build a PC once again.  

3/8/2004

There's nothing cool in game news today. Doom 3 isn't out, Painkiller isn't out, and the expansion for Rise of Nations isn't out either.  So, in an effort to keep padding my site with crap here's something for you. Exercise sucks! Why? Because at work someone was out last week and now someone is out this week with some sort of virus.  What's that mean? Double to workload for me.  Bah!! 

3/7/2004

France will be the next Muslim state if these idiots don't stop acting so stupid. A complete resignation of the scientific head honchos would only drive others away from their scientific community which in the long will lead to a complete brain drain of their country and in the end a stupid and naive country.  Given that they have one of the biggest Muslim minorities (probably majority soon) and democratic elections, you can see where it's headed.  So then, given how things are going, we'd go back over there and have to invade them, despite their lack of oil.  

/. had this story up today.

But when Michelle went back to EB Games to pick up her lost property, she got another shock. EB Games insisted on selling her back her own property for roughly twice as much as they had paid the thief. 

No more EB games for me.  Bastards. 

Last night I finally broke down and decided, "I'm going to give my machine a thorough cleaning." Not just the compressed air across the innards. But cleaning the fans with isopropyl alcohol, removing the heat sink fan and cleaning it and the heat sink. All that good stuff. Looks a lot better now though my wiring managment is something to be desired. More twist ties obviously needed. 

So naturally, somehow, my power supply blew out. My only theory is that when I blew the dust out either the dust getting blown flew up into the power supply and jammed something up or shorted it out. Or when I was cleaning with the can of air it blew out some of that cold air in a liquid state and might have shorted something. I'm about to pop open the power supply case and take a look for anything scorched.

It was an Antec 430 True Power that came with my case and I found an Antec 480 True Power at Fry's Electronics for about $120. There were others that were cheaper but I didn't recognize the names.

On the plus side of all this I now have a power supply with Serial ATA ready power connectors so that's a good thing for when I upgrade.

As a side note for even more learning, newer power supplies have power connectors labeled "fan only" which, near as I can tell, dish out less juice. As a lark I plugged in my CPU fan to that and it ran much quieter, but also a lot slower. So, despite my machine being 2-3 years old, it does have variable fan speed for the CPU.  Just have to turn the machine off to accomplish it. 

3/6/2004

So yesterday my buddy Maverick (visit his company's site. He hosts this one) and his fiancé met up with me and we went out to see Starsky and Hutch.  Funny mindless romp, but that's after having a few drinks so take my review with a shot of something if you want.

Any rate, he was discussing this site and how apparent it is that I am right about one of my primary theories in regards to games: You can't go wrong with shooting Nazis.  Nazis are bad bad men.  Look at the Indiana Jones series. The first and second ones what was occurring? Shooting Nazis. The second movie? Something stupid about tribal natives.  The original Wolfenstein 3-D?  Again shooting Nazis.  Heck, shooting Nazis, their dogs, their officers, even some sort of mechanical Hitler.  True, there has been so far one exception to this rule, Silent Storm but that probably has more to do with the presentation of material rather than the material itself.  Turn based is just not appealing. 

So, where am I going with this?  Very simple.  We came up with the ultimate Nazi killing game. We call it Anne Frank's Revenge*.  You're in your Jewish ghetto and finally decide, at almost some sort of Joan of Arc level of enlightenment that the Nazis need to go. Emerging from your attic, your first weapon being your thick bundled papers of a diary, you beat down the nearest Nazi and proceed to purge your neighborhood of the approaching Nazi goosestepping bastards.  Your family during this time also makes a break from the attic and eventually end back up at their various shops to provide you medical supplies, ammo, armor, and missing pages from your diary to guide you through the game.  

You almost meet new characters, including the kindly old man at the candy shop who will often give you special power ups called joo joo beads which will work as some super power up like the quad damage.  Other powers up include the Menora of Mauling, Dradel of Desecration, and Bahmitzvah Butt Whipper. 

It would be a mixture of Wolfenstein and Alice but also bringing in parts of Serious Sam since we need lots and lots of Nazis to shoot.  Any time you get a multi kill shot with your weapons we need some good tunes to pump out like the Hannukah song from Adam Sandler or the Dradel song from South Park. 

It's got everything you need, don't you think?  Nazis, guns, power ups, and a woman on a mission. Shoot, if I was a level designer I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'd be sitting on the beach counting my money. 

*We're very sorry for all this, we had been drinking but it sounds like a fun idea. Please direct any hate mail elsewhere. We really have nothing against any ethnic groups at all. Except Nazis of course.  Die bastards die. Also, apologies for any misspellings for any traditional religious icons, events, or holidays. 

3/4/2004

Sam & Max hit the road cancelled.  Probably cause it doesn't have light sabers and Lucas is all over himself regarding Star Wars.

More [H]ardOCP and Infinium stupidity. Penny Arcade sums it up.

Nothing much else to report.  So um, here take a look at this picture. It shows how sweet a ping gets when you take your PC up to work to play online at night on the company's T1 line. 

3/3/2004

Good day. 

Obviously, these Swedish folks know all about violence in video games.  I see it all the time in Medieval: Total War, Viking Invasion. Damn they are fierce.

Doom 3 prefers your Nvidia card.  Big deal.  Stupid marketing crap.  It'll run fine.  Keep buying ATI or Nvidia or whatever you want.  It won't matter.