The Force Unleashed & Spore

With all the hype surrounding Spore, I was expecting a stellar game (no pun intended). From the reviews that have been circulating around the web, and the reports of extreme DRM, I have now shied away from making a purchase. I think I will wait a while to see if it matures over time.

Since Spore is starting to look like a disappointment, I have turned my attention to the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed countdown. I own a Wii and can’t wait to toss everyone around with my remote and nunchuck – should be an interesting game. Hopefully its debut will fare better than Spore’s did.

Crazy Busy Update #6

I finally completed my ethics course and have a little bit of free time before jumping into my final class. If I didn’t finish my story about my work computer, I will sum it up now… After a bunch of searching and tinkering, I discovered that it was Windows Explorer that was having issues. I installed IE7 and that corrected everything – what a sweet simple fix.

I am happy to report that my DVD LCD overhead projector is working as planned and it is awesome. Since I have young children, I have done a lot of testing with their videos. It is pretty neat to watch Blues Clues on an 83″ screen in the basement. What is even better is that the projector is capable of going bigger – I am hoping to get it to the 100″ mark. I will have to hook the Wii up to it and rock out with Guitar Hero!

Fiesta Online – Nice Style

I haven’t really gotten into MMORPGs that much, but I thought I would give the newest free programs a try. First on my list was Fiesta Online. It installed easily and the launcher auto updated itself. That was very nice and convenient. Getting into a server was smooth and painless as well, but it should be noted that there is a noticeable lack of character customization available.

The one thing I noticed right off was Fiesta’s fun and beautiful stylized graphics. It is like a cross between anime and a living comic book. Very cool. Just like Team Fortress 2, it shows that you don’t need cutting edge graphics to have a good game. Speaking of gameplay – Fiesta is very streamlined and simplistic (which I appreciate). There is the usual MMORPG grinding, but the folks I met while playing have all been very nice and fun to hang with.

Overall, I like the style and feel of Fiesta Online. Unlike other free MMORPGs, I have actually had a desire to come back to it and keep exploring. While character creation is limited, Fiesta does have an online store where players can purchase in-game items that specialize the look and feel of their avatars. I might just have to give that a try.

Spore Creature Creator

Spore looks to be a grand undertaking and is quite the story in the PC gaming community. I was curious to see how things were coming along, so I downloaded the creature creator that was released yesterday. Even through it is just a small demo, it has been fun checking it out. The interface is very smooth, intutitive, and wonderful to work with.

The drag and drop body part feature, along with the adjustment controls, are very easy to learn and use (my 7 year old was creating creatures in no time). The Sporepedia is also fun to check out. This is where you can view creations that others have made. So far, the Spore experience has been great. I look forward to the full game that is supposed to ship in September. Just as an FYI – HERE is my very first attempt at creature creation.

My New GPU – XFX 8600GT XXX

I am excited to get my new video card! I was able to get my XFX 8400GS unit to overclock nicely and play games like Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis with decent settings. I know I could get higher performance with a better card, but I don’t have the cash for a Geforce 8800GT model or the new 9600GT unit. I was able to find a deal on the XFX 8600GT XXX video card off dealnews.com and newegg.com. This will be a good improvement over my 8400GS, and I understand the 8600GT XXX overclocks even further than it already is (low OC done by the factory). It should come in today and I can’t wait to see the increased frame rate in my games.

Team Fortress 2 Mayhem

Now that I have my Orange Box set up, I can turn my attention to checking out the games. I gave Portal a try and love it. I am up to level 19 and really digg the challenge of figuring out the game’s puzzles. Very cool stuff. I have also started checking out the frag action in Team Fortress 2. I was not sure if I would like the graphic styling of the game, but after playing it for a while it is really fun to be in a first person shooter cartoon.

I have spent most of my time playing the 2Fort map. It is a capture the flag (CTF) style level and is well designed for lots of mayhem and crazy moments. Out of all the characters, I really like the sticky bomb guy so far. It is also fun the hear the team banter (be prepared for lots of swearing) from those who have a microphone on their headset. I look forward to checking out the other maps soon.

Orange Box Installation Frustration

I cruise the dealnews website every now and again because you can find some awesome deals there. They recently linked to an Amazon deal for Valve’s Orange Box game bundle for the PC for only $30 with free shipping. It was close to Valentine’s Day, so I made the purchase and thanked my wife for the great gift!

I received the game in the mail in only 3-4 days and was excited to check it out. I became frustrated very quickly after installing the STEAM service/software. The problem started when STEAM wouldn’t recognize that I had the game install files on my purchased DVD and it started downloading the software. This would have taken forever. The only work-around I found was to copy the DVD files to a hard drive folder. When I ran the setup executable from there, STEAM recognized it just fine and installed quickly from the copied files. It didn’t take too much time to figure this course of action out, but it was still a pain in the butt.

E2160 DC Build – XFX 8400GS Overclock

After reaching the final stable overclock of my new motherboard, I turned my attention to my budget XFX 8400GS video card. After reading some reviews of the card I knew it was a decent overclocker. First thing first though – I upgraded my stock passive cooler on the card because it was running at 62C without any stress. This was not good at all. During 3D testing the temperature went so high that it started freezing the system.

I bought an aftermarket EVERCOOL VC-RF Cyclone Universal VGA Cooler and I have to say the thing is awesome. My idle temperature is now 29-30C and my gaming temperature (with the overclock) never gets past 41C. Now lets talk about the overclock. I used ATITool and was able to take my 459MHz core up to a stable 637MHz. I was then able to take my memory from a stock 400MHz up to a stable 550MHz (1100MHz DDR). This is awesome! It is roughly a 38.5% OC for the core and a 37.5% OC for the memory.

So far I have tested the overclocked card in Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis at 1024×768. I was able to set everything on high in Unreal Tournament 3 and the game play and graphics are as smooth as butter. Crysis is definitely next gen and a system hog, so I didn’t have high hopes for the 8400GS. I was pleasantly surprised to get a good gaming experience at 1024×768. I was able to set all the advanced settings on at least medium and one or two on high (anti-aliasing is totally out of the question though). Not bad for a budget card I picked up for $30.

Gamespot and Gerstmann

If you are a video gamer you have probably heard about the Gamespot “scandal” regarding the firing of Jeff Gerstmann over a negative review. This is what has been circulating the web, though both parties involved (Gamespot and Gerstmann) haven’t commented on the details of the incident.

I was listening to a recent Tech Guy podcast and Leo was discussing this a bit. He mentioned that Gamespot is owned/directed by CNET and that they have been known for their professional reviews. I do have to agree with this and hope Gamespot explains its actions for reputation sake. On the counter side to this the guys over at Diggnation did point out that Gamespot took down Gerstmann’s review of the game and replaced it with a less critical review. There was also some talk that the company who made the game was falsely bolstering review ratings from other sites.

No matter what actually happened, this was a wake up slap to many people. I blindly trusted Gamespot in the past for my gaming news and reviews. It appears a lot of people did. Now gamers are starting to question the integrity of what they are reading. This is not necessarily a bad thing in today’s Web 2.0 world.

E2160 DC Build – Gaming Performance

I was living in the dark ages of PC gaming. I came to this realization after I loaded up Battlefield 2142 on my new dual core machine and turned all the video settings up to high with 8X antialiasing enabled. I was literally blown away by the difference I saw over my old single core gaming rig.

The shadows, bump mapping, and textures were so crisp in this revolutionary experience it felt like I was playing a totally new game. I love it! There is no way I could ever go back knowing what can be achieved with a few hardware upgrades and a new system build. I have a budget XFX GeForce 8400GS video card in the new rig and it kicks butt! It runs a little warm without any overclocking, so I am going to upgrade the fan on it before I see how far it can go.