I've been playing this very small demo now for some 4 hours I am seriously surprised at how much fun the demo with it's limited amount of content already brings. There are 4 difficulty modes: Easy, Normal, Advanced and Expert. Now the first 3 won't pose any difficulties if you go only with any decent team of fps players, the first two being very easy and Advanced being rather easy. But Expert mode is really something else.

The Director, as Valve calls the AI engine, is a brilliant piece of engineering. If you think you can rest and camp out for 10 seconds somewhere the Director suddenly throws a raging horde of zombies at you. If it gets too easy it throws a Witch or 2 at you, and if it "feels" particularly nasty, the Director will throw a Tank at you. These babies look nasty in the downloadable movies, but they are bad when you're running around with all the hordes running around. Especially hard does it get when the Tank manages to take down 1 or 2 of your team mates. This boss really requires a team effort where there's strafing and shooting all around.

You can't be selfish in this game either, keeping health packs to yourself because if the team goes down the team goes down and you start the level all over again, with a total new challenge because the Director will spawn Bosses at different positions and responds to your reactions.

This is already a game I have no regrets in buying and I look forward to the full game in less than 2 weeks.

I cleaned out my now playing list. I prepped for Left 4 Dead, which will start taking up a lot of my time anyway in the coming months. TF2 will still be on there as the other multi-player I will probably play regularly. I have decided to just skip putting single player games on the list because I sometimes tend to take a while to finish them :p.

I downgraded Spore in my rating from 7.5 to 6. I stopped playing and actually have feeling at all to go back to the game. Some other games have had me on a break for a while but I always went back and finished them, but Spore just feels too much blah.

And looking at the huge amount of games both casuals, single player shooter, rpgs and adventure games I have more than enough time to waste on other titles before I should even consider wasting my precious game fun time.

I hope L4D is all it's promising to be, at least a lot of people around me are buying the game so I'll be able enjoy both the coop campaign and the versus mode in about 2 weeks.

I can't wait .

Since I bought Audiosurf for almost no money last week, I browsed through the Steam store bins and decided to buy some more nice goodies. Now I almost have that female feeling of satisfaction after having bought something, but I actually already have that after buying any new game, music CD, DVD or any gadget or PC item. This time I added Ninja Reflex, Everyday Shooter and the Best of Underground Pack which includes Eets, Rag Doll Kung Fu, Gumboy Crazy Adventures and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I love my kung-fu .

It's good to have some casual/indie titles to refresh my mind at times in-between my longer sessions playing either ETQW or TF2, which are my most played MP titles. TF2 probably takes the win atm though. After playing ETQW for 1400 hours I needed a little breather into another title.

The only thing still missing in DD is the true bargain bin. Just going to a store around the corner and finding a game dirt cheap because they need the shelf space. But maybe that also means my ever growing games collection will finally slow down and will allow me to be able to play the games that I have been buying.

A few weeks ago, I already decided to leave my clan and at the same time reset my stats. The latter simply because the only thing I was focused on was trying to get better in the melee top 10, trying to get back on the first page of the statistics page.

I was actually more focused on stats and thus stats whoring than enjoying the game and gaming in general. This is one of the reasons I quit playing World of Warcraft in the past. Luckily I asked myself again, why do I play games and have I been playing games for so long now (at the unrespectable age I am ). I play to have fun, to enjoy myself, to kick it, to funk around, to fly out of my mind, to take a trip, to immerse myself in the story, to doodly dee as an extension of real life NOT WORK . I have work that pays so there I need to work. And stat whoring, farming, grinding, raiding, gathering is all a big **** to turn the actual game into work again.

This week I made the switch from pure ETQW to a mixed bunch. I bought some smaller games: Audiosurf, which is a lot of fun to play with your music, Ninja Reflex, which is just a casual game to train visual reflexes, and I bought Gears of War and SWAT4 (bargain bin).

I also picked up TF2 again, which is a lot of fun and makes for a hell of a lot of mayhem.

Just worked my way through DOOM 3 RoE level 3, so I have that sitting for another day.

Time spend to date:
694 hours

Rank:

Supreme Commander

Overall Ranking: 29th
Melee Ranking: 20th (Back Stabbing for the win)

http://stats.enemyterritory.com/profile/bFunk?page=summary

I've been playing Quake Wars now for some 10 hours and I just have to say that I love it. It's an improved Wolfenstein:ET. Finally a game without a WW2 theme, it's got vehicles and it's very objective focused, which I must say is harder on public servers. So far I've only been exploring some of the classes (soldier, engineer, part of covert ops). It's a game that allows for more flexibility in enjoying the game. Even within classes you can still make a choice. Do I go for camp/sniping as Covert Ops or do I go for sabotage/killing undercover as Covert Ops.

Once the Orange Box is released I'll see what happens between the different MPs I have. I am not playing three different MP games. The choice between Counter-Strike, TF2 and QW will be a hard one, although I won't miss CSS as much. There haven't been any new official maps for ages now, and I don't expect new maps either. TF2 and QW on the other hand are relatively new (they are ofcourse update). So I hope there will be some updates from the game developer on some new maps also after release.

Well, I got back from Mexico last Sunday. It was a hell of a flight back because my oldest son threw up twice in the plane. He must have been dead tired from friday's party and then the next day a very long trip home. Anyway, after about a week now, I am more or less back in this time-zone (I've already spent a full week atwork).

I started back on my regular visits to Rapture which is still blowing me away, the game has such beauty. I get immersed in a world that feels so out of the ordinary and yet so much fun to visit. The only thing that has bugged me today is that I have constant crashes of the game, so I am now waiting for a reinstall to finish to see if that does the trick. I already downgraded to the last WHQL drivers under XP, but if this works I will upgrade again to the latest beta driver which supposedly has BioShock fixes.

Well, I'm off for some well deserved vacation. I will spend 2.5 weeks in sunny Mexico and will wager a trip into the US. Let's see if there's some nice game bargains I can pick up while on the other side of the Atlantic. My hard euros will give me loads of dollar value atm.

I might update these pages, but on the other hand, I might not

I ordered it, got called today by my local game store and had my wife pick it up (isn't she a sweet heart). Big daddy be prepared, and 8800GTX be prepared to suffer!

Hmm, what can I say about Sly's performance. The band started and was funky, a welcome refresher from Candy Dulfer's performance just before that. Some of the major songs were performed "Dance To The Music", "Sing A Simple Song", but all the time I and with me my friends and actually the rest of the crowd were wondering. There was this one question: "Where is Sly Stone?". The band kept on going and the roadies were signaling to keep on going. After about 25-30 minutes into the show, finally Sly showed up, not the funk legend I had expected but an old man. He showed up and went and sat behind his keyboard.

10 minutes of Sly behind his keyboard

As you can see above, that's how I saw him for a good 10 minutes then he came to the front of the podium before he was off again. He even stated he was an old man now. Hmm, 15 minutes of performance, I felt a little disappointed. I had seen him, butit wasn't much. Again the band kept on going anditlooked like the concert wasn't over yet. After a lot of hassle I guess, Sly showed up for another quick performance of "Thank You (Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)". This time he showed a little more enthusiasm and tried to rally the crowd for some funkin' pleasure.

After this it was over, Sly left, an old man, the band finished the concert for another 5-10 minutes. Disbelief and disappointment could be felt throughout the crowd.

Afterthoughts
Although I must say that I've seen James Brown after his release from prison and was completely disappointed because of his complete loss of funk, there are still funk legends out there at their old age that keep on going. George Clinton still knows how to keep on going, still knows how to keep on funkin', giving 3-4 hour concerts! For this 20 minutes Sly performance I can only say one thing from my heart: "Well, at least I saw him."

This sunday I am gonna see one of the true funk legends, Sly Stone. He is coming to North Sea Jazz, a 3 day festival that's organised every year here in the Netherlands. I of course will blog something about the performance afterwards. Cross fingers and hope for me that it won't be like James Brown, who sadly lost his funk long time before he died (hear the voice of the disappointed!).

Anyway on Sly & The Family Stone I might say that he is one of the originators, instigators to Funk with a capital F. That sometimes stinky, sometimes steamy, sometimes sweet, sometimes nasty music, that never lets me down. It always lifts me up. Without Sly there would be no Larry Graham, without Larry there would be no slap bass in funk. Where would George Clinton be without Sly, where would Prince be without Sly, Rick James? -> Sly.

Now the legend comes back from hiding and he is coming to blow my mind!

Here a little something for people that don't know his music:
Sly and the Family Stone - Thank You (Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)

I've tried to conquer GRAW for a few weeks now, but have decided to let it rest for a while. First of all, I had to replay a full level because of a known bug, then I end up in the embassy just to get shot to pieces just before getting myself rescued every single time.

I bought Stubbs a few days ago, and started that one, after that I will finish some other games before I pick up GRAW again. Stubbs is extremely funny and entertaining (I picked it up for only EUR 5, a very good bargain). My only problem is, that it won't play in 1680x1050 (my new one week old Sammy 226BW loves that resolution).

At the same time I am playing NWN (before I start on NWN2). It was free with my NWN2 collector's edition, but I'd still like to play it before starting on NWN2. Although I have no clue if stories are linked (like Baldur's 1&2), but it's an enjoyable game anyway. Although I miss Minsc and Boo kicking butts for goodness.

It's working, my system is built, and I am enjoying the eye candy. It's finally time to start playing all the games that I bought lately .

 First off, Dark Messiah of M&M.

I ordered and made some small changes:
- PSU: Antec NeoHE 550W
- Case: Antec Nine Hundred Gaming Case
- MoBo: Asus P5B Deluxe
- CPU: Intel Conroe E6600 Core2Duo
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Infinity
- Arctic Silver 5 Premium Silver Compound 3,5g
- Memory: Kingston HyperX DC 2GB Kit, PC2-6400 800MHz, LL  
- GPU: Asus Nvidia EN8800GTX/HTDP 768MB DDR3 (PCI-E)
- HD1: Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000rpm, 16MB, SATA
- HD2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB, 7200rpm, 16MB cache, SATAII
- Sound: Creative SoundBlaster X-FI XtremeMusic 7.1
- Optical: Asus DRW-1814BLT DL DVDRW, LS, Zwart, SATA, Retail
- OS: Microsoft Windows XP MCE 2005 UK, oem box

 All ordered 19th of April. I hope the parts are delivered quickly, in the mean time I am thinking of finding a second-hand Ageia. I have GRAW and plan to buy Rainbow Six: Vegas and GRAW2 and UT3 when they come out.

I've reached the final stage in building my new game system. Specs need to be up to par to support playing some of the great titles I already have sitting on my shelf (Stalker, NWN2, Jade Empire, Splinter Cell DA, and more) and some of the greats that for sure I will get (a.o. Bioshock). Specs I am working on:

- 1GB x 2 (2GB) PC6400 DDR2, CL4 (Kingston Kingston Hyper X)
- Antec NeoHE 550, 550W
- Antec Nine Hundred
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
- Asus P5B Deluxe, P965 (ATX, PCI-e, Sound, LAN, SATA II, RAID, 1394)
- Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional
- Samsung SH-S183L 18x
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 500GB (7200rpm, SATA II, 16MB)
- Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD, 73GB (10000rpm, SATA, 16MB)
- GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB DDR3 (any brand)

I hope I can have this out, ordered, build and playing on within a few weeks, enjoying full candy and glory with the latest games and finally working on my shamefull shelf of unplayed games (over 30 games and going up).

I finished Project Snowblind (blah) and started on Dark Messiah (still finding out if the Collector's Edition I bought also gives me the promised in game extras).

Then last weekend the worst thing happened. After I tried to tweak my system for the umptieth time, it of course crashed and I had to reset my BIOS, which failed. So to force a BIOS a reset, I removed my RAM and replugged that. Which seemed to work, but my system seemed to be giving problems with crashes going on. So I repeated the RAM removal several times, until it finally messed up the motherboard I guess. Now I only have 1 memory slot available . And since I was using 2x512MB, I now have a measily 512MB of memory. And I can tell you that's not much. Whereas before everything ran easily and pretty smoothly, everything seems to take forever, with lots of memory swapping all the time. I already ordered a 1GB strip of memory which I hope to have by tuesday, so I can have my system back on 1GB total before x-mas. Just need to check the 2x512 strips of memory, so I can sell em.

It's time I look into a new system, my current one is more than 2 years old. I already started collecting data again on what I'd like to go for. Expensive times are coming.

Well, I finally picked up the pace again. After finishing Gun and King Kong two weeks ago, I finished Star Wars Republic Commando last week. It's a kicking-butts-for-goodness as Minsc would say. I will write a short review later this week, but short to say that somehow the Star Wars license keep dropping good shooters and this time there's only a hint to sabers.

This weekend I started on Project: Snowblind, which so far is a so-so game. It's supposed to be Deus Ex-ish with cyberpunk and all that, but the game is pretty linear, rather easy, and although so far the advice has been in some levels to go unnoticed, barging in works just as well. Anyway, I don't expect it to hold me for much longer, and I am glad I bought it from the bargain bin, like I did for most of the lower scoring games in my collection.

I finished Gun and King Kong last week. Fun games, which I bought for EUR 15 a piece. For that money they're worth it. Currently I'm playing Star Wars Republic Commando, another bargain pick, which so far is extremely enjoyable. It's a shooter with lots of variety and I like the squad commandos allowing you to either assign a duty to one of your squad mates or performing it yourself.

And on the other hand, yes, I am still playing Counter-Strike: Source. I must try Dark Messiah MP because I'd like to have a little more variety in my MP experience. The problem with CSS is that it's addicting, but it's also getting stale. I want to play some simple MP action to lose some frustration that I encounting during the day at work, but some times CSS gives me more frustration due to lame team work or just lame players.

I hope I find a new MP game soon that forces team play and goal focused play instead of frag based simpleton playing.