• 22Jul 07

  Game Log #1: My expensive new toy

  A few weeks ago I built my first gaming rig with a lot of help from my favorite brother. We built it from the ground up with about $1,400 worth of parts (Vista and $250 monitor included in price). For the first time in about five years, I have a rig that can actually run games coming out. For those of you that are interested, it's got a GeForce 8800GTS, 2.0 GHz (overclocked to 2.6) Core Duo, and 2GB Ram. It's pretty damn sweet.

  I bought Company of Heroes and Oblivion right away with it, and I've been having some spontaneous purchases from Direct2Drive thanks to their "below $20" section. Far Cry for $10 seemed like a complete no-brainer, so I downloaded that right away and actually have played that the most. I finally finished the game today after about 25 grand hours of intense jungle creeping - very fun stuff. I wrote up a quick review on it and ended up giving it a 9.3. Besides some suspicious AI behavior and a lackluster finale, it's an incredible game, and I recommend anyone with a half decent rig that hasn't checked it out over the last three years to head over to D2D immediately and downloading it. I would seriously say that it's the best ten gaming bucks I've ever spent.

  I've gone on a crazy demo downloading binge, and I had a few pleasant surprises. First off, Prey is actually a very solid FPS and at the very least, extremely easy on the eyes. Except when your grandfather is going stabbed by alien spikes. I may have to give in and D2D that for a slim $20. Another pleasant demo surprise was Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. Not only did it look a lot better than I expected, but it played great. And once I saw D2D offered it for only $10 a few hours ago, I just had to get it. I just played the first three missions, and it is great, great fun.

  The weirdest play I've had yet is the Halo PC demo. I've played the Halos for hundreds of hours on my trusty Xbox (and not so trusty broken 360), so playing that on a mouse and keyboard was really strange. But awesome. Being a bit of a newbie at the WASD still, I had some trouble with the incredibly movement-intensive firefights Halo runs on, but man, the mouse is so nice. Don't even ask me how much I'd be willing to spend for a PC version of Halo 3 come September. There's no way I'm waiting two or three years to play that game again (the Beta was so sweet), so I guess I'll just have to put up with the gamepad. It could be worse.

  So anyway, back to present day. I'm in this crazy frenzy of playing all these different games almost simultaneously. I have Fable: The Lost Chapters almost done (it's shallow and short, but still damn fun), Half-Life 2 I'm slowly but surely getting through (and loving), Company of Heroes I just started playing through the campaign today (definitely not your dad's RTS, what a ride that it is), and I'm playing through Oblivion's main storyline. I played it on 360 and never got that much into it, even though I feel in love with Morrowind, but I'm really enjoying it more on my PC. Some mods and tweaking really makes it pretty and run smoother, and the mouse and keyboard is nice. Oh, right, and it doesn't freeze every two hours. That's always good. And then I'm playing Raven Shield and the original Splinter Cell for some intense Tom Clancy fun.

  The craziest thing is that I don't really miss achievement points. In fact, I feel liberated in a way.

  • Posted Jul 22, 2007 8:55 pm PT
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• 25Jan 07

  Uh, why?

  So I played the Crackdown demo. It's pretty awesome. There's a few concerns I have with it, namely how the skill progression will translate into the full game since in the demo, it's all accelerated. A limit of just 4 stars for each skill seems a little silly, because it doesn't seem like the difference between each star is enough when you can only level it up four times. Regardless, that doesn't make jumping around on rooftop any less fun. Or throwing cars around. Or hey, even driving them if you're more traditional. The impressions of the visuals from people I've talked to have been mixed to negative, but personally, like them. The comic-book style graphics obviously aren't as demanding as realistic ones, because the game runs very smoothly with an incredible draw distance. Which is one of the key components to just why rooftop travel is so damn fun. You can pretty much see as far as you could if it was real life, and shoot that far too. It's a very, very nice change of pace from Oblivion as far as pop-ups and texture loading goes.
  
  In the demo you can play Co-op over Live too, so I got my brother to download the demo, and we dicked around together for an hour. We would have happily kept playing, but it cuts you off after an hour. That hour was possibly the most fun I've had with my 360. It was definitely the funniest hour I've had. The things you can do are pretty ridiculous, and make for some great laughs.
  
  So my question is why MS felt the need to throw in a Halo 3 beta invite to sell the damn game. I almost don't want to buy it just so MS doesn't think their little trick worked and got my $60 because I want to play some beta for Halo 3. Sure, it's a nice plus, but you're getting my money because I want Crackdown. You're getting my money because Realtime Worlds did a kick ass job, not Bungie.
  
  It's a little frustrating, and on February 20 when I buy the game, I plan on emailing the Crackdown boys and just say, "Hey, I bought the game because you guys did a great job with it. Not because of this Halo sh*t."
  
  In other news, I've had mixed impressions with the Midway demo. The first thirty minutes or so that I played the game, I was utterly lost in the controls and fundamentals, but even after getting a grasp on the basics, I'm still not enjoying it that much. The controls are still fooling me, and I can't seem to hit sh*t. I plan to play the demo some more, because I DO want to like this game, I love the premise of the whole thing. And a competitive multiplayer experience that doesn't involve unbalanced submachine guns or crazy chainsaws would be refreshing.
  
  • Posted Jan 25, 2007 9:39 am PT
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• 28Nov 06

  No one to listen to.

  I have been visiting GameSpot since I aimlessly typed "videogames.com" into my web browser five or six years ago. They've always done a great job, but lately some of them seem increasingly obnoxious and stuck-up. Excluding Greg, Ryan, Brad, and Brian of course. For how much enthusiasm Jeff usually shows while writing his reviews and doing the video reviews, the Gears of War and Zelda reviews seemed like he would rather have been sitting on his couch at home watching wrestling or something. I can't help but wish Greg had reviewed them, not because I think the scores would have changed, but it was just a lousy and dull read and watch for both games.
  
  So with that said, the last few weeks I have been visiting other websites trying to find something fresh and more appealing to me. I like the "just like you" approach 1UP goes with, but man, I disagree with so many of their scores and comments, that it's just frustrating to read. IGN has always been a good pick that I have regularly checked over the past year or so, but their reviews are usually pretty drawn-out and bland, and they don't have any interesting features like 1UP and GameSpot pumping out. GameSpy's staff seems to have a very sincere and passionate love for gaming, but they're very much like IGN (perhaps because they're part of IGN) - boring reviews and not much else to see but reviews.
  
  I went Googling to see if I could find any obscure-but-great gaming sites, but with absolutely no success. If anyone has any suggestions, make a quick comment to this entry - it'd be much appreciated.
  
  My brother played the Wii (Excite Truck) at a GameStop a few days ago and was not impressed at all. Of course we're talking Excite Truck here, but his disappointed stretched past just the game to include the Wii-mote in general. But hey, he was also disappointed when playing the 360 the first time in a Wal-Mart. He's generally hard to please, unless it's Halo. Then everything in the world is perfect.
  
  On a side note, Donkey Kong Country rocks, even after all these years. Unlike Final Fantasy VII. That's what I learned over the Thanksgiving break. My sister learned of the phenomenon that is online video games. Made possible by the free trial of WoW.
  
  On another side note, Joe Fielder is the man. Watch the Halo video review - it's the best I've seen on GameSpot. I wonder what this guy is doing now.
  
  UPDATE: Joe Fielder is working as a game developer for EA.  Sort of ironic and depressing.
  
  
  
  • Posted Nov 28, 2006 8:46 pm PT
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