I walked into the fires of hell, and had a great time

Post #14

Well I was at home sick today which kind of sucks but at least it gave me some quality time on the couch in my bath robe. This is time I probably should've spent lying in bed but instead I opted to sit on the couch in front of the LCD.

That's because the poor souls of Cryodiil were crying out to me. Crying out from beneath the flaming portals of Oblivion. Oblivion is a PC Game from Bethesa Softworks that has some seriously impressive lineage being the sequel to Morrowind a monster of a game in its own right.

Having faced an addiction to Morrowind a few years back I knew what to expect with Oblivion. In no time I had my silver haired, blue-eyed wood elf loaded up with a quiver of arrows and ready to take on the world. First thing you'll notice about this game is that it is gorgeous. It's the prettiest game I've ever played. Trekking across the land of Cryodiil is actually part of the enjoyment in Oblivion, at times I'll just stop and look at the flowers blowing in the breeze. That is of course until a screaming flaming portal to hell opens up in front of you and it gets nasty. The story isn't going revolutionize fantasy stories, the death of an empire, rise of an evil power, all of course to be unravelled by the player, the hero of the story.

So the game looks great, and the story is pretty cool, how does it play? Like butter! The AI is smarter than in Morrowind and my old trick of walking around a rock while pelting an enemy with arrows just doesn't fly any more. However there's nothing like picking off a goblin right between the eyes with an arrow and watch him get knocked over backwards and tumble down a hillside. The physics are well represented and the effects are beautiful. What can I say, love the game and hey it has expansions coming so if I can actually finish this quest (which I never did with Morrowind) I have even more content to look forward too. I recommend you check it out if you got a beast of a PC to run it. It's the game that makes systems cry.

Hey you don't get all that beautiful flowers-blowing-in-breeze for nothing

Best game you’ve never played

Post #2

When I finished Knights of the Old Republic 2 a couple of months back my lasting thought was, “I paid money for that ****ing thing!?!” The original Knights of the Old Republic was made by Bioware, who are in my opinion some of the best software developers and Canadian to boot! The original was twisting, captivating and exciting. The sequel was boring, uninvolved and buggy as hell. Reloading levels was a common occurrence simply because the game would occasionally execute events in the wrong order causing you to be stuck in the game. Hours of game play lost for nothing. You also had no real connection to any of the characters in your party and became ridiculously powerful within the third of the game and could literally left click your way through any foe, bosses included. Utter disappointment! Then there’s Freedom Force VS The Third Reich. FFVTTR was 9.99 at Wal-Mart in the value games bin. Made by Irrational Games, it’s the sequel to “Freedom Force” which, itself, was apparently a fantastic game. While the graphics won’t blow you away, the voice acting is silly at best and the “cut scenes” look like me screwing around with Macromedia Flash, the game is great. The game is a little RPG a little Real Time Strategy and a bit of Action/Adventure. The characters are fun to use, there’s a boat load of them and once you get it down the interface is very intuitive. Add in the fact that the game is customizable from Stories, to Characters and you get a lot of value for 9.99. Also once I found out you could download superhero meshes and skins from the weeb and use them in the game I was giddy. The Predator Warrior and Predator Hunter are “heroes” I can’t go to battle without. There’s nothing like knocking over a half a dozen Nazi Gorillas off a rooftop with a crushing blow from your Predator Warrior. Trust me.

Knights of the Old Republic 2… the force is weak with this one

Bravo Bravia

Well it took approximately half of forever but we FINALLY got our 40" Sony LCD this weekend. On top of all the other stuff I had going on this weekend I didn't get to spend too much time with it but my initial impressions are definitely positive.

I went from out of the box to watching TV in less than 5 minutes. Similarly getting my laptop on the big screen took approximately 32 seconds. The only true “High Definition” source I had was my laptop, and the only HD media I had was Call of Duty. My laptop is kind of balls anyway when it comes to performance but even with the lackluster 1024X768 resolution centered on the screen Call of Duty looked amazing! The dark places in the game got a little too shady but a quick bump up of the gamma slider in-game got everything right as rain.

We also threw on some Movies and TV Shows we had saved on our computers and they look fantastic. Once again the darkest parts of the movies seem a little too dark but it can be adjusted easily enough. Then the last test was actually watching normal analog cable on the TV. This is one I’ve heard horror stories about. Fortunately the Bravia shined here. At first the image looked way too blurry and stretched, but a quick jaunt through the display settings, to adjust the signal noise, aspect ratio and color temperature and everything was looking pretty darn good. Granted it’s not the sexiness of a 16:9 HDTV signal, but heck it’s free :p

Alls I can say is I’m looking forward to next Tuesday when I’ll be able to download the latest episodes of Prison Break and Heroes and watch them in all their glory ;)

My kingdom for a gaming PC

F.E.A.R Me!

Well being a huge nerd and long time gamer it’s no surprise that I occasionally like to “Git ma game on” in the first person shooter genre. Unfortunately my lackluster PC limits what I can and cannot play. Also, if you don’t have the hardware to run it, purchasing PC games seems a little silly. Fortunately there’s F.E.A.R Combat! F.E.A.R Combat is simultaneously graphically beautiful yet with modest minimal requirements. Also at the price tag of absofreakinglootly free dollars it’s a heck of a steal. You read that right, while the F.E.A.R Single Player game is a regular off-the-shelf box, the multiplayer option can be downloaded directly from their website.

Every Tuesday night at 8 I meet up with our IT department online for a romp through the offices and factories of F.E.A.R’s varied maps, with my penetrator in hand. This is probably the part of the game I love the most, a large machine gun that fires 9” metal spikes. This thing makes your regular nail gun in other shooters look like a straw full of spitballs. The really enjoyable part of this weapon is that the rag-doll physics in the game are well highlighted when using this particular weapon. Hit an enemy in the right shoulder and his body will spin away from you, catch him in mid-jump and he’ll be tug backwards as if pulled by a string. The best is if you hit someone out of mid air while they are near a wall. You’ll actually pin them to the wall like some kind of sick effigy to taunt your opponents.

All-in-all an awesome game, I just can’t wait to see it on my new system… whenever I finish building it :-/

I penetrate the IT Manager weekly