I'm a little behind...

I had an overseas voice conversation using Windows Live Messenger the other night, and the sound quality and delay were painful. Google Talk has proven to be a much more effective and reliable solution in that department.

I'm looking for a replacement 400MHz FSB Socket A motherboard so that I can build something out of the leftover parts from my little brother's computer upgrade, but it's proving to be a real challenge. I've come across an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe and an abit NF7-S Version 2.0 on craigslist, but both sold quickly :(

I've finished F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, and it was a lot of fun. They don't quite explain why this new main character has super-human reflexes, but they hinted at a few possibilities. The gameplay remains the same, but the narrative is getting kind of repetitive as it plods along. While the story has become increasingly contrived, I'm curious to see how they wrap things up... But I hope they do it soon, because it's getting a little frustrating. Perhaps they're saving the big revelations for the sequel, or just mirroring Half-Life's structure, but the fact remains that I may lose interest if this keeps up, and I suspect many gamers already have.

Finishing-up Guitar Hero Encore Rocks The '80s and Guitar Hero III on "hard", but it's proving to be kind of, well... Hard. One song to go in Rocks The '80s, three or four in III. Gave up on Dead Head Fred on PSP; just wasn't holding my interest; Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters is doing a much better job :) Snagged my free copy of Carcassone from XBOX Live during their fifth anniversary festivities, and gave Screwjumper and Undertow a shot. The former seems solid enough as a relatively simple arcade game, but it's not really for me. Undertow's a bit deeper (no pun intended, I swear) and looks absolutely gorgeous, but that Battlefield-style gameplay has never really appealed to me all that much.

Finally, I think I've settled on playable graphics settings for Crysis (how come nobody told me ATi had released a hotfix!?) and Need For Speed ProStreet. I'm about halfway through Crysis, and I keep thinking that Far Cry already did jungle combat well and that Crackdown did the super solider thing much more effectively. While the game is still fun, it kinda drags and the gameplay isn't exactly groundbreaking. Perhaps they're just going for realism, but I can't shake the feeling that I've been disabling signal jammers and tagging air-strike targets for a little too long. While I appreciate the freedom the game offers in terms of how to approach each situation, I'd like the story to be just a touch more interesting between major plot points, please. ProStreet's awesome, by the way. I miss the arcade feel we've gotten used to since Underground, but I certainly don't miss the cheesy cutscenes. It's definitely more of a sim than before, but not quite Forza Motorsport or Gran Tourismo... Think more along the lines of Project Gotham Racing.

I think that about covers it for now...

So sleepy...

Destroyed Crackdown in no time and loved every minute of it; half way through F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate and quite enjoying it; found an old backup of my Most Wanted save game, so that's back in the rotation; got a Colecovision as well as some more Neo Geo MVS cartridges (Alpha Mission 2, Magical Drop 2, Windjammers, and SNK vs. Capcom!); couldn't find a replacement 400MHz FSB Socket A motherboard to replace my little brother's when some capacitors burst, so I overhauled his system (ASUS P5K Intel P35-based motherboard, Core 2 Duo E6750, 512MB Radeon 3870, 2GB DDR2-800, 350GB SATA2 HDD, 550W Antec TP3 PSU).

I've been pretty tired the last little while, so I'll be back with more detail another time...

'night!

That was embarassing...

Well, I've finally lost a game in my NHL08 season... It was to the Rangers, a 3-0 shutout. All of their goals came on funny bounces from star players, and their goalie was eerily unbeatable. I tried a few exhibition games on the hardest difficulty level (I've been playing on the second-hardest), and while I lost both, they were close. It seems as though the opposition's defence makes the real difference, taking away a lot of one-timer opportunities. Regardless of any of that, I'm having fun with it, and that's what matters :)

I picked-up Crackdown, Earth Defense 2017, and Carcassone for XBOX 360 for $25, $15, and free (in celebration of XBOX Live's fifth birthday), respectively. I like Carcassone, Earth Defense 2017 seems a pretty boring third-person shooter (friends had raved to me about how fun it is, but I'm just not seeing it; fun mindless games are like DooM, Serious Sam, and Painkiller... this just feels cheap), and Crackdown became my obsession for about two days. Crackdown really gets the open gameplay concept right, basically giving players a huge playground to mess around in. Achievements are fun, the story is passable and completely optional, and leveling-up your character is too much fun... Worth every penny :)

What else...? Finished F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and am now into Perseus Mandate. Extraction Point was fun, and had some really spooky moments, but Perseus Mandate has me worried... The story follows a second First Encounter Assault Recon team on a mission that seems to overlap with the first two titles. The thing is, the character you play as has all of the superhuman reflexes of the other team's main character... I wonder how they're gonna explain that one... Or if they already have and I just haven't been paying close enough attention... I dunno... Ergh... Just gonna shut my mouth now and play through it.

Also got a chance to play the new Windows-only content in Gears Of War (pretty good so far), as well as Crysis (kinda boring, but found a combination of high, medium, and low visual settings that seems to work well enough). Call Of Duty 4 and Lost Planet are on hold until I get through some more games that've been waiting longer, and I may just pass on Blacksite, Soldier Of Fortune, and Kane & Lynch altogether for the time being... I do intend to pick up Need For Speed ProStreet shortly though.

Oh, my stars!

Uh oh... Things are really starting to pile up now. Area 51: Blacksite, Assassin's Creed, Crysis, Kane & Lynch, Need For Speed ProStreet, Soldier Of Fortune Payback, and The King Of Fighters XI are all set to be released this week... I don't know what to do!

I think I may hold off on Assassin's Creed to come out for Windows, to help lighten my load, but that's not gonna help much in the long run :)

I dunno...

It would seem as though I've solved NHL08 on it's normal difficulty setting... Perhaps I should restart on something harder. Some of the games have been down to the wire, so I'm guessing those're the ones I should've lost ;)

Anyway, I finished Jericho, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's akin to BioShock insofar as it really allows players to approach the game as they see fit, given a set of tools. It's linear and a little repetitive on its own, but players have the opportunity to make it something really interesting and dynamic. It's not a game that makes heavy use of advanced AI or physics or powerups, but presents a versatile toolset in a solid narrative with some of the most gorgeous architecture and lighting we've seen yet. The ending though... Wow... What a letdown!

I've since moved on to F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point (figured I should get around to it since Perseus Mandate just came out) and Call Of Duty 4. Both are pretty solid games (CoD4's presentation is really top-notch), but neither has really grabbed me and held on. I'm thinking of going back and finishing System Shock 2 and Indigo Prophecy to tide me over until the next big release.

Speaking of big releases, well, this isn't one, but Fading Shadows for PSP has really piqued my interest... It's a really interesting-looking puzzle game... Read more about it here.

I other news, the Maxtor (Windows) hard drive in my BSD/Windows box went bad... Right towards the end of a particularly large BitTorrent download... Grr... Since I use that computer as a workbench to service others, I opted to re-install XP on the other hard drive, relegating any open source operating system use to my laptop (IBM ThinkPad X22 running Debian 4 'testing'). Good thing hard drives are cheap these days... I won't be buying a Maxtor though. I've seen far too many of them up and die without warning over the past few years. That's just me though; I'm sure they're wonderful.

I also cleaned out some particularly nasty spyware and virus infections from two people's computers this week... It'd been a while since I'd had to deal with something like that.

Too much!

Hey, sorry been busy lately... Picked-up a lot of good stuff :)

I bought the PS2 versions of Guitar Hero Encore Rocks The '80s and Guitar Hero III on sale last Monday; grabbed the last copy of each in the store. They're both wonderful, but I do have a few qualms with III. Some of the character designs and animations lust look scary, they got rid of Eddie Knox, I miss the old look of the new dots on the fretboard, some of the rhythms for familiar songs feel pretty awkward (perhaps that's just because I'm an actual guitar player), and some songs seem to have extra notes and riff changes thrown in simply for difficulty's sake... I don't dig that. Still, the heart of the game is the same, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Rocks The '80s is really solid, but awfully expensive for only 30 songs... Oh, and there's slowdown! Not acceptable! It's still playable though.

On my PSP, I've been progressing through Castlevania (unlocked Symphony Of The Night and the original Rondo Of Blood last night... So good :) ), got my hands on a copy of the God Of War: Chains Of Olympus demo (so gorgeous), and I'm trying to like Dead Head Fred... The thing is, all this Ratchet & Clank hype because of the new PS3 game has me itching to play Size Matters on PSP, but I really want to give Dead Head Fred a chance. Oh, and I picked-up Manhunt 2, but haven't really played it yet.

Jericho is still keeping me enthralled, but it's playing out a little more like Call Of Duty than Undying. The level structure (take a point, engage in a firefight, move to the next point) and team management (keeping your team from immediately getting their asses handed to them by giving effective orders and controlling the right characters for the situation) can get really frustrating at times, as I've found my whole team dying more often than I'd like to see despite my best efforts. It's getting better though, as I continue to come up with new strategies of playing specific teams and possessing different characters. Oh, also, despite my 12-0-0 record in NHL08, the game is actually still challenging. I'm playing it on the normal/medium difficulty setting, and a lot of games have been down to the wire (though I have had three shut-outs ;) ).