PC PC GAMES

Here is a game that has been plagued with it’s fare share of delays and massive community unhappiness due to it’s bad record of communication with the fans. Delays without explanation are never a good way of making fans.

I was able to play a few minutes and it delivers everything that w have been waiting for. But I also heard that some might have issues launching the game. Lets hear it?!

There has been a lot of negative push against BF3 by PCPCGames.com over the last few months as the launch became inevitable.  Mainly due to the practices of EA and the focus to produce a Steam competitor through their tool Origin.  EA’s practices soured many of the community users on the game before it was released.

Well, I am here to set it straight.  I am first and foremost an FPS fan and I have played my fair share over the years.  FPS to me is all about multiplayer.  All about the game experience, and to put it very clearly:

BATTLEFIELD 3 DELIVERS!

I cannot make it more clear than this.  This is the first FPS in ages that truly (continue reading…)

Looks like a lot of forums are ablaze and some news sites start to report about a lot of people that can’t start the game or if that not connect to the servers. How are you guys doing? I know quite a few people purchased it.

Gamefront News and comments:

• I can’t even get the game to load battlelog tonight. I’ve restarted etc. It just gives the loading pop up screen and that’s it.
• Anyone know how DICE or EA is going to fix this? As far as I can tell no official word has been given regarding these issues.
• Can’t get on the game on pc, can’t play at all, no launch. I have been on the phone with tech support for 2 days and still can’t launch, they don’t have an answer. 
  What a nightmare!

So many of you out there know how much I love to hate on World of WarCraft…I have made it clear on many podcasts…

Here’s the rub.  I was at home on Friday night watching the free parts of the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket and the wonderful people at Blizzard have decided to put out an offer that I just couldn’t refuse…and it was reinforced while over at Fascinator’s house on Saturday watching the real Virtual Ticket.

Sign up for a year of WoW and get Diablo III free…hmmmmmm!!!!

http://us.battle.net/en/int?r=wow

So I said to myself, “self, it has been over 3 years since you played except that couple of weeks you were on the beta for Cataclysm – do you want to play again?  Let us run the numbers…”  So I run the numbers as you see below.

Here are my calculations.

You can sign up using one of three schemes

1. Monthly payment – $14.99/month for one year ($179.88)
2. Quarterly payment – $13.99/month for one year ($167.88)
3. Bi-Annual payment – $12.99/month for one year ($155.88)

My brain said ouch instantly – but I told it to hold on and let’s run another number with this.

My guess on the price of Diablo III is $59.99, as that seems to be the going price for new games lately; now let’s figure that into the schemes above.

1. Monthly payment – $14.99/month for one year ($179.88) minus Diablo III ($179.88 – $59.99 = $119.89) divided by 12 months ($119.89 / 12 = $9.99 per month WoW)
2. Quarterly payment – $13.99/month for one year ($167.88) minus Diablo III ($167.88 – $59.99 = $107.89) divided by 12 months ($107.89 / 12 = $8.99 per month WoW)
3. Bi-Annual payment – $12.99/month for one year ($155.88) minus Diablo III ($155.88 – $59.99 = $95.89) divided by 12 months ($95.89 / 12 = $7.99 per month WoW)

So on Friday night (very late and sleepy) I opted for choice #3 and could (in my mind) justify playing WoW for the next year for less than $8/month and getting Diablo III since I planned on buying Diablo anyway.  So I talked with Fascinator, Kommie, and BarMan on Saturday and they were also interested in this scenario and wanted to play on a PvE server which is where I have always played in the past…after talking they all three went online and created characters on the server I play on [Eonar - Alliance].

Add wilrmoore@gmail.com [real ID] or Nachohealer [character ID] to your friends list…  So come join us, Fascinator has created a guild [The Dredd] and I bet if you ask nicely, he will invite you.

As a kicker you also get with the one year sign-up…

1. Tyrael’s Charger – Exclusive WoW mount
2. Guaranteed Beta Entry – into the next WoW expansion

So let the ribbing begin as I know that a LOT of you out there will hammer me for all the grief I have given WoW in the past, and the fact that I said I wouldn’t play again – but remember it has been over 3 years since I last “paid-to-play” on WoW so I stuck to my convictions for a bit…LOL!!!

P.S.  For those that have been living under a rock…there is a new expansion coming out soon which will have – wait for it -

PANDAS as the new race…no kidding!!!!  Kommie is beside himself.

This is LIKE WAY late, but I thought I would share this with you all.

You all remember a quirky indi Movie called The Gamers: Dorkness Rising?

We talked about it before. Great news here. The guys over at Dead Gentleman Productions have something new! Okay, its NOT so new, cause its been out for over a year… I cannot believe I missed this. Anyways, they started a web series called JourneyQuest!!! A series that was well revived by fans of their other stuff, and now they are going to do a 2nd season!

Now normally I would be like support them! Buy the season one dvd, and such. They even have a kickstarter page… thing is, they already met their goal for season 2. IN JUST 11 days!! WOW. Now they say if they can get a bit more in the next month, they will film the third season as well!!! These guys are completely supported by fans!

Well I am already supporting them by buying season 1 on DVD, and I will support their future growth with season 2, and I ask that you do the same. If you need some help trying to decide if you would like this, season 1 IS ON THE INTERNET, at their site, on youtube, and hulu. But, I am going to go ahead and post the trailer to the first season here, and get you hooked now.

Enjoy. I know I did.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/47400/

I broke down and bought it. So far I’ve played for an hour or two.

I am very impressed with the quality of this game. And considering the quality, I’m even more impressed that they decided to sell it for only $19.99. It’s amazing how these days, big-name software companies often release a buggy mess of a game, and yet a small indie developer can release something nearly flawless. I’ve yet to encounter any noticeable bugs. Even in the menus, before actually getting into a heist, it gives the impression of a Valve-quality title.

Yes, I’m comparing this to a Valve game. And not just because it’s “very similar to L4D” (which is a pretty big misconception from gamers who haven’t actually tried it), but rather, because it feels like all of the right design decisions were made.

The graphics, while nothing groundbreaking, are very pretty and clean. It looks good while running like butter at the same time. Think Portal 2-level of visuals. The audio sounds equally as great. The soundtrack does an awesome job of carrying the intensity of the game, while the radio chatter and bantering between your teammates really complete the effect.

Yelling at civilians, pushing them to the ground, and screaming “GET THE ♥♥♥♥ DOWN” is more satisfying than it should ever be. The gunplay, while not spectacular, is still decent. It’s no Killing Floor or Red Orchestra, but more of a standard CoD type of feel. Like L4D, the pistols feel like pea-shooters. This makes sense though considering the fact that you’re firing at very heavily-armored law enforcement units not far into the heist.

This game is challenging. Even on normal difficulty, if you mindlessly run ‘n’ gun into a group of cops, you’ll get busted pretty fast. It’s no Rainbow 6 either; Payday is still very much a shooter at it’s core, but there’s also a lot of strategy to consider.

Unlike L4D where you’re slaughtering hordes of zombies, the enemies in this game are much more intelligent. Seeing the AI move from cover to cover, dive through windows, grapple through skylights, and snipe from rooftops is legitimately intimidating. Also unlike L4D it’s fairly less linear.

Situations and objectives are different from game to game, which adds to the replay-ability. Even little things like shooting out the security cameras will have an actual effect on how difficult and/or successful your heist will be. In one game, after walking into the bank, one of my partners accidentally revealed himself way too early, which resulted in the alarms setting off. Consequently it seemed like we had a harder time tracking down the bank manager so we could kill him and steal his keycard.

I know some people are unsure about the replay-ability of this game. After playing it today, I can confidently say there are at least dozens of hours worth of entertainment here. Although I’ve only been playing the game for one day, I’ve just been playing the same map (The First World Bank) over and over, multiple times, which definitely says something about the replay-ability. I haven’t even touched the other heists yet. I’m excited to see what the other campaigns have in store.

Amazing value for this game.

Sandforce SSD Corsair Force GT in raid 0

Here is a short but sweet review of 2 Sandforce Corsair Force
GT 240Gb SSD hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration.

I moved from a single 256gb SSD drive to a raid 0 for a few
reasons.

256gb is still a bit on the small side and I wanted more
space.  The cost going from two 240gb
drives to a single 480MB drive  or 512gb
drive is about the same in cost. But the performance for two drives in raid 0
vs one drive is two times the performance. This is a lot of money to spend on
Drive space, so I figured if I was going to go big I should also keep performance
in mind This is why I went Raid 0.

This Gives a 2x performance gain for the same money as a
480GB Corsair Force GT.

I also thought of doing 4x120GB drives but My SATA3 6GB/s
controller only would raid 2 drives in 6GB/s.

My old SSD the Crucial C300 at the time was the best performer
coming in at 219MB per sec on the writes and 380MB on the read. At the time
this beat all other SSD’s in a 2.5” format by about 100MB per sec.

The Corsair Force GT 240GB comes in at 515MB/s on the write
and a blazing 555MB/s on the read. It uses the SF-2000 SSD Processor.

In RAID 0 the drives get
1030MB/s writes and 1100MB/s read.

See ATOT benchmark below.
When I say things open in a blink of an eye I really mean blink and
there the app is.

So by my clock Renegade Ops unlocks in 20 hours.  Any bets that it will get delayed again?  I sure hope they didn’t delay the game this long just to add a dune buggy and some ant lions (HL2).

Rage has been out a couple days now and I would like to chat about it. Anyone want to join me tonight in a google hangout and talk about it?

You can pre order and buy Afterfall for only $1 dollar if 10 million people pre order.

http://www.afterfall-universe.com/en/index

It is interesting who often they highlight the PC in this video. As a matter of fact you see that quite often in the last couple month. Make no mistake, we are in the renascence of PC gaming. With consoles reaching their age and hardware restrictions and with devs finding out that the PC platform is easy to develop on, without artificial restrictions by the platform owner it becomes more and more the target for developers again.