Category: games

*sigh* That's it. I finally got it. Almost 10 years of waiting has come to an end. I think they did a smash up job on TF2. And I've only played 2fort so far! It took me a bit to recapture my feel for the map - what with all the pretty textures and all. I was more used to seeing blocky, cut-and-dry gothic tiles everywhere from Quake 1. The graphics are awesome. I truly love the cell animation feel of it. Much more of a "fun" feel to it. I do miss the various grenades that different players have, but I guess removing them is for the best.

For those of you that still have not bought "The Orange Box", it's a great buy. I found that Circuit City has it for $39.99 while everyone else is releasing it at $49.99. If you take a Circuit City ad to Walmart they'll price match. So will Best Buy if you're nearby, plus you'll get an addition 10% off --- that's another whole $1.00! You can print off this page for price verification (possibly photoshop for addition discount, but I wouldn't ever suggest that.) I played it safe and got mine at Walmart for $39.99.

Oh yeah, did I mention Portal is a blast too? I hear there's a couple of other game bundled with it, but who cares? TF2 Baby!

Grendel sez: If you are flat broke or just don't want it, you can check out the 2D Flash version of Portal.

It's been a long time coming and it's almost here. I've been waiting years for Team Fortress 2 to make it's debut. Team Fortress 1 (the Quake mod) was a blast to play. Team Fortress Classic was a mediocre attempt to capture TF1 into a new engine and since then there's been a buzz about TF2 being released one day or another. It's been touted alongside Duke Nukem Forever as "vaporware" - but the release is nigh.

Alot of people don't like the game styling of cell animation, but I think it will make for a great game. So far, most of what we've been given glimpses of are animation shorts - but they're holding me over and whetting my appetite. So here's a few for you to watch too.

Team Fortress 2 : Meet the Heavy Weapon Guy

Team Fortress 2 : Meet the Soldier

Team Fortress 2 : Meet the Engineer

Team Fortress 2 : Meet the Demoman

So there you have it 3 of the handful of classes available to play in TF2. Maybe if you don't know anything about TF2, here's one more video for you.

Grendel sez: Don't forget Portal is in the Orange Box too!
update: Added "Meet the Demoman" link. "Aye!"

I just got done reinstalling and playing Battlefield 1942. I honestly don't know how this game ever fell out of popularity. I didn't play it as much after I got Call of Duty, but BF1942 is still a blast.

I guess I never liked Battlefield 2 as much. Yeah, I'd play it and it was really fun, but it just wasn't the same. It lacked the simplicity that made 1942 so easy to pick up and play.
Battlefield Vietnam sucked. I think I played it for a good 2 weeks before I reverted back to 1942.
Secret Weapons was a waste. I didn't even bother with it.
Road to Rome was alright, but it really wasn't ever that popular so people never played on those servers as much.
Good ole original Battlefield 1942 is a real gem.

I think it will be remembered for what it did to expanding gameplay. You could trek on foot forever it seemed. Or you could jump in a tank or jeep or some other vehicle and make you way to where you wanted/needed to be. Or you could jump into a plane - my personal favorite. I think the original 1942 had balance that most games lack. Player classes were balanced. The vehicles were all solid. Anti-aircraft was effective. With true teamwork you could easily take down the enemy (unless they had better cooperation).
I love Battlefield and miss not being able to pick up just any game and cream the other guys. C'est la vie.

Special thanks to Notorious on his belated Christmas gift to me and Jennifer. He hooked us up with another board game to add to our collection: The Settlers of Catan.
It's a very fun and dynamic game. There's no set layout of the board. It consists of several hex-tiles that sit side-by-side to construct a new, somewhat random arrangement that allows for a ton of different board layouts. Each game is different, so strategy must be changed and player must be able to adapt quickly to win. The goal of the game is simple, amass 10 Victory Points which are achieved by building settlements, cities and collecting Development Cards. There are different costs associated with each. To find out more about the game, check out wikipedia or University of Catan.

We were able to play a game with myself, grimlen, notorious and araolath; grimlen won - the punk. It's a great game, a little bit of a learning curve, but it's not bad once you get the hang of it. IM me if you'd like to try out the PC version.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered an Xbox from a guy on the SA Forums. I paid $80 shipped and felt that this was a good deal considering that new units are still running $180 in stores. After a shipping snafu, I received my Xbox. It was in a box with no padding and had made three trips to and from the east coast. I'm sure that the package had been the game ball in a FedEx corporate soccer tournament. This did not bode well.

And indeed, the DVD drive had ceased to function properly. I found large caches of drives on eBay for $40 shipped. I bit the bullet and bought one from the closest shipper I could find. So now I was at $120 for my v. 1.0 Xbox (made in Hungary!) when for $40 more I could have a brand new one (made in Mexico!). In any event, I realized that Microsoft was attempting to subsidize the odd screw market and invested in three different sizes of Torx screws to secure the case and internal components as well as needlessly making my life more difficult.

I had ordered a set of T10, T15, and T20 Torx screwdrivers from Northern Tool but they would not bee here until a couple of days from now. I found myself at Fry's yesterday and so picked up a 9-in-1 Torx tool that included the correct sizes for the Xbox. I'm still wondering why the Phillips head isn't getting as much love these days. Thankfully the computer hardware industry has kept with Phillips, be it ever so skewed in choice for head size.

I woke up this morning and, after scratching my head for five minutes then finding the two stupid hidden screws, popped the case off. The folks up in Redmond took a page out of Dell's case design with this one. They jammed more crap in this box than I would've thought could be allowed by UL or FCC safety standards. And yet, here it sits. The only redeeming feature about the design is that the optical and hard drives both sit flat and not in some impenetrable cage. The plastic risers weren't a terrible chore and actually did a nice job. So I swapped the drives out and all was well. At least until I realized I left the game disc in the drive I just took out.

Times like that make you humble. Some might say they are character building. We've all had them and they're good for the enterprising geek. They make us realize that we're capable of being just as dumb as the people who allow some of us to charge them upwards of $75 in labor for installing a new stick of RAM.

After a quick power switch I had the disc and Burnout Revenge was loading in its new home. Playing four or five missions left me with the feeling that the problem was thankfully resolved. In a way I'm glad I had to take it apart and replace the drive; now I know how to do it when I install my mod chip and load XBMC. After all, that was my real goal here: a media center that can stream content from my main machine, file server, or other device that someone may bring over. And it fills up the last open port on my Ethernet switch; nothing brings a sense of accomplishment like crashing cars and a full switch.