Archive for September, 2007
Windows Vista, Days 1 and 2
Posted by Wanderlust in First Person Shooters, PC Gaming, Software, Windows, XBox 360 Sunday, 30 September 2007 09:26 No Comments
Well I upgraded. Micro Center has a deal for Vista Home Premium OEM at $79 so I picked it up last week. Got it installed Friday night and so far I’m happy with it. I picked it up mostly for gaming and prep for Crysis. I did pick up Halo 2 but not really played it much but it looks great as well. I also want to pick up Shadowrun since it’s the first full cross platform game out there (Xbox 360 vs. PC gamers) but haven’t as of yet but it’s fairly cheap.
I wanted to try out my tried and true games first to really get a feel for how it would perform on the gaming platform. Honestly I’ve not seen any issues with BF2142 (other than the “this game has only been tested on Windows XP” message on install) and the typical issues I had on XP with PunkBuster. BF2 also has the same message.
The only issue I’ve had so far is hibernate or sleep. I found the system locked up (or at least non-responsive by the monitor) the first time I attempted to “revive” it in this state.
I’ve also played around with the built in games on Premium and they’re not bad. I even tried out Purble Place and found it friendly to kids and adults with the levels. I’m a gamer, have to try every game I find! hehe
As far as interface I haven’t been too upset but I do miss the up arrow but found that “alt-up arrow” does the same thing so being a keyboard person that’s not been a hard adaption. I was able to set most of the rest of the system to how I liked it in XP (no frills settings that I’ve liked since 95 but with the Aero design and settings that I find appealing as I did with XP from 98/2000 and using the XP “themes”).
The installation was a breeze, no issues with dropping the DVD in and installation, even to my Intel RAID. I believe it took about 20 minutes total (on an Intel 6600 core 2 duo). I also found that my 26GB system drive wasn’t enough after installation of the OS and my standard tools as well as Adobe CS3 but no fear, I was able to drop my gaming drive from 125GB to 113GB and increase my system drive to 38GB with no issues in the drive management piece. I have typically ran with a 15-20GB system drive on XP so it was a bit amazing that my 26GB partition wasn’t enough and I was down to like 2GB. I did turn off system restore afterwards and moved my temp file to another, larger, drive. The problem I did find is that it didn’t allow me to delete the pagesys file after redirection of the file but I’ve moved on from that for now.
So that’s it for my Vista experience… So far, so good. Other than figuring out a new OS and changing what I can back to how I like them (from previous OSes) I’m good to go. 
Fantasy Football Week 3 Results
Posted by Wanderlust in Sports Wednesday, 26 September 2007 01:50 No Comments
So it could have went better but a lot worse as well.
The Stewie Syndrome lost 119-144 and was the highest scoring team outside of my opponent, damn Blitzburg (but gotta love another Steelers fan! 
) So they hold on to the league scoring lead by 32 points and the power ranking but fall to 2-1 and 2nd place in the division.
BREWTALITY posted it’s second 100 point game in a row and moves up to 2-1 but after the disastrous 59 point first week still sits below middle in the power ranking but the Steelers get no glory either for being one of the best teams in the league so I’m fine with it (at least they spoke of them a bit on NFL network yesterday). It’s the sneak attack that I like…much like my team of last year. Maybe with Griese on the field (which I’ve wanted since last year and I’m not a Bears fan) the Bears D will get more rest. I personally think Griese did fine in Tampa but they looked over him for a younger QB as well who turned out poor after he was gone. So I am cheering for Griese to help BREWTALITY’s Bears D to step it up.
Well that’s it on the FF front this week… On to week 4.
Fantasy Football & The Stewie Syndrome
Posted by Wanderlust in Sports Sunday, 23 September 2007 00:56 No Comments
Going into week 2 The Stewie Syndrome is looking good and I don’t look like the fool everyone thought I was when I took Randy Moss and Terrell Owens. Unfortunately I didn’t start Randy Moss either week so I missed over 30 points for the season total (for cash on league scoring leader) but I’m still holding on with two solid 100 point weeks from my team and we’re 2-0. There are some other very tough teams in the league as well so we’ll see how things continue but I’m confident at the moment. As for replacements for The Stewie Syndrome, I replaced Chris Henry & the Panthers Defense with Brandon Marshall & the Texans defense. Marshall was a nice pickup considering I was last on the waiver pickups and he could have some big games, otherwise he’ll still be a good bye week sub. The Texans have looked great (and btw were my most improved team in pre-season by adding a somewhat mobile QB, at least more mobile than Carr, behind a questionable OL) and their big draft pick is coming through on defense and I think they’ll be a suitable trade by week 10 (when both the Texans and Patriots are on a bye week).
BREWTALITY is a completely different story and close to the real situation in the NFL. We’re 1-1 (and feel lucky after squeaking out a 2 pt win) because of the Bears defense/special teams. McNabb isn’t looking great, Jones-Drew and Lee Evans are busts so far and McGahee isn’t doing much either. I did pick up Derrick Ward after week one but that’s a temporary fix and I pulled Evans for Wes Welker this week to see how he does again… I don’t see Evans doing much against New England’s defense. I also added Antwaan Randle El and replaced McNair with Garcia so I have about 4 new players out of the 15 on the roster.
So we’re off to week 3 to see what happens…
Go Bucks! Awesome game today against Northwestern… I turned it on and at the beginning of the 2nd quarter and was happy to see a 28-0 1st quarter!!! Nice to see the Wolverines back on track as well. Can’t completely hate your biggest rival until the big game.
Windows XP SP2 “Save As” Dialog Shows Reversed Order
Posted by Wanderlust in Other, Software, Windows Wednesday, 19 September 2007 03:11 No Comments
Sometime recently when I did a “Save As” for any application or page in a browser, my sort order was reversed (See below). I let it go for a few days but finally it got a bit aggravating since, if you’re like me, you expect to see folders at the top and start to click impulsively. It was a bit frustrating to find the solution, even on Google. Anyway, I finally found an article and it appears to be an issue with the ShellState being corrupted. Oddly enough, the article only says it affects 95 and 98 but I’m on XP SP2 and this still occurred and the fix still worked.
Hope someone finds this useful and has less of a hard time finding the solution here than I did on Google. Drop in a comment if you find it useful or Digg it.
Medal of Honor: Airborne [PC], Post 1
Posted by Wanderlust in First Person Shooters, PC Gaming, XBox 360 Saturday, 15 September 2007 07:36 No Comments
So I’ve been playing a lot of MoHAB and the game is equally great and flawed. The missions are fun to play and the AI is good but at the same time almost worthless at times. I’m about complete with the game in about 12 hours of casually playing (reloading to grab some screenshots & videos) and in that time I’ve found that when it comes to larger objectives you’re nearly on your own. Starting out it seems that everyone is out for the same goal but as you progress it seems that your AI team is there to clean up bad guys leading up to objectives. When it comes to objectives you’re on your own such as planting explosives in a tank factory or taking on the bad ass SS soldiers. Early on they’re by your side but the further you progress, you find you’re more and more on your own. Part of the problem I’m sure is my patience but most of it is a short game made to last longer by throwing you out on your own, even with your AI mates beside you. I think the SP is 100x better than Call of Duty, where it appeared it was a walk through the park and it does force you to use health which is better than the rediculous scheme they used in Call of Duty 2 of just hiding. Both fail terribly though from the overabundance of console play in the games.
The save system isn’t even up to current standards on consoles. While I hate the fact that games have saved checkpoints rather than normal saves, this game goes a step further in stupidity. I’ve started to accept the fact they want to keep you from finishing a game in a day or 2 (which I know is why they have save points rather than allowing you to save) but this game goes a step further where you don’t even get to load a save point from your mission. It saves your last save point and that’s it. If you want to go back to play the previous check point, too bad you can’t. You have 1 save game through the entire game and if you go to something else in the campaign, too bad you lose current progress. This is also like Gears of War on the Xbox 360 (an incredible game that has the same issue…yes I call it an issue, it can’t be an oversight). So if I have completed a mission, why the hell can’t I play it again without losing where I’m at now? As I said I finally started to accept the load checkpoint game play and now they’ve decided to take it a step further and make it completely retarded. 
Don’t get me wrong the game is fun if you like the WWII shooters as I do but poor interface control makes great titles fall on their face. As I said I can’t help but think back to the original MoHAA. I may have to pull that back out and run through it again just for a comparison point. Even with it’s dating it’s still one of the best games in this genre I’ve played and probably among my favorite FPS titles.
I’m still working on a game rating system but so far it’s a draw on this title. It’s an awesome game that they kill by constraints of taking the time to make a title that lasts. Even Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault had a better interface and, for me, gets a better rating than Call of Duty 2 for that reason. The game got repetitive and old but was light years ahead of this game outside of a lot of the action.
My final thought… It amazes me that games are costing these astronomical amounts of money to produce (as they advertise) these days and yet they constrain them because they add less content or game play to them.
I think a lot of people can take a lot from the Bioshock cross-platform design even without playing it on Xbox 360. I do intend to rent it after completing it on the PC just to see how it plays out.
For screenshots, take a look here.
Buy it at Amazon:
