I should be up to my neck in new games by now and it seems that everything is being delayed.  I am going to have to sell a kidney in Q1-07 to pay for them all unless some of the games get delayed again.

The FPS gaming pool seems to be getting muddier and muddier.  Game after game gets released and the games I like get fewer and fewer players. I get up in the morning and there are only a few hundred people playing any of the games I am playing right now.  CS of course has plenty of players, but for some reason I can't play that game for very long.  I guess I just get killed too soon and then get tired of waiting for a new round... so I can get killed... again.

Even a bad to the bone game like F.E.A.R. with Combat thats now free, only had a scant 150 people on in this AM and good luck finding a populated slo-mo server then.  Whats a gamer to do when a game of F.E.A.R.s caliber can't get full servers even when its free...

I'm still playing Oblivion quite a bit but if its not that, its Halo thats been keeping me coming back.  Actually its the Warthog that keeps me coming back.  Its still my favorite ride evar and Race is just about the most MP gaming fun I have nowadays.

Well thats enough rambling for today I guess.

Since in Oblivion I am roleplaying my oldest and mostest favorite character from AD&D, I figured at some point he would run across a wish. Back in the day when I used to DM the paper and pencil game, I loved wishes. I didn't give them out very often, but I did give them out to characters that I felt deserved them, or when they were desperately needed to keep the game going.

So who better to be the recipient of a wish other than Dave Coper, my Oblivion character! :D

Why? Let me tell you why. Dave was in serious trouble. He was doing every thing he could trying to save the day, but he was stuck picking every stupid flower and uprooting every type of mushroom he could find just so he could sell them to get a few extra pieces of gold to use to pay someone to charge up his magical weapons. He was traveling back and forth to every town just so he could root around the mage's guilds looking for soul gems.

Anything he could carry including every knife, sword, bone, and etc. was carried to town to be sold. It seemed that the magical weapons he had worked so hard to get, were now sucking the life out of him.

It didn't take Dave very long to grow very, very tired of it all. He even starting having thoughts that it was time to retire. He figured Martin would just have to find another hero.

About that time a being with great power looked down upon Dave as he was lugging a sack of calipers to town. She remembered that Dave had done her a favor in the past but unfortunately he had unknowingly squandered the spoils she had given him.

She noted that Dave was an honest man who never knowingly stole anything. He did many things for the good of his community. He helped the poor, downtrodden, anyone in need, and he always strove to do the right thing. She decided that he could be used to bring more followers to her that in turn, she could use to do her bidding, and perhaps even one day, Dave himself would come to worship her as well.

So that night Azura came to Dave in his sleep and told him that if he wanted the star back, all he had to do was wish for it.

The next morning, Dave awoke with a start. Unsure if what had transpired was really a dream or not, he quickly shouted the words...

"player.additem 00000193 1" !!!!!!!


.


There was a flash of light and suddenly, the star was back in his possession.

Dave was overjoyed! He decided not to retire and so he forged ahead with new vigor, determined to save Tamriel.

Do you know what the most powerful/useful soul gem in the entire game is? If not stop reading now.

.

.

I just found out that I am in an exclusive club of wretched folk who found out all too late...

THAT THEY WASTED AZURA'S STAR!

NOOOOOOooooooooooooo....

I finally figure out what I had to do to get my mysticism level high enough to start casting soul trap and when I go looking for info on the soul gems, I find out what I had... RIGHT THERE IN MY HANDS... and I gave it away to be destroyed.... forever! (cries)

That'l teach me to get rid of something before finding out what it does first. I would go back to a previous save game, but that was many levels ago.

Of course I could cheat and get it back, but my character would never stoop so low as to cheat. ;) I am role-playing my oldest and most favorite AD&D character from way back in the day.

Now I gotta start collecting all those darn regular soul gems. (groan)

Aw MAN! I just realized that I also wasted a Varla stone early on when I only had one magical weapon. Now everything I use is magical and I am going broke recharging them all.

I blame the folks at Bethesda. THEY did this to me. They knew it was going to be one of my early quests so of course it would be the only Daedric artifact I had.

I am so pissed that I think I am going to take a week off from playing Oblivion and take out my frustrations on some replicants. Its RPL time!

So I finished HL2:EP1 and then right afterwards I finished SiN:Emergence. Man, one cliffhanger after another.

I was trying to find something fun to play but everything seemed so... *yawn.

GRAW is fun and its even better after the patch, but the server browser is so bad that after trying to find a good co-op server for more than about fifteen minues, I lose interest.

So I tried the Prey demo. It was cool, albeit standard FPS fare, but tasty just the same.

Then I went and played a few of my older games. They were fun, but I felt I was just passing the time and not really enjoying myself as much as I wanted. SiN in Arena mode kept me busy for an hour or two, and I even played some Wolf:ET.

I wanted something new. I looked around after many reviews, dowloaded videos, and a few recommendations from other people, I went and bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

So far, Ooooooo... I luuuuuuvs it.

I have avoided RPGs for years because I don't like turn based combat (can't stand it actually), but Oblivion is all FPS baybee! Of course I have the option to play it in 3rd person, but why would I? Well, I guess its useful to be able to check out how I look in my armor and whatnot.

I have to admit, I look pretty hawt. ;)

All of a sudden, it was like stepping back in time into my old pencil and paper AD&D days. This is what I would have expected an AD&D videogame to be. Too bad they went MMO with that one though. This game seems so huge, I think its going to take me quite a long time to finish it.

Plus there are mods-a-plenty and even new downloadable content. You gotta pay for those, but I guess you can't get something for nothing anymore.

Armed Assault is delayed an extra month, no official word at all about Quake Wars as far as a release date, so I figure I got some time.

Now go away, I got a sword and some armor to repair...

Ok, so today I will have HL2:EP1 waiting for me when I get home. I am this || close to finishing SiN:E, and its my normal night to play BF2 or UT2004 or CS or whatever with my buds, plus I want to try that new MP mode for GTA:SA I just found out about, AND I am still re-playing F.E.A.R. for background inspiration for my fanfic. Man, somethings gotta give! I need some clones or something.

Why the heck couldn't I have had all this cool PC gaming stuff when I was twenty and had ninteen hours a day to play. Sheesh.

Better now than never I guess. If I could just figure out a way to take a vacation day from work without telling the wife and then hide in my basement office aka "The Mancave" and play PC games all day long. Now that would be a real vacation.

Hmmm.... naaaa, I bet my kids would find me and then rat me out. Buncha ingrates... Pfft! See if I will pay for your college now!

One reason I love co-op so much is because most live people suck.  At least AI does not spend all its time trying to min/max every weapon or find ways to glitch the system or downright cheat.

This morning I decided to dust of my America's Army and play for a bit.  I got on an official server and realized very quickly that there were a few cheaters running around.  They could headshot in the middle of a jumping turn and even open doors that they were about ten "feet" away from.  

And they were bragging about their bots!  Lamer "A" said that Lamer "B" needed a better bot when he killed him several times in a row.  Lamer "B" says, "Oh I got a better bot" and then logs off and then back on.  Now its all Lamer "B" that is all over Lamer "A".  So then Lamer "A" logs off and then back on and now they must be using the same bot because they start a 50/50 kill ratio on each other.  

I am not sure why this was fun for either of them.  I'm also not sure why I stayed since I had no chance of survival when they got anywhere near me.

At least there seems to be an upswing of games with co-op in them coming out.  Thank the heavens.

I hate EA. I am tossing the whole Battlefield franchise like a live grenade, fast and far away. I am not even going to bother keeping my eye on... Oh, who the heck am I kidding.

Me after buying BF1942: "This game is so awesome, I won't need to buy anything else, ever!"

Me with BF1942 on buying Road to Rome: "I just bought the stupid game! Pfft, I aint giving them any more money."

Me with BF1942 and RtR on buying Secret Weapons of WWII: "RtR was not that great, no way am I going to let them fool me again."

Me with BF1942, RtR, and SW, on buying BF:Vietnam: "After buying all the BF1942 stuff, I am definately not going to give EA any more of my money! You blood-suckers!"

Me with BF1942, RtR, SW, and BF:V on buying BF2: "BF:V was pretty good, but that is all. Curse you EA! Game over! I quit!"

Me with BF1942, RtR, SW, BF:V, and BF2 on buying BF2:Special Forces: "I hate you EA! You just take and take and take... (sob) Thats all, I just can't take it anymore. I'm out. Goodbye forever!"

Me with BF1942, RtR, SW, BF:V, BF2, and BF2:SF on buying BF2142:

"Oh gawd! Here I go again!"

I have GRAW on the way to my house, then SiN:Episodes on the 7th of May, and HL2 Episode 1 on the 10th.  Man, its feast or famine around my house.

I will take the feast any day though.  ;)

Ok, so I find a cool HaloPC server that plays race and has regular admins on.  I played there for a few weeks and all was well. They were very sportsmanlike and I figured I would join their forum just to say "Thanks".  Then one of the admins changes my name and says its unacceptable on their forums.  "Remove the porn part." he said.  I ask if it will still be ok on the server and he says "No."

WTF over?!?!

When they said they ran a "family server", the irony of that did not really hit me until they made me change my name.  Playing a game where you kill people on a regular basis is ok but they have a problem with the mispelled porn part of my name.

Even Bungie themselves have no problem with my name since I use the same name on their forums when I post.

So I can change my name to play on those servers or I can boycott them.  As much as it pains me to abandon a good server, I am not sure I want to be with players like that.

Seems a bit too hypocritical to me.

I want some stuff to speed things up but with Vista and DX10 on the horizon, I am at an impasse. I currently have a board that only supports AGP, so I would have to get a new motherboard to really do any good. Then I would also have to get a new video card and it of course would only be a DX9 card.

So then I would have to upgrade AGAIN when the DX10 cards come out. I think I am going to sit on what I have and then build a whole new rig after DX10 is out. About the only thing I could do now that would be worth anything at all would be adding another gig of memory. Guess I will have to wait for a sale.