While PC gaming will never,ever outsell console units in terms of software. It's definitely far from being dead, which console users absolutely love to scream. Generally speaking, I find it amusing that this topic continues to come up (I remember it being mentioned back in the days of NES).
Anyway, here's a good link to read, after 3 weeks on sale, Witcher has sold 600k copies. While this isnt huge, it's definitely not a small number.
Well, I figured I needed a decent video card to round out my new pc so I just ordered this.
Looks really awesome and I hope it does well. Unfortunately, since ATI hasn't paid advertising lately to Gamespot, you wont see it show up on their tech page anytime soon(gamespot only reviews and/or gives favorable reviews to companies buying ad space).
So, I stopped by Fileplanet to check out what new demo's had appeared (no way am I even attempting to browse game demos on gamespot) and low and behold, I stumbled on Savage 2 on release day. Now, I vaguely remember Savage 1 (didnt play it) but I couldnt for the life of me remember what it was about. So, I downloaded the demo(which is the full game for 5 hours, then you have to pay the 29.99) installed it, and fired it up.
I really have to say, this is one of the best games I've played, hands down. Now, currently there are some serious memory management issues within the game and game engine(they are desperately trying to track them down and squash them). However, that being said, I can honestly see me playing this game well, well, into the future(if more maps are released somewhat soon).
Anyway, check it out, you'll be contributing to an indi developer that has definitely proved their worth.
Well, it's time for my anual upgrade (unfortunately this is becoming way too frequent). I decided to go ahead and buck the trend and stick with AMD. I went ahead and purchased a new MB GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-DS5 AM2+ RT and put a new Phenom 9600 on hold (I'm waiting to see if they release the 9900 anytime soon......). Anyway, you can check out the specs of the board here, It's definitely pretty sweet and I can't wait to get my hands on it!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128074
Also, I went ahead and picked up some new ram (figured if I'm going to build a decent PC, might as well have the right stuff!) you can find the link here, I purchased two sets of this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211188
In the end, I guess I could have bought a playstation 3 instead but, since I do most of my game playing and work on my pc, I might as well re invest in it.
I just read GameSpot's PC hardware guide, which can only be described as a failure. The entire guide seems to be written by someone who thinks an off the shelf HP is the best PC around. It's horribly vague,uninspired, and does absolutely nothing to assist someone in buying the right pieces for their PC.
In the end, they would have been much better off just posting a link to Tomshardware or something along that line.
You can read the article here, http://www.gamespot.com/console-resource/pc/
I'm pretty shocked to see Universalis with only 2047 votes(as of right now) when this game is by far one of the most engaging and arguably the best strategy game of all time. I guess it's a sign of the times that nobody wants a game as engrossing as this anymore.......
I'm also a little miffed over the fact that they've included RTS games(yeah yeah, I know (Real Time Strategy) with turn based games. Unfortunately, they're almost two different genres to say the least.
Long live short attention,quick action, and limited thinking, I guess.
So, as I mentioned before on a previous post, I decided to get rid of Vista. After using it for quite a long time, I got tired of continually hunting down new and improved drivers(which still seemed worse then their XP counterparts), constant clicking of admin rights(I know, I know, you can turn off UAC), and other quirks and random crap.
So, I installed Ubuntu and XP on a dual boot drive and so far so good. The only problem is, the more I use XP and Linux side by side, the more I'm leaning towards using Linux full time. With the recent anouncement by a few companies of full support for Linux instead of using those resources to port to Vista, things seriously look to improve on the gaming front.Also, with the recent anouncement by AMD of full support of Linux with their new driver scheme for ATI, it really can only get better and better.
While I don't hate Microsoft by any means (life is way too short to hate anything) I am seriously frustrated with their latest offering. I'm frustrated they released it before fixing issues from beta. I'm frustrated they took my 120+ USD and smiled, while knowing their product was broken. I'm frustrated with myself (and everyone else for that matter) for excepting unfinished, incomplete, and generally broken software(usually corrected 6+ months down the road) from companies. It's time software companies start shipping products that live up to expectations(i.e. COMPLETE)or die by the roadside (Bye Infogrames/Atari!)
In the end, with all the re-install work out of the way, I'm moving on ahead and never plan to revisit Vista again, (regardless of DirectX10,10.1,11,or whatever) ever.
So, recently I've been playing Company of Heroes, Opposing Forces off and on. The single player game has been extremely fun, well thought out, if not a little easy. So, after crawling my way through the single player campaign I figured I would hop on and play some multiplayer to find out how bad I stacked up against everyone else.
1. I created my account on Relic
2. I logged in, tried to jump in a game, found out everyone had a red X(couldnt connect to them)
3. Logged out, setup my router for the ports needing to be opened.
4. Logged back in, jumped into a game, crashed on loading.
5. Logged back in, found a game, got it to load and connect to everyone. Then, one of my opponents crashed during load.
This has been the extent of my multiplayer experience with OF since the day it was released, what I mean is, this happens every time while attemtping to play online. What's odd though is, during beta, the game worked pretty flawlessly. I have no idea what they hosed during release but at this point, trying to play multiplayer in this game is futile.
I have to admit, when I saw this game in a video clip, I chuckled. At first impression, I honestly thought it was some cutesy kids game that I would undeniably hate. Boy, was I in for a surprise...
This is by far one of the more creative games I've played in awhile. The graphics aren't the best out there(pretty good though), the AI is questionable(occasionally your horde will just stop and idle), and sounds are occasionally bland. With those short comings out of the way, the rest of the game is absolutely superb. It's absolutely full to the brim with humor,sillyness,and uh tom foolery.
The quick and dirty of it is this, you're an evil overlord brought back from the dead, to basically wreak havoc on the world,specifically a town called Spree(any game that allows you to burn halflings and dwarves alive,rocks). Now, you can play anyway you want, you can save the townsfolk,elves,etc or you can dispatch them at will. The ability to choose your path is what truly makes this game a blast to play(not to mention the comments by your horde).
At the end of the day, you should at least give this game a shot(download the demo)
Back to halfling slaying I go!
Windows Vista, love it or completely leave it.
After beta testing it for what seemed like an eternity, I honestly thought Microsoft had something decent on their hands when they got ready for launch. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, they seemed to be listening to the testers. They honestly tried their best to merge the best of Linux(security and reliability) and Windows(games and media) which quite a few of us were hoping for. Ifthey headed down the road they werecurrently headed, this would have made for the absolute be - all end - all windows platform.
Unfortunately, for all of their customers, they seriously failed.
DX10 which was supposed to be seriously superior to DX9 has been an undeniable failure. If you compare current DX9 offerings and their DX10 counter parts, there is usually no difference and on the 10 versions, a 30% negative FPS hit!
In addition to this, most of the games I was able to flawlessly load and play using XP, no longer work or randomly crash during play on Vista.
At the end of the day, Vista has had the absolute opposite effect on some of us out there. Me personally, I've decided I will never use Microsoft ever again as an operating system. This may seem a bit extreme but, I've purchased an Intel Mac and plan on dumping Suse on my PC. ( I can always virtualize my PC for games)
In the end, I have two words for Microsoft.
F*ck(censored by Gamespot)You
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