It was bound to happen, I have had this cheap 450W PSU that came with my case that I got 2 years ago. I chanced it and it worked well for a long time. Im just glad that the PSU didnt take anything with it as it blew. Just as I go to turn on the Computer here a little *pop*, knew exactly what happened. I guess I'll be hitting up Newegg soon. Probably grab at least a 550W PSU for future SLI if needed. The worst part is, this has to happen as L4D is ready to hit!!! argh!

LBP looks sooooo friggin good! I have watched tons of videos and read tons of previews, and have not seen or heard one single negative aspect of the game. When has every single hands-on impression of a game been 100% glowing??? not often, but I think eveyone will find something to do with this game, whether you make levels or just want to play things already made, there should be more than enough to satisfy everyones needs. Cant wait until October 21st!!!! aka, if anyone has a LBP beta code to throw my way????

The Snorefest that was E3 2008 has now come to an end with a big sigh, and a "meh" worked in there. I liked a lot of what I saw, but most of it was known, or stuff we saw before. E3 was always big because you werent sure what kind of megatons you were going to see. the biggest new of this E3 was a PS3-exclusive game going multiplat. WOW. A developer wanting to make a game that reaches more people and make more money off of it. weird huh. I miss the huge circus E3 used to be, its seems the ESA wants to disconnect the consumer form devs, not really sure why. I understand that you need a place were developers can go and show off there products, and meet with one another. If only there were a Game Developers Conference... The ESA need to come up with some kind of Game Consumer Conference for the hardcore fanboys to go and see these new products. I would love to meet some of these people and see there games before the public does, but, as it stands now, I can see liveblogs and listen to podcasts and that is as close as I will get.

I just picked this game up about 2 weeks ago, and I really regret not picking it up earlier. This is a kick-ass game. When it first came out in June of last year, I was still in the dinosaur age (aka dial-up connection) so I thought "yeah it looks cool but I dont mind passing it up" I was playing a lot of other games at the time anyways (mostly HL2 mods and WC3) When I finally did get high speed internet in December, I was playing FEAR and Quake 4 so BF2 was still somewhat off my radar. My buddy got it as a gift for his birthday from his kid, and he was blown away by it. He told me I had to get. So I saw it at gamestop ofr $40 and I said cool and picked it up. Now all I can say is HOLY CRAP this game is sweet. Now the first thing I can tell you is that I have not had a lot of the problems that most people have had with CTD and server connection problems. I get the occasional "there is a problem with the server connection" but that is not on my end, And I VERY rarely get a CTD (I think I have had 3 in the 20+ hours I've play it) So my experience has been very good with that side of the world. It also looks and works very well on my aging system (see my forum sig) There are few experience quite like blowing up a tank with 4 guys in it with C4, or taking down an attack helo with a AA turret. The game is also very versitle. You can sneak around the enemy base, blowign up commander assets or snipe people from long range, you can heal and revive people, or take them out with a grenade launcher. The vehicles really make the game as well. I realize that a lot of people have had bad experiences with BF2 and I think it sucks that EA/DICE have done little to rectify them, but I have had a very good time with it and I regret not jumping on it sooner. You can bet I will not make the same mistake with BF 2142.

Now that I think I am done with Quake 4 (for a while at least) I will give you my take on the last 2 great games i have played. i started out playing FEAR. There was so much hype around it that I just assumed that this was the next coming of HL2, then I find out it is far from it. So after I finished FEAR, I picked up Quake 4, I was not expecting much after reading Gamespots review and Quake 4 blew me away.

I guess the thing I look for the most in games is variety. Variety can lead to a lot of very positive gameplay experiences including replay value and the WOW-factor. The variety in Quake 4 was very impressive compared to FEAR.

FEAR IMO was very one-dimensional. It had great gameplay and it focused on that the entire game, which made it fun but after the first few levels your will to see what happens next is gone. You are in an office building the entire game, they try to spice it up at the end but did a horrible job on the ending as well. Your weapons are very run-of-the-mill and not fun to use at all (besides nailing some dudes head to the wall with the nailgun-type weapon). The game is also quite boring for the most part, most enemies are the same, no bosses, you fight enemies in 1 room for 30 seconds and then run around for 5 minutes, fight for 30 seconds, and so on.

Quake 4 on the other hand has the most variety of and FPS since HL2. Not only vastly more terrains than FEAR, but vehicles also. The weapons are much more satisfying and varied, I also like the fact you can have lots of weapons to choose from, giving the player multiple options on how to kill enemies. A lot more enemies that are much more intimadating, the Heavy Armored Soldiers of FEAR are no match for Floating dudes with rocket launchers. I also love the fact that there are mulitple instances were you are with comrades, even when your not, you are in constant contact with people weather they talk to you or someone else. It makes the game much more enthralling and much more enjoyable. the bosses are also very cool, and satisfying to kill.

I would rate FEAR an 8.6 and Quake 4 a 9.2.

Well, my sad BIOS story has a good ending, I guess. I got a new BIOS chip from an ebay store called "BIOSdepot" I e-mailed the guy a few times and he was very helpful. I ordered it on Thur. and got it on Mon. which I was stoked about (usually I have to wait like a week and a half to get anything I order off ebay) I, however, didnt buy the little BIOS removal tool that they had. I did some research on how to properly remove the BIOS chip, and it seemed pretty easy, of course, they were all using the BIOS remover tool. So I went to get my old chip out, and I think to myself "there is not a lot of working room in here"but I remembered on one of the sites they said you could use paper clip. Now for about the last 6 months I have had this box of like 5000 paper clips always getting in my way whenever I'm trying to do anything in the office, so I go to look for that, and it is now where to be found, Great!!!!! So I thought about what else I could use, Then I saw my little Jewlers screwdriver set. Sweet!!!!! Only the smallest one would fit in the corner, so I carefully try to pry it out. I kinda use it as a lever to bump it up on 2 diagonal corners, little by little, and the little sucker just pops right out!!! YESSSS!!! I make sure to pop the new one in with the little corner notch lined up, put her back together, and hit the power button with fingers crossed. BOOOOM, the POST pops right up and all is right with the world again!!!! I can honestly say that this was not as big of a deal as I thought it was going to be. It was a breeze, It set me back $17 but that is a small price to pay for the lesson I've learned. No matter how smart you think your friends are, They dont as much as Google.

This is a very sad story of a guy, his friend, and a corrupt BIOS, please grab a bag of popcorn and a tissue box.

So, my best friend comes over and is hanging out for a while, We are playing some HL2, some Halo 2, and a lot of AOE 3, We decided we need some beer. So I went to get it and he stayed at my place dinking around on my computer. Now, I have always thought of him as a somewhat tech savvy fellow, I would say I know more than him, but he seems like he knows what hes doing (despite the fact the the dude has a Celeron gaming system :lol:) So I get back and he says "Dude, you only have PC2700 RAM???" I explain to him "No, I have PC3200 RAM but I have all 3 of my mobo slots full, so the mobo decreased the speed. So he says "oh you can just change that in the BIOS" I explained that I tried a it would give me errors so I re-set the BIOS back. He he tells me "Here dude, I'll show you" So we go into BIOS, and we do it and the same thing happens to me the last time I tried it. While in there, however, he says "Your FSB speed is only 166mhz, shouldnt it be 333mhz?? I said yes it should, but AMD "double-pumps" it so it is actually 333mhz. He tells me only the 64's are double pumped, not my XP 2800+. So he takes me to a site that actaully says that (cant for the life of me remember which one it was) So I say "What the hell??" So we decided to go in and change it. The worst mistake I have ever made with any computer tweaking. I back up the BIOS to a floppy first. We change it, and restart. Nothing happens on restart, no POST, no errors, no nothing. Crap so I pop the floppy in and try to see if it will boot up. nothing, the floppy doesnt seem to be responding. Everything else does, Fans, LCD Lights, DVD-RW LCD, everything else powers on, but no floppy. Then I seem to remember, when I set boot options, I overwrote CD-drive where floppy was a not putting floppy as option. What an idiot!!! So I'm like crap. Lets crack her open. So I switch the Clear CMOS jumpers over for about 5 min. restart and.....nothing. So my buddy says to take out the CMOS battery. I thought it was soldered to the mobo, so I hop on my lappy and find out that it is not. So we pop that out for about 5 min. and pop it back in. This time I got a BIOS ROM checksum error. It said please insert A: disk. I'm like SWEET!!! so I pop it in and......nothing. So I was pissed by this point. This is where I am at now. I guess my only option now is to buy a new BIOS chip, and if that doesnt work, new mobo. I just hope nothing else got screwed up. This is the 3rd full computer I have built and this is the first time something like this happened. I guess I was due. Oh well, I can order a brand new BIOS chip on ebay for like $20 so no big deal. A week without my baby is way worse though. Hopefully this will fix it.

I am very excited that F.E.A.R. is almost upon us. This is perfect timing because I have just about ran out of games to play and my boss (AKA the wife) says that I can get a new game since I havent gotten one since HL2 in like February, so I'm do. I have been a very big fan of the AOE games as well, but that was when I was single and had lots of time to game. Now I have to choose what I play VERY CAREFULLY. I used to game about 30 hours per week 3 years ago. Now I get 10 hours if I'm lucky and the wife takes the kids to her friends or sisters house. But that is enough to play the good games, and perfect for FPS. I used to play a lot of RTS but they are just way too time consuming for me now. So F.E.A.R. should be perfect. I am very anxious to see where the storyline goes. I hope there is a little more vareity in the enemies then there was in the demo. I am tired of the same old, shoot some soldiers with a machinegun thing. I like Doom 3 and HL2 a lot because of the plethora of enemies and weapons to spice it up. F.E.A.R. has great potential because of the whole premise of the game and that freaky girl. It should be a ghost-bustin good time and I cant wait until it comes out. ONLY 1 MORE WEEK!!!!

Well, The forums have been down pretty much all week. I hope they get back up and running soon because I usually read the forums at work, and now I'm bored. I could actually work but my job doesnt require it. I am a regular in the PC Hardware/General Hardware forums and am anxiously awaiting the "new and improved" forums.

Speaking of new and improved, The new Gamespot seems pretty good. I was a little skeptical about it but I think once I get used to it, I will like it alot. I like the video player on the home page. I would personally like them to start automatically when you log on, but I realize a lot of people would be against that.

Well, I suppose I should actually "work" ARRRGGGH!!!