It looks like it's another good Christmas for me, but it has left me rather indecisive of what to do next. I got F.E.A.R., CoD2, Quake 4, and GTA:LCS, but at the same time, I have a lot of money that I have no idea what to spend on, almost $1300. I would get an Xbox 360 with this, but it's out of stock everywhere that I went. I was thinking of getting a 7800 GTX 512 MB, but I will need to sell my old 256 MB version first, which can be rather difficult to do, especially with all of this pressure from outside forces. I could get an X-Fi Elite Pro as well, and maybe some new speakers as well as a 7800 GTX 512 MB in addition, but I'm not sure how that would work out either. I could get a 2nd 7800 GTX 256 MB, as well as some more games, but I want to stay on the 512 MB video card side. So many choices, yet I don't know what to do :(.

It's not going to be easy to find a 360 at this point. The only options now are to either camp out at Wal-Mart or get to Bestbuy, Toys r Us, or Compusa before they open and before the crowds, which is right before school. I really should have preordered, and now I have to face the consequences. One way or another though, I'll get one on launch day.

On a side note, Far Cry pwns and Doom 3 is not as bad as I thought it would be. They run beautifully on my PC on high/max settings, which is a real relief to me :).

I finally received my new PC on Thursday. I have never had any experience with so much power and I have been going nuts with it. Nothing like playing Half-life 2 on max. settings (including x6 AA and x16 AF) and 1024 x 1280 and the F.E.A.R. demo with nearly full settings. That demo was so good that I preordered the Director's Edition right after I finished playing it :).

In other news, my nostalgia for long lost media (videogames and T.V. shows) has gotten worse in recent months. I have finally taken out my N64 and will procede to replay my entire collection on that system. As for the T.V. shows, I have no idea how I can find them unless anyone knows a legal way on how to download them :(.

I recently made a comment on this article on the Halo 3 Union. Since I couldn't post it (because the forums are down), I decided to copy and paste my ideas of Halo 3's launch coinciding the PS3's launch into my blog.



I really hope they don't try to release Halo 3 on the day of the PS3's launch. That is just rushing the game and sacrificing its quality, just like they did with Halo 2, and to be honest I didn't like Halo 2 very much at all. They will probably only have about a year and a half to finish it by that schedule, and that is only if they have been working since they finished Halo 2, which I doubt very much. They probably won't even have time to make a very good engine (I think the current one needs some serious work, and just won't do very well for next-gen). And releasing Halo 4 by 2007?! That would be even more of a rush! Whatever happened to taking the time to carefully finishing up games, polishing them, and making sure they are released only when they are completely finished? Half-life 2 was about 7 years in the making, Valve was very patient in finishing it off, and even delaying it from 2003 to 2004 to make sure it was finished. The final product of Half-life 2 was just such a superb game and was the result of the developers taking their time, creating a whole new engine and client, and polishing it to something that is truly enjoyable to play. I cannot really say the same about Halo 2. It was rushed, pretty rehashed to me, and was not the result of careful planning by Bungie. This is one of the main reasons why I think Half-life 2 is much better than Halo 2. With Halo 1, however, it is a completely different story. Halo 1 was carefully developed, went through many changes (even a genre change if I'm not mistaken), and was a polished product by the time it was ready for the Xbox's launch in 2001. I thought it was one of the best launch titles of all time, and even more importantly, one of the greatest FPS's of all time, even able to compete with an ultra-high quality game like Half-life 2. All Bungie should do is take their time with Halo 3 like they did with Halo 1 (and like Valve did with Half-life 2), and they will probably have a game that is worthy of recognition and on the same level of Half-life 2 and Halo 1. If they, however, rush it, release it on the same day of the PS3 launch, and I think it would be even worse than Halo 2, which isn't a good thing at all. Don't even get me started on how Halo 4 would work out.

Sorry for such a long rant, but I thought it was about time that I spoke my opinion about the whole Halo situation. Basically, all I want Bungie to do is to take their time with Halo, and not rush it. Rushing a FPS is one of the worst things you can do and video game history has proven that again and again and again.

 

I'll just leave it at that.

I just got back from CyberPower, where I had just placed my order for my new PC. Here are the specs if you want to know:


Gamer Ultra 7500 SE (NO MONITOR) ULTRA7500

• *BASE_PRICE: [+975]
• CASE: ALUMINUM X-Navigator Server 420W W/ Window & Temp Dis,Fan Control+ 3 Swapable Face [+45] (SILVER w/ Blue, Black, & Silver Face Plate)
• CASUPGRADE: NONE
• CPU: (939-pin) AMD ATHLON™64 FX57 CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology [+954]
• CD: PIONEER DVR-110 DUAL FORMAT 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER [+33] (BEIGE COLOR)
• CD2: NONE [-38]
• CABLE: Round Cable Upgrade for Hard Drive, Optical Drive & Floppy Drive [+19]
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 6in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
• FAN: CoolerMaster Liquid CPU Cooling Fan System Kit + 2 EXTRA CASE FANS [+89]
• FLOPPY: 1.44 MB FLOPPY DRIVE (BLACK COLOR)
• HALFLIFE2: Free "Half-Life 2 Bronze" Download Coupon
• HDD: Gaming Hard Drive (10,000RPM SATA150) [+35] (SATA150 - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM 8MB Cache WD740GD [+72])
• HDD2: 200GB Hard Drive [+108] (SATA150 - Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive)
• IEEE_CARD: NONE
• KEYBOARD: PS2 MULTIMEDIA INTERNET CONTROL KEYBOARD (BEIGE COLOR)
• MOUSE: PS2 INTERNET MOUSE W/ WHEEL (BLACK COLOR)
• MONITOR: NONE [-195]
• MP3PLAYER: NONE
• MODEM: NONE
• MOTHERBOARD: (Sckt939)ASUS A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Chipset SATA RAID Dual PCIE MB w/Gb-LAN,USB2.0,IEEE-1394,&7.1Audio [+107]
• MEMORY: 2048 MB (1GBx2) PC3200 400MHz Dual Channel DDR MEMORY [+135] (Corsair XMS PRO High Performance Memory w/ Heat Spreader & LED Lights [+123])
• NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
• OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional X64 Edition (Requires AMD Athlon 64 CPU) [+46]
• PRO_WIRING: Professional Wiring for All WIRINGs Inside The System Chasis with High Performance Thermal Compound on CPU [+19]
• PRINTER: None
• PRINTER_CABLE: None
• POWERSUPPLY: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA 24P (ALL IN ONE) SLI Supports 600Watt Power Supply [+154]
• RAID: NONE
• RUSH: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS
• SOFT: Microsoft® Works 7.0
• SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY PLUS ONE-YEAR ONSITE SERVICE
• SOUND: Creative Labs SB Audigy-2 ZS 7.1 [+95]
• SPEAKERS: (SILVER)JUSTER NEON LIGHT SUBWOOFER STEREO SPEAKERS [-33]
• SCANNER: NONE
• STRAP: NONE
• TEMP: THERMAL TEMPERATURE LCD DISPLAY WITH 3X FAN CONTROLLER [+12] (BLACK COLOR)
• UPS: OPTI-UPS ES1000C 1000VA/700W UNINTERRUPT POWER SUPPLY - Recommended [+149]
• USB: Build-in USB 2.0 Ports
• USBHD: NONE
• VIDEOCAMERA: NONE
• VIDEO: NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB 16X PCI Express Video Card [+396]
• VIDEO2: NONE
• WIRELESSCARD: NONE
• WIRELESSPOINT: NONE
• ZIP: NONE

All of that for 3300 USD even. Finally, I have a PC that is not mediocre, a PC that will not start to choke on even the simplest of tasks, and a PC that will not run Half-life 2 like a slideshow.

It's just so great that all I can say now is
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

It's that time again. It's now October we are right in the middle of the most exciting quarter of gaming of the year. To make it even more exciting, a brand new system is launching in November and there are also many, many PC and console titles to look foward to this time as well.

I thought I should take the time to map out the possible titles and hardware that I would like to get over this time of year.

Hardware:

Nvidia 7800 GTX ($500)

Xbox 360 ($400)


Software:

PC:

Half-life 2: Aftermath (?)

F.E.A.R. Director's Cut Edition ($55.00)

Doom 3 (?)

Far Cry (?)

Quake 4 (?)

Oblivion (?)

Call of Duty (?)

I'll add or remove some more if I think of any.

Consoles:
Resident Evil 4 Premium Edition (PS2) ($55.00)

Resident Evil 4 Collector's Edition (GC) ($90.00@ebay)
 
Killer 7 (GC) ($30.00)

Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360) (?)

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP) (?)

I'll add or remove some more if I think of any.




That's all for now!

Intel Pentium 4 1.7 GHZ Processor
Nvidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400 w/ directX verison 7.0
256 MB RAM
No idea about the mobo
Hardisk I think is 40 GB w/ 5200 RPM
NEC NR-7900A
Lite-On LTN486 48x Max
Not sure not the sound card

I think you can figure out what I have to work with from this. I get no more than maybe 15 FPS in Half-life 2 on the lowest settings with an inane amount of stuttering and loading times and it often freezes up and crashes even when I'm playing low-tech games like even SimCity 2000 and Rollercoaster Tycoon. It even freezes up when I'm just using Firefox.
I got this 4 years ago and haven't upgraded at all. It is just so discouraging that I have to work with this everyday :(.

I don't have any good ideas on what to make my board about :(.

Maybe someone can help me?

I just deleted all but one of my journal entries today and opened my journal up for other people to see. I didn't want anyone else to see that stuff, and most of it was garbage anyway.

That's all I have to say.

I know that there is a wishlist feature on GS, and it works very well, but when you have 194+ games on it, it can get pretty hard to plan how you are going to get everything. So here, I will make a list of all the games that I would like to have by 2007.

Games I definitely want:


The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1987)

Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES, 1988 )

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES, 1992 )

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB, 1993 )

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (GBC, 1998 )

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (GBA, 2002 )

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/ Master's Quest (GC, 2003 )

The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition (GC, 2003 )

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA, 2005 )

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC, 2006 )

F.E.A.R. (PC, 2005 )

Metal Gear Solid 1 (PS, 1998 )

Metal Gear Solid 1: VR Missions (PS,1999 )

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistance (PS2, 2005 )

Metal Gear Ac!d 2 (PSP, 2006? )

Metal Gear Solid/ Ghost Babel (GBC, 2000 )

Ninja Gaiden (Xbox, 2004 )

Final Fantasy 1-12 (NES; SNES; PS; PS2; DS, variety of years )

Deus Ex ( PC, 2000 )

System Shock 1+2 (PC, 1994 and 1999 )

Resident Evil (PS, 1996. Might be really hard to find :P )

REmake (GC, 2002 )

Resident Evil 2 (not sure what version )

Resident Evil 3 (not sure what version )

Resident Evil: Code Veronica (DC, 2000 )

Metroid (NES, 1986 )

Metroid II (GB, 1992 )

Super Metroid (SNES, 1994 )

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GC, 2004 )

Halo 3 (Xbox 360, 2006 )

Quake (PC, 1996 )

Quake II (PC, 1997 )

Quake III: Arena (PC, 1999 )

Quake IV (PC, 2005 )

Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC, 2004 )

Battlefield 1942 (PC, 2002 )

Battlefield 2 (PC, 2005 )



I'll add more when I think of some.


Games I might want to get:

Resident Evil 4 (PS2, 2005 )

Metroid Fusion (GBA, 2002 )

Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA, 2004 )


I'll add more to this list too when I think of some.