As I was mentioning to NeonNinja in my previous blog, I've had a little extra money recently and I have been using it to pick up a few things for myself. I actually bought Shadowrun, a new power supply, and a new graphics card all at the same time from Amazon. However, Shadowrun I got from J and B Computer World and had to pay for shipping. The iteam I got from Amazon I was able to get free "Super Saver" shipping. While J and B shipped my purchase right away Amazon waited, which I knew they would do. So I finally got my Amazon order yesterday and I'm impressed.

So, which items did I get?

I got this power supply:

Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU 500W V2.0

and I got this video card:

eVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT 512MB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0

Now, I would have liked to have taken pictures or video, but honestly I wanted to get this all installed quickly so my wife didn't have time to think about how much I spent and convert that into clothes or baby items. So while she was at the grocery store yesterday I opened up my package and set to install all of it while she was gone. It was pretty ambitious of me because she would only be gone 20 minutes and I never installed anything this complicated before. I did have an old graphics card, but it just plugged into the PCI-e port, no extra power required.

The first thing I did was unhook everything from the computer and unplug it, then I moved it over to an open space on the floor of my living room. I then unboxed the power supply and was honestly a little intimidated by it, but I still set to work. I removed the side panel from my conputer and tried to figure out what the power supply was plugged into already. There were two cables to the motherboard and one was rather large and partially hidden under my hard drive, there were also cables to the DVD drive and the hard drive itself. That was all I could see. I took careful note of how everything was, and thought about taking a picture in case I couldn't remember, but I was in a hurry, and besides I'm a tech genius (right?). I found there were four screws on the back of the case to hold the power supply in and I removed those and unhooked it from the components then removed it from the PC. It felt a little like I had just torn the computer's heart out. :twisted:

Installing the new power supply was more complicated. While the 300 Watt that came built in my computer had like 3 wires coming out of it, the new one had like 8. What am I supposed to do with all those wires? I tried not to panic and found that actually the power supply fit in the spot left by the old one super easy. I screwed it in with four screws on the back of the case just like the old one was.

I decided to leave the wires all just sitting there for a bit so I could get the new video card installed. So I go the new card and unboxed it and went to replace the old card. This is were I really needed pictures, but didn't have the time. I'll try to illustrate as best possible here.

As you can see the new card is considerably longer that the old one. So much so, that it almost didn't fit, but only almost. Which is great! :lol:

So now that I had everything in the case I went to plug in all the power cables. It wasn't too hard to remember plugging in the motherboard cables and the one to the DVD drive. I have a little trouble with the hard drive. Then, I plugged power into the graphics card. All the extra cables I bundeled up and shoved towards the bottom of the case. I closed up the case and plugged everything back into the computer.

Now, the moment of truth! I hoped turning it back on wouldn't cause it to explode or light on fire. Everything looked fine at first then, where it normally would boot into Windows, I got a primary hard disk error. I knew I must have forgot to plug the hard drive back into the motherboard. So, I unplugged everything again, and opened the case. Then I plugged the hard drive into the motherboard and closed it all up again. I rehooked up everything and tried booting again. Success! It booted into windows.

Only a few minutes later and I was waiting while the drivers installed and cleaning up the mess I had left. That is when my wife came home and though she knew I had bought computer stuff and she knew I had installed it, she didn't sit there and watch me do it, so it sat pretty easy on her mind (from what I can tell). The computer rebooted and she hasn't really noticed a difference.

As for performance. I haven't got to test it as much as I would like to, but I know it is a ton better. My Windows Experience Index went up from a 3.2 to a 4.7. The graphics portion is rated at 5.9 now, but I'm limited because of my processor, a Pentium D 2.4 Ghz (I'm not upgrading that anytime soon). I went from running my games at the lowest settings, to the higest on my monitors native resolution. For the power source,its fairly quiet, and it seems like everything is getting power and nothing has lit on fire yet. So, I'm pretty happy about that too.

Tell me what you think.

A lot of you, in fact I think all of you, did not know me back when I was 15 and had tons of free time to devote to my favorite hobby. So, in case you didn't know, I AM AN EXTREME GAMER! I haven't had as much free time as I've wanted recently and have been playing catch up with things I need to do on the weekends. This weekend was different and I was free to do whatever I wanted. So I spent it playing quite a few different games on two different platforms. I'll run down the list of this past weekends accomplishments. BE JEALOUS!

Beat Halo 2 on legendary:

If you haven't read this blog yet, I'll give you a quick summary. I finally beat Halo 2 PC on legendary. You can only play a solo campaign on there, so its pretty tough. I hate to say I did it only to get the achievement so I wont. I did have fun, but the achievement didn't unlock for some reason. Needless to say, I'm mad.

Shadowrun:

I played Shadowrun extensively over the weekend. I decided I really like playing a Human because they have no cost for tech. I've gotten pretty good.

If you didn't catch my review take a look at it. I'm pretty proud of it.

Mass Effect:

Yes, I'm still playing Mass Effect. I got the achievement for Soldier Ally yesterday. I'm almost done with my game on the hardest difficulty. I'm at the point where every enemy is easy again. Mass Effect really has a problem with difficulty scaling. It is impossible in the begining and in the end nothing can kill you.

The Cake is a LIE!

I beat Portal this weekend. I bet you didn't even know I had Portal. Well, I don't. A friend let me play through it and I beat it in less than 4 hours. I didn't have any help on the Puzzles so I feel like I was pretty quick. I found it annoying when I knew the solution to the puzzle but died because I missed a small jump. I hate platforming games anyway, so it doesn't suprise me. Anyway, the game is perfect in every other way. I love it but I'm glad I didn't buy it because well, its short. There are some additional puzzles I didn't bother trying. So, I don't have any impressions on them.

Rock Band... its annoying:

I played the Endless Setlist on Rock Band. I personally don't see how anyone can remain a fan of that game after playing through that. It actually took me more time to complete than playing through portal, but unlike portal I didn't enjoy it. I got an achievement for it, but I was only playing on medium, because I'm not that good at vocals. If I wanted all the achievements I would have to play through it again on Easy, Hard, and Expert. That is something I'm never going to do, and am I little peeved that the developers thought that anyone would find the endless setlist fun enough to play through even once.

I've removed Rock Band from my now playing. Probably for good.

TMNT for gamerscore:

I've got TMNT out from gamefly right now and managed to play through a couple of stages. It has to be the easiest gamerscore game I've played in a while and I am quite happy with it for that reason. I actually love Tenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I've already watched the movie TMNT a couple of times. The game is all platforming, which as I mentioned before I hate, but honestly this is a baby game. They give you plent of nija powers to do things like run across walls and jump all over the place and there are a lot of check points. I think the game is somewhat fun, and I plan to finish it sometime soon.

So thats it. I think it was a pretty full two days of gaming. My gamerscore is over 18000, which is a short jump to 20k. I have some games in my collection that can put me over right now, so I'm looking foreward to that. I'll probably finish up with Mass Effect soon. I think I might do one more game as an Adept, its the one c1ass I haven't tried. Also, despite my low review score for Shadowrun, I really like it and will probably be playing it a lot more too.

Tell me what you think.

"Everything the game does, it does right. The only problem is that it doesn't do very much."

Difficulty: Just Right

Time Spent: 10-20 hours

Shadowrun is a game that seems to have a lot of potential. In the end, though, it isn't fully exploited. The game mixes fantasy games and sci-fi shooters in a marriage that should be any nerds dream, and it does so very well. When you go online the game is solid. The problem is that there are only 3 game modes. So, after completing the tutorials and playing a few matches online, you'll be wondering where the rest of the game is. Sadly that is a question the will forever remain unanswered.

There are a couple things to note about Shadowrun. First, it is Windows Vista only and does require a decent system (2GBs RAM and Ge Force 7600+ graphics card). It is enhanced for dual core system so if you have one it, its a plus. Also, since this is a Games for Windows LIVE title, the online requires a Windows LIVE account (hotmail account) to play online. You can play against other PC players with a silver account, but to most games are from Xbox 360 players and you'll need a Gold account which is $50 a year if you don't already have one (it does come with a month free). Of course the game can be played locally over LAN, if you're opposed to online for whatever reason.

Shadowrun is set in a fictional future where, in addition to technological discoveries, magic is uncovered for the first time in 5000 years. The discovery of magic lead opposing forces into war and also created different races of meta-humans. As the player, you're fighting for the forces of RNA or Lineage for control of magical artifacts simply called "artifacts" (creative, right?). Anyway, the story doesn't matter at all and serves only as an excuse for you to be shooting at other players online.

When you join a match you'll be placed on a team. At the beginning of each round you'll have a chance to buy your choice of weapons or skills. For anyone who has played Counter Strike, that should be pretty familiar. Then you'll set off to destroy the opposing team. Should you be killed you will not respawn, but you can rejoin the fight if one of your team members revives you. Once the game gets going there will be people flying and teleporting around, as well as shooting and healing, killing and reviving. It is a lot to wrap your mind around and that is the real strength of Shadowrun.

In the game there are four races, human, elf, dwarf, and troll. Each race has its own advantages and they are all balanced very well. In addition to the races there are Tech and Magic... oh and of course guns too. Magic skills allow you to heal team mates, or teleport, or even summon minions and more. Tech abilities allow you to use a glider, or have radar like vision, or improve your speed, or aim better. As for weapons there is your standard fair of pistol, machine gun, rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, mini-gun, rockets, and (maybe not so standard) katana. When you start messing around with Race/Skill/Weapon combos then you start to understand Shadowrun's complexity, and its uniqueness. From my experience it is easy to make a combination you like, but difficult to master all the different aspects of what your enemy may be doing at any given time.

So, the game is totally based around team play and, as I previously mentioned, there is an astounding 3 different modes to play and that might even be brought down to two. Each map is set up as either a Extraction Map or a Raid Map, and Extraction Maps you can't play Raid on and vise-versa. Extraction has both teams fighting to bring the artifact back to their base, while in Raid only Lineage tries to capture the flag while RNA tries to protect it. In either of these game modes if one team eliminates all players on the other team, they win the round regardless of the artifact. The third game type, availible on all maps, is called Attrition, where the objective is to kill the other team. In Attrition the artifact stays on the map, but only serves as a kind of power-up that either team can use. While all of these game modes are fun they're not very diverse and I really feel the game could use more modes to choose from.

Graphically the game does pretty well, but there are a few issues. Each team has a different look for the different races, but other that that there is no difference between characters. You can't change your clothes or looks in the slightest way, there isn't even a choice to change gender (everyone is male). The developers also failed to put in a ladder climbing animation for some unknown reason. Still, everything looks good even on the lowest settings. Everything holds up graphically even with 16 players quickly moving around and using magic and skills.

Sound is pretty simple in the game. I don't know that there is much to say on it. It isn't bad or distracting, but its not something you'll be looking for the soundtrack for. One thing the game does that I appreciate, is that it gives you auditory warnings as to where enemies are and where your team mates are fighting. Some people might find that annoying, but it isn't overdone, so I'm glad they included it. As far as sound effects go everything sounds like it should.

In the end, Shadowrun is a fun, but limited game. Everything it does works well, but you might get sick of what is really just two different types of matches. This PC version can actually be picked up fairly cheap now. I got mine for $10 with a free month of Gold. If you're the kind of person who enjoys playing games like Counter Strike endlessly and want to try something different you need this game. For everyone else, you wont be hurting yourself if you decide to skip this one.

Score: 6.5

Please, leave positive feedback here if you read all that.

I finally finished Halo 2 PC on legendary. GUESS WHAT?!?!?! I DIDN'T GET THE ACHIEVEMENT!!!!!!!! Games for Windows live is a f'ed up glitchy mess and I am really sick of it. Also the game doesn't show which levels it counts that you've completed online and which ones it doesn't. Which means I've going to have to play through the whole thing again and just pray if I actually want the achievement. That is a bunch of BS!

I'm thinking about writting my review for Shadowrun already. Its pretty straightforward, so even though I haven't spent much time with it, I think I have a good feel for it. The sad truth is there isn't much there, but that is somewhat ok because what is there at least works. I think it is a game that missed its potential because of pressures from Microsoft for the cross-platform play and they didn't get to focus on elements like making more game modes. I guess it just is what it is.

So I got my copy of Shadowrun that I ordered and happily installed in on my computer last night. I was supprised how beautifully it runs given that my current system doesn't meet the minimum requirements (I'm actually getting a new graphics card whenever it finally arrives). Currently, I have it set to 800x600 with all the effects turned off, but it works perfectly. The game has ben knock for being too limited and I would agree in part. If you paid $50 or $60 for this game you would feel ripped off. Sill as a $10 - $30 game this is a pretty sweet buy. I'll explain why.

The reason Shadowrun is so cool is its unique combination of fanatasy and sci-fi. You have a choice of Races like elves, and drawves, trolls, and humans. It also has a mix of magic and tech. When you put together the mix of race/skill/weapon combinations availible the game can get pretty intense. The problems that make the game so limited is the small number of maps and the small number of actual guns. If you can't embrace the new skill system and try to stick to mostly running and gunning you'll be bored, but then again you'll also die really easily.

To me the game seems like a Team Fortress 2, that is maybe a little bit more fleshed out, but less the rest of the orange box (warning: I haven't actually played Team Fortress 2, i'm just going off what I've heard). So far, I haven't gotten th nerve to go online. I know there are people out there playing though. I did go through the training and I played a few matches against bots. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the skills and find a mix I really like. Still, just with what little experience I've had so far, I know I didn't waste my money, that was the one thing I was afraid of. If you have Vista you could do much worse than a $10 copy of Shadowrun.

I'm sure most of you don't know this because mostly on here I talk about all my xbox 360 gaming, but I'm a big fan of the Tales of Series. I've beat Tales of Sympohnia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Destiny 2, and I've played parts of Tales of Phantasia, and Tales of Legendia, and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythologies. With exception of Radiant Mythologies, all of those games are good for the time they were released and some of them are the most enjoyable RPGs I've ever played through. That being the case, I am EXTREMELY excited to hear that a new Tales of game is comming to the 360 and despite it being a Japanese only download, I'm just a big enough fan that I have to try it. Well, I did, I downloaded the Japanese Demo and played through all 6 minutes or so of it, and I hated it. I was so dissapointed by it I had to find someone who would understand the totally sorrow I'm going through so I posted in this forum hoping to find some sympathy. Well, I didn't find any.

Regardless of whether you're a fan of the Tales of Series or not, it should be appearent to anyone playing that Demo, that at the very least it is a crappy demo. There are basically 2 different groups of enemies you can fight and a boss. There is no leveling and you can't even check your equipment. For fans there are some things you can do such as cooking, but that really doesn't make any difference. My personal opinion of the demo was that there were more problems beyond that. The graphics looked like the were ported from a PS2 version, the voice acting sounded like all the characters were talking into tin cans, the music was horrible, and everything (battles, dialog, movement speed) felt slowed down from previous games in the series. Now being a fan, I'm still open to giving the full version of the game a try, but I'm not so much of a fan that I'm blinded to the faults in that short demo.

Of the people in the forum, most of them are in total disbelief that I can say anything bad about the graphics. It makes me wonder if these people actually play any other games. I mean sure these might look a little better than Tales of Sympohnia, but that game was on the gamecube and released about 4 years ago. I'm looking for more than a marginal improvement. The game doesn't look nearly as good as Eternal Sonata which is also Cell Shaded and on the same system. It could be the bland art sty1e or just a lack of proficency developing for the system, but it is still ugly. Argue that this is just one stage of a demo and that it doesn't reflect the finished quality of the game, but don't pretend like my eyes don't work or that I have no perception as to what current day game graphics should look like. That really makes me mad. :evil:

Anway, I seemed to have stumbled upon yeat another group of fanboys and fangirls. I'm sure that some of them legitimatly thought the demo was better than I did, and thats fine. Obviosly these people are all fans, because they're willing to create a japanese live account (silver) just to download this game demo. I would think that not all of them were so diluted to think that the game would be unquestionably without fault, but now I'm not so sure. As for myself, I'm not so optimistic about the game anymore, but being the fan of the series that I am, I know I will at least give the full game its fair shake when it comes out in August. Hopefully the game plays better as a whole.

If you missed my earlier blog I was invited to a LAN party this past weekend and I actually did go and, not so suprisingly, I had a lot of fun. I was a little leary about unhooking my computer and dragging it off somewhere, but it wasn't nearly as cumbersome as I thought it would be. There were about 15 people who showed up and amazingly we were all able to hook up our gaming PCs in the same room without killing the power. We played Unreal Tournament for the most part, and it really was amazing looking around and seeing everyone going against each other. It is better than playing on the internet! One thing I learned though was I'm not very good at PC shooters. That isn't a suprise to me as I've only played Demos and MMORPGs on my PC for the most part. For it being my first experience with these games I don't think I did that bad. Other games we played were Counter Strike and Worms Armageddon. I did the best at Counter Strike, which is weird because it is the one I liked the least.

On another note I beat Eternal Sonata. I hope I don't offend anyone when I say it was really easy. If any of you have played the game I found a cheater equipment configuration for Falsetto. I had two items equiped on her that increaded the ammount of time she got back when she attacked. That meant I could hit 40 times if I was standing next to an enemy when my turn started. Now, for those of you who have played and beat the game I was wondering if you could help me out with something; WTF is up with that ending?!?! I seriously have no idea at all. Hopefully one of you can explain it to me. Send it by PM if you have to. That will avoid plot spoilers in the comment section.

Edit__

Eternal Sonata review is up. CHECK HERE!

I've been tempted to buy shadowrun ever since I played the demo. It played totally different from most shooters. With the weapon, magic, race mixes there needs to be more going on in your mind. The biggest worry I had was that no one would play it. It seems the Xbox forums are buzzing with cultish followers of the game, so I guess I don't have any worries there. I'm looking forward to getting to play it and I'm wagering the cross platform achievements will be even esier from the Windows Vista side.

Here's the link if you want to buy it yourself. Note, it is Vista only and does require a decent system.

I downloaded the XNA studio from Microsoft today. If you don't know what XNA is it is basicly a way to start developing games on your own. Using XNA you can make games for windows and Xbox 360, and soon you can make them for Zune too. I have absolutly no experience making games, no formal education, and only limited programming experience (mostly in web programming not for games). I'm not looking for something to make money here, but at worst I'll become more familair with the .net framework (which my current employer needs developers for) and maybe I'll be able to make a game my son will enjoy (which should be incredibly easier than making the online RPG I've always wanted). Right now it looks incredibly confusing, but I'm going to go through all the tutorials. I'd like to get good enough at understanding what is going on that I could help review other people's games online. I would hope my useful feedback turns in to actual inprovements in those games. Then I'll be like an amature game tester. I know when I was a kid I always said I wanted to be a game tester. I'm sure I'll have to gain some serious skills though before people would consider paying me to do it.

I've been invited to a LAN party with some of the people I work with and am pretty sure I'll be going. I've actually never been to one before and even being invited has bumped me up a full point on the nerdometer. For those of you who aren't familiar with what a LAN party is, I'll explain it to you like I explained it to my wife. LAN partys are exactly like the parties where middle aged single women take their pet poodles to one place so they can all play together, only replace "middle age single women" with "socially inept male techno-geeks" and replace "pet poodles" with "computers". We'll be playing Unreal Tornament and Worms Armageddon. The party is this Friday, so I'll be sure to let everyone know how it went next week.