Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~

Well, seeing as how we're roughly the same age, I would have been a youngn', too, when your dad was there. I'm not familiar with a camp by the name of Ayres, but I've been to Butzbach more then once as it was almost directly on the way from where I was to Giessen, where we did a few exercises on a semi-regular basis. So I may have been to Ayres, but I certainly wouldn't remember that name after all these years. In fact, my general sense of direction over there wasn't very good, but iti didn't matter because I could speak and read enough of the language to get by, all of the Germans spoke English anyhow, and the Strass system took me wherever I wanted to go, including, on a couple of occasions, other countries. I really loved it over there, and I'd like to go back one of these days now that it's just "Germany" again, as opposed to "East & West" while I was there.

As some of you know, there is the possibility that the game World of Warcraft is going to be completely banned in China. So even though we may not be happy about what's happened with games like Modern Warfare 2, hey, at least we have a choice, and we have our Veterans and others who have served to thank for freedoms like that.

Another video that would be fun to see would be the crazy things that soldiers do when they get bored (or better yet, bored AND inebriated). When I was stationed in Germany (1989-1991), at Gibbs Kaserne in Weisbaden, my roommates had the brilliant idea (after the consumption of much alcohol) to jump out of our 3rd floor window to the grounds below. When that proved to be only slightly dangerous--and therefore not very interesting--they decided to try to FORCE other people out the window. Unfortunately for my roommates, the intended victims were sober and distrustful of a group of drunkards trying to get them to "come to the window and look at this!" Thus was born the even more brilliant idea to get someone to "come and look at what's inside this wall-locker!", at which point the victim was forced into the locker, the locker was secured, and then the locker and it's human cargo were pushed out the window. Amazingly enough, the only serious injury sustained was a broken arm. Not so amazingly, only two people were subjected to this "adventure" before the MPs came to the scene and put a stop to everything. And since the military encourages teamwork, I was subjected to the punishment for these activities along with my roommates, even though I did not participate. Good times!

I spent a little downtime at work today Googling things like "modern warfare 2 sales figures". Since, as of this posting, it is still officially Day 1, no solid numbers are in yet, but projections are that MW2 will have the best opening numbers of any game to date. I could not find any specific articles that made any mention of a loss of sales due to canceled pre-orders or the ire of the PC gaming community. One thing that Activision is worried about is that the copies sold before the official release date won't be counted in the opening day totals, and indications are that a significant number of units were sold prior to the official release date, even if only by a day or two. Supposedly, a number of "mom 'n pop" stores started selling early so as to get a bigger piece of the pie, which in turn prompted retailers like GameStop and Best Buy to break the release date to prevent pre-order cancellations from people who purchased early elsewhere. As with the game Spore, the PC community have let their feelings be known by spamming sites such as BestBuy.com and Amazon.com with extremely negative reviews about the game. I seriously doubt that this will have any impact on sales, since the majority of sales will be on the consoles, and by now, members of that demographic will have made up their minds as to whether or not they were going to purchase this game (or ask Santa to bring it for them). As for me, since the multi-player holds no interest, I'll pass on it for now. I'd like to play the single-player campaign, but that's not worth $60. Eventually, I'll be able to get it for $25 or so, most likely used. I just picked up Batman for $25 on a local classified ads site the I visit often, and that game came out just two months ago. Unfortunately, another similar outrage may be brewing. John Carmack recently announced that id's new game, Rage, will also likely lack a dedicated server feature. Article here: http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/27094-Car...likely_for_rage I hope this doesn't become a trend...

Blizzard Honors Top "World of Warcraft" player.

This is further evidence that Infinity Ward really dropped the ball, because, without modding, you won't be able to do this in Modern Warfare 2. If my sniper can't bust a move in MW2, I'll pass on it.

Mass Effect is indeed a good game, as is pretty much anything the developer, BioWare, has done so far. I have no idea as to how many of the Sparta members are RPG fans, but for $10, I'd highly recommend it. As far as Mass Effect vs the KOTOR games is concerned, I think it's a matter of how big of a Star Wars nut you are. All three are great games, with very similar styles of play. The KOTOR games are older, they don't support widescreen displays, and KOTOR2 doesn't work on most Vista (and probably Win7) installations, unless you want to trust a user-made patch that is a pain to install. But if you want to be a Jedi (good or bad) and slice people up with a lightsabre or knock them around a bit with The Force, you'll want to look into these games, and they run quite well on older or mid-range systems. Mass Effect is all (relatively) new and shiny and requires an above-average PC to get the best visuals and performance, and it's nice to have a good RPG that doesn't involves elves and dwarves all that abracadabra.

OK, I'll admit it, you got me on this one. When I started reading this, I thought, "Wow, I can't believe he's being so candid with this information". Shows you what a sucker I am!

I believe it was the other way around, but in any event, I seriously doubt that Blizzard had any say in the matter, and if they had, I think they would have gone in a direction that would have made PC gamers happy. MW2 (and probably IW.net) was well under development at the time Activision and Blizzard attempted to form Voltron. Activision's CEO, on the other hand, probably had some say in this issue, since it's seems to be his mission in life to make PC gaming as miserable an experience as is humanly possible. I believe his name is Bobby Kotick, so I'm sure if you Google the name, you'll find all sorts of articles on the guy, many with unkind words in them.

I feel the same way about Bethesda, which makes me wonder (and a bit worried) about how I did not hear about this game until now. Everything I've heard about the company as of late has focused on their new property "Brink" (developed with Splash Damage), as well as the usual speculation and rumors surrounding Elder Scrolls V. I'll say this, though: I've always been impressed enough with Bethesda' products that I would be willing to take the risk and purchase the game without hearing anything more about it. Of course, I'll be following up on the development of this game from now on, but I believe enough in Bethesda's commitment to making quality products that I would gamble on it. By the way, if anyone reading this works for Bethesda, please PM me so I can let you know where to send the money.

Ahh, well, since someone has apparently revived this thread (I've not seen it around before), I may as well add in my two bits: Here you can see my X360 which exists solely for the purpose of playing Rock Band. I got the complete set up (only the 20GB HD, though) with the RB2 instruments and games for $150, which I thought was a pretty good deal. I've since added RB Beatles. And this is a better look at the desktop. I love this 42" display; it's from Dynex, which is Best Buy's "store-brand", and the picture is as sharp and clear as any PC-specific LCD display at 1920x1080. The TrackIR 5 is perched up top there. A bit of a mess; the glass desktop is covered in fingerprints and water rings and what not, but there it is.

TO Durka: If you like this kind of material, I would strongly recommend "The Baroque Cycle", a trilogy of books by Neal Stephenson. I've read all but one of his books, and you can find them at: http://www.nealstephenson.com/ TO Haloelite: How are those 40K books? I've always been a huge fan of the 40K universe because I've played the game since it's first tabletop incarnation, but I've also been wary about the books because, more often than not, such novelizations are crappy tie-ins that don't do justice to the source material. The WH40K universe has such a rich and interesting backstory, and I'd hate to have it ruined for me by some hack who just wanted to write about space marines with guns but was too lazy to come up with his own background. Let me know how they are!

Anyone else care to join us sometime? My SteamID and GameSpyID are both fatal_papercut. Please feel free to send me an invite. I also play a bit of the Valve games from time to time, primarily TF2 and L4D, with the occasional round of CS:S when I feel like being all jumpy-shooty and what not. BTW, looks like Slain and I will be running Level 11 characters in Borderlands to start with tonight, FYI.

Yep, I have the "Gold" edition that includes the Opposing Fronts expansion. I passed on Tales of Valor because that was primarily designed for multi-player, which I don't do much of with RTS (the exception being the Dawn of War games--love those!). From what I can tell, the standard game has been patched to include fixes and features from the ToV expansion, so I think you can play some of the new game types with the original game, just not with the new maps. I could be wrong on this, though, because I haven't tried a game lately; I keep the game installed, "just in case...".

I just downloaded the game from Steam last night, and am getting my first taste of the game this morning. I haven't tried co-op yet, but I'd love to give it a go. For the near future, I'd be available Saturday evening, US EST 7pm, same Sunday (whenever we finish racing in NFS:S). I think Ebden asked the question about whether the game was "safe" for a 13-year-old. So far, in two hours of play, I haven't come across anything I'd consider objectionable. It's certainly a violent and bloody game, but not more so than a typical FPS, and I haven't heard any foul language yet, although the ESRB rating does list Language as one of the reasons for a mature rating. So far, I'd say the game is like a FPS version of Diablo--it's all about leveling up and getting bigger, better loot. I suppose in some ways this also makes it comparable to the ill-fated Hellgate: London, but I never did have an interest in that game. I watched a flatmate play it for awhile and found that game to be rather dull. Borderlands is entertaining so far. If I've encountered any downside, it would be the fact that it's taking me some time to get used to how the visual style affects my gameplay. The in-game Options don't allow much when it comes to tweaking the game, but fortunately the game has a few config files that allow you to tweak pretty much everything, including settings that SHOULD have been included in-game such as V-sync and AA. I don't know what the default FOV is set at, but it is way too limiting. I tweaked my config to make it 90 degrees, which is pretty standard for most shooters. If you want to know how to tweak the config files, see the sticky-posts for the game on the Steam forums at: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...ad.php?t=998374 If the game looks interesting to you, you'd probably enjoy it.

When the original Diablo was released, I wasn't really certain that I'd like it, since I consider myself a more "traditional" RPGer. As it turned out, Diablo's simplicity was also it's most addictive component, and it was easy to pick up and put down at my convenience. I don't recall playing a real "hack-n-slash" since then, so I'm looking forward to what will essentially be a more relaxed game, as opposed to those games where I have to try to figure out where the heck I am on the map and how many meters it is to a spotted target and whether or not I'm far away enough from the radio tower and satchel charges.

So, let's be optimistic for a moment and say that we'll find a way to get this campaign to run the way we want it to. The only other problem I would foresee is coordination. Since people will be dropping in and out of the campaign at different times, it might become difficult to keep track of what objectives have/have not been completed, and what the next/current objective is. If we can find a way to stay on top of the current situation, I think we'd have something interesting. One solution that is coming off the top of my head (and therefore may, in fact, be total crap) is to assign one or two "Commander(s)" that would be in charge offering up-to-date info on what is going on and posting that information on the forums or some other easily-accessible place. A bit of a kludge, I know, and I'm sure we could think up something better, but there it is.

Sign me up for "everyone else".

Hmmm, I was always under the impression that this was not a subscription-based game, and now that the reviews are out, there's still nothing that mentions anything about a subscription. Please, someone let me know if I'm wrong about this, because a monthly fee would keep me away from this game, good as it may otherwise be. In fact, after a bit more fact-checking before firing off this post, I'm quite certain that no subscription is required.

Or, as we always say in the Customer Service industry, "The Customer is Always Wrong." Hopefully, with the promised dedicated server, this issue will be taken care of, and even if CM doesn't step up to do it, maybe someone like EvenBalance (Punkbuster) will. Not the best solution, I know, but better than nothing.

This is odd, because I am running Vista Home Premium 64-bit (and have been doing so for over a year now), and AA3 has worked for me since the day I downloaded it. I tried it again--by going into an actual online game, mind you--right before replying to this post, and it's still running. In case it makes any difference, the version of the game I'm running is 3.0.6. Also, for someone that made a comment about the game's graphics, FYI: it uses the Unreal 3 engine. Of course, it doesn't LOOK as nice as Unreal Tournament 3, but then what else would you expect from a government-funded effort? And yeah, the game does feature some really good CQB; I always kinda liked the Rainbow Six Vegas games for that sort of thing, but I hated the "hide behind a wall for a few seconds and you'll be all healed" mechanic. AA3 has a similar feel, but with more realistic health and damage modeling (even more so than Arma2, for that matter). Of course, there's no AI, so you're always playing against real people, and there are no vehicles, either. Just straight squad vs squad combat.

I'm probably lucky here. We bought a Vista-loaded laptop for my niece's birthday in June and it qualified for a free Win7 upgrade; she said she's not particularly picky, and her laptop is a little powerhouse which has been running flawlessly so far, so she told me I could have the upgrade if I wanted it. So, hopefully, the upgrade isn't somehow tied to the Vista-license for her specific machine. I've Googled to see if this might be the case, but everything I've read so far says it's the same upgrade version that you'd buy anyplace else without any strings attached. All that will happen is that it will invalidate my current Vista license (unless I downgraded back to Vista for some odd reason).

You can also download free through Steam if you have an account with them.

Unfortunately, this only holds true for the current console generation. Consider this: what if the next Xbox or PlayStation was designed with Mouse & Keyboard controls in mind? And what if MS or Sony required developers to support M&K when applicable, along with dual-analog controllers? To be honest, the current-gen consoles ARE fairly impressive machines, especially when you consider the cost to the consumer. So think about how much more capable the NEXT-gen will be--particularly with M&K support. With more powerful machines that the next-gen is sure to bring and PC control schemes, consoles would directly encroach upon what has been PC-exclusive territory. If you follow the PC gaming industry at all, you know that Microsoft in particular would be absolutely thrilled if this happened, even if they would be unwilling to openly admit this in so many words. Next-gen machines will most likely be able to run the high-end PC games of today, and if that's the case, what incentive does a developer have to publish PC-exclusive titles? What incentive would they have to publish PC titles at all, when the market will likely be very small (and I'm not even bringing up the issue of piracy). And history already shows that MS and Sony will be willing to take a loss on initial hardware sales in order to increase software sales, because that's where the real money is due to licensing fees. My prediction--which I hope ends up being wrong--is that we'll all be gaming on consoles exclusively in ten years or less. If it doesn't happen after the upcoming generation of consoles, then surely after that. Believe me, I'd be really happy to eat my own words on this one. ** Edit ** For the purpose of staying on-topic, I can say that I won't be getting MW2, at least not the initial release. Since I have no interest in the multiplayer, there's no reason for me to pay $60 for a short single-player game. But when the price comes down to $40 or less--probably on sale on Steam in a year or so--I'll get it to play the single-player campaign, which I'm hoping will be fun.

Now that Fraps has been updated to work properly with Dragon Rising, I thought I'd post a video comprised of some of the cooperative multiplayer games that I've had the pleasure of participating in with some of the regulars. I tried to include footage that highlights the fun of playing the game with friends, as well as the to-be-expected sequences of things being blown up or shot at. Enjoy!