I've made my decision to upgrade my now two year old PC that I feel is starting to lagg behind... well it started last year but now I just gotta have some smooth gameplay on my fav of platforms.

Now, you will probably question some things I've decided to do to make this happen, and you might even question why I'm upgrading. I'm doing two things to bring in more cash:

1. Selling my PSP
2. Selling a few years old Dell LCD 20.1" monitor

I'm done with the PSP. I've had it for like three months and I'm done. I don't need to fill in that gap I have between home and school with games I've grown so fracking tired of. It wasn't as fun as I'd hoped. So thats going out. The monitor is a no-brainer because last summer I got a 27" Dell to rule both my PC and 360. Works wonderful and looks sexy enough to be arrested. Not ushering out that one for a couple of years.

Maybe I don't have quite enough cash to make this economically passable (I need my buffer zone), but if these two sales goes through as I plan, I'll live another three months at least.


I should introduce my current rig. An over-clocked beast of the last generation:

ABIT KN8-SLI,nForce4 SLI, Socket-939
AMD Opteron 165, 1.8GHz (over clocked to 2.21GHz)
Corsair Value S. PC3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MB (two 1024mb stick, one was corrupted and
never returned for completely no logical reason)
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT 512MB GDDR3 (over clocked to a X1900XTX)
Hiper ATX 480W, 14dB

So, yeah. It's still do-able. And that's why I'm feeling so hesitant about the whole thing. Because it does everything else I want perfectly, except gaming. But even that is a borderline case. I run COD4, UT3, TF2 decently at 1280x800 (I dare you to take advantage of my monitor's 1920x1200. I dare you!) and I can actually max out Bioshock (for about an hour before things start crashing down). Thats the beauty of PC gaming and its poorly optimized drivers and games who don't see eye-to-eye (Gears of War, Crysis) or seem to dance around like bff's (UT3, Bioshock). Sometimes stuff works and sometimes they don't. And lately things have just not been working out as good as I want it to work out.


I give you my upgrade campaign trail of 2008:

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5 Kit w/two matched CM2X1024A-6400 Dimm's
Intel Core™ 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz, Socket LGA775, 6MB, 1333Mhz
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI, Socket-775, GbLAN, DDR2, SATAII, ATX, 2xPCI-Ex16
XFX GeForce 8800GT 600M 512MB GDDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI/HDTV/HDCP,600Mhz

The plan is to keep the motherboard and GPU in the family by having XFX as my weapon of choice. The MB is SLI because I want to cram another 8800GT in there to get more performance than a GTX (allegedly), and by having it all in the family I'll reduce driver complications and have the machine as reliant as possible. The RAM is fast and cheap, and I'm buying two of those packs to get 4gb (Crytek approved?). The CPU is really interesting because of the 45nm chipset that is supposed to reduce power supply by 10% and generally perform a bit faster than the 65nm. Also something about SSE4, which is good. Powerful, fast, cheap and easy to over clock (4GHz is nothing to sneeze at).

I got the rest I need, it's just the core that's being replaced. Hopefully I will get enough cash to buy this thing by the time the new Intel processor start hitting retail around late February. And hopefully by then I will have come to my senses and invested the money in my life or something.

Allright, I love writing shit. That's right. Shit. I love going on and on about philosophies of games and yadayada and talking about the bigger picture. A lot of people here do it better than me , and I sometimes forget the games I'm actually playing. I can't enjoy them quite as much as when I first got my hands on them, because I'm constantly in the need of that next fix of gaming bliss. So this post will just be a rant about how I loved the Devil May Cry 4 demo on the 360.

It's been a kinda drought lately (mostly spending my time in tf2, cod4 and halo3, some old vampire rpg, and Puzzle Quest on my way to school), so I've been in a state of boredom. Sure, tf2 is just plain awesome, Halo3 is great and fun in multiplayer (can't stand the campaign, but thats another story) and Cod4 is intense and dignity stripping (e.g. making you feel like you're barking up the wrong tree if you were planning on a professional cod4 mp career), but I don't devote every hour a day to a certain game because I just don't have the attention span. I need that new game!

And here it is! The Devil May Cry 4 demo got me giddy for a new game again. I've played about half of dmc3 on a borrowed ps2 a while back, and that game pulled me in for some awesomeness that was made for my shallow mind. I love the attitude (the over-the-top style that just makes fun of itself and having a great time doing so), I loved the music, the graphics and the combo-frantic gameplay. That was dmc3. This is dmc4. And given the graphics whore I am, it is the dmc made entirely for me. Or so it feels, 'cause I hope that feeling can last longer than the 15 or so minutes you have in the demo.

The controls on the 360 is pretty much the same as on the ps3 (the face buttons are the same, R1 is right bumper etc.) but it does feel a bit awkward. It feels very awkward in fact. Having played dmc on a dualshock, you'll have the same awkward feeling, I'm sure. But it works. If I could hook up a dualshock usb controller to my 360 (or any other device for that matter) I would.

Devil May Cry 4 got me giddy and excited again, like I felt a few months ago with the big game avalanche that was late 2007. Sure, you can make a lot of arguments against the game, I have some concerns that I might talk about when I've played the final game. But for that 15 minutes (give or take) Nero certainly did hit a slam dunk.

The 1 console future. The paper that will declare just exactly what a "console" has to include to be manufactured and sold legally. It will be owned by some industry led organization and presumably have its HQ in the US. Have I got it right so far? No? Enlighten me.

One of the main arguments put forth is that the technical advancements made in the industry are going to halt at some point, provided that the production costs will get too high and development cycles reach ridiculous amount of years. That argument to me sounds pretty ridiculous in it self. Imagine if that mindset had such a huge impact in the 90's? Everybody just went "No, I'm gonna settle with this amount of pixels, that many polygons, and this many hours of gameplay. Screw technological advancements, THIS is what games are gonna be like from now on." Am I being a douche, or does this argument sound absurd to anyone else but me?

Garnett Lee was the man who got me pretty upset about it, during a 1Up Yours podcast not too long ago. "5.1 surround sound, high-definition graphics, online play" was his bullet points he laid out that technology has come to a halt, or should see a halt in the near future. Because hey, consoles now have "high-definition". Welcome to the PC, eons ago.

Yep, I'm gonna settle with the startlingly realistic human faces of Mass Effect, the OMFG glow on every object in UT3 and GoW, the real-world environments the Source engine brings me, the .jpeg-like surprised and chocked looking Philippine faces and the over-all ridiculously "gorgeous" graphics of Crysis. This is it for me. I don't need any more advancements in technology to transcend my mind into another world of joy, awe and wonder. /sarcasm


I don't know, costs and development cycles have all but decreased and that leads many to believe this has got to stop at some point. Maybe it will, or maybe it will get more efficient (has history taught us anything at all?), but we're a long way from seeing that 1 console future.

Staying up to 4.30 in the morning for watching a press conference I knew would be very insignificant, was a bad move. Now I need some sleep. And Bill's only shock treatment for me last night was a video about his last day in office that made me want to kill myself. He apparently knows some celebrities. Including Slash. Who?

What the announcements for Microsoft's gaming division told me was that nothing "new" was happening in the 360 camp. The IPTV partnerships will use Xbox Live as the communications platform, and that platform can be transferred between devices, from the original Xbox to the 360, further on to future Xbox's. Connectivity was the rant, and connectivity they delivered. If reality was anything like a Microsoft press conference, things would be kind of nice. Unfortunately, reality is something missing from the Microsoft point of view on society.

What the press conference told me was that they are going to ride this year out with software for the 360, before the next Xbox is announced. This press conference told me that they don't have anything new and revolutionary to bring to the 360 camp, and that they are already looking forward towards future generations of gaming, bringing Xbox Live with all its IPTV services with them.



What I said yesterday brought me down to the standards of suckage here on dtoid, though I promised not to tard out. Maybe I broke that promise, and maybe I've become too pretentious to recall what made me not to fail in the beginning. Whatever the case might be, I stick by my douchebaggery methods of deeming the 360 to the ground partly because of HD DVD (i don't know anything really and maybe therein lies the problem, i just don't know when to stfu), and I will have to make a lot of changes to bring you guys' trust back... Because this site is just too awesome to not contribute to, and I sure wanna be a part of it in many years to come.

If Batman Begins taught me one thing, it's an answer to a question. "What do we do when we fall, Bruce? We learn how to pick ourselves up again." And thats just what I intend to do.



/wrist

Like Gerstmann-gate, this is a time to blog and we bloggers love it, as we get to be pretentious again and satisfy our egos by writing about the same thing over and over again. I am no different, and this issue is no different. This is the beginning of the end of the HD-format war, with Warner being bought by the Blu-ray lobby group for allegedly $500million, leaving Paramount, Universal and Toshiba in a difficult position. Or is it really that difficult for them? Haven’t they already made up their minds and the end to format war was already over months ago? Things like this don’t come to the public’s attention nowadays any faster than it did before the internet.

Is HD DVD dead? Yes. It will not be many years before Blu-ray will be the only alternative on the market, and I think by 2009, even by the end of ’08, Blu-ray = El Rey. During the course of this year, Blu-ray sales of both players and discs have increased while HD-DVD took a step back, which is a direct result of the rising sales of PS3 as well as better marketing for Blu-ray. I hate to say it, but Michael Bay was right, and like Mr. Bay says, whatever Wal-Mart pushes, wins . Marketing and money is everything. The media industry is one dirty business, and will always be won by the ever raging rein of the almighty currency . The problem for any HD distribution format is the already established mainstream appeal of the DVD. It will take a few years, about 3-4, before we see the sales of HD format discs to surpass the sales of DVD discs.

The death of HD DVD will also mean the death of the Xbox 360. By the end of this year PS3 will have marginalized the gap between 360 and PS3 sales, and developers have adapted to the delicate, intelligent and pain-in-the-ass-hardware that is the Cell processor and the 256mb of RAM (lol?). The 360 is already obsolete and will be even more so by 2009, and by then the next Xbox will have been announced and planned for a 2009 holiday release. That’s right I said it.

Did Microsoft know this was going to happen? Was this a factor in the decision not to include a hd-dvd player in the 360? I am a suspicious man with conspiracy thoughts coming out my ass, so I’ll bet that there was an uncertainty in the Microsoft camp regarding the HD format war. Not including a HD playback device, and painting themselves in a corner with the arcade/core SKU’s point to yes, they were aware and uncertain. So, will Microsoft announce the 360 Ultimate with a built-in HD DVD player? Not bloody likely. There is no need for another 360. There is a need for another Xbox, with IP-TV, 320gb hard drive, built-in Blu-ray player, motion-sensing controls and a hell of a lot graphical power to surpass the PS3. The problem is with the built-in Blu-ray player. Will it actually be there? Blu-ray has become so familiarized with the PS3 that it's gonna be very hard for Microsoft to incorporate it into one of their products. But it seems like Microsoft doesn’t have a choice, because an all-digital-distribution-future is a long away ahead.

I just have to get some Halo 3-hate off my chest. I can't stand the music, I can't stand the story, and most of all I can't stand the constant shoving in my face that this game is the best thing since "peanut!butter!jelly!". Seeing Halo 3 receive this award made me feel a bit better, but this quickly wrecked that feeling. They're not even using the actually cover art! "...using an arsenal of long- and short-range weapons, plus grenades and hand-to-hand moves" is one of my favorites. As far as I know, every goddamn FPS I've played has a somewhat similar formula, I would say. If I was to say something about my game of the year, I'd prolly go for an argument thats a little bit more substantiated.

I hate Halo 3, but I think it's a good game. Let me explain:

First, the good

Now, I have played 5 chapters of the singleplayer campaign and done some matches online, so I haven't spent half my life playing this game, but a fair amount to at least give it my honest opinion about it. Its good. Halo 3 is a good game. How does it rate? Between 7 and 8. The amount of polish is unbelievable. An incredibly solid game that runs smooth, has almost no glitches, and frankly has some very smart combat situations that are not too complex nor too shallow or unsubstantial. The way that the AI behaves differently so that you have to implement new strategies further up the difficulty ladder is quite impressive. The multiplayer mode is perhaps the deepest I've seen, and the matchmaking system actually works. Forge is cool, noting more. Save films are also cool and a step forward for online interactivity.


Now, the bad

Halo is a boring game. Both singeplayer and multiplayer are incredibly boring. This is, of course, very subjective, but I'm used to games that grab me by the balls and doesn't let go. Halo just feels like something that's there, "and hey look, you can just play that game if you want. It's there. Pick it up. Play. Lay it down. Come back when you feel like it. Doesn't matter, really. You know, whatever." That's the feeling I get playing Halo. Most of that is because it's so slow. I feel like I'm high playing it. And not in a good way high.

The story is completely uninspired. I get better story out of Quake or Rainbow Six than this. The way everything is presented to you is just so American. The whole game just smells like stars and stripes, and thats something that most games don't. Even the most American ones. I feel like I'm the quarterback for my high-school football team when playing Halo. It just, has this very banal and "fabricated" epic feel thats so transparent. Its plastic. The game is plastic. Just because you put a munk choir on your pretentious melody doesn't make it "epic". This isn't Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. You want epic? Look deeper than the main theme.

And the worst thing about Halo 3, is the marketing. The way they shoved this incredibly mediocre experience down my throat like it was Jesus' cock (yes I said it) disgusted me to the degree that I will never be able to experience Halo 3 with an empty canvas. It will always be tainted with my hate for the franchise and with the utterly disgusting fabricated plasticness (my word, I made it up).




/wrist


PS(p)
I'm playing Silent Hill Origins on PSP, and I'm liking it so far. Never played a Silent Hill game before, but I can see why it has got the following its got. Looking forward to Silent Hill 5.
PS(out)