Help Fund a Game

While browsing kickstarter yesterday, I came across a game that is in the early stages of development. The game, known as Blade Symphony, is a sword fighting game who's game mechanics are based on those of the Star Wars: Jedi Knights series. What is better is that you can help fund this game! The more you give, the more you get. One of the neediest promotions is if you donate $1000, you get named an Executive of the  game in the credits.  This game has potential, and is definitely worth donating to. 

For those of you who don't know what Kicstarter is, it is a website where people post their ideas for products. If the idea is accepted, then Kickstarter will fund their prototype and let them make a video about it. The person(s) then try to promote their idea, so as to reach their goal. When they reach their goal they go and start producing more of that product.

~Dave

Humble Bundle 3 is Here!

Humble Bundle is back and this time sporting five new games. Humble Bundle, for those who don't know, is a charity promotion event that allows you to buy the five offered games for any price you wish, even free. This is one of the best ways I have seen to raise money for charity. Past Humble Bundles have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, just by selling games for what ever price the buyer wishes to pay. In addition to buying the games, you have the choice of where your money gets to go. You could send it all to charity, or you could send it to the developers. Split it however you would like. This time around the games up for grabs are Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVV, And Yet it Moves, and Hammerfight. All of these great games for what ever price you want. So what are you waiting for? Go buy some games!

~Dave

Good Timing Gamestop

Yesterday I received an email from Gamestop promoting their new sale. Boy did I laugh when I saw what it was. Due to the reason events with Sony's PSN, it would seem Gamestop is trying to empty out stock. This means you could get a PS3 for as little as $200. Wether or not you need one is up to you, I myself was always looking into a Blueray player. Most likely I will pass this one up, but it is something to think about. Plus, when PSN does come back up, anyone who uses this promotion should really not give any information to PSN no matter how safe Sony claims it is. Another possibility is that Sony knows their sales will drop due to the recent incident, thus they may have instructed sellers to put a sale on to keep the sale of their consoles going. What ever it may be is unknown, however if you need a PS3 now is your chance to get one at a low price.

~Dave

3DS Test Drive

Over the course of last week I was able to check out the newly released 3DS. I, like many others, was skeptical at first as to whether the device would work. After some fiddling around with the menu screen, I booted into Pilot Wings. The man at Gamestop showed me where the 3D switch was and how it changed the dimension of the game. I put it on max so as to have the full effect. As I was playing he said "Did you find 'the sweet spot'?". I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, so I nodded my head in disagreement. He took a minute to explain to me that because of the layering, there is one spot you have to find where you get the full effect of the 3D. After moving the device backwards and forwards I finally found the spot. It is different for everyone, but when you find it the game really pops. This is not to say the 3D is amazingly crisp, it is not, but it does work in a sense. If you tilt the device left and right while playing, you can see all the different layers. That in itself was very interesting.

The next thing I learned about where the game cards. Each 3DS comes packed with 6 game cards. When you go into the game card program and lay the cards on the table, it will scan the card and create a 3D game right on the table. You can see all this happen in real time, and the game takes into consideration all the other things that are on the table. The 3DS I used didn't have the cards, so I didn't get to test this feature out.

The final thing that I tried was the head shooting game. You unlock more for this game with the more faces you gather. I was able to scan my face into the game and start playing. I do recommend that you NOT use 3D for this game. See, the game is an augmented reality game, so you are forced to move around. This makes you not able to hold the 3DS in "the sweet spot". It makes this game less fun.

Overall with game line up, and the starting price, I would not get a 3DS yet. Yes, I would like one in the future, however it is not worthing paying $250 for the console, plus an extra $60 for the game. There will be good games in the future, such as paper mario and legend of zelda, but right now it is best to wait.

~Dave

Portal 2

Chell as seen in Portal 2

The sequel to Valve's single player 2007 hit, Portal, is now here. Portal 2 is here and it lives up to the hype around its release. The game takes place 10 years after the original. You still play Chell, the main character, and this time you are challenged with harder more mind boggling levels. The game tends to focus on the backstory of Aperture Science, while revealing some other startling information. I won't go farther then that, as I don't want to spoil anything for you guys.

The game mechanics are the same for the most part. The newest addition to the game would be the new "Gels". Gels give you either enhanced speed or enhanced jumping height. There is one more gel, but I will let that one go as it may be a potential spoiler.

The great thing about the game is that the facility almost seems alive as you play through the game. Walls are moving and being fixed constantly. In addition, junk is being disposed of constantly. One thing I found to be a nice addition was how music seemed to correspond with your actions in the game. The faster Chell moved, the faster the music got, and the more intense it became. As for Co-op, I can't speak about it yet as I haven't gotten to play that part of the game. Hopefully I will be able to play co-op mode. From what I have played though, this game is definitely worth the buy.

~Dave

Ready to Help Charity

I know a lot of you out there like gaming, and that is good... really good. Purchasing games usually can seem like your throwing your money away, but fret no more because Humble Bundle has returned! That is right sport's fans, you can now help charity and game your heart out at the same time. Now, you could be mean and not pay anything for the bundle, but why would you do that when you can name your own price? Last bundle made almost 2 million dollars, and gave out almost 10 games. And the best part is, they are cross platform. Well, in this one only three are cross platform, but three is better then none! You can join in the fun today at humblebundle.com. The bundle goes on sale today at 9 AM PST, 1 AM EST. Make sure to give a little.

~Dave

MSI Hawk GTX 460 1GB GDDR5

My brand new graphics card!

After three days of waiting, a weeks of researching, my new graphics card has finally arrived. Installing it was a pain in my thumb because I shredded some skin while getting the PCI-E wires in and out. However, once it was in there was very little issues afterward. I booted into Windows without a hitch. After Windows installed the drivers, and I made sure I had the latest ones, I restarted the computer so Windows could apply the changes. Finally I got into Steam and ran Just Cause 2, a game which has its own benchmarking program in it. First, since I didn't have a lot of time, I set the display setting to "optimal" which is suppose to choose the best for my rig. I thought it was wrong at first because it set everything to "very high" and some optional items to "On". Here are my results:

AMAZING!

This was by far an amazing investment, and will most likely last me the next two years or so. This, of course, is only one benchmark, if I had done others I would probably see slight differences. As for my old 9800 GT, I am putting it away in storage. I have some future plans for it that where I might put it to use. If my current motherboard support the PhysX feature though, I would have put my 9800 GT in PhysX with my MSI Hawk.

~Dave

Purchasing a New Graphics Card

The process to pick out a new graphics card is not always an easy one, especially when you are working with a hackintosh. The trick is, I have to get one that is compatible with the hackintosh, as well as one that will provide the best gaming experience when running windows. In addition, I must have the money for one. My options were either the Nvidia 4XX series, or the Nvidia 5XX series. My price range was no more then $200. I had to read up on the new fermi cards so I could get a sense of what the performance differences were between the 4XX and the 5XX sereis. When it came down to it, the difference in performance was maybe 10-15 FPS (frames per second). However, the 5XX series is a bit pricier because it just came out two months ago. After looking at the differences, it would seem I was confined to buying a 4XX series card. Next things to do? Well I had to choose between the 460, 470, or the 480. From what I already knew, the 480 ran way too hot, and the 470 was very noisy. Bassed on this, I decided to look into buying a 460. Many different companies make variations of the 460, so I had to decide on a company. This is where I had no idea what I was looking for, they all seemed the same. It was at this point that I went to reddit for help. I posted a thread asking what card would be good for me in the 460 series. Within a couple responses it was narrowed down to either an EVGA 460, AR Version, with 1 GB of GDDR5 RAM, or the MSI Hawk 460 with 1 GB GDDR5. The difference between the two cards was the EVGA model came with a lifetime warranty, were as the MSI model was very good for overclocking. That means the MSI card can be set to run at levels higher then it is manufactured to.

There is a price difference between the two cards of about $10. Originally I thought I might need the lifetime warranty, however the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a card with more performance capability would be better. After searching, price matching, and more thinking, I decided on the MSI Hawk. The current price of the card is $199.00 with a $20 mail in rebate. I have decided I will be buying from Newegg because they have the lowest price overall. I was debating whether to go to Amazon or not, but I believe Amazon would be hard to deal with if there were any issue with the card. Thanks to reddit, and a lot of searching, I am getting a new MSI Hawk. My next challenge: Getting it to work with my hackintosh.

~Dave

NES for Japan

One way to help Japan would be to donate to the Red Cross, another would be to go out there and help. However, you can also sell one of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System games ever sold on ebay. Nintendo Stadium Events is the rarest NES game ever sold. It was only in production for one year before being taken off the shelves. The game is factory sealed, which ups the value significantly. This copy has been verified as a legit copy by the Video Game Authority, or VGA for short. They have given it a rating of 75 out of 100, which on their scale is considered very good condition and near mint. The seller has put the minimum acceptance price at 500,000 dollars, but I have a feeling he may have to lower it. He promises that 10% of the proceeds will go to Japan Quake Relief.

~Dave

The Cat Strikes Again

For those readers who have been here since the start of the blog, you may remember the incident with my laptop adapter and my cat. Well my cat has struck again, and this time at my Logitech G330 gaming headset. Besides the fact that I was furious, I now was put in the position to figure out the problem. Do I call Logitech tech support and hope they help, or just go buy a new headset. Seeing as I was still under warranty, I called up Logitech. I went through all the menu prompts, and was connected with a representative fairly quickly. The very first thing I asked, before explaining my problem, was how long was my limited warranty which came with my G330 headset. After a minute of looking, he told me two years. This was good, it meant I could get my replacement and be covered by warranty, which means I wouldn't have to pay. I then proceeded to tell my story that my cat attacked my headset, and that I was hoping the warranty would cover it. No questions asked, he simply said he needed some contact information from me; thus, I provided it for him. At the end of the call he made sure I understood that I would get an email in the next 24 hours with a shipping label. All I had to do is box up the headset and put the shipping label on it. Once shipped, I wouldn't get my new one shipped until they received my package at their plant in Arizona. 

I was very pleased with the overall experience. This is the first time I have ever had to call Logitech tech support for a warranty issue. The process was clean and easy, and the rep was very nice. I am glad that Logitech does such a good job with their customer support, it really helps when you are the end user with a broken item. Now I just have to get the packing label in my email and this process would be great!

~Dave

Sometimes, it is Best to Skip

As you may recall, yesterday I discussed a new game that was to be released. I had been eyeing this game, and was excited about its being released. Come the time at which the game was released, I had my money in hand and was ready to buy. However, before buying I wanted to double check that this was really the game I wanted. I wanted to check if this was really going to live up to my expectation. Was this going to be the Call of Duty killer my friend told me it would be? Would it surpass Battlefield Bad Company 2? I went online and searched google for reviews. To my surprise, many sites didn't like the game. Most said it was average, and the only gameplay mechanic it had going for it was the destructible environment. Graphics were sub par, and sound quality was below standards. I was really surprised. I had waited almost eight months for this game. So, with much vexation, I put my money away and saved it. Now that I look back on the whole event, I am glad I didn't spend my money. I can proudly say I am saving it.

~Dave

Breach on Sale Today

Breach is going on sale today. For those of you who don't know, Breach is a multiplayer gamer which boasts having the most destructible environments. It also uses a third person cover system, and an amazing physics engine. The game is what I would like to call the "Battlefield Bad Company 2 of Indie Games". The game is to be released on both Xbox 360 and PC today. The PC version will go on sale at 1 PM. Price is said to be between $15-20. The game is multiplayer only, and has been due for release for quite a while now. It was suppose to be released last year in the fall, but was not quite ready so it was pushed back. Whether or not this game will live up to its hype is to be seen, but I can only hope that it does.

~Dave

Best Buy is Really Strumming My Cords

I have been waiting since last year's E3 show for the ability to pre-order the pro Rock Band guitar. However, only Best Buy is selling it. And not only that, but you can only pre-order online for this guitar. Does not sound so bad right? Wrong! To pre-order online requires you pay the full amount up front. That means $279.99 on the spot. It is not like GameStop where you can put $5 down and then pay the full amount later. That is the reason I like GameStop over Best Buy, they are more reasonable. Now, Best Buy has some good costumer service, but options like this really annoy me. The reason GameStop is better is because putting $5 down first allows the buyer to save up for the final product. I do this with all my games, pre-order and then save up. This way I am able to buy the product when it comes out. So, if Best Buy wants my business when it comes to expensive products online, I suggest they change their pre-order policy. I am not shelling out $300 dollars on a product before it is even ready to ship.

~Dave

Somewhat Successful Attempt

I decided to take some time yesterday to try an idea of mine. I really wanted to play Super Meat Boy on my macbook, but it is a Windows only game. My idea was to install steam in Wine, and then attempt to play through wine. Just getting steam to work properly was a pain. I had to install it through wine, then I had to change some settings in X11 ( the program that runs the applications) so that I could click. It was very tedious and quite annoying. After that, I had to wait for Super Meat Boy to download, which took a couple of minutes. When I finally started to run it, it failed to start. So, I went into the control settings for the "steam" application in wine and changed it to run in Windows XP instead of Vista. This in turn allowed Super Meat Boy to play, but with a few graphical glitches, and at a low fram rate. In the end, I ended up uninstalling the Windows version of Steam, and decided to wait until Super Meat Boy is ported to Mac.

~Dave

Last Day to Grab Great Sales

Steam's amazing sales will end tomorrow, making today the last day to get any of the games you want. The sale has been going for over two weeks now, with new deals everyday. Rumor has it that today will be a recap of all the greatest selling games throughout the sale. That, in my mind, sounds like it would happen. However, if you get to the sale before 1 PM EST, you can get Half Life 2 on sale. It is an amazing deal for an amazing games, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Other games of note that you should pick up if they go on sale again are Super Meat Boy, Batman Arkham Assylum, Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Dirt 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2. All of these are amazing games which you should check out. Due note that Dragon Age takes up 23 GB of space, so make sure you have space. I hope everyone got what they wanted from the sale, lets hope for just as good a sale next year!

~Dave

MineCraft Server

The server client on my laptop looked like this.

Last night a spend a tone of time on a Minecraft server that I made. The process was very easy, and I had almost no trouble at all. Once I got it up and running, my friend and I played for hours and hours on it. I followed this simple tutorial to get the server up and running on my macbook. Here are the directions I followed when making the server, they were very clear and easy!

1. Download the latest version of minecraft_server.jar from here
2. Create a folder and put minecraft_server.jar into it. For example, create a folder on the Desktop named minecraft_server and drag the jar file into it.
3. Open TextEdit, set the format to plain text (Format > Make Plain Text), copy and paste in the following code, and save the file as "start.command" in the same folder as minecraft_server.jar.

   #!/bin/bash
   cd "`dirname "$0"`"
   java -Xmx1G -Xms1G -jar minecraft_server.jar

   This will give the server enough RAM to run. The amount of RAM can be changed by editing the 1G to something else, such as 2G for 2 GB.
4. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Type in chmod a+x , with a space after it, then drag and drop the start.command file into the terminal window, then press enter. (This gives run permission to the script.)

Double-click the start.command file to start the server.

Next, set up port mapping by following the directions below.

For server settings, see the relevant steps in the section Configure the Minecraft Server, but skip the port forwarding steps if you followed the port mapping directions below.

The whole process took about fifteen to twenty minutes, and the server only took a little less then 100 mb of RAM to run. Plus, the rate at which it send packets is very small too. My friend and I made a house, and found quite a few items. We even saved it so next we return to the server, we can play with our items!

~Dave

The Holidays Come to An End

After many sales, the holiday season has come to an end. Steam will be wrapping up its holiday sale this Sunday. Many stores are offering last minute price cuts, such as GameStop and Games For Windows. If you haven't gotten what you wanted already, then it is probably best you wait. Just around the corner is the new year, and many items drop in price then too. Some even go lower then they were during the holiday. That said, no games will be lower at the moment then the ones in the Steam sale, so make sure to pick up what you want out of that. Plus, in the new year there are many new things coming out, so you may wish to save your money for something then. And because the new year brings new items into the store, they tend to have clearance sales on items they don't want anymore, one that didn't sell well, or ones that they have too many of. So make sure to just keep an eye out for those sales.

~Dave

Hunble Bundle Christmas Gift!

The guys over at Hunble Bundle are still going strong with their charity promotion. However, they have added a new twist. If you pay, or have payed, $7.60, you will all the games from the last bundle with your purchase. That means you will get a total of 9 games! And, even better, you will also receive a Steam activation key for it too, so you can play your games on steam! Games included are World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugare HD, Panumbra Overture, and Samorost 2. Also, if you noticed, the previous pack had a bonus game. That may, or may not, be hinting at a possibility of an extra game for the bundle going on now. If there is no extra game, I would be fine. It is nice enough that they have given all this. The good thing is, that have raised over 1.5 million dollars from this! Remember, give a little something this holiday ;)

~Dave

Drink Like There is No Tomorrow

About two weeks ago I found this site, and when I found it there was a half price sale going on. Now, many of you may have friends who are gamers and don't know what to get them for the holidays. Hopefully by now you have something for them, but if you don't you can order something from here. The site is called Sanshee, and they specialize in making items based on video games. They make things from pokemon trainer badges, to shirts made by people. The shirts currently on sale are made by people on their website. They sell shirts made by people on their website if they like it enough. Due note that the shirts do not come pre-shrunk, that means buy a little bigger because it will shrink after the first wash. I do suggest the TF2 Scout shirts and the fallout shirt (seen above). Both make great gifts.

~Dave

Steam Sale is On!

Yesterday, Steam began its annual sale of games. The marketing tactic was very clever for this. The introduce the treasure hunt a few weeks back, and made a requirement to log on the last day, yesterday, to be entered in the grand prize drawing. Then, when everyone logged on yesterday, Steam put their sale on. That made everyone arrive and find all these great games on sale. Now, to start you have over 1000 games on sale. However, there are a select few each day that go on sale at a ridiculously low price. Yesterday's sale had Battlefield Bad Company 2 for about seven dollars, and Super Meat Boy for about three dollars. Other games to note were Deus Ex, Fallout 3, and Portal. What I recommend is not to buy everything you want today. Buy only the games that are on the daily sale first. If, by the end of the sale, the game you wanted did not become a daily, then go buy it for the price it is at. I have a feeling most of the valve games are going on sale, so I am holding off on Half Life 2 and Left 4 Dead at the moment. I am also hoping that Killing Floor goes on the daily sale. Make sure you also have a budget when going through your purchases. You don't want to overspend and then realize you spent too much. It is very tempting to want to buy everything at once. Refrain from that and just wait it out. While you are browsing, I do suggest checking out the website http://www.steamgamesales.com/ when you have a chance. The website shows you all the prices games on steam ever were, so you can gauge if the game you want may drop to a lower price.

~Dave