Red Faction: Guerilla Review

Positives:

Enjoyable destruction physics and gameplay
Creative and fun missions
Good weapon variety and feel
Fun arcade-ish driving
Open world options

Negatives:

Open world can feel a little too directionless at times

Summary:

An enjoyable romp through an open world built to be destroyed but that occasionally leaves you wondering what is next

Rating:

8.5 / 10

Recommendations:

Best played with a mouse and keyboard for better shooting accuracy

Darksiders Review

Positives:

Fun, addictive, visceral combat
Enjoyable, if predictable, storyline
Some cleverly designed puzzles
Enjoyable weapon and tool variations

Negatives:

Puzzles at times feel tacked on and overdone
Last stage of the game is twice its appropriate length

Summary:

A fun, predictable, action game that does best when focusing on its strengths (combat) but loses itself a bit towards the end with excessive puzzles and dungeon crawling

Rating:

8.5 / 10

Recommendations:

Best played with a gamepad

The End of Used Games

I’m surprised it’s taken this long for used games to be eliminated, but I guess it required a new console generation.  Regardless, eliminating used game sales is an obvious move.  And I for one am actually enthusiastic about the idea of eliminating used games as I think it will reduce the cost of games overall (game publishers have profit metrics they need to hit regardless of delivery method, and if there are no more used sales, a larger share of the profits are going to the publishers lowering the burden on new games to pay for all of their profit).

I don’t however think it will behave as Paul Tassi says.  Instead, I think you are looking at a prisoner’s dilemma problem in the “older” game market.  For the game developers as a whole, it would be better to agree to a consistent slightly reduced price and not deviate from it.  That way, gamers will want games and be forced to pay the higher prices for them.  However, it is in the best interest of each individual publisher to have everyone else keep the price of their games high while that developer offers discounts and all the sales flock to their now lower-priced games.  That competition will be awfully difficult to avoid.  Now Microsoft and Sony will have the desire certainly to try to corral the developers and keep prices high, but the competition will also exist between the platforms.  Many gamers will have multiple consoles (and a PC!) and will quickly switch their gaming habits (all else being equal) to whatever platform offers the best deals.

It would be unfortunate if console gamers had to wait an entire additional generation to see one-year-old games for less than $10 which is commonplace on Steam.  Fortunately, I don’t see that happening, but of course, my opinion plus a cup of coffee can get you a cup of coffee.

Best Buy is Shrinking!

Does this surprise anyone?  If you are even semi-interested in electronics, you should know already that online retailers have significantly better deals than Best Buy almost every day.  In my experience the difference is 20%-50% for most items.  And forget about buying computer components.

The problem is places like Best Buy rely on customer ignorance and impulse purchases to keep their margins.  As customers become aware of the ease and competitiveness of the online retailers, there is just no real reason to visit a Best Buy.

If instead, they offered helpful salespeople and slightly higher prices, I could see some value there, but online retailers offer better prices and typically provide much more information.

Game Journalists Beholden to Publishers?

Paul Tassi says that instances of companies exerting pressure on gaming journalists for positive reviews are very rare.  To that I say, they only need exist to impact other journalists.  An autocratic regime only needs to beat and teargas one group of protesters before all other potential protesters take notice.  I would guarantee that every game journo knows of the “few” stories out there of this happening.  How could it not be in the back of your mind as you write reviews on a game of a goliath like EA or Activision that are so critical to your future access to the latest and greatest games?  If nothing else, it provides for a sentinel effect.  I can’t say it’s rare or common, but simple human nature (self preservation etc) would indicate that it at least matters.

Please don’t misunderstand me in that I am not saying any mainstream journalists are bad people or in any way deceitful.  Without knowing any of them, my guess would be that they are all perfectly fine people, but they are still obviously operating under a clear conflict of interest (acknowledged or otherwise).  There are probably lots of people in similar situations across any number of industries who are able to maintain professionalism, but that conflict of interest still exists, and no one should hold any illusions to the contrary.

Baldur's Gate on an iPad?

Somehow this is unsettling to me.  Maybe they can make it good, but... spend that time developing the game for a real platform.  What is the use case where someone buys a game like Baldur's Gate which takes dozens of hours to finish (IIRC) on an iPad.  No thanks for me.

Primary Threat to PC Gaming

Stardock says it Apple Airplay.  I don't know the tech, but I find it questionable (you know, just because).

Mass Effect Ending Actually Good?

If the real Mass Effect ending was so good that everyone missed it, it was actually bad.  Just sayin’.

An Elder Scrolls MMO?

Am I the only one around that isn’t interested in seeing  one more great single player franchise invest their time in a multiplayer environment?  I realize this doesn’t necessarily mean that single player game development will cease, but it would be naïve to think it will occur with the same intensity as talent will be drawn from those games.  I am one of the unlucky few who hasn’t yet played Skyrim because I am cheap and I have a ton of other great stuff to play (e.g. The Witcher), however, I am definitely looking forward to it, and I am clearly looking forward to whatever the next version will be and even the DLC.  MMOs are big bulky adventures that can be great, but because of their nature, they by definition require a huge investment of time, and potentially money (although more likely than not, all new MMOs will be free to play soon enough).

Personally, I like single player games because they allow you to be the hero.  MMOs attempt to do this, but because everyone is already in the game, they simply can't provide the feeling of uniqueness - particularly if your time in the game is limited.

New Simcity Game Concerns

Seeing the news of a new SimCity game seems like generally excellent news.  The items demoed in the video at the link seem like excellent additions.  My real concern with the agent problem comes down to scale.  Like I imagine a lot of Simcity players, I like make big freakin’ honking cities with 1 million+ residents.  Will the agents be able to scale that large without grinding my i7 to a halt or will it be limited to 10K agents or something and you will get truly strange results by grouping agents into 100 people (nobody lives in 24 houses, and 100 people live in one)?  I’m all for software pushing hardware for a change, but I just hope this is handled correctly.

Tempting Deal on Space Marine

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/warhammer-space-marine-pc/36706.aspx

More Skyrim Criticism

Given my predisposition for enjoying easy games, I think I would have to disagree with the gist of this article.  While some amount of puzzle solving is enjoyable (I loved Portal and Portal 2 for what they were), I am pretty sure I would find the kind of puzzles he is discussing as tedious at best.  If I need to work that hard at something, call me lazy, but I am more likely than not going to want to get paid (said without irony by an unpaid blogger :) ).

Who’s Ready to Raid? (sent from my Blackberry)

Who out there is thinking that playing WoW on your smartphone is a good idea?  Sure, maybe I could see adding the casual items, but in my time playing (I never raided heavily, but I was a pretty decent tank at heroics), the end-game content is what matters, and in that stuff you play in a group, and the other people in that group generally CARE about succeeding in the game with the time they have invested.  They are not going to be particularly interested while you handicap yourself with unresponsive and inadequate controls.

The point of a smartphone/tablet is to provide a simple interface (touch) that is intuitive.  If you look at the latest games (Batman is a good example, but this applies to WoW as well), there are lots and lots of controls that need to be coordinated, something I don’t think is remotely possible on a touchscreen.  And nor should it need to do that!  It’s actually ok to have different controls excel at different things.  It’s easy to look at the success of the iPad/iPhone and think “that’s the way everything is going” without really thinking about the fact that what we have now for the controls for games actually works and is like it is for a reason regardless of the next new thing.

I think it’s all too easy for people who don’t really game or know what it is like to assume that you can do anything with a touch interface because you can use Facebook with it.  But when it comes to actual gaming (no, Angry Birds is not what I am talking about), it actually can require some skill even with all the best controls.  If you choose to play on a device with poor controls, you are effectively limiting your effectiveness as a player, and especially in multiplayer environments, that just isn’t going to fly.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Funded by Kickstarter?

Well, not more than a week after I viewed the Wasteland 2 kickstarter project in a negative light, I get this announcement which at the least makes me do a double-take.  BG is one of my favorite old games, and I would love to see a new sequel.

That being said, it is still hard for me to come to terms with paying $10 or more for an unknown quality game when there are already so many good games out there already that have proven themselves worthy of my money that I haven’t already bought….

Why doesn’t the Movie Industry Adopt a Steam-Like Platform?

Seeing the latest news on the new Ultraviolet platform, it appears to be a bit of a mess.  It is pretty sad to see the movie and television industry lurching so painfully into the future.  I have no idea how things are going to shake out, but it seems to me that there are really two viable models (or some combination of the two) that will win out.  But first, let’s just stipulate that cable tv is dead.  Maybe it’s not yet, but it’s dying slowly and certainly.  The idea of turning on the television and not being able to see exactly what you want when you want it will be seen as a true curiosity to the generations after us just as stories of the milk man are to this generation.

As I said, I only see two models surviving the coming tv apocalypse, a subscription-based, cloud-based, Netflix-like service where the advantages are that you have access to a broad library of media for as long as that subscription is active.  Unlike Netflix though, I think that these services will ultimately be offered by the content creators (the studios) themselves as cloud-hosting becomes easier and cheaper to perform and the middle-man’s profits are absorbed into the content creators.  I see this type of service appealing to customers that consume significant amounts of media and don’t want to be limited in choices.

Computation is in a Race between Personalization and Generalization

Just listening to the latest in-game chat podcast here regarding the reduction in cost of internet infrastructure (i.e. bandwidth), and I think there were some good points made, but I think I would take it another direction slightly.

I think technology is developing rapidly in two directions.  First, as was discussed on the podcast mentioned above is that bandwidth is becoming cheaper, “cloud” and cloud-like services are becoming more prevalent, but it’s also the case that computing power is getting cheaper and ever more personal.  For all intents and purposes, in a few short years, nearly everyone’s phone will behave as a essentially a small little computer (with possibly similar power to today’s entry-level laptops).

Generalized computation leads to service based models (think OnLive or Netflix) and personalized computation leads to ownership models (think PCs or video games).

As prices over time asymptotically approach zero for both, the question is which will have fewer barriers to adoption.

I would like to go further on this and explain why I would much prefer the personalized computation route (short version: because it empowers consumers rather than companies), but for the time being, I will leave it off here.

Mild Skyrim Criticism

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/19/why-skyrim-misses-the-mark-when-it-comes-to-story-telling-in-video-games/

Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition

I want.

Corsair 550d Case

So I just purchased a Corsair 550d case.  I'm still putting the final touches on my HTPC with it in it, but it looks quite promising.  Really like the 140mm exhaust fan option.

New SimCity

Yes, more of this please.

Oh, and release it on Steam.  Thanks!

Is Bioware Losing its Mojo?

Just like many of you, some of my favorite games have been made by Bioware.  Dragon Age: Origins sticks out to me as one of the best games of the last several years.  And obviously, the old Baldur’s Gates were fantastic.

However, with the stink over the Mass Effect 3 ending, and the failure of Dragon Age II, is it time to question whether Bioware is losing its edge?  Now of course, I am glossing over two things:  first, Star Wars: TOR was launched and by all accounts seems to be pretty decent (1.7 million people can’t be wrong!), and Mass Effect 3 for all the handwringing about the ending has had solid reviews from professional sites, so maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  Still, I can’t help but think that they are showing some cracks in the façade.  My cynical guess would be that EA is coming down hard on them to push out more content faster and that is contributing to unpolished products more recently.  I suppose time will tell, but I do hope Dragon Age III bucks the trend because I am really looking forward to it.

Good Deals on Games

Some good deals here for the interested.  I'm gonna pass for the moment as I am beginning to realize I am a Steam fanboy, and the Steam deals are not that interesting to me.

And I think we're grading Origin on a curve here by saying their sales are that great.  50% is fine and all for the uninformed, but I rarely buy anything less than two-thirds off and have a full library (108 games and counting) anyway.

Just sayin'.

Is Traditional PC Gaming Threatened by Mobile Devices?

There has been much ink spilled about the “end of the PCs”.  Much of that has to do with the rise of smartphones and tablets (my view of the relationship between mobile devices and PCs at some other time), and there is no doubt that smartphones and tablets have seen a meteoric rise in sales in recent years.  At the same time, the graphics processing on those devices has significantly improved to the point where valid comparisons can be made between current generation console graphics and say an iPad or the Tegra 3.

The PC gaming market, on the other hand, is relatively stagnant from a growth perspective.  Console gaming has taken a large chunk of the mainstream gamers away from PC gaming.  What’s left are typically pretty impassioned enthusiasts but a relatively small subset of overall gamers.  Even with digital downloading, Steam, mods, and other myriad benefits of PC Gaming, the growth simply isn’t there.  But if you look at the chart I posted the other day, I think it will help with my explanation of my theory.

Now there are various reasons why PC Gamers game on PCs, and I will not bother to list them all here (I tried but there were too many, and this post isn’t about that), but the one reason that I think is critical is that typical PC gamers are looking for the BEST experience they can get for their budget.  For example, I recently purchased a new graphics card which incidentally happens to be roughly the same price as the cost of the components of a new iPad, but my graphics card is just for rendering graphics.  The reason I spent so much was not because I absolutely needed that level of performance or that I am dumb (although maybe…).  Rather, I am sure I could have made do with a much less impressive (read: expensive) card.  I did it though because I wanted the BEST visual experience for my budget.  I would say that that is typical for the average PC Gamer.  And yes, we could all spend less and get a console (and many us have consoles too), but we want the better visual experience and so we want to spend what it will take to get that better experience.  You need look no further than the number of gamers willing to spend money on top-of-the-line graphics cards and 30” high resolution monitors to see that there is a real desire to get that “best” experience possible.

Faithful Core Gamers and the Rise of Mobile Gaming (Cont’d)

Expanding on my previous post here.  I have put together a chart that I think helps explain the gaming community by the markets they are in.

More on Mass Effect 3 and Consumer Entitlement

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/15/upset-mass-effect-fans-entitled-gamers-or-responsible-consumers/#more-7105

I think this comes down to basically customers bought a product (Mass Effect 3), disliked that product, and they have every right to complain in the ways they see fit.  As Erik Kain says, I don’t think this would be controversial if it were any other product.  And of course they are entitled!  They bought the product and in many cases, multiple products, early, at maximum profitability!  Why shouldn’t they want an appropriate return for making those investments?

Additionally, the point of playing video games is to make an impact on the game itself.  That’s why we play games rather than watch movies.  Making one ending no matter the choices made strikes me as laziness as much as anything.  The calculation Bioware made I am sure comes down to the fact that a relatively small percentage of customers played all three games, invested in them, and make it to the end of #3.  The business case is obvious for not focusing on that small group of customers, but you would hope that they would care a little more about their product if nothing else for the pride of making a decent product (I know, how naïve of me to even suggest it!).

Prefer Steam to No DRM

Am I bad gamer because I’d rather have a game activate on Steam that have it be DRM free?  Does that make me a fanboy?  Probably… but frankly, I like it that Steam keeps track of my stats, and Steam gives me exactly the flexibility I need/want – the ability to install my games on any system I have whenever I want.  And did I mention I love that it tracks my personal stats?  I know I’m weird.

Baldur's Gate HD Coming in the Summer?

I've got to admit this looks great.  I loved the first two.

Steampad?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/14/apple-steam-pad-and-the-new-wave-of-game-development/

I am not nearly as bullish as this guy on mobile games/Apple in general, but it is interesting to think about what could be next.  It is a pretty exciting time for gamers.  The trend I am probably most hopeful for is the model of "buy once, play on anything".  I hope that developers begin to make games that are slightly more platform agnostic.

Internet Demand to Increase 10x

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/internet-broadband-bandwidth-demand-cap,15013.html

Not exactly surprising news but gets at the reason I’m not too bullish on services like OnLive.  My household already has two dedicated internet users at night (my wife and I) and my kids aren’t yet old enough to start using, but will in the next 5 years or so.  My bandwidth cap (Comcast) is 250 GBs a month.  Sounds like a lot, but if I want to stream 1080p shows, that can get chewed through rather quickly.  And especially with gaming, I want all the fidelity I can (looking to pick up a 2560x1440 monitor soon and see 4K screens on the horizon).  Even if somehow the data caps issue is resolved (which I am still skeptical), I would hate to feel the lag and /or latency spikes and poor quality video due to having to share so much bandwidth with the rest of my house, but maybe I am too much of a technology skeptic.

If OnLive could iron out those kinks, it could be a game changer, but for some reason (old age maybe?), I still prefer the idea of owning my games and my hardware although subscriptions to everything seems to be the way stuff (Netflix, OnLive, Dropbox, etc) is going.

Mass Effect 3 Ending

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/15/paragons-of-protest-retake-mass-effect-raises-money-for-kids/

It doesn’t surprise me that the ME 3 ending is as bad as it sounds all things considered (high value games like this are inevitably going to be products of a committee culture ultimately), but it is disappointing.

I probably won't get to this game for awhile.  Still need to play ME 1 and 2 sadly.

Wasteland 2 Funded by Kickstarter

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/15/wasteland-2-brought-to-you-by-kickstarter/

Not sure what I think of this.  Having never played the games mentioned, I can’t comment on that, but I do wonder what the exact value is of something like this.  With this being in such an initial phase of development, people are buying… the Wasteland 2 name?  And the vague outline of people who will work on a game.  Seems like a risky bet to me and one more likely than not to lead to disappointment for many of the people buying in (I am guessing expectations are already high, and no work has been done at all).  Don’t get me wrong, I am enthusiastic about more games always everywhere, and I will pick it up if it looks really promising/sounds fun, but if I have to vote with $X of my hard-earned money to support developers, I am going to reward products that have proven themselves.  For example, I just picked up Orcs Must Die on a Steam sale.

Video Card Benchmarking

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516

Apropos of my last post, if you are at all interested in getting a new video card, these guys have the definitive analysis in my opinion.  Frame times are what matter.  For a variety of reasons, I am a bit doubtful of some of their methods (requires statistics-speak which I will spare), but compared to fps, frame times win hands down.

Radeon HD 7800 Series

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22573

If I was in the market for a video card, I’d be getting one of these – although after Nvidia releases Kepler and the prices settle.  My one experience with Nvidia (560 TI 448) has not been great so far (although I love MSI cards), so I think I am switching back next time.  AMD seems to provide more value anyway.

Mechwarrior Online!

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22640

Ooh boy, that looks like a good time!

Faithful Core Gamers and the Rise of Mobile Gaming

One of the things I always find so remarkable when I read news about various companies “refocusing on social/mobile games” obviously at the expense of core games is how clueless it seems.  You would think at some point as a gaming company that they might realize that real gamers (i.e. core gamers) are the ones that buy their products and will do so religiously.  It’s like a love triangle where game publishers are like some high school boy who can’t get over the ditzy flighty cheerleader who gives him occasional looks (i.e. non-gamers generally, and in the current example, mobile “gamers”).  All the while, he shuns the faithful but somewhat plain girlfriend he already has (i.e. core gamers).  You saw it with the Wii*, and that obviously went nowhere fast, and now I am guessing you are seeing it now with games on mobile devices.

Sure, there are a lot of people buying games for iOS and Android right now**, but I would guess a lot of it is the novelty of it (“ooh, look what my iPad can do”), but the thing about non-gamers is that they’re… non-gamers, and they are usually non-gamers for a reason.  Sure, some gamers are buying those games, but the market for $5 iPad games isn’t sexy because of the relatively small proportion of people who have mobile devices who are also gamers.  It’s sexy because of how many people own smart phones (or will) in total.

Origin Now Offers Sega Games

http://www.techpowerup.com/162385/SEGA-to-Offer-Top-Games-on-Origin.html

Kind of mixed feelings about Origin right now.  On the one hand, more competition for digital delivery is always better.  On the other hand, I love Steam, and I don’t like having my library fractured into disparate silos (I get odd amounts of joy out of being able to see the rankings of the amount of time I play on my various games and seeing what games I have spent the most time playing).

What I don’t understand is how come the DRM/DD service (Steam, Origin, GOG) hasn’t already been decoupled from where you purchase the game.  Seems to me, you should be able to buy the game anywhere, get a product code, and activate it anywhere with the DRM service you prefer.  Right now, I am passing up sales at Origin and Amazon DD (for instance) because they don’t activate on Steam - sales I would have otherwise bit on.  If the publisher just had a list of approved DRM services where its code could be activated and the DRM service got some payment if it activated on their site, I think everyone would be happy.  And it would force the DRM services to then compete for those dollars by offering better services.

My general stance towards Origin has been that I am going to wait them out as long as I can.  I bought BF3 from them, because I fell in love with the tech.  They’ve got a lot of sexy games (for instance) though that I will eventually want to play (provided I can ever reduce my Steam backlog).  I am hoping (perhaps futilely) that they will wise up and allow older games back on Steam (after a year or so after release). For now, I am quite content to play my Steam games though.

Why I Play Games on Easy / Why I Enjoy Easy Games

In a lot of forums and posts of the professional gaming press, there seems to be a bit of fetishization of playing games on hard modes and a stigma on playing games on easy mode.  I don’t really agree with that, and here are some reasons why:

• When I play a game, I am suspending reality to enter a better / more fun reality.  Is it better / more fun to slash through one guy, two guys, or three guys at a time with a sword?  Did I even need to ask?

• I work hard all day and most of my night.  Why would I want to take the precious few hours I have left and work hard then?

• When I play games, I play them to feel empowered and powerful.  I don’t play games to be frustrated over and over again.  I don’t enjoy being frustrated.  And the sense of relief at having accomplished the same thing but harder usually does not make up for the additional time lost.

• At a lot of games, I am not that good of a player.  Frankly, in a lot of games, I kind of suck.  That is not to say I can’t play them, but some games (shooters come to mind) I just don’t have the skills (twitch) to be at the top of the charts.  I can accept that about myself, and I like it when my games can accept that too.

• Sometimes I just want the experience and as many experiences as I can get.  Playing games on easy allows me to get through games faster and see other games and their other experiences. 

Counterpoint.  As with anything, there are things that aren’t as great.  Namely:

About This Blog

I think my post on myself has probably given a good idea where I am coming from.  In case you are interested in why I want to blog (don’t worry, non-self-indulgent content coming soon!), I think this passage from Stephen Crane captures it nicely.

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.

 

-Stephen Crane

 

That being said, I hope you all will get as much out of it as I do, but… time will tell!  And now for something completely different…

About Me

I thought it was important to start this out with a bit of an introduction.  I have a regular day-time job doing work of a statistical, mathematics, and computer science background (heavier on the math/stats than the CompSci).  More recently, I have been moved into more of a middle management role at a financial services company.  I have a wife, a 3 year-old son, and a daughter on the way.

 

For the most part, my life is already very full, but I spend most of my free time with my various hobbies.  Predominantly, those are gaming, tech news, and I am a pretty avid follower of politics/public policy. 

 

For the most part, my blog will focus on gaming and tech news, and will focus pretty heavily on my particular favorite brand of gaming – pc gaming. 

 

Like most middle class people my age (30), my first exposure to video games was through arcades and a friend who had one of the first ataris.  My first console was an NES, and I played the standard games (Mario, Duckhunt, Super Speed Bike).  None of those I would say caught my interest, and it wasn’t until SimCity 2000 and Doom that I got my first taste of PC Gaming.  The Doom/Wolfenstein games were fun, but SimCity 2000 was formative for me.  As a child, I just couldn’t believe the opportunities and intricacies available in a game like that.  No objectives?  No problem!  I still remember to this day when I first heard of the game and talking my poor childhood friend’s ear off about what amazing possibilities it presented (it wouldn’t be for a year or more longer until my family had a computer with high enough specs to play it (1 MB of RAM!)).

 

Over time, there would be other formative games.  I have listed those in no particular order:

 

Final Fantasy III – the first game where I fell in love with the story.

SimCity 2000 – The open-endedness and endless possibilities were mesmerizing.

Civilization II – I spend hours playing this at my parent’s work computer because our home computer couldn’t handle it.

Final Fantasy VIII – Yes that one.  The first game that I played through almost entirely start to finish (twice!).

World of Warcraft – The most addictive fun I’ve ever had – until it began to compete with my real life for time.

 

Nowadays, my more recent favorites are Civilization V, Defense Grid: The Awakening, The Witcher, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Company of Heroes, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Battlefield 3, and of course World of Warcraft, although I will not play that anymore so that I have time for other games.

 

As you can probably tell, I tend to play older games more recently for various reasons but the largest is that I spend a big part of the last decade engrossed in WoW.  It was a great game, but I put it down because it began to feel too much like a grind to keep up with the Jones’.  I will always have an unmatched love for my warrior tank (aka Dolor), but I had to put it down to see what else I was missing (and boy am I glad I did!).

 

My current rig is:

 

i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz

16 GB G.Skill 1866 MHz Memory

MSI NVidia 560 Ti 448 @ 900MHz

128 GB Crucial M4 SSD

2x 1.5 TB Hitachi 7200 RPM HDD in Raid 0

2x 2.0 TB Samsung 5400 RPM HDD in Raid 0

Corsair H80 Liquid Cooler

Corsair 650D Case

 

I built my first rig in 2010, and my only regret is that it took me so long.  Up until then, I had been gaming on prebuilt desktops/laptops which worked fine, but were nothing compared to enjoyment and satisfaction of building my own.  There is some difficult to define satisfaction I got from building my own computer.  Gaming on hardware I put together and am responsible for is very refreshing in a world where everything is becoming so specialized.  It’s a very beautiful thing, and I highly recommend it if you haven’t already.

 

As you might be able to tell, I tend to spend more money on my hardware than on my software J.

 

I think that’s about all you need to know about me to know where I am coming from.  For those of you interested (brave?) enough to read this far, I appreciate the courtesy and hope that this gives you some insight into who I am and where this blog will be going.

Hello World

Huzzah, my first post.  More to come.